Letter to the editor: Credibility in policing

There is some truth to columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.’s remarks regarding credibility as a tool in policing (“Bryant’s is not an open-and-shut case,” April 27, TribLIVE). The problem is, Blacks need to erase a lot of bad memories.

Critical race theory is also problematic. Further, the expanse of Black crime and sociology along with media sensationalism cloud rational analysis.

Pitts exhibits more than his share of hostility. In a 2007 column, Pitts used the rape and murder of a white couple by five Black men in Knoxville, Tenn., as a reminder of historic Black suffering and his own vindictiveness. He wrote, “And here I’m obligated, because I’m Black, to say that if the defendants in this case did what they are accused of doing, I’d be happy to see them rot under the jailhouse. Sadly, that needs to be said because there are people who will not take it as a given. But with that obligation fulfilled, let me add that I am likewise unkindly disposed toward the crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand. I have four words for them and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized. Cry me a river.”

The scholar and columnist Thomas Sowell recognized this vindictiveness in other Black leaders, noting in a 2015 column that President Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, were in “payback mode.”

I’m not suggesting we forget the ugly part of our past, but it’s hard to promote a positive concept like improving police credibility while simultaneously espousing confrontation, a la Rep. Maxine Waters, and Black Lives Matter clamoring to defund the police.

Louis D’Emilio

Penn Township, Westmoreland County