Reports on Fort Hood shouldn’t promote Islamophobia

Originally published November 12, 2009. This column was given two different headlines. In the Nov. 12 print edition, it was “Some factors forgotten in Fort Hood shooting”. Online, it ran as “Reports on Fort Hood shouldn’t promote Islamophobia”.

One week ago, a man killed thirteen and wounded another 29 in an unexpected shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas. When news sources revealed his name, people suddenly forgot that he is a single, Virginia-born, 39-year-old Army psychiatrist who has served since 1995, and had been recently informed of his upcoming deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

But a name like Nidal Malik Hasan attracts a lot of attention from the press and the public these days.

News reports continue to emerge that focus almost solely on Hasan’s Muslim background—e-mail exchanges with radical imam Anwar al-Aulaqi regarding a research paper, a presentation concerned with American Muslims’ potential personal reactions to waging a war against other Muslims, and much more.

The AP and ABC made sure to mention soldiers’ speculative claims that they heard Hasan yell “Allahu akbar!” during the violence last week. On Monday, Reuters, rather than identify him as a Virginian or even of the nationality of his parents, simply said that Hasan is “a Muslim born in the United States of immigrant parents.”

It’s interesting that the only word used to describe him in a very brief report is his religious preference.

Popular news media seems devoted to stripping all of the other details from this horrible event, leaving the public with two assertions—that Hasan is a Muslim and a terrorist.

It seems likely that Hasan’s perspectives on the United States, its overseas conflicts, and his religion factored into his extreme actions.

But as the press and the government mull over how this situation could have been prevented, all they’re doing is debating over something that doesn’t really have a clear solution.

It is in no way acceptable to seek out Muslims in the military and investigate their behavior and correspondences without a concrete instance of questionable action on the part of an individual.

On top of that, it’s another nigh-impossible task to create regulations that give investigators further scope over personal data and the power to decide what is potentially dangerous.

Rather than wade into the quagmire of whether others’ inaction in approaching Hasan had to do with some misguided sense of “political correctness,” the greater issues at hand are basic oversights on the part of others at Fort Hood.

How did a psychiatrist get a potentially unregistered civilian handgun onto a base? How did a military mental health professional with potentially serious emotional and psychological issues get out of his own standard psychiatric examinations?

It’s not to say that Hasan’s religion shouldn’t be discussed if it’s proven to be the primary motive for his appalling behavior, and in his circumstance, it may well be. But most of the presentation of information concerning his beliefs is the same kind of sensationalist fear-mongering that’s put Muslims in such a compromised position in the U.S. in the first place.

While we continue to seek justice in the aftermath of such a terrible crime, it is deeply important that we remember one person who identifies in any particular way—Christian, Latino, gay, American, Muslim—is not an example of everyone else who identifies the same way.

Other people who are observant Muslims, who have names that others could construe as “Middle Eastern,” and the like should not be forced to cringe as they listen to the news, hoping that actions of one single human being will not reflect upon their own.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.

Sparkman murder exhibits culture of violence taking over across US

Originally published October 1, 2009.

Obama’s administration thus far has certainly been a controversial one for many, but it also seems to have unintentionally spawned something much less anticipated—a culture of violent response to politics.

Bill Sparkman was 51 years old. He lived in London, Kentucky, where he worked as a substitute teacher and classroom aide. He was a cancer survivor. He was also a part-time census worker.

On September 13, Sparkman was found dead at Hoskins Cemetary in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. He was bound, gagged, and almost naked. Though his feet rested on the ground, there was a noose around his neck tied to a nearby tree branch. The word “Fed” was scrawled on his chest in red marker, and his census ID was taped to his neck.

Close on the heels of Bill Sparkman’s death came the posting and removal of a Facebook poll asking whether participants thought President Obama should be killed. And of course, all of this follows increasingly aggressive demonstrations at town hall meetings and healthcare reform discussions at which people have turned out with guns and posters calling for the death of Obama.

Obama’s administration thus far has certainly been a controversial one for many, but it also seems to have unintentionally spawned something much less anticipated—a culture of violent response to politics.

It’s not as though people have never committed destructive deeds over political reasons or disagreements. It’s not even as though worse acts have never been carried out. The disconcerting aspect is that this aggression is highly public and directed at one common target—Barack Obama and anything perceived as having to do with him: legislation, speeches, public gatherings, you name it, right down to census workers.

Given what was written on his body, it seems Bill Sparkman paid dearly, not specifically for his census work or his personal life, but for his connection to our current president.

But the motivation for such serious enmity remains unclear. Accusations of racism have been made left and right, and while I think issues of race play especially heavily into the evolving dynamics of American culture right now, it seems too cut-and-dry to attribute this inclination toward violence strictly to racial tension.

One of the most confusing elements of this rabid anti-Obama sentiment is that, though some of it had existed before he was even elected, much of it has been amplified by debates on healthcare reform and stimulus spending. While having fervid feelings and opinions about both issues is quite valid, I can’t wrap my head around the pseudo-logic that leads to these overt threats of violence. How does someone make the jump from criticism of Obama’s (and Congress’s, for that matter) suggestions for economic recovery and healthcare reform to a decision that the clear solution is simply to suggest or carry out the president’s murder?

How does someone who comes to a well-researched conclusion on either side of the healthcare debate feel so intensely about it that killing someone is justifiable? How do people get riled up more over Obama speaking to schoolchildren about working hard and making a commitment to their country (which most presidents notably do, even to adult audiences) than the fact that we are at war?

More importantly, how do we get off the track we’re on? It’s a typical response for people to shut out everything someone else says when their beliefs differ on a single issue—something much more common than politically-motivated violence. But until we can determine what has pushed political disagreement to this openly hostile level and why television news media seems so intent on urging it on—until we can figure out why Bill Sparkman was murdered in a place without a history of politically-motivated violence—questions are all we have.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.

Shooting shows police offers must think before they react

Originally published September 17, 2009.

All sides can agree that on August 24, a 23-year-old man was shot and killed by police officers in a Rockford church. Everything else is still up in the air. Rockford police chief Chet Epperson has said that officers Stan North and Oda Poole fatally shot Mark Anthony Barmore as he attempted to wrestle a gun away from them.

Eyewitnesses at the scene insist that Barmore came out of hiding with his hands up and was killed. These witnesses were two church day care employees, as well as several young children.

Rockford police received a call that day regarding a domestic disturbance between Barmore and his girlfriend, and encountered him outside Kingdom Authority International Ministries Church. According to an Associate Press article on Saturday, the church was one he attended on occasion and that he was speaking outside with pastor Rev. Melvin Brown’s wife and 17-year-old daughter—the two daycare employees.

These witnesses and police dispute whether officers approached with their guns drawn, but all concur that Barmore ran into the church upon seeing them. It’s not unreasonable that Mark Anthony Barmore would have fled.

He had been arrested before, once on charges of assaulting an officer with a firearm, and had recently finished serving a prison sentence. It could certainly be true that he had just come from the scene of a domestic disturbance with his live-in girlfriend. But all accounts have stated that at the time of the shooting, Barmore was unarmed and alone. He should not have ended up dead.

The case is currently under investigation by Illinois state police and the Cook County state attorney’s office, but the NAACP is calling for both a full-on investigation by the Department of Justice and a reintroduction of the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act. The legislation, originally backed by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in 2000, aims to unify the use-of-force policies of all law enforcement agencies by mandating federal standards.

While the effectiveness of a Department of Justice investigation will become clear as further information is released in the current investigation, the need for passage of the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act is already overwhelming.

Just looking at the details of the Barmore case make this clear, despite arguments over what took place. If Mark Barmore, a single, weaponless man, had attempted to fight one of two armed police officers for a gun, it might have justified the police’s decision to shoot. But that should have meant two shots—one for each officer—in non-fatal parts of Barmore’s body that would have rendered him unable to attack.

If witness testimony is correct, there’s no reason Barmore should have been injured at all.

He reappeared from the boiler room into which he had run, hands up in surrender, according to Marissa Brown.

She has said Barmore was shot multiple times, around as many as eight.

Establishing a standard use-of-force policy would begin a process of re-educating law enforcement officers and how they assess situations in which force is necessary—something clearly needed, as evidenced by the record of one of the officers involved in Barmore’s death.

In the ongoing investigation, it’s come to light that Oda Poole shot three other suspects in last three years, killing one of them.

Poole insists that the 66-year-old man he fatally wounded was pointing what could have been a weapon at him and would not drop it. It turned to out to be hammer in a sock. Police found a suicide note on the man after the fact. The million-dollar question: why did Poole fail to consider shooting him in a spot that would have disarmed him?

Setting use of force standards won’t fix everything, but teaching officers to think before they shoot is a much-needed first step on the path to eliminating unnecessary violence—and unnecessary loss of life.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.