Jesus Crist, Don't Do It!

The Sean Bell murder trial in NYC in May 2008 highlighted the continued oppression that African Americans and other minorities are subject to. Although we have elected an African-American President, the underlying, pervasive racism of our society, epitomized by disproportionate incarceration rates among blacks and Latinos, endemic unemployment and sky-rocking foreclosures within minority communities, gives mute testimony to the persistence of institutionalized racism in our supposedly "post-racial" society, which has the largest per capita prison population in the world of which over 40% are people of color. This is a national crisis that is hardly ever mentioned by our political leaders of either party.

In today's world the perpetrators of outrages such as Bell's murder, may very well be of the same ethnicity as the victim, which doesn't change but emphasizes the institutional nature of the abuse. The Bell case was just one example among many documenting the reality of racial oppression in our society, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. What added additional irony and pathos to the incident was the coincidence that fifty years earlier another Bell, named Daniel, met a similar fate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In 1958, Daniel Bell, a young African-American was shot in the back by Officer Thomas Grady supposedly in self-defense, an excuse based on the discovery that Daniel had a knife in his hand at the time he was shot. In 1977 another officer, Louis Krause, came forward, nearly 20 years after the fact and admitted that his partner had planted the knife on the victim. Grady, who had been on duty when he fired the shots that killed Bell and planted the knife, pleaded guilty in 1978 to homicide by reckless conduct and to perjury for lying during the inquest that cleared him. Milwaukee's D.A. at the time, E. Michael McCann, who served in that capacity for 36 years before retiring in 2006, refused to investigate whether anyone else in the department was involved in the cover-up.

Below is a poem I wrote 30 years ago to commemorate Daniel's murder. It was read during a rally organized to protest the police cover-up of Daniel's murder that had then come to light. The poem is based on a news story that appeared in the Sept. 13, 1979 Milwaukee Journal. Entitled "Killer Pleaded: Don't Tell DA," the article tells how officer Grady tried to dissuade his partner Louis Krause from exposing the cover-up of Daniel Bell's murder.The telephone conversation held between these two former police officers, as reported in the paper, serves as the basis for the poem.

Killer Cop Pleaded "Don't Tell DA"
-- Dennis A. Etler

"Jesus Christ don't do it."
We've kept this under wraps for twenty years now
No need to bring it to the light of day.
It's true we were on the prowl
Looking for prey
Walking with a swagger.
It didn't matter, he was only a n*gger kid,
why, all I had to do was take out that dagger,
and put it in his hand.
No need to land
In jail now.

"Jesus Christ don't do it."
Hey, we've stuck together through thick and thin
Now's not the time to do me in.
It's happened before and happened since
Shi...when we killed that boy we hardly winced
Or gave
A thought that he had a right to live.

"Jesus Christ don't do it."
Sure I've thought of it time and again,
But these things happen now and then.
Shouldn't take it so hard
Those people need a lesson, show them
who's boss, who calls the cards.

"Jesus Christ, don't do it."
What's this world comin' to when a
black boy's life twenty years dead
Can bring me back to this damn city
Led before the dock.
I tell you it's a pity.
He was just a n*gger kid, if we had
put him under lock and thrown away the key
There wouldn't be all this fuss and I'd
be off scot-free.

"Jesus Christ, don't do it."
I'm not alone in this crime.
But I'm the only one gonna do any time.
Those others in the cover-up
Why DA McCann said he'd never give up
Their names.
And what about those other murders?
You can't tell me that all them claims
of self-defense
Make any more sense
Than mine.
"Jesus Christ, don't do it!"

50 years ago, 30 years ago, the day before yesterday, today and tomorrow. The more things change the more they stay the same.