It’s remarkable that many whites people in the United States do not find it objectionable when rogue elements in some police departments brutalize and kill Black citizens. It’s also tellin that they do not see those attacks as attacks on all Americans including themselves !!!
Yet when police are attacked they see those attacks as attacks on them .
Is it that they do not see Black citizens as citizens of America? Why does the corporate media mourn the lives of police officers but does not mourn the innocent lives taken by bad cops? Why can’t we do both ?

This phe­nom­e­non speaks vol­umes about race rela­tions in America . It also speaks loud­ly about the hypocrisy of that seg­ment of the soci­ety. Let’s be clear, not all police shoot­ings are bad shoot­ings . Lord knows I spend count­less hours writ­ing about that very fact. That each case is an indi­vid­ual case and has to be looked at as such.
What I find dis­tress­ing is that those peo­ple who say there is a war going on against police fail to real­ize that there are some bla­tant­ly bad police shoot­ings as well.

As I have said con­sis­tent­ly, it is rather sil­ly to demon­strate against police. Police only enforce laws . Police offi­cers are forced to enforce laws they some­times dis­agree with , but they are sworn to enforce those laws at the per­il of their lives and in many cas­es they end up giv­ing up their lives that way.
Anyone whom have ever tak­en the oath of a police offi­cer under­stands that police are usu­al­ly the scape­goats for politi­cians with bad inten­tions. People angry at gov­ern­ment take out their frus­tra­tions on the police. The police are seen as the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the evils of government.
That is why it is crit­i­cal that the judi­cial sys­tem do what it must to address the incred­i­ble dis­par­i­ty in the ways the laws are enforced from the least infrac­tion to the most seri­ous. People respect the rule of law when enforce­ment , pros­e­cu­tion and incar­cer­a­tion are seen as fair. No one can argue that any of this is true in the United States where count­less reports have point­ed to Black com­mu­ni­ties being over-policed.
Blacks are much more like­ly to be arrest­ed for using and deal­ing drugs, even though they do not con­sume or deal drugs more than white Americans.

Blacks are much more like­ly to be arrest­ed than their white coun­ter­parts for any range of crimes. They also get longer sen­tence for the same crime . These are not opin­ions they are irrefutable data sup­port­ed facts.
People do not have faith in the sys­tem when they wit­ness police killings on video which shocks our sen­si­bil­i­ties yet parts of the sys­tem does every­thing with­in it’s pow­er to pre­vent jus­tice from being done.
Police offi­cers are giv­en a lot of lat­i­tude but they can­not be giv­en free rein to kill with­out consequence.
Pretending that the data is unre­al, is unre­al. Blaming pro­test­ers who stand up for jus­tice only makes them more angry. White peo­ple Canonizing cops while ignor­ing the pain of the black and brown com­mu­ni­ty is a pre­scrip­tion for dis­as­ter. A Fascist right wing can­di­date seek­ing the pres­i­den­cy who declares him­self the law-and-order can­di­date does noth­ing to improve race rela­tions. It does noth­ing to bridge the gap between police and cit­i­zens it widens the breach.

There is dai­ly talk about hav­ing a nation­al con­ver­sa­tion. That con­ver­sa­tion must begin by rec­og­niz­ing that there is a seri­ous issue of police vio­lence and dis­re­spect against peo­ple of color.
As a for­mer police offi­cer who have been shot in the line of duty , I must reit­er­ate that even if the law gives police jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use lethal or dead­ly force, that offi­cer must also be guid­ed by a greater moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Don’t shoot at some­one if you don’t have to . Don’t shoot because you can kill and get away with it .
That’s the heart of the matter.

As we grapple for solutions in this renewed fight for social justice it is rather easy to go to our respective corners hardened and baked in our ideas of how just our own causes are and just how wrong the other side is.

As we seek the elu­sive goal of one com­mon human­i­ty, we can­not for­get that if we know bet­ter it is up to us to be bet­ter. By being bet­ter we demon­strate that when we speak about equal­i­ty and jus­tice we not only say it from our mouths we demon­strate it by our actions.

We must nev­er for­get the white peo­ple who aid­ed and shield­ed Harriet Tubman as she guid­ed thou­sands from the ghast­ly and hor­rif­ic bru­tal­i­ty of slav­ery to the promise of respite at the risk of their own peril.
When we hear the com­ments of some with dark pig­ment in their skin it bog­gles the mind. We know they igno­rant­ly hate them­selves but we must nev­er for­get that Harriet Tubman also said she freed thou­sands from servi­tude and could have freed thou­sands more , if only they knew they were slaves.

We should nev­er for­get Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi. The three young civ­il rights work­ers were work­ing to reg­is­ter black vot­ers in Mississippi, thus inspir­ing the ire of the local Klan. The deaths of Schwerner and Goodman, white Northerners and mem­bers of the Congress of Racial Equality caused a nation­al out­rage in 1964.

As con­sci­en­tious peo­ple of all col­or stood up to big­otry and vio­lence in the 60’s it is impor­tant that peo­ple of all col­or stand up and speak out against big­otry and the inequities with­ing the jus­tice system.
These prob­lems will not go away overnight but it behooves all Americans to speak out if they believe in equal­i­ty. We all have to live on this planet.
As some­one once said we may not have come over on the same ship but we are all in this boat together.

Why would any­one, black or white, be mad at a black per­son who says “BLACK LIVES MATTER”?
Here’s the truth, they are mad because they believe that black lives do not matter.
Some time ago back I wrote an arti­cle in which I allud­ed to a very sim­ple fact. That fact is that when black peo­ple say “black lives mat­ter,” they are sim­ply say­ing “(black lives mat­ter too)”.

So why would I, a black man be offend­ed if a white per­son says “white lives mat­ter”? It would not, because that per­son would be exact­ly cor­rect. But you see that is the way I was raised to believe in the sanc­ti­ty of all lives.
Oh, let me expound on that a lit­tle, that is my Christian upbring­ing. Not a so-called Judaeo Christian upbring­ing which advances an unin­tel­lec­tu­al & igno­rant con­cept that skin pig­men­ta­tion is some­how a sign of superiority.

When I say I was raised to respect the sanc­ti­ty of life I did not mean black lives or white lives or brown or yel­low or what­ev­er. I meant all lives. Yes, the ani­mals that God cre­at­ed and placed in our care as well.
So you would nev­er see me buy­ing a gun to go out and kill Deer, strap it onto my car, take it home just so I can show off its antlers.
I am more respect­ful of my stew­ard­ship over God’s crea­tures. Sure I eat some meats but if I had to kill to eat, I would only kill what I need­ed, not kill for the sheer joy of it or sim­ply because I can.

You won’t ever see me arro­gant­ly killing ele­phants for their ivory, Lions just because, or any crea­ture under the sun just because I can, or feel that I some­how have the right.
I too love the crea­tures of this world, I sim­ply refuse to love them to death. I can­not kill some­thing I claim to love sim­ply to show them off as some sign of my masculinity.
Yes, I shoot ani­mals too, I just do it with my cam­era. Even the tini­est crea­ture has a right to its life, so I take care not to squish a bug when it gets into my house if I can extract it with­out killing it. That is the essence of my Christianity, not a dement­ed & twist­ed ver­sion of Christianity which fun­da­men­tal­ly believes in the [dom­i­na­tion] of God’s crea­tures much less any of his people.

The Hypocrisy Of The Harambe Objectors…

So when black peo­ple say “black lives mat­ter” those who oppose that con­cept, fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they don’t.
Period.
Here’s why.
Recently a black moth­er went through the anguish of deal­ing with over ten min­utes of heart-wrench­ing agony as her four-year-old black son fell into a Gorilla enclo­sure at an Ohio Zoo. Authorities were even­tu­al­ly forced to put the pri­mate down in order to save the boy’s life. They took the deci­sion after the Gorilla dragged the lit­tle boy around like a rag doll.
So-called ani­mal lovers rose up en-masse demand­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of the moth­er’s con­duct and demand­ing her arrest for neglect­ing her child which result­ed in the ani­mal’s death.

The police inves­ti­gat­ed and turned over their find­ings to the pros­e­cu­tor who said the moth­er had done noth­ing wrong.
These same hyp­ocrites nev­er have a word of protest when ani­mals are slaugh­tered by white men and women for their fur, ivory, or oth­er body parts. They have a sick twist­ed and per­vert­ed idea that the plan­et is theirs to do with it what they want.
The words of the pros­e­cu­tor were par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant.”[To be frank, I am dis­gust­ed that some would seek to equate the lives of a human being with that of an ani­mal]”.
The pros­e­cu­tor is white.
Not long after­ward a white cou­ple lost their two-year-old son at a Walt Disney resort in Florida. At about 9:pm author­i­ties say the two-year-old was wad­ing in shal­low waters of a lagoon when an alli­ga­tor pulled the child under.

Tragically the child did not sur­vive. I have no idea how many Alligators were killed to deter­mine if they had con­sumed the child, before the body of the child was even­tu­al­ly found intact.
What I do know is that there were no peti­tions demand­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion to deter­mine why a two-year-old child was in waters away from an adult which would have made this tragedy possible.
There were no calls for arrest­ing who­ev­er was in charge of the child (assum­ing that any­one was).
It is a hor­rif­ic tragedy for some­one to believe they are about to or to lose their child, speak­ing as a father who lost a child. That par­ent needs all of the love, care, atten­tion, coun­sel­ing, prayer, and good­will possible.
Yet the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites who demand­ed that the black moth­er be inves­ti­gat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed were duplic­i­tous but pre­dictably silent when the white fam­i­ly went through the very same horror.

All of a sud­den it was okay, the white fam­i­ly need all the love and prayers they could get..
The stark mes­sage in their evil protest was clear, the ani­mal should not be sac­ri­ficed to spare the black baby but all stops should be pulled out regard­less of the cost to save the white one.
Here’s a word to you hyp­ocrites you say “all lives mat­ter,” “yes damn you all lives mat­ter, not just yours”. In fact, the par­ents of the two-year-old baby had prob­a­bly twice the bur­den that the par­ent of the four-year-old had, sole­ly on the basis of its age.
Where is your outrage?

THE SUBVERSIVE CAMPAIGN WHICH IS BEING WAGED AGAINST BLACK LIVES MATTER

During the Civil Rights fights of the 1960s, lit­er­al­ly, every civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion and indi­vid­u­als came under sur­veil­lance and seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI and oth­er Government Agencies.
I do not need to rehash that sor­did peri­od and the extent of the sub­ver­sive war­fare which was waged against those orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als who dared to stand up for their right to be treat­ed as human beings.
Many of those peace­ful yet valiant war­riors were mur­dered by peo­ple who did not want them to have the right to speak out and defend their God-giv­en dignity.
What’s remark­able, is the fact that the Government itself was huge­ly com­plic­it in per­se­cut­ing them under the guise that they were communist.
Blacks who are unaware of these facts may very well have been born with­out sight because for all intents and pur­pos­es they were blind.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize win­ner, whose name lit­er­al­ly every politi­cian black and white now invoke, was labeled a dan­ger­ous com­mu­nist by FBI direc­tor [J Edgar Hoover].
There is no dif­fer­ence today in what you hear from some of the Police offi­cials and the racial dem­a­gogues like Donald Trump.
No ratio­nal per­son believes that peo­ple march­ing for their rights & dig­ni­ty are ter­ror­ists. If this bla­tant attempt at crim­i­nal­iz­ing a legit­i­mate protest group stand, then the First Amendment to the con­sti­tu­tion means nothing.
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution pro­hibits the mak­ing of any law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, imped­ing the free exer­cise of reli­gion, abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, infring­ing on the free­dom of the press, inter­fer­ing with the right to peace­ably assem­ble, or pro­hibit­ing the peti­tion­ing for a gov­ern­men­tal redress of griev­ances.

The actions of Dillon Roof the mur­der­ing mon­ster who killed nine (9) black mem­bers of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston South Carolina is not the respon­si­bil­i­ty of decent white peo­ple. Neither are the actions of Micah Xavier Johnson the cop killer the respon­si­bil­i­ty of black lives mat­ter or black peo­ple for that matter.
Let us rec­og­nize these ped­dlers of race-bait­ing for what they are, they are racist ped­dlers of divi­sive­ness and demagoguery.
Whether it be the irrel­e­vant for­mer race baiter-in-chief of New York City Rudolph Giuliani, who pit­ted police against the sit­ting may­or David Dinkins to gain pow­er or any­one else, the strat­e­gy is the same.

Giuliani rode on the backs of police offi­cers into office. Once in office, he used the police in his strat­e­gy which divid­ed New York City in a way that was not seen before in mod­ern history.
He did that until the cops them­selves real­ized that he cared noth­ing about their inter­est. Giuliani is a nar­cis­sis­tic fraud on a per­son­al mis­sion of hate and per­son­al self-aggrandizement.
What is astound­ing, yet not total­ly un-expect­ed are the black police offi­cials who stu­pid­ly fall for that non­sense. None of these idiots were born police offi­cers but they were born with black skin.
Being a police offi­cer is some­thing you chose to do. Being black is who you are.

Bad police offi­cers are not only a dan­ger to the pub­lic they are a dan­ger to good police offi­cers. We have seen the evi­dence of that. Evil per­sists when good men/​women remain silent. We know our friends not just by what they say but by their silence. We also know them by what they refuse to say.
They refuse to say “BLACK LIVES MATTER” because they do not believe they do. They know damn well that when poor oppressed peo­ple say black lives mat­ter they are not say­ing white lives or any oth­er doesn’t.
So please do not accept these dem­a­gogues and their race-bait­ing when they argue all lives mat­ter. They do not believe it. They care more about the lives of Gorillas than they do that of black children.
They care about peace & order not about jus­tice and human dig­ni­ty. They care about bro­ken glass, not about bro­ken black bodies.
It is time for real black peo­ple to dis­en­tan­gle them­selves from those who con­tin­ue to demon­strate that they are not with us. We wel­come our white broth­ers and sis­ters who con­tin­ue to stand with us and move on from the others.
I will lead by exam­ple “WHITE LIVES MATTER”. If they believe “BLACK LIVES MATTER ” let’s hear them say it !!!
By their fruits, you shall know them.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blogger.
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com.
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

The above pho­to was tak­en by Louisiana-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jonathan Bachman, work­ing for Reuters, over the week­end, dur­ing protests in Baton Rouge. Bachman snapped the pho­to just as Evans was being arrest­ed for stand­ing in the street.

Many are call­ing the image a “Tiananmen Square Moment” in the protests. Some are liken­ing it to the imagery of the woman fac­ing down neo-nazi skin­heads in Europe.

There are many defin­ing moments in his­to­ry that once you wit­ness them you can­not un-see them.The image of the 35-year-old moth­er of a 5 year old son was astound­ing­ly powerful.
Ms Evans is report­ed to have said, I trav­eled to Baton Rouge “because I want­ed to look my son in the eyes and tell him I fought for his free­dom and rights,”.
She was booked on a charge of sim­ple obstruc­tion of a high­way and had been released from custody.

Lets cut to the chase and be done with the bull, the reason police and black people are having conflicts is not because black people are acting crazy when confronted or stopped by police. It is not because they do not know how to act either, it has nothing to do with police lack of training, it’s not about people getting off protest lines to apply for the $40.000 a year job Dallas police chief David Brown condescendingly wants blacks to apply for.
It’s about a systematic lack of respect that too many police officers have for the black community.

Lets set aside the num­ber of cops whom have been fired or oth­er­wise dis­ci­plined of late for tex­ting deroga­to­ry and pejo­ra­tive con­tent to each oth­er about black Americans. Lets also set aside the num­ber of them whom are active mem­bers of hate groups like the Klu Klux Klan , the Aryan broth­er­hood and the pletho­ra of oth­er Neo-Nazi white hate groups which are a dime a dozen across America. And lets just ignore the rage with which they tell black men that they are going to kill them before they do just that.
You tell me what exact­ly do we have left?

Dallas police chief David Brown who just hap­pen to wear black skin has him­self lost his own son to police bul­lets . With remark­able con­de­scen­sion Brown lec­tured pro­test­ers , telling them they should get off protest lines and apply to be cops . In his words “we are hir­ing “.
The very idea that Brown would sug­gest that join­ing the ranks of police depart­ments will fix the sys­tem­at­ic prob­lem of entrenched racial dis­par­i­ty demon­strates his woe­ful lack of depth and maybe even worse.
When a black man who hap­pen to lose his own son to police bul­lets can make those state­ments it demon­strates the uphill task the aver­age black in America faces against the tyran­ni­cal oppres­sion of bru­tal and bar­bar­ic killers in uni­form who pre­tend to be cops..
Of the 14,633 law enforce­ment agen­cies across the coun­ty and near­ly one mil­lion police offi­cers who staff those agen­cies there are some fine and exem­plary offi­cers , that does not need say­ing when­ev­er we broach the sub­ject of police wrongdoing.

What should not be allowed to stand how­ev­er is the con­stant chat­ter about the work offi­cers do to over­shad­ow the legit­i­mate cries for jus­tice against police bar­barism and tyranny.
It is illog­i­cal and immoral to argue about sup­port­ing law enforce­ment when there is a hun­dred years of unde­ni­able evi­dence that peo­ple of col­or are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly bru­tal­ized and killed at the hands of police dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their num­bers in the society.
Fifty fours years ago Dr Martin Luther King said the great­est chal­lenge fac­ing black peo­ple in America was police abuse , today the great­est chal­lenge fac­ing black peo­ple in America is police abuse.
So what exact­ly has changed ?

We con­tin­ue to hear about the need to sup­port law-enforce­ment as if legit­i­mate con­cern and out­rage against police atroc­i­ties are tan­ta­mount to being anti-law enforcement.
It is a straw-man dis­trac­tion which is designed to deflect atten­tion from the real issue of police vio­lence against com­mu­ni­ties of color.
Many police offi­cers are black and Latino it is not about hat­ing law enforce­ment . People of col­or want police in their com­mu­ni­ties that is why they hire their fel­low cit­i­zens to do the job of pro­tect­ing them.
What has to change is the mis­guid­ed notion among many in the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty that their role is an abstrac­tion divorced from the needs and dic­tates of the peo­ple they serve.
In essence police must see them­selves as ser­vants of all com­mu­ni­ties and not as agents of the state with a duty to keep cer­tain peo­ple in their place.

Communities of col­or must endeav­or to lift them­selves out of the morass of con­stant vic­tim-hood., Not so that they may live up to the stan­dards of oth­ers but that they as com­mu­ni­ties may not be defined by others.
Black com­mu­ni­ties can­not con­tin­ue to com­pete on a play­ing field on which the goal-posts are con­stant­ly moved to adhere to the needs of one team. It’s unten­able to com­pete on a play­ing field on which the ref­er­ees and the oppos­ing team are one and the same.
Blacks can­not con­tin­ue to shuf­fle up to fit into the spaces defined by oth­ers, or to make oth­ers com­fort­able. This is their damn coun­try too.
If only he did not have a crim­i­nal record.
If only he did not run.
If only he did not talk back.
If only he did not ask questions.
If only he did not pull out his wallet.
If only he was­n’t dri­ving with a bust­ed tail-light.
If only he said yes sir , no sir.
If only he showed def­er­ence and respect.
If only he was­n’t in that neighborhood.
If only she had put out the cig­a­rette when told to despite being in her own car.

Police offi­cers can­not say they are good cops when they refuse to speak out against the actions of their col­leagues even when they know they are wrong.
Clearly it must be evi­dent to all that when bad police offi­cers are allowed to do the things they do with­out con­se­quences it endan­gers all includ­ing good cops.
How can cer­tain cit­i­zens expect to be lis­tened to when they refuse to acknowl­edge the pain of others?
When you refuse to speak out about the pain and the indig­ni­ties suf­fered by your neigh­bor you refuse to acknowl­edge their humanity .
How can you expect them to appre­ci­ate your pain when you deny them their basic humanity.

There is a shock­ing pat­tern by police in America when it comes to their con­duct, they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they should not be ques­tioned . It has become clear that they now har­bor a sense of grandios­i­ty which is utter­ly stunning.
Police advo­cates argue that police are there pro­tect­ing peo­ple even when they demon­strate against them. I am a lit­tle per­plexed at that line of reasoning .
Exactly what are they sup­posed to do? Aren’t police offi­cers paid to pro­tect the pub­lic who pay their salaries?
Are we to believe that police should have the right while on the pub­lic’s pay­roll to decide what they will and will not do?

After mem­bers of the Minnesota Lynx wore T‑shirts Saturday night demand­ing “change” fol­low­ing two police-involved shoot­ings of black men, four off-duty Minneapolis cops report­ed­ly decid­ed to quit their jobs as are­na secu­ri­ty guards.The WNBA play­ers sport­ed black warmup shirts before a game against the Dallas Wings at Target Center that said “Change Starts with Us — Justice and Accountability” on the front; the names of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile were on the back, along with the Dallas Police Department shield and “Black Lives Matter.”

The atti­tudes of these cops is on open dis­play , the arro­gance and the sense of deity they feel ‚only goes to demon­strate to the world why there are so many instances of abuse and exces­sive force lev­eled against mem­bers of the pub­lic but more-so against mem­bers of the minor­i­ty community.
Even though they were not on the pub­lic pay­roll and are total­ly with­ing their rights to decide to do secu­ri­ty work or not , their actions are a mir­ror into how they think and to some extent the rea­son why they abuse citizens.
They sim­ply have a God com­plex, its one born of dis­re­spect, and a sense that they are not only above the laws but they are above being crit­i­cized and there­in lies the problem.
|

Unofficially 567 peo­ple killed by American police , yet there is no uni­formed gath­er­ing of this data . Is there a rea­son that there is no uni­formed account­ing for the amount of peo­ple killed in the most sophis­ti­cat­ed Nation on Earth?
Or is there a will­ful desire to con­ceal these statistics?
As a for­mer Law-Enforcement offi­cers who served a full decade in a very vio­lent nation I cringe to see these images and the stag­ger­ing sta­tis­tics which seem to show police act­ing more like down­right dan­ger­ous thugs than law­ful offi­cers of the law.

Mark Dayton says lev­el of force was ‘way in excess’ of what was nec­es­sary and demands jus­tice depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion as Obama calls shoot­ings ‘a seri­ous problem’

The fatal shoot­ing of a black man by police in Minnesota was attrib­uted to racism by the state’s gov­er­nor on Thursday, as Barack Obama urged Americans to admit that the coun­try faced a “seri­ous prob­lem” of prej­u­dice in law enforcement.

Dispensing with the cau­tion typ­i­cal­ly shown by elect­ed lead­ers fol­low­ing shoot­ings by police, Governor Mark Dayton blamed the death of Philando Castile on racial bias and said the offi­cer involved used a lev­el of force “way in excess” of what was nec­es­sary. “Would this have hap­pened if the dri­ver and pas­sen­ger were white?” Dayton asked at a press con­fer­ence. “I don’t think it would have. So I’m forced to con­front, and I think all of Minnesota is forced to con­front, that this kind of racism exists.”

The killing of Castile, 32, is the lat­est to roil the US in the near­ly two years since the fatal shoot­ing by police of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, led to waves of unrest around the coun­try. Castile’s death was broad­cast live on Facebook by his girl­friend after he was shot by an offi­cer through the win­dow of their car dur­ing a traf­fic stop near St Paul on Wednesday evening. Castile had been reach­ing for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion after warn­ing the offi­cer that he was legal­ly car­ry­ing a hand­gun, accord­ing to his girl­friend. It was the sec­ond time this week that the killing by police of an African American was cap­tured on wide­ly shared cell­phone video. On Tuesday, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot dead dur­ing a strug­gle with two offi­cers in Baton Rouge,Louisiana. Sterling, who was sell­ing CDs out­side a shop, appeared to have a pis­tol in his pock­et. Obama said Americans “should be deeply trou­bled” by the two shoot­ings, as he sug­gest­ed it was nec­es­sary to “admit we’ve got a seri­ous prob­lem” with racial bias or its appear­ance among some police offi­cers. “We’ve seen such tragedies far too many times,” Obama said of the Sterling and Castile killings, in a Facebook post.

The two men were the 135^th and 136^th African Americans to be killed by police across the US in 2016, accord­ing to anongo­ing Guardian project to doc­u­ment every death caused by law enforce­ment offi­cers. In total, 561 peo­ple have been killed so far this year. Castile’s moth­er, Valerie, said she was out­raged by the death of the 32-year-old school cafe­te­ria work­er. “Every day you hear of anoth­er black per­son being shot down – gunned down – by the peo­ple who are sup­posed to pro­tect us,” she told CNN. Some of the country’s most promi­nent black cul­tur­al fig­ures also expressed anger over the shoot­ings. “We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our com­mu­ni­ties,” the singer Beyoncé said in a state­ment on her web­site. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us’.” An exten­sive list of names of peo­ple killed by US police was pro­ject­ed as a back­drop to Beyoncé’s con­cert in Glasgow, Scotland, on Thursday evening.

Dayton, a Democrat, asked the US Department of Justice to inves­ti­gate Castile’s shoot­ing after pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side his man­sion overnight and wrapped his gates in crime-scene tape. The depart­ment is already review­ing the death of Sterling in Baton Rouge.

“I will do every­thing in my pow­er to help pro­tect the integri­ty of that inves­ti­ga­tion, to ensure a prop­er and just out­come for all involved,” Dayton said in a statement.

A Department of Justice spokesman said in an email that the depart­ment “stands ready to pro­vide assis­tance” to Minnesota author­i­ties in inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing if required “and will inde­pen­dent­ly assess what fur­ther action may be war­rant­ed”. Officials said on Wednesday that they would open a fed­er­al civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into Sterling’s death in Louisiana. That the shoot­ings were a cause for con­cern. Asked in a con­gres­sion­al hear­ing whether killings such as those of Castile and Sterling were “hap­pen­ing at an alarm­ing rate”, Comey replied: “‘Yes’ is the emphat­ic answer.” Comey had pre­vi­ous­ly stood out with­in theObama admin­is­tra­tion by focus­ing on con­cerns that protests against police shoot­ings may be caus­ing a rise in crime by prompt­ing offi­cers to hold back from con­fronta­tions. Castile and his girl­friend, Diamond Reynolds, were pulled over at about 9pm on Wednesday because their car had a bro­ken tail light, accord­ing to Reynolds. Quickly start­ing to film and broad­cast to Facebook’s live video fea­ture, Reynolds said to the cam­era that the offi­cer had just opened fire as Castile reached into his pocket.

“He was try­ing to get out his ID and his wal­let out his pock­et and he let the offi­cer know that he was that he had a firearm,” she says in the video. “He was reach­ing for his wal­let and the offi­cer just shot him in his arm.” Reynolds esti­mat­ed that the offi­cer fired between three and five times. Castile is seen slumped across a front seat cov­ered in blood. He squirms with his eyes half-open. Reynolds says to cam­era: “Please don’t tell me that he’s gone. Please offi­cer, don’t tell me that you just did this to him.” As oth­er offi­cers arrive, Reynolds is instruct­ed to leave the vehi­cle. The phone con­tin­ues to film as it is laid on the ground. One dis­traught-sound­ing offi­cer, who has not been iden­ti­fied, can be heard shout­ing “Fuck” repeat­ed­ly. After Reynolds is detained, her four-year-old daugh­ter can be heard com­fort­ing her. “It’s OK mom­my,” she says The deaths of Sterling and Castile have revived protests about the treat­ment by offi­cers of black peo­ple who appear to be car­ry­ing firearms legal­ly or non-threat­en­ing­ly, as mil­lions of Americans do every day with­out incident.

Castile’s moth­er said her son was “try­ing to do the right things, and live accord­ing­ly by the law”. Minnesotans are enti­tled to car­ry a hand­gun if they obtain a per­mit from their local sher­iff after earn­ing a train­ing cer­tifi­cate. Reynolds said Castile was licensed to car­ry his gun. The offi­cer who shot Castile works for the small St Anthony police depart­ment, whose chief John Ohl said in his 2015 annu­al report that out­siders “can eas­i­ly over­look just how dif­fi­cult it can be to deal humane­ly, as cops must, even with the dregs of our soci­ety”. The report sug­gest­ed St Anthony’s 23 offi­cers each received an aver­age of 67 hours of train­ing last year, includ­ing on de-esca­la­tion, the use of force and firearms. In the Baton Rouge case, police con­front­ed Sterling because he matched the descrip­tion of a man report­ed to have threat­ened some­one with a gun. Two video clips of his strug­gle with police indi­cate, how­ev­er, that his pis­tol remained in his pock­et and was removed by offi­cers after he was shot. It was unclear from the footage whether Sterling tried to reach for the weapon.

On Thursday, it was announced that lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­ly of Walter Scott, the 50-year-old African American killed by police in South Carolina in 2015, would now rep­re­sent mem­bers of Sterling’s fam­i­ly as well. “We will demand trans­paren­cy from the Baton Rouge police depart­ment and all oth­er agen­cies involved in this inves­ti­ga­tion. We will not stop until every ques­tion has been answered,” said attor­neys L. Chris Stewart and Justin Bamberg in a state­ment. Scott’s death, which was also cap­tured on video by a wit­ness, result­ed in a $6.5m set­tle­ment, and mur­der charges for the white offi­cer who opened fire. The cas­es joined a series of flash­points in recent years includ­ing those of Tamir Rice and John Crawford, two young African Americans who were sep­a­rate­ly shot dead by police in Ohio in 2014 while han­dling pel­let guns in a park and a Walmart store respec­tive­ly. In both cas­es, offi­cers fired with­in sec­onds of see­ing them. Campaigners said African Americans were treat­ed unfair­ly to dead­ly effect. “No mat­ter how well you fol­low the rules, you can still be dead because you’re black,” said Brittany Packnett, an activist and for­mer mem­ber of Obama’s White House polic­ing task­force. “Compliance has nev­er guar­an­teed our safe­ty.” Gun rights advo­cates who are typ­i­cal­ly forth­right in defend­ing firearms own­ers have been crit­i­cised for fail­ing to speak out in sup­port of black peo­ple tar­get­ed while armed. Asked about the Castile shoot­ing, Jennifer Baker, the National Rifle Association’s direc­tor of pub­lic affairs, said only on Thursday: “We have not issued a state­ment.” Larry Pratt, the exec­u­tive direc­tor emer­i­tus of Gun Owners of America, bris­tled at the sug­ges­tion that race made a dif­fer­ence. “We don’t speak out for black American nor white America or any oth­er kinds of racial posi­tion. That is an obnox­ious ques­tion. Keep ask­ing ques­tions like that and you’re going to get hung up on, like right now,” he said, then dis­con­nect­ed the line. https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​/​j​u​l​/​0​7​/​p​h​i​l​a​n​d​o​-​c​a​s​t​i​l​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​c​a​l​l​s​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​q​u​i​r​y​-​f​b​i​-​m​i​n​n​e​s​o​t​a​-​o​f​f​i​c​ers

Yesterday I wrote on the continued transformation of terrorism internationally and even by local criminals when they are allowed to operate in spaces they shouldn’t and in ways they ought not be allowed.
To some degree it may reasonably be said that when it comes to local or home grown criminals who would terrorize the innocent, some degree of political correctness have actually allowed the growth and brazenness of these criminals.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​a​r​e​-​p​r​e​p​a​r​e​-​h​e​l​p​-​s​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​-​o​t​h​e​r​s​-​f​o​o​l​i​s​h​l​y​-​l​i​v​e​-​d​e​n​i​a​l​-​v​u​l​n​e​r​a​b​i​l​i​ty/

It’s impor­tant to under­stand that we will most like­ly nev­er live as free peo­ple in soci­eties which are free from crime any­time soon .
I believe we are faced with two choic­es going for­ward (1) being free cit­i­zens of this plan­et who help in our own secu­ri­ty by doing what we can per­son­al­ly to ensure that crim­i­nal behav­ior is not allowed to devel­op in our homes , our com­mu­ni­ties and in our countries.
Or (2) peo­ple suc­cumb to strict reg­i­ment­ed gov­ern­men­tal con­trol of our lives , ced­ing all free­doms to states in which we live .
I would argue that ced­ing free­doms to Government is prob­a­bly where we are head­ed as a specie. We have all giv­en up mas­sive chunks of our indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties since the events of September 11^th 2001 .
Ironically since then ‚despite con­tin­ued ero­sion of our rights and priv­i­leges we have not attained the secu­ri­ty we seek , If fact we have become expo­nen­tial­ly less safe.

Regardless of where we live we are affect­ed by events which tran­spired on that morn­ing in 2001 . Air trav­el has lit­er­al­ly become and exer­cise in debase­ment. We are sub­ject­ed to being herd­ed togeth­er in lines, forced to deal with police dogs sniff­ing our per­sons and our per­son­al belong­ings. People we don’t know are allowed to grope and fon­dle us to their sat­is­fac­tion just so that we can get on a flight crammed togeth­er like sar­dines with oth­ers who have like­wise sur­ren­dered their dig­ni­ties. As I inti­mat­ed yes­ter­day this is the new nor­mal for the fore­see­able future , these con­di­tions are not about to sub­side or go away. The way things used to be ‚sim­ply used to be .……They are no more.

During the 1980’s to ear­ly 1990’s I was a law enforce­ment offi­cer in Jamaica dur­ing my tenure which began in 1982 and end­ed in 1991 the coun­try was awash in ille­gal guns . Most of the weapon­ry we faced then were M16 assault rifles, the AR 15’s and a slew of semi-auto­mat­ic hand­guns. Intelligence sug­gest­ed then that many of those weapons were dumped on the island by American drug run­ners who flew light air­craft from Florida to the Island on Ganja runs. It was rumored that much of the cocaine which del­uged our streets at the time also came into the island that way.

Despite work­ing with lit­er­al­ly no, sup­port, equip­ment, or oth­er resources the hard work and resilience of Jamaican police offi­cers man­aged to put a siz­able dent into the drug trade. Unfortunately many also suc­cumbed to the lure of easy dirty mon­ey. The sheer mass of weapon­ry which was in the hands of crim­i­nals at that time was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less that it is today over two decades later.
With the excep­tion of the tremen­dous loss of life lead­ing up to the gen­er­al elec­tions of 1980 , mur­ders and oth­er crimes com­mit­ted with the use of firearms were high but for the most part the hard work­ing mem­bers of the JCF kept a lid on things. I believe many Jamaicans would be pre­pared to go back to 300 plus homi­cides annu­al­ly as com­pared to the over 1200 the Island aver­ages annu­al­ly today.
Crime does not increase by 300% between the ear­ly 90′ and present day with­out atten­dant fac­tors dri­ving it’s growth.
Whether or not the nation wants to con­cede that the rel­a­tive­ly safe­ty it enjoyed was a result of the no non­sense approach police took in going after crim­i­nals does not change the fact that we were reg­is­ter­ing around 300 homi­cides annu­al­ly as a result of that strategy.

The many offi­cers in the NYPD with whom I spoke con­fessed that by the time the show­er posse , span­glers and oth­er Jamaican crim­i­nal enter­pris­es came to their atten­tion they were already well estab­lished from the east coast of the United States to California and as far away as Alaska. They were also large­ly oper­at­ing in coun­tries like Great Britain and Canada .
Law enforce­ment offi­cials in the United States said it was­n’t the drug deal­ing which star­tled them as much as the lev­el of vio­lence Jamaican gang­sters employed in an attempt to dri­ve fear into their adversaries.
They also found out in no uncer­tain terms that the lev­el of respect they received from American crim­i­nals who gen­er­al­ly avoid­ed killing cops did not extend to Jamaican criminals.
Jamaicans have no com­punc­tion about killing police offi­cers and they did. The dif­fer­ence is that when they did they brought down the wrath and pow­er of the entire American gov­ern­ment on their heads.
It would not be busi­ness as usu­al in the United States when they killed police offi­cers as it is in Jamaica where they are cod­dled, loved and adored.
They would not be released on bail because some lit­tle anti-police judge decides to turn them loose.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​f​a​t​a​l​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​d​o​w​n​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​u​p​-​u​p​-​up/
Today when I speak to police offi­cers in Jamaica they tell me they are not get­ting involved as there is no rea­son to .
Criminals open­ly brag that INDECOM pro­tects them from the police . Visitors to the Island speak of men walk­ing around with guns as if they have not a care in the world .
This is what Jamaica has come to, but if you are walk­ing around in the gan­ja fog, just had some jerk chick­en or pork , or enjoyed a drink of our world renowned white rum none of this mat­ter to you.
Because con­trary to the mas­sive and uncon­strained blood-let­ting, “Jumeka nice nu rass.”