BY: PASTOR BILL SUNBERG
Jeremiah Ranger was a difficult case.
I remember reading these words at his funeral, written by his Child Youth Worker from Oakdale Park Middle School:
“Jeremiah was adorable and shy. He had eyes that showed pain and hope at the same time…He was kind, loving, fragile, protective, and family oriented…Through his anxiety was a loving boy.”
Most of those who knew him the best would say the same thing. He had a big heart and a big smile. But he also had a darker side. Jeremiah Ranger was a difficult case.
One fact is true. Jeremiah’s life came to a tragic end one year ago, on April 26, 2020. It was the early days of quarantine in Toronto. And while the city was trying to develop strategies for staying alive amidst a pandemic, Jeremiah was shot with a gun and died on the pavement, next to a dumpster. He had lived 16 days past his 15th birthday. And not one more.
Jeremiah Ranger was a difficult case.
Not solely because of the kind of death he died. Mostly because of the kind of life he lived.
One lens into understanding his difficult life is through the eyes of Toronto Police Service, 31 Division. Looking through this lens tells quite a tale. His police file has 234 pages. Forty-three recorded encounters. And those are just the ones captured in writing in the General Occurrence Records Releases.
Looking through these pages, you first notice Jeremiah’s pattern of crime and mischief. Clearly, no one accumulates 43 written encounters with the police for nothing. And Jeremiah is no different. The pages reveal assaults, both with and without a weapon, muggings, harassment of other youth in the community, countless school related incidents, uttering threats, and even an armed robbery in a stolen vehicle. All this in 15 years and 16 days. Jeremiah did a lot of things he shouldn’t have. But if you stop reading there, you won’t really see Jeremiah.
There is another lens to look through. This is the lens which revealed the description at his funeral as “adorable and shy…kind, loving, fragile, protective, and family oriented…a loving boy.” I remember that boy. And his big smile. Every word of the description in this tribute was true.
Two lenses. Two different vantage points. It seems impossible that both could be true. But they were. And that is what made his case so difficult. And this is why he needed us the most.
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“Jeremiah RANGER (2005/04/10) attends the Lambton Park Community School and is enlisted in class for children with learning disabilities. There are seven other children from grades 1 to 3 with various disabilities in this class.
RANGER has a history of deviant behaviour ranging from screaming profanities, uttering threats, and vandalism at school…”
So begins the very first written encounter between Jeremiah Ranger and Toronto Police Service. The incident took place on January 31, 2014. Jeremiah was 8 years old. The very first mention of his name in the 234 pages of reports is to say Jeremiah is a problem.
Two weeks later was the second report. It starts much the same way. The second paragraph reads in part: “Jeremiah has a concerning history of violent and unruly behaviour. He has been in a behavioural class for four years.” This class was described both as a “class for children with learning disabilities” and a “behavioural class.” Either way, Jeremiah was eight years old and had already been in this class for four years. And this is the first mention of Jeremiah Ranger through the Toronto Police Service lens. Right from the beginning, it is as if Jeremiah was put in a box. One that was labelled, “This kid is a problem.” No less than fifteen times through the 234 pages written by Toronto Police Service is it noted that Jeremiah has a history of problems, commentary unnecessarily added to isolated, individual incidents.
The third report continues the pattern. Problem at school. The police are called. The report begins by noting, “This kid is a problem.” The repeated mention of this reveals the way TPS thought of him. It was the same way from the beginning. “This kid is a problem.”
You can see what it was like living in this box by fast forwarding three years to 2017 when Jeremiah was 11 years old. Nicky, Nicky, Nine Door is a game youth in the community play. It involves knocking loudly on someone’s door and then running away to hide before they open it. The youth are entertained by the fact that people open their door only to find no one there. On May 30, 2017, Jeremiah was arrested for playing Nicky, Nicky, Nine Door. When the police were trying to “gain control over him”, they backed Jeremiah into a corner. He tried to resist. As a result of the struggle, in addition to the charge of Mischief, he was also charged with Assault to a Peace Officer. In an effort to justify an arrest for an adolescent game that escalated to a charge for assaulting a Peace Officer, the GO Records Release for this incident makes mention of the reports from 2014 when Jeremiah was 8 years old and where it was declared, “This kid is a problem.” He was in the box from the beginning. And that box was used to justify an arrest for playing a game. While he usually played this game with a group of friends, the General Occurrence Records Release does not make mention of anyone else being arrested that day.
Another example of the unique way TPS treated Jeremiah is found in the GO# dated April 26, 2017. This occurred one month before the Nicky, Nicky, Nine Door incident. This report deals with a conflict Jeremiah had with another student. The other student is described as skipping school a lot and having problems with his behaviour at school as well. When he was at school, he had outbursts and displayed a lack of respect for his teachers and any other authority figure. He crawled under desks during class and was aggressive toward other students. This sounds very similar to Jeremiah’s story. However, there is one significant difference. This report goes on at length about how much of an advocate the other student’s father is for his son. It mentions the efforts the youth is making in seeing a social worker. It describes the youth as a very quiet respectful young man. It suggests reasons for the problems at school as if in an effort to excuse or explain away the behaviour. This is quite different than suggesting, “This kid is a problem.” Jeremiah was not treated the same as other kids.
It is also worth noting as a further example of how the police had put Jeremiah in a box that after going on at length about how the other youth in this GO Records Release was a quiet, respectful young man, the report reads “This report did not state that any threats or criminal offences occurred…” and “…there is no information at this time to concretely say that RANGER committed a criminal offence.” And yet, a thirteen page report is in his file, effectively saying that while there is no record of Jeremiah doing anything wrong, the other youth is a respectful young man and Jeremiah is a problem.
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Krystal Ranger is the mother of Jeremiah. I am proud to be her Pastor and friend. I have been in her home many times. I have eaten her food, which is always delicious. She is a graduate of the Role Model Mom’s GED program which has been hosted in partnership with Toronto City Mission in one of the classrooms in my church until pandemic days. Krystal even worked for us for a year. I smile when I see her.
I met with Krystal on a number of occasions in recent days. Virtual meetings, mostly. We would sit and talk about Jeremiah. For hours at a time. She would share memories. I would ask questions. Each time, as she talked about her son, both about his life and his tragic death of a year ago, tears would quietly stream down her cheeks. Often, during our conversations, she mentioned how much she misses Jeremiah. More than once, she added that she was thankful in a way because, “At least now, Jeremiah is free.” Free from the struggle. Free from the anxiety. Free from the box people put him in.
When commenting on the box that people in authority put Jeremiah in, Krystal said, “They always saw him as a problem. He could do no right. It didn’t matter how he tried. What advice I took. It didn’t matter. It never mattered. He was just written off at a very young age. And could never shake that stereotype of him.” “…You can’t be told your whole life that you are not going to become anything and that you are this way and not expect you won’t eventually be like that. The self esteem was very low.”
As you can imagine, the mother of a child taken away from her in such a tragic way, at such a young age, would have a lot of emotions when thinking back on the events that ended his life. Anger at the one who pulled the trigger. Outrage at the events that surrounded the shooting. Resentment at how people responded to all of this. What if questions. Second guessing. Unanswered questions. Krystal shared one of those emotions with me, saying, “I have a lot of anger when it comes to the Toronto Police and the way they dealt with Jeremiah. Sometimes more than, like, his actual killer.” Revealing words on the consequences of putting people in a box.
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I recently learned a new word. Somebodiness. It is a concept rooted in the works and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. It refers to the dignity and worth given to all human beings.
When MLK uttered his famous words, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character,” he was not calling for a new era of racial colour blindness. His quote is often used in this way but I cannot imagine MLK saying to Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, or any of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama— Addie May Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—that their Blackness did not matter. It did matter. And it does matter. Racial colour blindness requires people of all races to leave their bodies at the door. Racial Colour blindness ignores the beauty and richness of diversity. Racial colourblindness robs the world of its treasures.
No, what MLK was calling for in his famous quote was something far different. He was calling for a universal sense of somebodiness. For every person born on this planet, regardless of race or colour or culture or anything else, to be able to wake up in the morning and say, “I am somebody. The world sees me. The world knows me. I belong.” It is what we all crave.
It should not need to be said. But I will say it anyway. A reminder never hurts. Everybody is somebody.
You are somebody.
I am somebody.
Single Moms are somebody.
Victims are somebody.
Suspects are somebody.
Jane-Sheppard residents are somebody.
People with mental health challenges are somebody.
People with learning disabilities are somebody.
People with anger management issues are somebody.
Eight year old students with a history of violent and unruly behaviour are somebody.
Gang involved youth are somebody.
Teachers are somebody.
Police officers are somebody.
Black people are somebody.
White people are somebody.
Everybody is somebody.
I could go on. But it would take too long. Furthermore, while acknowledging that everybody is somebody, it should also be stated that the sense of somebodiness does not come equally to everyone. Somebodiness for white people in our culture is implied. Somebodiness for black people is something they are required to struggle and fight for. That is why, when stating the painfully obvious point that black lives matter, they have to justify their reasons for saying it. What a terrible burden to bear. Every day. No one should have to fight to claim their somebodiness.
Fighting for somebodiness, however, is a thing. There are young men in the Jane—Sheppard community and all across our city who are doing just that. We have a box for them too. We call them gang members. More often than not, carrying a handgun is a way of claiming somebodiness. “If you are going to deny my somebodiness, at least you have to pay attention to the gun.” I support the effort to remove guns from our streets but the difficult truth is that if by taking away the guns from the hands of young black men you also take away their somebodiness, the problem will not go away. If every media story highlights the difficulties while ignoring the thousands of stories of resilience and strength and beauty of noted communities in our city, then we succeed in robbing every child born into those communities of their somebodiness. “You are only from Jane—Sheppard.” “You are only from Jane-Finch.” Some will wither under the weight of this burden. Some will fight against it. But everyone will be affected by it.
The importance of the sense of somebodiness was evident in the life of Jeremiah Ranger. He surely never heard the word, but he craved it none the less. His mother described it this way, “Jeremiah was the type of kid that if you seen the other side of him and judged him the positive way, he really craved that. So once he got that attention, he would be more open and more willing to work with people that seen him that mattered. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of people like that. So the ones that did, he would gravitate to.”
When reading through the 234 pages of Jeremiah’s police record, you might come to the conclusion that you see a lot of well meaning police officers doing their jobs as best they can. Or you might share the opinion and anger expressed by Jeremiah’s mom. But whether intentional or not, I see a pattern of policies and police behaviour that have the effect of robbing the community of its somebodiness—robbing Jeremiah Ranger of his somebodiness. And the consequences are devastating. I intend to make that case next time by examining the details and events which occurred on November 20, 2015.
But for today, let us end where we began.
The difficult cases are the ones that need us the most.
An eight year old boy with a history of violent and unruly behaviour, who already has eyes that show pain and hope at the same time, is in need of help not handcuffs. His whole life and existence is a struggle to claim his somebodiness.
It will not be easy. There will be many days when it will be much easier to see the dark side. But we cannot afford to give up due to the difficulty of the road.
Because it is the difficult cases that need us the most.
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Personal / Pastoral Notes:
• Krystal, I am your biggest fan. I know there have been times this past year when you were not sure you would make it. But you did. And you are. I am proud of you for fighting for Jeremiah. I am pulling for you as you do the same for the rest of your family. And with each step you take, I will be behind you, cheering you on the whole time.
• To the people in the Jane-Sheppard and Jane-Finch communities, I think you are amazing. I have been in your homes. I have eaten at your tables. I have even helped paint some of your houses. You inspire me. I know there are many other stories like Jeremiah’s. Stories of hardship and oppression. Stories of people and systems stealing your somebodiness. I would love to hear from you. If you have a story that needs to be told, please contact me at pb.to@rogers.com.
• To Black Lives Matter, keep carrying the signs. Keep walking in the protests. Keep reminding us of the beauty and vitality of the Black Community. I will cheer you on. I will walk with you in the future like I have in the past. Together, let’s claim the somebodiness MLK dreamed about for people of colour everywhere.
• This article and the rest of the four part series “Block Boy: The Story of Jeremiah Ranger” can be viewed on my website pastorbill.ca