Her “jest will savor but of shallow wit, when thousands weep more than did laugh at it.”
Apologies to Shakespeare, but the comment fits Jemele Hill’s tweet concerning the Chicago Police Department on Friday. While the Atlantic writer might think her humor is clever, her tolerance for Smollett’s waste of police resources and her derision for Chicago police officers speaks volumes about the sincerity of her concern for the Windy City. Here’s the tweet.
Chicago police: How dare Jussie Smollett waste our time and resources when we could be out solving real crimes.
Also Chicago police: pic.twitter.com/Q9anB0awjw
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) March 29, 2019
It’s a sad message devoid of intellectual merit.
At a basic level, Hill denies reality by pretending Smollett’s apparent deception was not without significant cost. The facts prove it. In the 13 days that followed Smollett’s Jan. 29 allegation that he was attacked, there were at least 93 other violent crime incident reports in that same police district. Does that matter? Yes. Smollett’s report was given a very high investigative priority due to his public standing, his false accusation of racial and homophobic motivations behind the faked attack, and Chicago’s need to present itself as safe for visitors. Police resources are limited, so we can confidently assume other victims of violent crime lost out to Smollett in police investigative resourcing.
Then there’s also Hill’s implication that it is Chicago police’s inadequacy that explains the department’s low homicide clearance rate. That is manifestly untrue. Indeed, the very article Hill references, but perhaps failed to read, documents how the communities of Chicago’s South and West Sides generally refuse to cooperate with police investigators, preferring to pursue their own retaliation for killings.
Hill’s flippancy here reflects a broader trend by leftist commentators to engage more introspectively about the question of police injustice and not so introspectively about community safety. Yes, Chicago police are far from perfect. I have no doubt that black Americans have more reason to judge police officers more skeptically than white Americans. And yes, these concerns must be addressed with better police training and community engagement, including sustained police presence and more misconduct safeguards, such as body cameras. Everyone should be able to trust the police, and it’s a huge societal problem that many blacks don’t feel they can.
But Jemele Hill should also accept that Chicago PD is not the driving force behind the violent threat to black lives in that city. Whatever social, educational, or economic inequalities they have suffered, and we must address these, we can’t just turn a blind eye to the young men who are pulling the triggers and ending far more black lives. We hear about Smollett from Hill, but do we hear about Amanda Boozer-Brown? Or her baby? No.
Anyway, if you’re still not convinced, go and read Chicago Tribune’s John Kass.
