Why Are We Humanizing The Ex-Cop Who Killed Botham Jean
By: Ezinne Ukoha
Tags: Gun Violence, Media, Race, BlackLivesMatter, White Privilege

Botham Jean. The victim who matters

Why Are We Humanizing The Ex-Cop Who Killed Botham Jean

White pain always dominates

A year ago I wrote about the brutal slaying of twenty-six-year-old Botham Jean, and the centralized theme of my piece exhaustively flushed out the main reasons why the senseless murder serves as the epitome of why Black lives never matter.

When the breaking news went viral, the details were strikingly incomprehensible based on the fact that it was impossible to imagine a scenario where a White off duty cop would randomly enter the apartment belonging to a Black man, and proceed to shoot him to death in self-defense.

Amber Guyger was the killer, who managed to not only park her car on the wrong level of her apartment complex in Dallas, Texas, but she also ended up on the floor that was above her own, which led her to walk into the wrong unit, that featured a bright red welcome mat at the entrance.

Exhibit A: a bright red mat

Somehow this woman, who at the time was an employee of the Dallas Police Department, was unable to rely on the thorough training that she presumably received before being awarded the badge that entrusted her with the duty to serve and protect.

She blindly entered a stranger’s apartment, and promptly feared for her life when she saw a Black man standing in front of her. She swiftly went into cop-mode and started yelling out orders. When the Black man towering over didn’t comply, she shot him in the chest.

What followed in the hours after Botham Jean was shot to death by an intruder, accurately resembles what’s currently playing out in the trial of Amber Guyger, the frazzled White woman, who is being predictably coddled by the media, as she tearfully gives her “emotional” testimony,” drenched in the tears of her White victimhood.

The dramatics are unbearably transparent, and pretty much standard fare in the realm of humanizing White perpetrators, who commit violent crimes that lead to the senseless deaths of Black and Brown.

White women have the luxury of glamorous mugshots, and an army of glossy pictorials that capture the torment of delicate features, responding to the consequences of their deadly actions. The circulating clips are edited to highlight the segments where the murderer is sobbing for the benefit of the cameras, and with the intent of tugging at the heartstrings of the jury.

Amber Guyger isn’t inconsolable because she made reckless decisions that resulted in the brutal murder of an innocent Black man. She’s wailing for the life that’s slipping away from her, and she’s loudly begging for another chance to do the exact same thing.

After realizing that she shot the occupant of the apartment that she wasn’t renting, chaos ensued. And once the crime scene was swarming with officers and first responders, there was the urgent mission to save the “victim,” by finessing the escape route for the hysterical White woman, who needed to be out of the vicinity of her crime.

Imagine what would’ve happened if the off-duty cop had been a Black woman, who inexplicably stumbled into the wrong apartment. Visualize her ignoring the glaring sign of the red mat at the entrance, and casually stepping into the domain of an unsuspecting renter, who gets shot in the chest before the shooter realizes where she is, and why she’s officially a murderer.

There’s no way that a Black woman, would be given the privilege of being presumed innocent by the arriving officers, who would swiftly handcuff her, and escort her to a waiting vehicle. Her mugshot would have the stamp of “the angry Black woman,” with a questionable past, who willfully exerted her authority with stunning unprofessionalism.

But right after the fatal shooting, Amber Guyger was given preferential treatment by the Dallas Police, as she became the protected witness and offender. Pertinent information about her state of mind after her shift ended, when she began the trip home, was mysteriously withheld for reasons that still haven’t been sorted.

The rumor mill swirled with theories of how she actually knew the man she murdered, which insinuated that this was possibly a bloody ending to an ill-fated love affair. And then there was the story of how she may have been drunk when she drove into the complex, which explained how she unknowingly parked her car on the wrong level, and kept walking without ever noticing her surroundings.

And a year later, with the activation of a trial, we still don’t have the concrete answers to the inquiries surrounding that fateful night when a former cop clocked out after a long day that included overtime, and headed home with a level of coherency that should’ve prevented what ultimately transpired.

Guyger claims that the shooting was a horrific accident, and that she was suffering from intense fatigue after an extra long shift. But prosectors aren’t convinced that she was suffering from job-related exhaustion, based on the lengthy sexting that she indulged in, hours and minutes before she killed Botham Jean.

The sexting was between Guyger and a male colleague, and it was an energetic exchange that didn’t at all reveal the temperament of a woman, who was physically and emotionally spent after enduring the strenuous activity that’s typical for police officers patrolling the streets.

Guyger was on desk duty that day. She was dealing with mostly administrative tasks, which explains why she was energetic enough to sext a fellow cop with shit like:

“Super horny today too.”

Both Guyger and her cop lover guiltily deleted those damning messages. And while it’s quite obvious why those preventative measures were executed, we still don’t know how and why this woman lost her sense of direction and her entire mind when she drove away from her place of work, and headed to her residential complex.

But we can confirm the hovering torturousness of witnessing the national humanization of a cold-blooded killer, and how it is an affront to the dignity of Botham Jean, who was an upstanding citizen, a beloved son, and valued employee at the accounting and auditing firm of PriceWaterHouseCooper.

Former Dallas police chief, Craig Miller was recruited by the defense to introduce the baseless theory of the controversial condition known as “inattentional blindness.”

Miller argues that based on the “totality of the evidence,” he’s inclined to believe that Guyger had every reason to believe her life was in danger when she encountered Botham Jean, because of how she mistakenly assumed she was in her apartment, and so her decision to shoot him to death was justified.

What a crock of shit!

Amber Guyger is a pampered murderess who possesses the currency of Whiteness that negates the deserved narrative that should be vilifying her for the crime that has armed a bereft family with the all-consuming quest of seeking justice on behalf of a young Black man, whose precious life still doesn’t matter.

Various media outlets are polluting timelines with “emotionally-driven” clips of Amber Guyger, showcasing the acting chops that present the nauseating imagery of how White victimhood is cunningly implemented for the societal cleansing of privileged White criminals.

The shameless display of White fragility at its worst is just another searing illustration of how the biased judicial system is structurally enabled to maintain the long-held practices of ceremoniously rewarding murderous cops who shoot to kill unarmed Black and Brown victims.

And so we wait with bated breath and necessary cautiousness, as the court system once again accommodates yet another tragic case of how the toxicity of Whiteness orchestrates unfathomable circumstances, that expectedly spares the life of the perpetrator at the expense of the Black victims who pay the ultimate price.

Black pain. The tears of a Black mother are real.

Instead of the tear-stained faces of bereaved family members, who are forced to internalize the unsightliness of the woman who killed their loved one because of the tiredness stemming from hours of nonstop sexting, we are being bombarded with the pathetic performance of a crooked cop, who has logged in her contribution to the epidemic of gun violence.

Amber Guyger is being humanized because of the rite of passage that elevates her pain above the Black family who lost what they will never recover in this lifetime.

Even in death, Botham Jean is being dealt the heavy blow that threatens to exonerate his killer from the crime of his shooting death.

We wait.

We wait for the day when Black pain finally becomes the centerpiece of the cases that were borne from the lethality of Whiteness.

Update!