Naked Truths
The video of Matthew Bernard running around naked as he's chased by a Virginia State Police officer seems like something which could be a YouTube celebrity's tribute to The Benny Hill Show or some kind of college fraternity prank gone awry. A young white man, stark naked, running around attempting to strangle a bystander with a cop chasing him, while half heartedly swinging a baton at the naked suspect. It's surreal, and verges on comical without any other context.
Everything exists in context though. Eventually, State Police got Matthew Bernard in cuffs, and into custody. What the video doesn't show is that Bernard is the prime suspect in a triple murder. They were called to the scene after a neighbor had found the body of Bernard's mother in their driveway. It's believed Bernard murdered his mother, his sister and his toddler nephew who turned one in June. The video shows the culmination of a multi-agency search. From the second the video begins, police believe they are chasing a murderer.
For those who follow stories concerning police shootings and other uses of force, especially here in Virginia, it's hard not to think of Marcus-David Peters. After running naked across I-95 and being struck by a vehicle coming to a stop, a Richmond City police officer confronted Marcus. The officer attempts to stun Marcus, but only one of the leads from the stun gun connects, diminishing it's effectiveness considerably. As Marcus continues toward the officer, he's then shot twice in the stomach. Marcus died at the hospital, as a result of those gunshots.
Police had been called to the scene due to reports of a naked man running around on I-95. The investigation that followed revealed security camera footage of Marcus a few minutes before, leaving The Jefferson hotel where he was employed part time, naked, after having removed his clothes at some point after arriving at the hotel. Prior to his appearance on I-95, Marcus was suspected of no crime, except possibly public exposure. Police didn't arrive on the scene believing they were encountering an individual who'd committed any acts of violence. They hadn't yet made any connection between Peters actions at the Jefferson and the man on I-95. No one at The Jefferson saw fit to call the police.
Marcus-David Peters was a Black man. Matthew Bernard is a white man. In keeping with character, the usual chorus of voices are exclaiming that none of this has anything to do with race. It would be an admirable act of creative thinking to look at the contrast between these two cases and ignore the obvious implications. It would be admirable, if a complete lack of any care for our fellow human beings who are also Black was admirable. Any realistic reading of history and current political, social and economic landscape suggests no shortage of people who find this kind of creative reasoning admirable. It has to be referred to as "creative reasoning" though, because referring to as "lying" or "a willful campaign to disregard both the nation's stated values and the lessons of history" isn't considered civil.
Contrary to the assumptions of those who have consistently attempted to undermine discussions and analysis which does highlight the racial disparities in policing, law enforcement and criminal punishment, isn't that the motive is to see a parity in punishment by fostering a climate of more severe punishment. The assumption seems to be that in criticizing the fact that Marcus-David Peters was shot and Matthew Bernard was taken into custody without injury, advocates for reform of law enforcement would prefer for Matthew Bernard to have been shot to death. This is not the case, and it highlights the degree to which advocates for law enforcement reform and criminal punishment reform are only given space in the public sphere when they are to be used as foils to agitate our fears. The consequence of the fact that the many plans and ideas about reform or complete overhaul aren't given significant attention when there isn't a current uproar about the violence of law enforcement or criminal punishment is a public which is easily mislead about the character of those plans and ideas. Misinformation about what those plans and ideas are becomes the understood norm.
The people who have dedicated their lives to these ideas are not advocating the shooting of Matthew Bernard. They're advocating that Marcus-David Peters should have been given the same consideration as Matthew Bernard, and the facts back up their assertion that the reason he wasn't is because Marcus was Black.
Unfortunately, where many of our political, social and media institutions are concerned, it seems relevant to debate the degree to which the centuries long portrayal of Black men as lawless, lustful, rampaging brutes comes into play, the discussion always seems to stop there. There can be no consensus developed because the popular narrative is betrayed as "one side seeing everything as being related to race," and one side "never seeing race as related to anything." This is the longer held belief and more veiled version of "we should debate the Nazis into obscurity." Ignoring that the "way of life" and standard of living which is disproportionately enjoyed by white Americans in comparison to Black Americans is the result of centuries of patriarchal white supremacy is a must. "Get over it, it happened so long ago," is one of the brainless responses to a discussion of something happening right now.
The argument is also made that the officer who killed Marcus-David Peters was Black, and therefore, race couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it. This discounts both the fact that Black men has been portrayed as dangerous brutes for centuries, and that in a society which prizes white life and safety far ahead of Black life and safety, a Black man, including a police officer, is going to have been conditioned to believe there will be severe and swift punishment for harm done to a white man, not limited to, but most especially below the Mason Dixon line. Valuing the health and safety of white life, especially that of white men, ahead of all others, also puts the fact that even as a suspected murderer who attempted to assault a police officer and attempted to strangle someone in front of a police officer, Matthew Bernard is taken into custody and the worst of his injuries are the result of him purposefully banging his own head against the cage separating the front and rear of a police car. The fact is that white police officers aren't more likely to shoot Black suspects than Black police officers, but Black people and other people of color are overwhelmingly more likely to be shot by police officers. The only way to pretend this isn't true is to discount population rates, and instead only focus on rates of criminal convictions by race, which essentially sidesteps the entire issue of whether or not a minority of people are policed more heavily than the majority. Policing as an institution and criminal punishment as an institution, have embedded systematic biases that don't change just because we give a Black person a badge or a judge's robe.
It's hard to look at the video of Bernard being chased around and not feel it has a Keystone Cops quality to it, which is part of what allows for so many to discount the rage expressed at the difference in his treatment from that of Marcus. The video of Marcus was never given that kind of leeway. Even where his being hit by a slow moving vehicle is actually a staple of this kind of slapstick imagery, it's not perceived as "wacky" or as "funny." It's perceived as terrifying. The difference is entirely how a naked Black man and a naked white man are perceived, and that the body cam footage of Marcus' murder puts the viewer directly in the shoes of the officer, instead of as a bystander, which is the perspective on the Bernard video. Both videos show an obviously disturbed individual, charging at a police officer. Racial bias and difference in camera prospective produce very different sympathies.
In both Matthew Bernard and Marcus-David Peters cases, their mental state has been in question. Initial reaction to the Marcus-David Peters shooting was for those who'd seen the body camera footage to claim Marcus was obviously on drugs. The "colorblind" set loves a good "PCP rampage" narrative. The toxicology report proved that observation false. There was no way to deny Marcus was obviously in some kind of psychological distress, and even if the officer at the moment of encountering Marcus couldn't have known he wasn't under the influence of one drug or another, it was blatantly clear he was in distress. Even the most vociferous among the "race played no part" chorus didn't deny that fact. Many of them leaned on it as a partial explanation. Marcus is shot within 18 seconds of coming into contact with a police officer.
The video of Mathew Bernard begins with him already running at a State Police officer, and continues for a minute and forty four seconds, including Matthew continuing to run at the officer while being maced, and then attempting to strangle a bystander. The officer never pulls his gun. Bernard is apprehended when he runs directly at a different officer and a K-9 unit. Officers can be heard yelling for him to get down on the ground as he approaches. A scuffle ensues, the two end up behind some trees, a second officer and the police dog rush in. Nothing about Bernard's behavior in the video suggests a person of sound mind. Between running into a stream of mace, attempting to choke a random bystander, running directly at a K-9 unit and the more generally, just running around buck naked while doing those things, all suggest someone experiencing a mental health crisis of some kind, whether drug induced or not. It's being reported that Bernard is now on suicide watch.
The reality is that the response to Matthew Bernard should be the standard. It's an obfuscation to start from the premise that advocates for Marcus-David Peters and law enforcement reform more generally, would have preferred Bernard to be shot. The fact of the matter is that despite the extreme similarities, and the very key difference that Bernard was already connected to a triple homicide, the man who wasn't connected to any act of violence was shot within 18 seconds, and the triple homicide suspect was given ample consideration for his safety and well being. It is the story of the way police violence is levied in the United States, embodied by the similarities and differences in the two cases.
This isn't about lowering the standard of violence for white suspects. It's not about wanting the percentage of white people in the general populace being shot to be expanded to equal that of Black people and other people of color. The fear of so much of the white population in the country is that they will be treated by police the way people of color have always been treated, and so the calls for equity terrify even ignorantly well meaning white people. The call for accountability and change is to make sure that people like Marcus-David Peters are taken into custody with as little injury as humanly possible, just as Matthew Bernard was.
There is no doubt that there is going to be a contingent, including political personalities, media personalities and law enforcement representatives who will deny how much racism plays into policing, law enforcement and criminal punishment. It's a perspective allows for the least intellectual or moral rigor and it can be extremely profitable. These two cases present an opportunity to be able to speak very directly about the inequities they would deny exist. It's commendable that Matthew Bernard was taken into custody without significant injury. This shouldn't be overlooked any more than it should be overlooked that we have now seen almost a decade worth of examples of police committing a much more vicious and ultimately deadly variety of violence against Black men who have come into contact with police for nothing which could in any realm be considered as serious as a triple homicide. We should commend police for dealing with an obviously mentally distressed individual in a way that takes their well being into account. Because of that, we can't overlook the number of cases where Black men in the same circumstances are given absolutely no concern for their well being.
It should also be noted that prosecutors haven't charged the officer responsible for Marcus-David Peters death. The investigation found it to be a "justifiable homicide." In comparing the two cases and the police response, this seems almost as surreal as the video of Bernard streaking around naked with a police officer chasing behind him.
Hopefully it will be a very long time before we have two examples which are so transparent in their differences between the way white people and people of color (and especially Black people in the US) are treated. Odds are against that though. Given the reality of police violence against people of color and the fact that men of all races, including white men, are primed to turn to violence as an acceptable solution and whose symptoms of mental illness are veiled by definitions of masculinity, chances are high it won't be long before we have more cases which will bare this all out as clearly.