By Frederick A. Hurst

Some things should go without saying. For example, Springfield needs an independent police commission and the current police commissioner should graciously retire. Yet, some folks still don’t get it although many seem to.
The front page of this issue of Point of View illustrates the obvious. Although the truth should speak for itself, many folks are willing to affirm the truth for those who already know it and especially for those who still don’t seem to get it. Springfield has a policing problem that is becoming increasingly more costly to its taxpayers.
I was horrified when Mayor Sarno appointed William Fitchet as his first police commissioner without even a hint of a broader search. I knew Fitchet from the past – decades ago – when he and his cohorts were out on the streets terrorizing Black and Brown young folks at a time when the culture of our police department considered it normal. And the current police commissioner, Cheryl Clapprood, was trained in the same culture and served under Fitchet, which probably explains why she could so callously insult the entire Black community with her casual comments in her letter to our seniors in which she downplayed the police murder of Delano Walker, Jr.
We all know how Delano Walker, Jr. died from a warrantless, random police stop by a White cop who grabbed him by his neck which forced him into Columbus Avenue traffic where he was fatally hit by an oncoming car. It was quicker than the nine minutes that Eric Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck but it was just as deadly and, although the White cop escaped Chauvin’s fate (unfortunately), his behavior cost Springfield $1.2 million dollars of taxpayers’ money which was the proper, though inadequate, payment to Delano’s family who will never see him again.
But Clapprood saw the plain facts differently when she wrote in her letter: “Delano Walker was an example given of a young man who, for whatever reason (emphasis added), was trying to get away from the police and went into the highway tragically losing his life.” “FOR WHATEVER REASON!,” she said, as if we all don’t know exactly what happened!
After all these years our police commissioner, Cheryl Clapprood, is still obfuscating the facts in deference to the cop who killed Delano Walker Jr. just as she continues to deny the current problems in her department that are illustrated in the articles on our front page and by current events, some of which attracted federal intervention. Clapprood is clearly the wrong person for the commissioner job as is the mayor who so casually appointed her without the hint of a national – or local, for that matter – search. Springfield deserves better.
I am engaged in a dispute with a White friend (maybe former by now) who suggested to me by e-mail that the interaction between Massachusetts Senior Action Council (Springfield Chapter) and Commissioner Clapprood could have easily been settled through mediation. My response was unequivocal and not well received, which didn’t faze me because I knew that my friend was skimming the surface of a much deeper problem than a mere “difference between equals” as his comments implied. I knew he meant well but I also knew that he didn’t understand the experiential and historical factors that drove the encounter between Black seniors and the police commissioner, who was supposedly serving them and their community.
Clapprood hit a really deep nerve and made it worse when she preceded her insulting comment on Delano Walker by saying: “I cannot think of a positive purpose for bringing up tragedies from twenty or more years ago….” What absolute nonsense! (actually eleven years)
I, and many others, are still haunted by the 1954 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till almost 70 years ago in Money, Mississippi and by all of the unjustified killings of Black folks before then and up to the present as well as by the day-to-day brutality that Black folks are subjected to by too many of those who are sworn to protect them and the blue wall of silence that stifles accountability. In that context, “mediation” sounds like a willow-the-wisp solution to a complex problem that can only be solved by major reform starting with the removal of the old guard and its replacement by new leaders who are able and willing to change the old culture. Nothing less will do.
The truth speaks for itself whether or not those who need to know it, hear it. And that goes for Commissioner Clapprood, Mayor Sarno and my White friend and all those others who would deny or diminish the truths that serve as the bedrock of our democratic way of life. ■