A Black mother's greatest fear realized
A Black mother's greatest fear realized 4 years later.
A story on NPR today had me filled with sadness and a few tears.
LaMot Dottin, age 21, vanished in 1995 in New York City. His mother, deeply concerned that he did not come home, 48 hours later, ran to the police station to file a missing person's report. Her concerns were minimized and dismissed as she tried to report her one and only missing child. It took 30 days before NYPD would actually file a missing person's report and she would spend 4 years looking for her son. The very crucial step to aid in identifying a dead body was stalled and caused her 4 years of grief and worry - finger prints.
8 days after LaMott went missing, his body was found floating in a river. Finger prints are required on all bodies found that could not be identified. The prints were taken but the result was not known. LaMott had an arrest record and his prints were on file. Because he remained unnamed, he was buried in America's largest public cemetery on Heart's Island in New York.
The missing person's department talked about the caseload and the system that was broken, but to hear the mother's perspective, something greater was going on.
After "4 years of frustration", she called one day to demand information and they had it. The irony is that the same officer that dismissed her concerns, answered the phone that day and invited her down to talk about the case. The FBI had identified her son 4 years ago, but the NYPD never followed-up on the finger print analysis. Without the ID, he was buried as an unnamed citizen: male.
A few years ago, I wrote about traveling across the southern US and the angst and worry my mother had. She wanted me to check in everyday and to let her know where I was sleeping; I was on my way to Maryland to begin service as an Air Force officer. During my days of travel, I spoke about the worry that must have consumed my mother and yet she had to go to work each day and perform expertly and without question; clearly, the worst part is not knowing.
LaMont's mother, Mrs. Fowler, tells her story with such calm, and I know, more now than ever, what my mother feared when I was traveling through the South. She and her dad talked about Black men missing and not being taken seriously by law enforcement. This leaves the arduous and painful task of finding the missing person up to the family.
Lamont's body was exhumed and he had a proper burial with a white casket and white horses that escorted his body thought Queens. In 2016, New York state passed the LaMont Dottin law, a law the prioritizes missing adults. One of difficulties in this story in not knowing to what degree did race and gender play a role in not seeing her loss as real. To what degree did an overwhelmed and ill-equipped system make it easier for the police to minimize her concerns. This was also the time in which New York's "stop n frisk" was at its greatest. Also, did they run his name and discover he had a criminal past and further minimize his mother's concerns? The intersection between an overwhelmed police department's missing persons division, structural and institutional racism, and racism in policing make it hard to listen to her story and conclude that it was just an oversight.
No words can truly summarize the absolute pain of this mother. Not only to lose her only child, but to fall victim to a system that ignored her and left her the sole investigator to try to find her son. She will never know how her son died, but seeks peace in knowing that she finally knows where her son is.