Police Killed An Unarmed White Man In Iowa And His Community Didn’t Seem To Notice

A few min­utes before Des Moines police killed Ryan Keith Bolinger Tuesday night, the 28-year-old white man was danc­ing in the street, accord­ing to an offi­cer. Police did­n’t find the dis­play fun­ny. In a news con­fer­ence Wednesday, Des Moines Police Sgt. Jason Halifax said Bolinger had ear­li­er pulled up beside the squad car of an offi­cer who was con­duct­ing an unre­lat­ed traf­fic stop, park­ing his 2000 Lincoln sedan so close that he blocked the police cruis­er’s dri­ver’s side door. Bolinger then left his vehi­cle and danced around before get­ting back in and dri­ving away.

Officer Vanessa Miller, a sev­en-year vet­er­an of the force, gave pur­suit, fol­low­ing Bolinger in a low-speed chase that hov­ered around the 35 miles-per-hour lim­it, offi­cials said. The Des Moines Register reports that Officer Ian Lawler, who had ear­li­er been boxed in by Bolinger, radioed that he was join­ing Miller in the pur­suit. He also sug­gest­ed that they may be deal­ing with a drunk or men­tal­ly ill suspect.

About two min­utes into the chase, Miller cut Bolinger off as he attempt­ed to make a U‑turn, forc­ing his car to a stop. Bolinger exit­ed his vehi­cle and approached Miller’s squad car “walk­ing with a pur­pose,” Halifax said. As he advanced, Miller, who is white, fired a sin­gle bul­let through her rolled up dri­ver’s side win­dow, shat­ter­ing the glass and strik­ing Bolinger in the tor­so. He lat­er died from the gun­shot wound at a local hospital.

The inci­dent comes as much of the nation’s atten­tion remains focused on the issue of police killings and account­abil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly since the fatal shoot­ing of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. Bolinger’s death was one of a string of offi­cer-involved shoot­ings this week that brought the total num­ber of peo­ple killed by police nation­wide to more than 500 so far this year, accord­ing to data com­piled by The Guardian. At least two more peo­ple have been killed since Bolinger died.

Much of the grass­roots out­cry around the issue of police vio­lence has been orga­nized under the Black Lives Matter umbrel­la, as protests sur­round­ing the killings of black men and women — and the sub­se­quent deci­sions not to charge, much less con­vict, the offi­cers respon­si­ble for those deaths — have arisen around the nation. Data shows that black Americans, par­tic­u­lar­ly young black men, face a high­er like­li­hood of being killed by police than their non-black peers. The Guardian’s report­ing sup­ports that find­ing, show­ing that 28.2 per­cent of all peo­ple killed by police this year have been black, despite mak­ing up just 13.2 per­cent of the population.

So how do white peo­ple in Iowa respond when police kill a white per­son under ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances in a heav­i­ly white neigh­bor­hood? If Des Moines is any exam­ple, they don’t: A sin­gle pro­test­er showed up out­side the police press con­fer­ence on Wednesday, accord­ing to the Register. There was no wall-to-wall media cov­er­age of large-scale demon­stra­tions, because there were no demon­stra­tions to cover.

The city’s appar­ent apa­thy is about more than racial demo­graph­ics. Iowa gen­er­al­ly has lit­tle expe­ri­ence with fatal police shoot­ings. Bolinger is only the third per­son killed by police in the state in 2015, accord­ing to The Guardian. One was an armed rob­bery sus­pect killed after alleged­ly point­ing a gun at police fol­low­ing a car chase. The oth­er was a woman report­ed­ly killed by an errant bul­let fired by an offi­cer who slipped while attempt­ing to shoot a dog that had jumped on him. Both were white. (For com­par­i­son, the Los Angeles Police Department alone has killed more than three times Iowa’s total so far this year, which speaks to long­stand­ing con­cerns about the LAPD’s use of force.)

Unlike New York or Ferguson, sites of protests fol­low­ing deci­sions not to charge police offi­cers in killings of black men, Des Moines is more than 76 per­cent white, accord­ing to Census data. And the state of Iowa as a whole is 92.5 per­cent white, near­ly 30 per­cent­age points high­er than U.S. pop­u­la­tion, which is 62.6 per­cent white. But so was Bolinger, for that mat­ter, and so were near­ly 50 per­cent of all peo­ple killed by police this year, accord­ing to The Guardian.

Bolinger’s death did­n’t hap­pen against a back­drop of ten­sion between law enforce­ment and the com­mu­ni­ty — a ten­sion that, in oth­er places, forms an essen­tial part of the Black Lives Matter mes­sage. But the out­come of his shoot­ing is ulti­mate­ly the same: an unarmed per­son is dead under cir­cum­stances that appear unnec­es­sary and per­haps even avoidable.

While Black Lives Matter indeed focus­es on the black expe­ri­ence, Bolinger’s death under­scores that many of the issues at the move­men­t’s core apply to peo­ple of all races. Many of the changes activists are cham­pi­oning would ben­e­fit all communities.

This point is all too often lost on white crit­ics of the Black Lives Matter move­ment. But it’s time for all peo­ple, in any com­mu­ni­ty touched by a police killing, to wake up.

Though Des Moines has not felt the impact of police vio­lence in the way many cities have, it has­n’t been com­plete­ly insu­lat­ed from the ongo­ing debate over polic­ing, nor from the racial nar­ra­tives that have right­ful­ly accom­pa­nied it. In May, a group of pro­test­ers gath­ered under the Black Lives Matter man­tle in Des Moines, call­ing for police reform and increased account­abil­i­ty. Photos from the event show that a num­ber of the atten­dees were white.

Amid the push for police reform and the broad­er rein­ing in of the use of force, Bolinger’s death is a reminder that while these issues affect some com­mu­ni­ties dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly, they can also affect any com­mu­ni­ty at any time.

UPDATE: ⁶⁄₁₅ — More than 100 pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side of the Des Moines Police Station on Saturday to protest Bolinger’s death.

The event, orga­nized by an edi­tor at CopBlock​.org, a grass­roots group that aims to increase police account­abil­i­ty, was peace­ful and did not lead to any arrests.
Police Killed An Unarmed White Man In Iowa And His Community Didn’t Seem To Notice