There are so many creative ways for people to celebrate Black History Month, but some just get it wrong.
The Miami Police Department decided to decorate a police cruiser with Africa-themed imagery for the month of February. Revealed on Twitter on Feb. 1, Miami’s mayor, Francis Suarez, told
Fox News it was “beautiful.” “This is a beautiful collaboration to commemorate Black history and Black History Month and the history of African Americans and our police department and our city,” Suarez said. “This is Black history.”News 7 Miami reported the ceremony took place at the Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum along Northwest 11th Street. Miami Police Chief Manuel Morales was also present. Reporter Joshua Caballos tweeted that he spoke with Black police union president Stanley Jean-Poix, who said the union approved the car design before the unveiling. “It celebrates our African ancestry,” Jean-Poix told Caballos.
Social media did not hold back on expressing how
they felt regarding the design. Sherrilyn Ifill, former President & Director-Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, used three words – “THIS CANNOT BE.”Some pointed out the fact the the police don’t have the best reputation with the Black community, and the design is in bad taste.
One Twitter user called for Miami Police to “read the room.”
MSNBC legal analyst, Charles Coleman, called the car “tone deaf” and said it showed that the Miami Police Department doesn’t have any diversity, equity, and inclusion experts on staff.
In the wake of the Tyre Nichols case and similar cases across the country, Twitter users posted memes and videos, showing that some police don’t really know how to respond.
Unfortunately, other Twitter users took the opportunity to point out police cruisers are not created to celebrate everyone’s history, claiming if they did, it would be racist.
O
ther Twitter users took the opportunity to point out how wrong the police department was, from a historic place. “They’re the police dept where the notorious phrase ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ derives from,” one user tweeted.NPR reported that the Miami police Chief Walter Headley used the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in 1967 after crimes erupted during the civil rights era.