Norwood, Ohio, our urban Appalachian city/burg without discernable lane lines and with seemingly endless road construction that never results in better roads; the city betwixt and between us and the other places we’d like to be, will always get what it gets — a bad rap and a bad reputation — because of its so-called “leaders.”
Their police are never fully accountable for officers’ bad behavior, like police station cameras capturing officers mercilessly pummeling and slamming to the ground a black woman under arrest in the police lobby.
Yes, that went away.
Now there’s more undeniable proof Norwood is being led by its nose into a corner of deeper clannishness in the name of “protect and serve.”
In a letter dated Dec. 22 that has now come to light, Norwood Mayor Thomas F. Williams penned a bon mot to the Norwood Police Department slamming black civil rights leaders and do-nothing politicians, warning officers — like a roll call from a long-ago episode of Hill Street Blues — to “be careful out there,” ending that he, for one, will always have their backs.
He writes: “With recent events across the country, I feel compelled to express my thoughts in writing as police officers across the country are under attack by race baiting black leaders and cowardly elected officials.
“As you know, Norwood, in the past, has been portrayed in a negative fashion by some. The Norwood Police Department has always performed its duties in an exemplary fashion and held its high standards of conduct without any outside influence…back each other and take nothing for granted.
Let it be known that, God forbid, something controversial should happen, I WILL NOT ABANDON YOU.
God watch over the Norwood Police Department.”
Then he signs it “Fraternally yours.”
Williams’ rallying cry reminds me of the formative days of that other ruling American institution, the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was also formed as a fraternity of like-minded, fed-up brethren who sidestepped the law and meted out their own form of justice, all while stitching their rebel flags with the threads of “us versus them.”
The letter’s tone — while not quite threatening — is albeit still ominous. It is supposed to be rah-rah fraternal; however, it comes off as a reinforcement of the thin blue line separating the cops from the citizenry. Its message to “back each other and take nothing for granted” reads like rudimentary instructions to “shoot first, lie later,” a subversive message that has earned plenty of American police forces glaring media attention and public outrage, if not deep trouble.
Clearly, Mayor Williams can say Ferguson, Long Island and Cleveland. Further, he must be watching endless pundits on, probably, Fox News espouse how this country has been run off the rails by gutless politicians kowtowing to bullying black thugs running and rioting in the streets.
Here is where Williams’ letter is so stupidly delicious it’s like clubbing baby seals.
First, why does God make bigots so stupid?
I know they’re not all as stupid as Williams; some are actually quite brilliant, which is why America always ends up back at the door of racism: The smart bigots have figured out how to make some aspects of our lives together curvilinear.
But bigots like Williams are on par with, say, the Hollywood studio heads of Sony Pictures whose emails got leaked by the North Koreans and they got caught wondering what (black) movies President Obama would like to watch or calling comedian Kevin Hart a money-grubbing little man who won’t do anything without first being paid.
These emails and letters let us know how these people — these “leaders” — really feel about the rest of us and it makes me sick to my stomach.
What makes Williams so much like them is he is stupid enough to put his stupidity on paper and then circulate it so it can fall into the hands of someone like me who takes profound umbrage with his Bull Connor-esque frenzied call to his troops to mount up against the dark forces that would keep Norwood police from fully carrying out their duties.
Williams, in effect, is part and parcel of what’s supremely wrong with Norwood and why it can’t escape its own black eye. Williams wants to ensure that Norwood remains a southern-most northern burg unwelcoming to strangers and strangled by rogue cops, and he’s using the race-based, police-inspired tragedies of the day to do it. And any Norwood cop — by his silent acceptance of Williams’ edicts or by his outward carriage — who is down with Williams is a cop I do not ever want to encounter as I’m passing through Norwood to get to freedom.
Secondly, Norwood is a vacuum, and tripe like this gurgles up and, sadly, dies down then blows away because there’s no real black presence in Norwood except for the blacks who maybe work the cash registers at Kroger or the drive-thru windows at Norwood’s endless array of fast food chains.
There was one TV news story on this letter and a sound bite from a black woman, an activist without any muscle behind her, sheepishly demanding an apology from Williams.
Crickets.
There will be no real black push back or outrage over Williams’ letter and it will appear as though he got his message off without so much as a black batted eye.
But my eyes are blinking wildly, Mr. Williams, and between each blink you must know that you are being watched, monitored, listened to, written about and documented. People are talking about you in these streets and they’re mainly flummoxed by your letter and how it and you can go unnoticed.
This is neither a warning nor a threat.
But you really should take your Old Dixie, your cowboys and Indians rodeo show some place else, like retirement. Find another old bigot in an assisted-care home who longs for the olden days like you, then y’all can sit together in the activity room and wax poetic about the days when cops got away with murder. It’ll make you happy to know it happens all the time.
CONTACT KATHY Y. WILSON: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2015.
