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Modern-Day Slave Catchers on the Job in Galveston, Texas
I n a scene straight out of every slavery novel or film ever written or produced, and the blood-soaked history in which they are steeped, two white Galveston, Texas policemen paraded a handcuffed, roped or leashed black man through the streets of the city as they rode comfortably, nonchalantly, astride horses.
The Galveston Police Department, via its black police chief Vernon Hale, issued an apology, but only after the jarring images of this scene were posted on social media. Donald Neely, 43, was homeless, unarmed and well known to the GPD, having had at least six “encounters” with that office over the course of the last eighteen months. This latest arrest was for trespassing. These cops, therefore, knew, or should have known, that Neely was also mentally ill.
As a part of his apology, Chief Hale offered a “rationale” of sorts, explaining that the use of rope on such suspects and in such circumstances is a “trained technique and best practice in some scenarios.” Therefore, in this “scenario,” leading a roped, mentally ill, homeless black man through the central business district of one of the most geographically southern and historically iconic of southern cities was “best practice” and in keeping with police “policy.”
