When Police Investigate Themselves: Why Charleston Needs More Than Internal Reviews

An opinion by Crystal Good, Founder and Publisher, Black By God — The West Virginian

In My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem writes that police bodies—regardless of race—carry deep, unhealed trauma that can manifest as fight, flight, or freeze responses. When officers encounter Black bodies, which they often perceive as dangerous with superhuman powers and impervious to pain, that trauma can lead to irrational or intense reactions, even in non-threatening situations.

Two weeks ago, four Charleston attorneys presented video evidence to City Council alleging a pattern of abuse by the now-disbanded Special Enforcement Unit. Yesterday, the Charleston Police Department cleared all officers involved. No policy violations. Case closed.

Except it’s not closed. Not for the community members who have seen the videos and those who stood witness on the West Side to these incidents. Not for the people who were hospitalized. Not for the Black residents of Charleston’s West Side who have been saying for years that something is wrong.

As a publisher of a small, Black-led newspaper in West Virginia, I get nervous about fast-moving news cycles. We don’t have the capacity for breaking news every hour. I’ve been stressed trying to get this story right. BBG doesn’t do breaking news—not really. We do slow news, and we need more investigative support to help us do it well. But I’ve learned something valuable in our slower pace: when you move slower, you think deeper.

I want to say how proud I am of the attorneys who stepped forward—Rico Moore, Olobunmi “Bunmi” Kusimo-Frazier, Trent Redman, and Geoffrey Cullop. They used their legal training and professional standing to amplify the voices of people who have been afraid to speak. This is what it looks like when professionals use their skills to support their community. Not for a paycheck. Not for recognition. Because it needed to be done.

And it’s something we all can do. We all have skills, platforms, access, or expertise that someone else needs. The question is whether we’re willing to use what we have on behalf of those who have been harmed, ignored, or silenced. These attorneys didn’t just file paperwork. They stood before City Council and said: we see this, we have evidence, and we’re not going to let it be swept aside. That takes courage. That takes integrity. That’s what building community looks like.

In nearly every video of alleged police misconduct—not just in Charleston, but across the country—you see the same pattern: officers escalating situations that could have been de-escalated. A question becomes a confrontation. A confrontation becomes violence. And then comes the report that doesn’t match what the camera captured. The community is expected to comply. To trust. To accept that what they saw isn’t what they saw.

But what if the problem runs deeper than policy violations? What if we’re asking the wrong questions entirely?

Learning To Care: A Message to Law Enforcement  

Menakem examines how unhealed trauma lives in our bodies—including the bodies of police officers. He argues that police carry trauma from their work and personal histories, and are regularly exposed to the trauma of others, which creates secondary and vicarious trauma that affects their responses in the field.

But there’s another layer: Menakem explores how police bodies often perceive Black bodies as dangerous, with superhuman strength, and impervious to pain—prejudices similar to those held by white-bodied people. Meanwhile, white bodies see themselves as fragile and vulnerable, looking to police bodies for protection and safety. Black bodies, in turn, see both white bodies and police bodies as dangerous.

This web of perception and misperception, layered with unhealed trauma, creates the conditions for violence—even when no actual threat exists. What we’re witnessing in Charleston, and in so many other communities, may not simply be “bad apples” or policy failures. It may be unhealed trauma expressing itself through a badge and a gun.

An internal investigation that finds “no policy violations” might be technically accurate. The officers may have followed protocol. But if the protocol itself doesn’t account for trauma responses, if it doesn’t create space for officers to react from their highest dignity rather than from fight-or-flight instincts, then the policy is the problem.

We’ve long known that power doesn’t make good humans. A badge doesn’t heal trauma. Authority doesn’t teach de-escalation. What we need is a sincere intervention of humanity. We need officers who can stand in their dignity and not allow their unhealed trauma to dictate their actions. We need officers who can respond from their highest good—not from a triggered nervous system that sees threat where there is none.

Menakem offers tools for police officers to address trauma through body-centered practices and self-care. His work suggests that healing individual trauma can change police culture entirely—moving away from a culture of dominance and toward one of genuine community trust. But healing requires acknowledgment. It requires officers and departments to admit that something is broken—not just in policy, but in how we ask human beings to carry the weight of community safety without giving them the tools to process what that weight does to their bodies and minds.

An internal review that clears everyone involved doesn’t create space for that acknowledgment. It doesn’t ask: Why did this officer escalate? What was happening in his body in that moment? How do we ensure this doesn’t happen again—not through better paperwork, but through better humans?

The attorneys who filed this complaint asked for a civilian oversight board. They asked for independent review. They asked for transparency. These aren’t radical demands. They’re basic accountability measures that recognize a simple truth: people cannot fairly investigate themselves.

But beyond oversight, Charleston needs a deeper conversation about what we’re asking of our police officers and whether we’re giving them what they need to show up as their best selves. We need to ask whether our policies create conditions for healing or for harm.

The videos exist. The complaints exist. The pattern exists. The question isn’t whether misconduct happened. The question is whether we have the courage to look beyond policy violations and ask what kind of transformation—individual and systemic—is required to break the cycle.

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Crystal Good is the founder and publisher of Black By God: The West Virginian, West Virginia’s only Black-led newspaper.