Source: Camden County Sheriff’s Office / Camden County Sheriff’s Office
There’s a reason so many of us refuse to entertain the “a few bad apples” narrative regarding aggressive and often brutal police officers who demonstrably become more aggressive on average when dealing with Black people. There’s a reason so many of us believe it’s America’s entire system of policing interrogated, investigated, and, possibly, dismantled and reformed anew.
Last Monday, Camden County Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge shot and killed 53-year-old Leonard Allan Cure, a man who had previously been exonerated after serving 16 years of a life sentence for a crime he did not commit. As we reported Thursday, police surveillance footage released by the Camden County Sheriff’s Office shows Cure, who was pulled over for speeding and driving recklessly, was met by an aggressive and apparently furious Aldridge, who began shouting at him to “GET OUT” of his car before the deputy was anywhere near it. The video shows that Cure complied until he found out he was being arrested for speeding, which he said in protest should only result in a ticket. After a couple of rounds with a police taser and a physical struggle between the two, Aldridge fatally shot Cure, who had not been reported as being armed at the time.
“The officer got out of the car extremely aggressive, yelling and screaming commands, and my brother complied,” said Cure’s brother, Michael Cure. “He did comply, so after watching the video, I do believe things could have been handled differently, but I also believe the officer got out being extremely aggressive.”
The system of policing will likely determine that Aldridge did nothing wrong. It won’t do much in the way of questioning why Aldridge did indeed feel the need to arrest Cure rather than issue him a citation, which would likely have carried a hefty fine considering how fast Cure was reportedly driving. The system of policing won’t empathize with Cure, who had suffered the trauma of a false arrest resulting in him losing more than a decade and a half of his life behind bars. It also isn’t likely it will spend significant time questioning why Aldridge—like so many police officers, most of whom are not held accountable for excessive force—chose to escalate things with a citizen who thought his arrest was unjust rather than deescalate things, which police training is supposed to teach.
