BYP100 Shut Down Police Review Board Meeting
by: Darcelle Pluviose
As we all sat before the BYPeview board, I heard silence. Silence of my siblings in liberation who had just moments before been heckling and provoking the members of the board. When Martinez Sutton took the mic, his words reverberated through the room too small to hold our collective energies but too big to find intimacy in walls lined with armed cops and journalists. Through his words we heard the story that most of us gathered there already knew: Rekia was murdered unjustly, Dante Servin should be fired, and cops in general are assholes; it was business as usual. Except this time it wasn’t. Martinez’s words, stories, and gestures could’ve been any of ours in the audience-hell, it is way too many of our stories. When the monotonous repetition of black death is sensationalized by the media, we sometimes lose the intimacy of love and grief between those who have been killed and those who they leave behind. By shutting down the meeting on Thursday, BYP100 further exposed the illegitimacy of IPRA and the Police Review Board, as well as returning some of the intimacy to Martinez, who was able to share his story, albeit at the protest of the board. When Martinez Sutton, furious in his mourning, waved a bag of his sister’s bloody hair it incited such deep emotion in me that I couldn’t fathom how a review board or a police force-sworn to protect Chicago’s people-could not fire the officer who brought us all into the room. Black people get fired just because, and it seems astronomically difficult for a police officer to get fired for murder, no matter the amount of evidence. But the truth of the matter is, it shouldn’t take bloody hair and impromptu disruptions and civil disobedience to sway the minds of IPRA and the Police Review Board. Black women (especially black trans women) are among the most vulnerable in society and are routinely gunned down and violated by the state, namely, through police officers. Say her name, we proclaim, on our social media pages and in the face of the systems we seek to dismantle. No, I want you to say her name and recognize her life. Black women’s narratives shouldn’t be erased in neither white corporate media, nor in #blacklivesmatter circuits. Rekia Boyd should be here. The state never loved her. Fire Servin now.
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