Do You Kill Simply Because The Law Gives You Cover…

After the shoot­ing of the police offi­cers in Dallas Texas , The Police chief David Brown told pro­test­ers out­raged by indis­crim­i­nate police killings quote , “get off that protest line we are hir­ing”. I thought Brown was not only woe­ful­ly con­de­scend­ing but illu­mi­nat­ing­ly igno­rant . His com­ments made assump­tions about pro­test­ers skills sets, employ­ment sta­tus as well as assumed they would want to be cops.
Many peo­ple who stepped into the streets to protest the grotesque police killings were Doctors, pro­gram­mers , teach­ers nurs­es and all types of career fields. They were Blacks, Whites, Latinos and peo­ple of all dif­fer­ent backgrounds.
Inherent in Brown’s assump­tions was a naïveté which assumed that the seri­ous issue of police killings can be fixed with more police. Or more Black police officers.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/l/

Since then almost two hun­dred peo­ple have report­ed­ly turned up hop­ing to become a part of the Dallas PD. As you might have imag­ined most of them are white . Even if more cops could fix the prob­lem most of the peo­ple who turned up were white. To those who see police as a prob­lem and white police in par­tic­u­lar as a seri­ous prob­lem, this places David Brown’s sim­plis­tic argu­ments on their head.
At the time Brown made the state­ment , many includ­ing the President of the United States of America was fawn­ing over him. The effu­sive praise direct­ed Brown’s way from both left and right had noth­ing to do with Brown the indi­vid­ual and every­thing to do with America’s sin­gu­lar glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of law-enforcement.
As some­one who ask my fel­low Jamaicans to sup­port law ‑enforce­ment I get it , just not the idol wor­ship which comes out of the polit­i­cal right, with­out hold­ing dirty cops accountable,.

I chid­ed David Brown’s com­ments not because I though he did not mean well , or that he may not even be a nice guy . I found his com­ments both con­de­scend­ing and patron­iz­ing. I also thought they were dis­re­spect­ful and I said so. Not every per­son who steps up to con­demn egre­gious police behav­ior wants to be a police offi­cer. On that basis I was not per­turbed that a cou­ple of my offi­cer friends were upset that I thought Brown’s com­ments condescending.
I was quick to point out that I sup­port law-enforce­ment and more impor­tant­ly I am a for­mer law-enforce­ment offi­cer. What I cer­tain­ly did not con­done while I served and cer­tain­ly do not sup­port now are bad police officers.
My point in all of this, is that mere­ly sign­ing up more peo­ple Brown clear­ly saw as unem­ployed from depressed com­mu­ni­ties is no solu­tion to police killings.
He believes if peo­ple have jobs ‚police will be more respect­ful of their lives . If so be the case then sign up every­one and lets all be cops. As if black cops do not fear for their lives like every oth­er black person.
Black Americans cer­tain­ly have no inter­est in being abused or killed by black cops. In many com­mu­ni­ties of col­or they view black cops with even more sus­pi­cion as they believe they are worse than white officers.
Yes there is much out­rage when white police offi­cers kill black cit­i­zens. That I sub­mit how­ev­er derives from the con­tin­ued poor rela­tion­ship between blacks and whites in the United States and the biased role police has con­sis­tent­ly played in the whole saga.
On the oth­er hand , In case after case we see sit­u­a­tions where black police offi­cers them­selves abuse cit­i­zens or stand by and do noth­ing while their white coun­ter­parts abuse citizens

In my home coun­try of Jamaica, peo­ple say police are inher­ent­ly dis­re­spect­ful and abu­sive , yet there is no black and white pop­u­la­tion. The polar oppo­sites are poor une­d­u­cat­ed un-con­nect­ed peo­ple and monied peo­ple with connection.
This points to deep­er cul­tur­al atti­tudes of how police view peo­ple who are tra­di­tion­al­ly seen as less wor­thy of respect. Police are tra­di­tion­al­ly more pre­dis­posed to abus­ing peo­ple they do not believe will be able to hire high pro­file lawyers to fight on their behalf in court.
In Jamaica the poor­er class are seen the same way that black Americans are viewed by American police.
I believe it is fun­da­men­tal­ly the rea­son that we con­tin­ue to have the gap­ing dif­fer­ences of opin­ion in the way we view police killing of black Americans in America . Whites gen­er­al­ly do not have acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ships with police, pri­mar­i­ly because police gen­er­al­ly do not abuse and wan­ton­ly kill whites.
It is true that over­all more whites are killed by police each year but when the amount of whites killed are viewed against their num­bers in the soci­ety those num­bers become less glar­ing. Conversely the num­ber of dead blacks is alarm­ing when viewed against their per­cent­age with­in the population.

Which brings us to the killing of 23-year-old Korryn Gaines a Baltimore Maryland woman. According to live​.bal​ti​more​sun​.com police went to serve arrest war­rants on ms Gaines when she alleged­ly point­ed a gun at them.
They say they pulled back and called for swat.
The 23-year-old woman had been pulled over in March for dri­ving with a card­board “Free Traveler” sign in place of a license plate on her car, and told an offi­cer at the scene that police would have to “mur­der” her to get her out of the vehicle.
Cops report­ed­ly went in search of Ms Gaines for fail­ing to appear in court. It is pret­ty nor­mal for police to show up to arrest some­one for fail­ing to show up in court. What is stun­ning is that they would esca­late a sit­u­a­tion with a woman in a sit­u­a­tion in which there is also a minor child . Why bring swat into the pic­ture? The woman clear­ly was not going any­where . Why cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion in which killing her and hurt­ing her child becomes a possibility?
From all indi­ca­tions Korryn Gaines had men­tal issues. Police alleged­ly nego­ti­at­ed with her for hours , they knew she had her young son in the apart­ment with her.
They said she point­ed the weapon at them at dif­fer­ent times but did not fire at them. Does that not say to them wait just a minute here , lets see what we can do to de-esca­late this? If not for her for the minor child?
But even then why not for her ? Why in the name of God are these cops so will­ing to kill peo­ple, blak or white ? What the hell is wronk with wait­ing and wait­ing and talk­ing some­one down?
How about bring­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber in to rea­sure the young lady?
http://​live​.bal​ti​more​sun​.com/​E​v​e​n​t​/​B​a​l​t​i​m​o​r​e​_​C​o​u​n​t​y​_​P​o​l​i​c​e​_​b​r​i​e​f​i​n​g​_​o​n​_​d​e​a​t​h​_​o​f​_​K​o​r​r​y​n​_​G​a​i​nes
Why would they take the deci­sion to shoot her and place her son at risk? What kind of police offi­cers open fire on a woman armed or not par­tic­u­lar­ly in a sit­u­a­tion where a child is present in the room?

I sub­mit there must have been a bet­ter way to deal with this sit­u­a­tion than to open fire on this clear­ly dis­turbed woman. What would the police have done if they had no guns ?
I guar­an­tee there would have been a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to this mat­ter. Korryn Gaines was shot because she was a poor woman of color.
Police lack of respect for black lives con­tin­ue to get peo­ple killed.
What is behind this innate desire by police to kill ? When did police become judge , jury and exe­cu­tion­ers? Why are police killing peo­ple sim­ply because they can get away with it?