the larger health impacts that police violence and trauma have on families, communities and black women, in particular. During Erica Garner’s funeral, the Reverend Al Sharpton talked about Erica’s unflinching determination to get justice for her father. Sharpton said, while they say, quote, “she died of a heart attack, no, her heart was attacked that day,” referring to July 27th, 2014, the day police killed her father, Eric Garner.
Christen Smith talking:
When I heard that Erica Garner had had a heart attack, I was devastated. And I was devastated primarily because I thought to myself, “Oh, my goodness, this is happening again.” I’ve seen this happen so many times before. So, basically, when the police kill someone, we only think about the impact that that death has in the moment. We think about the bullets. We think about the baton blows. We think about the tasing. We think about the beating. But we don’t think about the lingering effects.
And so, for me, police violence is like a nuclear bomb. The initial blast is only a fraction of what is here to come. And so, in the aftermath of a nuclear bomb, we know that we have fallout. And the trauma of police violence is like fallout, and it kills you slowly like the cancer that kills you because of fallout.
And when I listen to Erica Garner’s stories and when she talks about her trauma—and she talked about it a lot, in many interviews. And in one of her last interviews, she talked about the fact that she—this was beating her down and having effects on her health. And she talked about the fact that—you know, look at Venida Browder, who was Kalief Browder’s mother, and look at what the stress did to her. And for those who don’t know, Venida Browder passed away in October of 2016, 16 months after her son Kalief committed suicide.
Committed suicide after he was held at Rikers Island for three years. He had never been tried, eventually simply released, was beaten in jail and ultimately committed suicide.
when Erica spoke about that devastating case, she knew that there was something going on with her that was resonating with what happened to Venida Browder. And that’s just devastating. And so, the trauma was literally weighing down on her. And she was aware of it. And I think that one of the aspects that makes her death so very tragic, in addition to all of these other things, is the fact that she knew that this stress was really taking a toll on her health. And she told us multiple times before she passed away, “Look, this is hurting me. I’m hurting.” And that, to me, says that this is a tremendous problem that we need to start to look at. Black women are dying in the aftermath of police killings, and we are not counting them in the death toll. We are not thinking about them as the victims of police violence. And we must. As far as I’m concerned, the Garner family lost two people to police violence: They lost Eric Garner, and they lost Erica Garner.
First of all, I think that most of these families are not—do not have access to the proper care. And so, in my research, I’ve talked to families who have lost family members to police violence. In particular, I’ve talked to the sister of Larry Jackson Jr. here in Austin, Texas, who was killed—and Larry Jackson Jr. was killed by a police officer in July 2014.
And after that, I had long conversations with her. I think that what we need to do is offer therapy. That therapy needs to be free. And we also need to be able to do the research that we need in order to know what—the extent of this problem. We don’t have sufficient data, on a national scale, to be able to know what’s going on. So, in order to address this, the families need therapy. They need free therapy. They need support. And they need support from society in a way that they are not going to have to bear the burden of it.
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Christen Smith
associate professor of African and African diaspora studies and anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her piece for The Conversation is titled “The fallout of police violence is killing black women like Erica Garner.” Smith is also the author of Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil.
— source democracynow.org