EDITORIAL: Freddie Gray, Aura Rosser

A KNIFE COST both Baltimore resident Freddie Gray and Ann Arbor resident Aura Rosser their lives. In Gray’s case, Baltimore police officers alleged that the small, spring-assisted pocket knife Gray was carrying was illegal. The debate over why Gray ended up in police custody – where he suffered a fatal neck injury – speaks to a primary grievance echoed in protests from Ann Arbor to New York to Baltimore in recent months: that laws intended to protect everyone are often used to hassle certain citizens but not others.

Aura Rosser, naked from the waist up, allegedly advanced on two Ann Arbor police officers in her home while holding a knife. One of those officers used a taser and the other officer drew his weapon, shot and killed her. Local elected officials have called the death a drug-related tragedy. Efforts to characterize a police killing of a mentally ill women holding a knife as a drug-related incident all at once absolve the officers and avoids the question of whether a mentally ill, well-to-do white mother of three living in Burns Park or Ives Woods, would have suffered the same fate as Aura Rosser.

Recent fatal police encounters have begun with jaywalking in Ferguson, Missouri, and selling cigarettes in Staten Island, New York. The incidents have highlighted the level of deference shown to police by both American society and the courts. In Ann Arbor, local elected officials have done the same. The mayor of Baltimore recently asked the Dept. of Justice to investigate whether that city’s police target minorities. The same question has been asked by protesters, and leaders of Ann Arbor’s minority communities. Our mayor and Council have an obligation to find the answer.