Friday, December 05, 2003

Who killed Nathaniel Jones? Since Sunday morning, the question has reverberated across the national landscape like a clap of thunder echoing a flash of lightning over the horizon.

By now, the image of Nathaniel "Skip" Jones fighting with Cincinnati police in the parking lot of a White Castle in Avondale has burned itself into the nation's short-term memory. It will be displaced soon enough. Fresh images packaged for easy consumption in the 24-hour cable news cycle will see to that.

In an age when police cruisers are equipped with stationary cameras that turn every encounter into a black-and-white morality play, you'd think by now the cops would have figured out efficient ways to subdue a violent suspect without re-enacting the stomping scene from "A Clockwork Orange."

But as tempting as it is for some to lay the responsibility for another black man's death squarely on the shoulders of frightened officers who didn't know how to deal with a very large but unarmed suspect who refused to be handcuffed without a fight, that doesn't begin to explain who killed Nathaniel Jones.

The Hamilton County coroner's office has determined that Jones died as a direct result of his struggle with the arresting officers. Well, that's obvious enough. But the question of who "killed" Nathaniel Jones is a little more subtle than determining who was the last to gratuitously pummel him with a nightstick.

Skip Jones was a "dead man walking" long before the cops ever laid eyes on him Sunday morning. An obese 41-year-old with high blood pressure, an enlarged heart and a drug problem is already stumbling through life on borrowed time. Slugging an officer while high on angel dust is a recipe for disaster in every urban scenario imaginable.

Doing something stupid in a drug-induced stupor doesn't rise to the level of mitigating circumstances for cops, especially those wrestling with subconscious racial phobias. Once the sirens wail, empathy and moderation become luxuries few cops feel they can afford. It may be a failure of humanity, but it isn't difficult to see what compels a man who wants to see his wife and kids again to err on the side of deadly pragmatism.

Who killed Nathaniel Jones? Let's start with the evil "friend" or drug dealer who supplied the mix of PCP and cocaine that transformed an even-keeled giant and "model neighbor" into a fidgety mass of aberrant behavior. Once again drugs turned a grown man into a dancing bear with little regard for his own dignity. Anyone who makes a nuisance of himself at a White Castle at 6 a.m. is obviously not in his right mind.

Who killed Nathaniel Jones? Some of the credit belongs to those who, for reasons of social expedience, chose to look the other way when a 350-pound man's life spiraled out of control. Why is it so much easier for friends and strangers to be indignant on a black man's behalf when he's dead? Did anyone even bother to confront Jones about his behavior when he was alive?

How many vigils were held to dissuade Skip from a life of low-level despair? How many times did the family's attorney offer to sit down with him man-to-man? How many activists who now crowd auditoriums organized interventions to help him get his act together? Did Skip's value to the community begin before or after he became a symbol of police brutality?

What's more responsible for Nathaniel Jones' death: the six cops who failed to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation during the crucial minutes his brain was starved for oxygen or a dysfunctional political system in Cincinnati that perpetuates the racial and economic disparities that make such incidents possible?

Who killed Nathaniel Jones? Did the color of his skin doom him in a racially divided city or did he exercise a measure of moral autonomy and choice like other mortals? Was his death the logical outcome of a bad education, a permissive family life and a laissez-faire attitude toward drugs and crime? Does his death illustrate some tragic state of moral and political determinism in Cincinnati?

Who killed Nathaniel Jones? Is the answer as obvious as we think it is? And are we doing enough to prevent the next Nathaniel Jones and the one after him from dying on the same streets in the same way?

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