Above Photo: Getty.
I wonder what she thought at the very end?
Natasha’s naked body was pinned to the cold concrete, hands already cuffed behind her back, under the weight of half a dozen armored cops who punched her while she cried. The blows came and went, a background of violence between the brain-jarring impact of voltage that caused her entire body to spasm. The kind of teeth-grinding, spine-arching pain that 50,000 volts will inflict, from a weapon designed to drop linebacker-sized felons in their tracks. But Natasha was already down, not just on the floor but on the floor of a jail, being tortured by the very cops she had called for help in her time of need.
She couldn’t understand why she was subjected to treatment we wouldn’t inflict on a rabid dog. When the voltage hit for the third time, whatever thoughts in her mind shuddered out of sync. The words fell that had fallen her lips, pleading, please don’t hurt me. “You promised not to kill me”, still ringing around the tiny cell. Then the voltage again, her body thrashing uncontrollably on the floor. If she was like many who get tased, she would have lost control of her bladder, her bowels.
It might have been the fourth bolt of lightning, maybe it was the fifth, but at some point in that lonely concrete and steel cage, naked and consumed with fear, surrounded by anger and violence, Natasha’s heart gave out. It would not have gone out easily; it was a heart of a mother, the heart of a woman who had overcome endless challenge to become a local honor roll student. But no amount of love, of courage, no will to hold on and see her little daughter one last time, could survive relentless electrocution. Somewhere in that blur of violence and hatred, Natasha McKenna died, her only company the men who had killed her.
As horrible as the thought may be, one can at least imagine how she suffered. What is beyond imagination, beyond all reason, is why. Natasha was not a criminal, she herself had called the police for help in a medical crisis. How is it that she was taken not to the hospital, but the jail? How is it that the team to enter her cell a full week later was not a team of medics, but a SERT team, men clad in weapons and armor developed and trained to put down prison riots.
Yet as awful, as horrific as the actions of those men were, far more troubling is how could a professional law enforcement environment make them think that the merest concept of six men brutally assaulting a naked woman in jail was “all right”? Put aside the split-second decisions in the heat of the moment and ask yourself what went through the mind of the deputies of Sheriff Stacey Kincaid when they met a 24 hours — a full day before the event — to plan their tactics? What went through their minds the next morning when after a night to consider the attack plan, they were in their locker room, calmly suiting up for battle? Natasha was already in a cell, she didn’t need to be “contained” to prevent risk to the public. In fact the only person ever in danger was Natasha herself, danger from neglect and forced deprivation of medical attention. Did nobody on the SERT team — or worse, nobody in leadership over them with a whole day of advance notice — think to call a doctor? A psychiatrist? An EMT? Somebody actually trained to deal with a health crisis?
Perhaps equally horrible is that fact that neither the mainstream media nor the special interest groups — those who adamantly purport that “Black Lives Matter” — seem to care enough about Natasha McKenna to call for punishing the person in charge, the Sheriff! An officer who shoots a male felon twice his size gets fired and publicly crucified, but the six men who tortured a black woman to death — and mind you, the event is on videotape — walk away. The sheriff responsible stonewalls the media and other law enforcement investigation for months until she can come up with the notion of a “diversion program” that seems solely geared towards diverting public attention away from a fatal lack of leadership. And literally no one ‘in power’ calls for this Sheriff to be replaced in the election now just one month away?!
The gears of “business as usual” continue to turn in Fairfax, Virginia as they do in Washington DC, and Stacey Kincaid may well be re-elected in a few weeks to bring the citizens of Fairfax four more years of her special brand of justice. Yes, word is leaking out that she is taking steps to throw the deputies under the bus, but as much as they deserve career-ending loss of work and freedom, what good does it do now? Thugs are replaceable. This is a problem that begins at the top. And politicians at the top will sacrifice any number of pawns to stay on top. That is just how things work.
I must confess that this case has vexed me, for the most un-humanitarian of reasons. I am a white guy, an old-school citizen with no criminal record and nary an unpleasant experience with police. Since I was a kid I have referred to an officer as “Sir” so the odds of my ever being shot while committing a felony just do not exist. But I grew up believing that you call the cops when in need, and I can imagine that were I having some sort of crisis — a stroke, a seizure, some sort of episode that clouded my ability to function — that I would look for a man with a badge. And that now scares me, at least in Fairfax, because I have seen somebody do just that and end up dead. That could happen to me, it could happen to my wife, to my daughter. I could be the next person in a Stacey Kincaid jail lying naked on the floor as the tasers fire off a second time, a third, a fourth. I wouldn’t understand why, any more than Natasha understood why it happened to her.
I wonder what I would think at the very end?