What do we have to do? Get murdered on nationwide TV for them to hear us?

On May 25, 2020, I watched in horror as Derek Chauvin, an infamous constable on patrol, knelt on George Floyd’s neck until his spirit departed his body. Three officers stood by and did nothing. I also watched Chauvin and those same three officers be arrested, tried, and convicted, while so many like them remain free.

Shortly thereafter, the Department of Justice opened a civil investigation; on June 16, 2023, the DOJ found the Minneapolis Police Department and the City of Minneapolis engaged in a pattern of systematic discriminatory, unconstitutional behavior in violation of the civil rights of Blacks and Native Americans.

As if they didn’t already know.

Newark, New Jersey 1965

Nobody should work under the conditions Sonny Boy Brown faced every single day just to make a dollar. It was a crap shoot each time he turned the key in the ignition. Sometimes the air conditioning in the beat-up old cab worked, but most of the time, like tonight, it burped out enough hot air to melt him like a stick of butter. He slammed his fist against the dashboard as if he could frighten the damn thing into working.

It is too got-damned hot for this shit! He railed, pounding the steering wheel.

Before he could properly curse out the jacked-up car and bemoan the insufferably torrid night, static from the dispatcher’s radio crackled and popped him out of his bitching session. His boss Winston Chandler’s deep gravelly voice filled the inside of the cab.

Winston and his brother Stedman left Barbados ten years ago, but they still held on to their heavy Caribbean accents like old women clutching their pocketbooks in a room full of thieves.

“Where ya’ at, Sonny Bwoy?”

Sonny Boy thought, I’ll tell you where I’m at, WINSTON. I’m sitting in one of your beat-up taxis, sweatin’ like a damn pig because YOU and your penny-pinchin’, fly fish eatin’, half-ass English speaking brother are too damned cheap to get the air conditioning fixed or give me another damn car. That’s where I’m at, muhfucka!

Instead, he gave Winston his location. Hell, times are hard, and I need this job.

“You got a pickup, two passengers at Hayes Homes on Irving Turner going to Penn Station.”

Resigned to yet another long miserable night, Sonny Boy acknowledged the pickup with a “Roger that, boss” and pulled out.

A heat wave besieged the City of Newark, and the humidity was off the charts. The temperature had tipped past the one hundred degree mark for the past fourteen days with no sign of relief. Sonny Boy had watched the sunset less than an hour ago.

It felt like the fiery globe was still sitting right in the middle of Broad Street, roasting everything and everyone in the city. Even though he had the windows down, by the time he made it to Fifteenth Avenue, his shirt was literally sticking to his body.

Sonny Boy slowed at the next traffic light and reached for a crumpled napkin in the passenger seat to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. He was hot, hungry, and dog-tired. All he wanted to do was strip off his wet clothing, take a nice long shower, and pop an ice cold Ballantine Ale.

He was thinking there had to be a better way to make a living when he pulled up behind two police cars double-parked on Fifteenth Avenue.

“I know they see me,” he said out loud. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently.

Just to make sure the cops were aware of his presence, Sonny Boy lightly tapped his horn to get the officers’ attention. He got a whole lot of nothing in return. One cop burst out laughing at something the other cop said.

I do not have time for this shit! Winston is going to be on my ass if I don’t get the pickup to the station on time.

Sonny Boy took a deep breath and drove around the cop cars. By the time he made it to Seventeenth Avenue, he saw bright flashing lights behind him.

“Aw shit. NOW they want to act like they see me!”

Other than a few minor parking violations, Sonny Boy had never been in any kind of trouble with the law, and he planned to keep it that way.

“I’m too damn pretty to sit in anybody’s jail,” he muttered, pulling over. He dug in his pocket to get his wallet out and set his face in modern-day slave mode.

Sonny Boy barely had time to throw the cab in park when the door to the cab flew open. Sonny Boy feared the door would come off at the hinges.

A big barrel-bellied cop reached inside the cab with fists as big as Easter hams. The cop grabbed Sonny Boy by the collar of his sweaty shirt, dragged him out of the driver’s seat, and forced him to kneel in the middle of the street. Sonny Boy nearly passed out from the pain when his bad right knee slammed against the steering wheel. The contents of Sonny Boy’s wallet—his money, license and registration—scattered in the street like confetti.

Could somebody PLEASE tell me what the fuck happened to ‘license, registration, and insurance card,’ huh? Dayuuuum. I didn’t kill nobody!

It had been a long time since anything had scared Sonny Boy. He lived a pretty low-key life, preferring to stay out of the radar of Newark’s infamous constables on patrol. But dammit, he was scared as shit now.

The cop lurking over him had to be 300 pounds and some change. He was a menacing monster, with a fat, swollen, hog-like face, and small yellow teeth that were clinched together behind a slit of a mouth. Sonny Boy could not process the pure hatred he saw in the cop’s eyes.

He doesn’t even know me. How can you hate somebody you don’t even know? Incomprehensible.

In an effort to modulate his voice to a respectable tone, Sonny Boy cleared his throat the best he could, even though that big motherfucker was just short of strangling him. He didn’t want to agitate the cop any more than his Black face already had. Sonny Boy focused his eyes on one button straining against the cop’s thick belly. He was too afraid to look him in the eye.

“Excuse me, Officer, could you please tell me what I did wrong?”

His answer was a whole lot of hard breathing and bad breath. When he finally got up the courage to look in the cop's face, who still had a stranglehold on him, he knew this encounter was going to end badly.

The cop reminded Sonny Boy of what a member of the KKK would look like if he caught a brother coming out of his daughter’s bedroom zipping up his pants: pure evil. The name on the officer’s badge was Carlo Portofino, but it was a sure ‘nuff demon that answered Sonny Boy’s question with an evil leer on his face.

“You made an illegal pass, and when we tried to pull you over, you resisted arrest.” His voice was gravelly, inhumanly gravelly.

Resisting arrest? WTF??!! 

Sonny Boy had a feeling this situation was going to escalate from bad to catastrophic with lightning speed. He looked toward the second cop, who was standing less than a foot away, tapping the inside of his palm with a long leather-covered stick in a menacing manner. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what a “blackjack” was. Under that leather was pure cold steel. His hopes sank like the Titanic when he looked into the second cop’s eyes, eyes so cold that they said nothing and everything at once. He knew he could expect no mercy from that quarter.

But surely these cops don’t intend to beat me in the middle of the street like I’m some kind of dog! Or do they?

Sonny Boy got his answer as soon as he returned his attention to the first officer, whose enormous fist was barreling toward him like a derailed freight train. Seconds later, pain like somebody had stuffed an activated time bomb between his lips exploded in the side of his face. The back of his head made a loud thump when it slammed into the back door of the cab, leaving a deep bloody dent.

Sonny Boy slumped to one side, his head lying on his shoulder like a discarded rag doll. The fat cop raised Sonny Boy’s head from his shoulder, palming it in his hand to keep it nice and straight. And then he kicked Sonny Boy in the center of his face, shattering his nose, eye sockets, and both cheekbones.

Sonny Boy gasped from the shock and intensity of the pain. Blood flew everywhere. When the second cop joined in on the fun, Sonny Boy didn’t know where one cop’s brutal fists and boots started and the other’s ended. All he knew was pain.

Damn if they ain’t going to beat my Black ass to death right out here in front of witnesses, Sonny Boy thought.

Static from the dispatch radio joined the grunts and punches and shouting from the open windows of angry residents of Harmon Projects. The last thing Sonny Boy heard before he finally blacked out was Winston’s angry voice.

“Where you at, Sonny Bwoy?!!! The pickup just called and said you didn’t get there yet. I need your fuckin’ location now!”

That night, the city erupted in flames.

 Photo credit: NBC News, Darnella Frazier