October 22, 2003

No, ma'am.

I'm still not sure which surprised me more: her question or my response.

And she was such a tiny, little thing beneath her fishing cap, a backpack strapped around her.

It is why I noticed her in the sea of people Monday afternoon, standing alone, holding a large white sign that read simply: "No More Killing."

She was not shouting like the others.

Indeed, she said nothing as others swirled around her. Her head swiveled this way and that as she took it all in, her eyes seemingly pasted open from her forehead to her chin, the size of Frisbees, like a child marveling at an overly generous bounty on Christmas morning.

At 72 years of age, Catherine Bryant almost certainly was the oldest of the nearly 200 people who had come downtown to protest the police killing of 15-year-old Paul Childs.

I sidled up to her.

"I'm here for my grandchildren, baby," she said in that haltingly sweet, sing-song tone my grandmother, my mother and other women their age always used to gently explain things.

She has eight of them now, from 7 to 15 years old, she said. And she believes they are no longer safe. No, it is not at school, not from gangs, baby, Catherine Bryant said.

They are not safe from the police.

It was a common refrain during the mini-march from City Hall to police headquarters, yet - unlike so many others - she uttered it not as an angry indictment, but with extreme sadness.

She'd loaded up her backpack with water and a few snacks, and made the journey from her Denver home.

"If I don't speak up for (my grandchildren), I don't believe anyone will," Catherine Bryant said.

She looked briefly at the ground and, then, simply into the distance. "I should have done this years ago," she said.

She was raised differently. Hers was a different time. To speak out was to be singled out, and to be beaten down, she said, begging me not to use her home address.

Instead, she would just sit at home, watch the news and rail at her television. Or, she said, her protest vehicle was her telephone. How she would spend hours on it with friends, conversing about the latest injustice.

In the end, nothing would change.

No, today, she would march. Maybe her advancing age, she said, pushed her out the door.

"I've never been to a protest before," Catherine Bryant said, looking up sheepishly, covering her mouth and giving a little chuckle.

"I like it. What are they going to do with a 72-year-old woman, anyway?"

It is true, the killing of Paul Childs isn't simply an issue of one cop, a lack of command oversight, of bad or overzealous police work. Or of racism.

It is, indeed, an issue of community anger. The faces of those who protested Monday ran the color spectrum, the anger and despair they voiced not at all limited to the circumstances of their birth.

And their message was such a simple one.

Maybe Catherine Bryant, in her tiny voice, put it best: We as citizens have a duty to let not only the mayor and the police chief know, but let everyone know what happened to that developmentally disabled 15-year-old was unnecessary and outrageous.

And that we don't like it.

"I've learned people often will listen to you as a group," the elderly woman said. "Individually, they won't hear or talk to you. And if no one protests, no one will care. They will feel they can do anything."

In time, perhaps the mayor and the police chief not only will listen, they'll understand what was said on Monday.

Experience tells me nothing will happen. But the city will choose this course at its peril.

A beginning, to be sure, will be to take away James Turney's badge.

I have seen up close the residue of his handiwork, the places where his two disabled young victims fell, the distances they had stood from him and, much worse, the anguished cries of those who loved them.

This is but a start. Of course, the issue isn't solely James Turney. It is also one of training, of truly assessing situations, that it sometimes simply isn't enough to hide behind the all-too-often and convenient "Well, he had a knife" cover.

Even a 72-year-old woman knows this. And shouldn't we, as she asks, demand more?

"We can get anyone who just shoots," Catherine Bryant said softly. "Any of us can go out, and just bang-bang-bang. There has to be a better method.

"He - they - knew no one was in danger. Why didn't the officer wait, let him just stand there until he got thirsty, until he got hungry enough, and just fell over?"

It is why she and others who give a damn about this city showed up Monday afternoon.

We were saying our goodbyes when Catherine Bryant asked the question.

"You have a son, don't you?" she asked.

Yes, ma'am.

"If he were so out of line today that you needed the police, would you call?"

My answer still stuns me.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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