America has the worst inci­dences of police abuse in the Western world, includ­ing the wan­ton and avoid­able tak­ing of the lives of its cit­i­zens. We could delve into why this is the real­i­ty, but that would take too much time, which we do not have today.
Sufficing to say that despite the calls to rein in police and the wide unchecked pow­ers vest­ed in them when there are inci­dences of bla­tant abuse, the pow­ers that be increase police pow­ers and the pro­tec­tion giv­en to them against prosecution.
The wide and unchecked pow­ers giv­en to police by Federal, State, and local leg­is­la­tures and expand­ed by the Supreme and low­er courts give police a brutish and cal­lous atti­tude in the way they deal with cit­i­zens they con­sid­er powerless.
After the George Floyd mur­der by Minneapolis cops, many munic­i­pal­i­ties bold­ly declared they would change the way police oper­ate. Many pro­gres­sive munic­i­pal­i­ties even pledged to cut spend­ing on police and use those resources to serve their con­stituents better.
None of that became a real­i­ty because the entrenched white pow­er struc­ture that exists and thrives on police vio­lence pushed back hard by label­ing them anti-police.
The Zionist/​corporate media got in on the act by point­ing to false nar­ra­tives of ris­ing vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics. The fact is that vio­lent crimes have con­tin­ued to trend down­ward for decades.
Ironically, the only aspect of vio­lent crimes that has con­sis­tent­ly been on the increase has been mass shoot­ings com­mit­ted by vio­lent white extremists.
Unchecked police pow­ers have embold­ened police to be wan­ton and cal­lous with the use of lethal force even when they enter peo­ple’s homes.
This lack of account­abil­i­ty has placed the lives of Black American cit­i­zens in seri­ous per­il, essen­tial­ly remov­ing the pro­tec­tions every­one should have in the sanc­ti­ty of their own homes.
Despite the [cas­tle doc­trine], police con­tin­ue to enter the homes of cit­i­zens (usu­al­ly blacks), some­times the wrong home, and kill the occu­pant in a hail of bullets.
This is com­plete­ly alien to me as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer who under­stands the duty of care required when enter­ing some­one’s home.

The tac­tic used when police mur­der young black men is that they have long crim­i­nal records. The strat­e­gy of crim­i­nal­iz­ing, demo­niz­ing, and destroy­ing has worked to jus­ti­fy police vio­lence for as long as polic­ing has been in existence.
The life of the young man they snuffed out in the arti­cle below pos­es a prob­lem for that cul­ture. He was a mil­i­tary man with zero crim­i­nal record. 
What lie will they come up to jus­ti­fy mur­der­ing him? We shall see.

Castle doctrine

The cas­tle doc­trine refers to an excep­tion to the duty to retreat before using dead­ly self-defense if a par­ty is in their own home. 
Under the doc­trine of self-defense, a par­ty who rea­son­ably believes they are threat­ened with the imme­di­ate use of dead­ly force can legal­ly respond with a pro­por­tion­al amount of force to deter that threat. The doc­trine of self-defense is sub­ject to var­i­ous restric­tions which dif­fer from juris­dic­tion to juris­dic­tion. One such restric­tion on self-defense is the rule to retreat. In juris­dic­tions that fol­low the rule to retreat, a par­ty is not enti­tled to a defense of self-defense unless they first tried to mit­i­gate the neces­si­ty of force by flee­ing the sit­u­a­tion, so long as retreat­ing could be done safe­ly. That said, in juris­dic­tions that fol­low the cas­tle doc­trine, this restric­tion has an excep­tion for par­ties in their own home. A par­ty in their own home does not have a duty to retreat and, there­fore, is enti­tled to a defense of self-defense so long as the oth­er require­ments of the defense are met. The cas­tle doc­trine exists in both com­mon law and Model Penal Code jurisdictions.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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An attor­ney for the fam­i­ly of a Black air­man fatal­ly shot by a Florida deputy in his home last week is call­ing for the release of law enforce­ment body­cam footage, say­ing a wit­ness believes the deputy was at the wrong apartment.
The 23-year-old vic­tim has been iden­ti­fied by his fam­i­ly as Roger Fortson – an​active-duty senior air­man, accord­ing to fam­i­ly attor­ney Ben Crump. “The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Roger’s death raise seri­ous ques­tions that demand imme­di­ate answers from author­i­ties, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the alarm­ing wit­ness state­ment that the police entered the wrong apart­ment,” Crump said, cit­ing the account of an uniden­ti­fied per­son who was on FaceTime with Fortson at the time of the shooting.
Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden said in a state­ment deputies respond­ed last Friday to an apart­ment after receiv­ing a call for “a dis­tur­bance in progress.” “Hearing sounds of a dis­tur­bance, (a deputy) react­ed in self-defense after he encoun­tered a 23-year-old man armed with a gun and after the deputy had iden­ti­fied him­self as law enforce­ment,” the sher­iff said. “The deputy shot the man, who lat­er suc­cumbed to his injuries,” said the sher­iff.

“I imme­di­ate­ly placed the deputy on admin­is­tra­tive leave and have asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to con­duct the inves­ti­ga­tion that is required in such inci­dents,” the sheriff’s state­ment said. CNN has reached out to the sheriff’s office and Florida Department of Law Enforcement for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion. The deputy involved in the shoot­ing has not been iden­ti­fied by offi­cials. Crump – who’s expect­ed to hold a news con­fer­ence in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on Thursday – called Fortson “a stel­lar mem­ber of the Air Force and loved by his community.”
“We are call­ing for trans­paren­cy in the inves­ti­ga­tion into Roger’s death and the IMMEDIATE release of body­cam video to the fam­i­ly,” Crump said Wednesday in a post on X. 

Airman entered active duty in 2019

Fortson heard two sep­a­rate knocks at the door and – the wit­ness said – when no one could be seen through the peep­hole, Fortson retrieved his gun, which was legal­ly owned, accord­ing to Crump. The deputy then alleged­ly burst into the apart­ment and shot Fortson. The wit­ness said law enforce­ment respond­ed to the wrong apart­ment, and there was no dis­tur­bance there at the time, Crump said in a news release. According to Crump, the wit­ness said Fortson was alone at the time. Her rela­tion­ship to Fortson was not dis­closed. Deputies com­mu­ni­cat­ed with dis­patch that Fortson had been shot six times with mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds to the chest with one exit wound, accord­ing to police dis­patch calls, obtained by CNN affil­i­ate WEAR. Officers can be heard say­ing that there was a “dis­tur­bance … phys­i­cal in progress,” in the dis­patch calls, WEAR report­ed. “Fortson was assigned to the 4^th Special Operations Squadron. He entered active duty on Nov. 19, 2019,” said a state­ment from the Air Force, which not­ed the shoot­ing occurred at Fortson’s off-base residence.

“The 1^st Special Operations Wing’s pri­or­i­ties are pro­vid­ing casu­al­ty affairs ser­vice to the fam­i­ly, sup­port­ing the squadron dur­ing this trag­ic time, and ensur­ing resources are avail­able for all who are impact­ed,” said the Hurlburt Field statement.

Shooting calls to mind past incidents

While details about the shoot­ing remain murky, the alle­ga­tion the Okaloosa deputy respond­ed to the wrong apart­ment echoes oth­er shoot­ings in recent years, in which a Black man or woman was killed by law enforce­ment in their home. In 2019, a for­mer Dallas police offi­cer was sen­tenced to 10 years in prison after fatal­ly shoot­ing Botham Jean in his apart­ment the year pri­or. The offi­cer – off duty but still in uni­form – lived on the floor below Jean’s and said she approached what she believed to be her own apart­ment when she saw Jean inside. Atatiana Jefferson was killed that same year when a Fort Worth offi­cer, respond­ing to what police believed to be a bur­glary, shot her through her bed­room win­dow. The offi­cer tes­ti­fied at tri­al that Jefferson point­ed a gun at him, but pros­e­cu­tors argued there was no evi­dence he saw the gun before open­ing fire. The for­mer Fort Worth offi­cer was sen­tenced to near­ly 12 years in prison in 2022.