It has been clear since slav­ery that blacks were not going to receive any­thing in America they are not pre­pared to fight and die for. For sev­er­al years now I have been lament­ing that the sac­ri­fices made by great Martyrs like Malcolm X and King among oth­ers are being squan­dered. I the­o­rized that this would come back to haunt Black-America. Unfortunately that time is here.
President Obama wants cops to wear body cam­era, as a way for America to see what Police offi­cers are doing in their name. As much as I sup­port the pres­i­den­t’s ini­tia­tive, I won­der what effect it will have when Prosecutors and Grand Juries take it upon them­selves to cir­cum­vent the law.
Eric Garner was killed on cam­era, in broad daylight.
Daniel M. Donovan Jr. Staten Island District Attorney indict­ed the young man who record­ed the killing on his cell-phone. Cops con­ve­nient­ly arrest­ed him pass­ing a gun to a woman. 
NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo who killed Eric Garner will not be asked to answer in a state court for his actions.
Ramsey Orta, 22, was alleged­ly arrest­ed out­side a known drug loca­tion on Staten Island by nar­cotics offi­cers who claimed Orta placed a hand­gun in his com­pan­ion’s waist­band, the New York Police Department said. Orta report­ed­ly told cops “You’re just mad because I filmed your boy,”.
Fast track to Ferguson Missouri, There was active talk about indict­ing the step-father of Michael Brown who was heard on tape say­ing “lets burn this B$#@!& down”, in response to the news that Darren Wilson would not be indicted. 
These are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a Police-state. Whenever cit­i­zens are not allowed to ques­tion or oth­er­wise demand answers of police, or hold them account­able, they are in a police state.
Police depart­ments are not laws onto them­selves. They are duty bound to obey the laws, even as they enforce them.
We are at crit­i­cal mass when peo­ple who pho­to­graph or record police crimes and fam­i­ly mem­bers already in griev­ing are tar­get­ed while killer cops walk free.

At this time there is much empha­sis on police depart­ments and indi­vid­ual offi­cers, the prob­lem is much deep­er than cops . There seem to be a sys­tem­at­ic effort on the part of pros­e­cu­tors to cov­er for cops. Some are con­vinced some Prosecutors are even crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it in the way they han­dle pros­e­cu­tion evi­dence involv­ing cops in the grand jury process. Prosecutors are sup­posed to be ser­vants of the peo­ple. There is much talk about the grand jury process and what may have occurred or not in these secret proceedings.
lost in this noise is the fact that pros­e­cu­tors have the pow­er and indeed a duty to pros­e­cute crimes, irre­spec­tive of who the offend­er is sep­a­rate from the grand jury process.
When Prosecutors decide to go the route of the grand-jury in cas­es like the Eric Garner’s , they are abdi­cat­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ty to their oath at best. Worse case they are doing all in their pow­er in assist­ing cops who break the laws to escape prosecution.
All Americans have a stake in what is hap­pen­ing present­ly. Blacks Whites and and every­one else.

There is much to be said about black lead­er­ship, or more impor­tant­ly the absence of one. As young peo­ple take to the streets demand­ing a new direc­tion for their coun­try, old civ­il rights func­tionar­ies are still stuck using the old talk­ing-points about jobs.
This fight is not a fight about jobs right now, it is a fight for jus­tice and fair­ness. In some cas­es it is an exis­ten­tial fight. Lets fight this fight and not con­fuse this fight with oth­er issues.

So let me get this straight the St. Louis Police was con­sid­er­ing pros­e­cut­ing the

step-father of slain teen Michael Brown for shout­ing “lets burn this *&^$# down” after the non-indict­ment but killer cop Darren Wilson is walk­ing around free?
What am I miss­ing here? 
What pow­er does this man have to influ­ence the actions of a mob ? How do they prove this? The Police brass and the entire sys­tem of IN-jus­tice in that state can­not con­trol it’s killers in uni­form but wants to use the very same sys­tem to pros­e­cute peo­ple for uti­liz­ing their free speech in a high­ly charged environment .

We under­stand Michael Brown’s step­fa­ther, Louis Head, apol­o­gized Wednesday.

“Something came over me as I watched and lis­tened to my wife, the moth­er of Michael Brown Jr., react to the gut-wrench­ing news that the cop who killed her son wouldn’t be charged with a crime,” Head said in a state­ment to CNN. “My emo­tions admit­ted­ly got the best of me.

“This is my fam­i­ly,” Head said. “I was so angry and full of raw emo­tions, as so many oth­ers were, and grant­ed I screamed out words I shouldn’t have screamed in the heat of the moment. I was wrong, and I humbly apol­o­gize to all those who read my anger and my pain as a true desire for what I want for the community.”

We will await the apol­o­gy from the real crim­i­nals in all this, the sys­tem which had it’s Agent kill an-unarmed man,then pull out all the stops to make sure he does­n’t even have to answer for his actions. Always remem­ber that a black man has no rights a white man is bound to respect. I would not hold my breath if I were you. They have no shame, no con­science , no humanity.

IN THE MEANTIME:

Some St. Louis Rams play­ers exer­cised their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed right to free speech Sunday when they came out with “hands up don’t shoot” hand-signs in sup­port of mur­dered Michael Brown. 
This of course drew the ire of the bul­ly­ing boys in blue in the St Louis Police Officers Association . The asso­ci­a­tion issued a release

press­ing the NFL do quote dis­ci­pline the play­ers who exer­cised their right. 
Who dis­ci­pline cops when they mur­der citizens

But I digress, as I write this a secret Staten Island Grand Jury decid­ed the mur­der­ing cop Pantaleo who choked Eric Garner to death would not face charges.

Back to the state­ment of the Saint Louis police offi­cers Association.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association is pro­found­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the mem­bers of the St. Louis Rams foot­ball team who chose to ignore the moun­tains of evi­dence released from the St. Louis County Grand Jury this week and engage in a dis­play that police offi­cers around the nation found taste­less, offen­sive and inflammatory.
Five mem­bers of the Rams enIered the field today exhibit­ing the “hands-up-don’t‑shoot” pose that has been adopt­ed by pro­tes­tors who accused Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson of mur­der­ing Michael Brown. The ges­ture has become syn­ony­mous with asser­tions that Michael Brown was inno­cent of any wrong­do­ing and attempt­ing to sur­ren­der peace­ful­ly when Wilson, accord­ing to some now-dis­cred­it­ed wit­ness­es, gunned him down in cold blood.

SLPOA Business Manager Jeff Roorda said, “now that the evi­dence is in and Officer Wilson’s account has been ver­i­fied by phys­i­cal and bal­lis­tic evi­dence as well as eye-wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, which led the grand jury to con­clude that no prob­a­ble cause exist­ed that Wilson engaged in any wrong­do­ing, it is unthink­able that home­town ath­letes would so pub­licly per­pet­u­ate a nar­ra­tive that has been dis­proven over-and-over again.”

Roorda was incensed that the Rams and the NFL would tol­er­ate such behav­ior and called it remark­ably hyp­o­crit­i­cal. “All week long, the Rams and the NFL were on the phone with the St. Louis Police Department ask­ing for assur­ances that the play­ers and the fans would be kept safe from the vio­lent pro­test­ers who had riot­ed, loot­ed, and burned build­ings in Ferguson. Our offi­cers have been work­ing 12 hour shifts for over a week, they had days off includ­ing Thanksgiving can­celled so that they could defend this com­mu­ni­ty from those on the streets that per­pet­u­ate this myth that Michael Brown was exe­cut­ed by a broth­er police offi­cer and then, as the play­ers and their fans sit safe­ly in their dome under the watch­ful pro­tec­tion of hun­dreds of St. Louis’s finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exon­er­at­ed offi­cer a mur­der­er, that is way out-of-bounds, to put it in foot­ball par­lance,” Roorda said.

The SLPOA is call­ing for the play­ers involved to be dis­ci­plined and for the Rams and the NFL to deliv­er a very pub­lic apol­o­gy. Roorda said he planned to speak to the NFL and the Rams to voice his organization’s dis­plea­sure tomor­row. He also plans to reach out to oth­er police orga­ni­za­tions in St. Louis and around the coun­try to enlist their input on what the appro­pri­ate response from law enforce­ment should be. Roorda warned, “I know that there are those that will say that these play­ers are sim­ply exer­cis­ing their First Amendment rights. Well I’ve got news for peo­ple who think that way, cops have first amend­ment rights too, and we plan to exer­cise ours. I’d remind the NFL and their play­ers that it is not the vio­lent thugs burn­ing down build­ings that buy their advertiser’s prod­ucts. It’s cops and the good peo­ple of St. Louis and oth­er NFL towns that do. Somebody needs to throw a flag on this play. If it’s not the NFL and the Rams, then it’ll be cops and their supporters.”

The state­ment start­ed out rea­son­able it did not take long how­ev­er for the true mind­set of the Organization to become clear. Bully-ish, Thuggish, threat­en­ing, enti­tled, above being questioned.
I nev­er quite under­stood their claim that they pro­vide secu­ri­ty so that cit­i­zens can oper­ate in safety>
Here’s a clue, People pay you to ensure their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, if you feel above doing what they pay you for give up the job and find anoth­er job that you are qual­i­fied to do. You do not have a right to being a Police Officer. 

There is also a grow­ing sense that in far two many cas­es Police offi­cers actions are indis­tin­guish­able from the actions of the KKK. There is also a crys­tal-clear per­cep­tion that a cer­tain sec­tion of the Caucasian com­mu­ni­ty is quite pleased with the actions of killer cops, Irrespective of their actions. In the 60’s it was admit­ted that many Police Departments like the LAPD and oth­ers had large amounts of mem­bers who were active mem­bers of the Klan.
If this was true for PD’s like the LAPD and oth­er large depart­ments what do you think is the case in small Lilly-white com­mu­ni­ties with all white police depart­ments and cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tems still invest­ed in the con­cept of racial superiority?

There were sup­posed attempts to change the make up of some of those Departments, bet­ter edu­cat­ed offi­cers and in some cas­es diver­si­ty. What they were not able to do is to remove the scourge of racism from the hearts of many who are still join­ing the ranks of police departments.

On Monday, Time Out Sports Bar & Grill post­ed on its Facebook page that it would no longer sup­port the foot­ball team “due to the bone head­ed ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ act by the num­ber of Rams play­ers.” The post said all signs and pho­tos of the Rams would be removed from the walls. “We need to stand up to thugs who destroy our com­mu­ni­ty and burn down local busi­ness­es, and boy­cott the oth­er thugs/​organizations who sup­port them,” the post read. The restau­rant lat­er post­ed again, say­ing it was “not tak­ing sides in the Ferguson tragedy” and sup­ports peace­ful protest and free speech, but dis­agreed with the Rams “bring­ing the protest to a nation­wide pro­fes­sion­al sport­ing event.” A few dozen pro­test­ers gath­ered at around 6 p.m. on Tuesday out­side one of Time Out’s loca­tions in St. Louis. Wearing Rams jer­seys and hats, the pro­test­ers chant­ed “We are Rams fans” and “We want ser­vice.” Protesters said a man who iden­ti­fied him­self as a co-own­er of the bar came to the door dur­ing the demonstration.
http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​1​4​/​1​2​/​0​3​/​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​-​s​t​-​l​o​u​i​s​-​r​a​m​s​_​n​_​6​2​5​8​5​8​2​.​h​tml

As President Obama asks Congress for funds to kick off a cam­paign for body cam­eras for cops, I am not sure what cam­eras will do to reduce this prob­lem of police abuse and extra-judi­cial killings. 
The entire killing of Eric Garner was cap­tured on Camera. Garner could clear­ly be heard on Camera say­ing “I can’t breathe< I can’t breathe” I can’t breathe”. Daniel Pantaleo did not think of releas­ing his death-grip on the man until the life drained out of him.
White Staten Island res­i­dents to whom cops can do no wrong, decid­ed not to break their tra­di­tion of pro­tect­ing killer cops. They sup­pos­ed­ly looked at the evi­dence of the case on the basis that there was no intent to kill, despite the Medical Examiner, rul­ing the death a homicide.
Even though the grand jury’s job is not to decide inno­cence or guilt the Staten Island Jury decid­ed to lit­er­al­ly try the case and decid­ed there was no case to answer. No “prob­a­ble cause”, no mur­der, no manslaugh­ter, no assault, no stran­gu­la­tion, no nothing.….….….

After Eric Garner stopped mov­ing they all stood around, they took no steps to ren­der CPR or any oth­er life sav­ing pro­ce­dure. They knew they had killed him.
They did noth­ing because they knew they did not need to.
There was no rea­son to care.
No rea­son to wor­ry about consequence.

In the ongo­ing debate after the death of Michael Brown the 18 year old Ferguson youth and oth­er killings of black men by police, every­one seem to have tak­en sides based on col­or and or life experiences.
Many blacks who are exposed to the dai­ly abuse and dis­re­spect of Police are enraged by the fact that yet anoth­er unarmed black man was killed by a white police offi­cer and the offi­cer was not even made to defend his actions in a court of law.
Many includ­ing this writer fer­vent­ly believe that St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch used his office and bent over back­wards to ensure that the cop in ques­tion, Darren Wilson would face no charges , at least at the State level.
Many are pin­ning their hopes to a pos­si­ble Federal Indictment of Wilson. Of course that indict­ment would have to come from new evi­dence yet unheard. The stan­dard for a Federal Indictment is much high­er than at the state level.
Of course McCulloch has already poi­soned that well with his pre-ver­dict press diatribe.
Federal Prosecutors would have to prove that Wilson killed Brown because he was black or any oth­er Federally pre­scribed char­ac­ter­is­tic that would neces­si­tate an indictment.
An uphill task at best.

I thought I would talk about the rash of killings by police, of large­ly, but not total­ly con­fined to unarmed black men.
Years ago despite what many thought were worse times for race rela­tions, it was rare to hear of a police offi­cer killing some­one, black or white.
This leads us to won­der at the rea­son for this rash of aggres­sive behav­ior on the part of police.
Once even an armed sus­pect would be giv­en mul­ti­ple chances to drop his weapon, some­times police would spend hours nego­ti­at­ing with armed assailants , hop­ing to have a blood­less resolution.
Many will argue offi­cers were nev­er that lenient with black offend­ers, I dis­agree. Yes race does play a part in how some cops behave but there are times depend­ing on the offi­cers of course,in which sit­u­a­tions involv­ing black assailants are resolved with­out lethal forced being employed.
However the soon­er peo­ple come to the real­iza­tion that there are some real­ly bad actors out there wear­ing police uni­forms the clos­er we are to fix­ing this prob­lem. Unless of course some do not want a fix. For some apol­o­gists cops can do no wrong, regard­less of the glar­ing abuse of pow­er some cops com­mit against cit­i­zens. There are those who find ways to ratio­nal­ize away their crim­i­nal actions.
You know for some they are the buffer between the big bad black-man, and the white race. Just ask FOX television.

Which brings us to why cops are so quick on the trig­ger today ?

♦If offi­cers know they will be held account­able for their actions, they would be much more cir­cum­spect in the way they car­ry out their duties
♦The mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police depart­ments have cre­at­ed mod­ern day Rombos who gets to act out their blood-lust fan­tasies with the toys giv­en them.

Cops these days are dressed like sol­diers pre­pared for bat­tle, full mil­i­tary regalia in too many instances and semi-auto­mat­ic weapons. They have become sol­diers look­ing for war.
To under­stand this phe­nom­e­non we must first look at the ill-advised war on drugs waged by this coun­try, a war which has cost the lives of thou­sands, dev­as­tat­ed the lives of count­less oth­ers, hun­dreds of thou­sands incar­cer­at­ed and tril­lions of dol­lars spent in what is wide­ly believed to be a los­ing effort.

Ever politi­cian run­ning for office wants to be a big shot so he/​she runs on law and order. Don’t get me wrong I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe in the rule of law, notwith­stand­ing, this pos­tur­ing has cre­at­ed a sce­nario in which we are now wound into a cocoon-like police state , one from which we do not have the will to extri­cate our­selves. Politicians from the Alderman to the President are behold­ing to law enforce­ment and their Unions. Some are pet­ri­fied of even crit­i­ciz­ing out­right police abuse out of fear of police back-lash.
This cre­ates even worse behav­ior by police. Unfortunately this is where we now find ourselves.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police offi­cer respond­ing to a 911 call sev­er­al days ago. The 12 year-old was killed just sec­onds after police drove up. The cop dri­ving did not even have a chance to exit the vehi­cle before his trig­ger-hap­py part­ner gunned down the 12 years old child who was armed with a pel­let gun. What lit­tle 12 year old boy does not play with fake guns? What lit­tle boy does not fan­ta­size that he is a cow­boy, or cop? Who knows what young Tamir was think­ing as he played in the park by him­self ? maybe, just maybe he was fan­ta­siz­ing he was a cop before he was gunned down two bul­lets to his tarso.

Kajieme Powell … A 25 year-old St. Louis man was killed 23 sec­onds after police arrived . Powell who had a small knife was walk­ing around on the pave­ment and on a grassy embank­ment , hands swing­ing at his side, he ignored police com­mands to drop the small knife he had in his hands. Powell was more of a com­ic spec­ta­cle to passers-by than a threat. Seconds lat­er Powell lay dead 9 police bul­lets punc­tur­ing his body, some as he lay dying on the ground.

Is it a‑okay to kill some­one sim­ply because you know the ele­ments are there to guar­an­tee that you will not be held accountable?
He had a knife.…
He refused our com­mands to drop the knife»…
He was mov­ing toward us»>
He was swing­ing his arms in a threat­en­ing way»>
He was shout­ing shoot me now, kill me now.….

The ele­ments are there for you to kill, yes, but did you have to use lethal force. When ques­tioned the St Louis Police Chief said cops want to go home to their fam­i­lies. Pressed fur­ther on the pos­si­ble use of Tasers he came up with the lame excuse that Powell was wear­ing a Jacket so Tasers may not have worked.
Hockey great Wayne Gretsky famous­ly said “you miss a hun­dred per­cent of the shots you do not take” . Of course we will nev­er know whether it would have worked, the two cops could­n’t both­er using non-lethal force , why should they ‚who was going to defend this men­tal­ly impaired black man with a knife ?

Do you kill sim­ply because you are told you are going on a gun run ? Police Brass in Cleveland said there was no con­fronta­tion between 12-year-old Tamir Rce and cops who arrived on the scene after some­one called that the young­ster was wav­ing around a gun. The caller twice told the dis­patch­er that the gun may have been a fake, she was how­ev­er too busy ask­ing whether the kid was black or white to assim­i­late that lit­tle nuisance.
Arriving cops did not both­er to stop with weapons drawn from a safe dis­tance. Observe the sequence of events as the car raced up to the lit­tle boy and instant­ly he was lay­ing on the ground two bul­lets in his body. It almost seem that some cops are look­ing for rea­sons to kill rather than enforce the laws.

♦Militarization of police depart­ments have made cops over­ly aggressive.
♦Heavy weapons and equip­ment makes them believe they are at war.
♦Not pros­e­cut­ing them vig­or­ous­ly when they break the law,emboldens them to be more dis­re­spect­ful and abusive.
♦Blind sup­port and cov­er-ups per­pet­u­ates and encour­ages bad behavior.

Some com­mu­ni­ties are at war with the police which is sup­posed to ser­vice their needs. There are Fergusons all across America. In far too many com­mu­ni­ties police are not ser­vants of the peo­ple but oppres­sors. Police Oppression may not be in the form of killings but in false tick­et­ing and arrests on con­coct­ed rolling stops by Police in the Town of Poughkeepsie New York, and myr­i­ad oth­er local­i­ties. In many local­i­ties peo­ple just keep their mouths shut and pay the fines, while police lie to fill quo­tas and the cof­fers fill up so the Politicians can spend and spend some more, all too often using the ill-got­ten monies to hire more police and the cycle continues.

Vassar Professor Kiese Laymon in a bril­liant piece writ­ten for Ghawker titled My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK
Wrote:
I was dri­ving down Hooker Avenue. When the white police offi­cer, whose head was way too small for his neck, asked if my truck was stolen, I laughed, said no, and shame­ful­ly showed him my license and my ID, just like Lanre Akinsiku. The ID, which ensures that I can spend the rest of my life in a lush state park with fat fear­less squir­rels, sur­round­ed by enlight­ened white folks who love talk­ing about Jon Stewart, Obama, and civil­i­ty, has been washed so many times it does­n’t lie flat. After tak­ing my license and ID back to his car, the police offi­cer came to me with a tick­et and two lessons. “Looks like you got a good thing going on over there at Vassar College,” he said. “You don’t wan­na it ruin it by rolling through stop signs, do you?” I sucked my teeth, shook my head, kept my right hand vis­i­bly on my right thigh, rolled my win­dow up, and head­ed back to cam­pus. One more tick­et. Two more con­de­scend­ing lessons from a lame armed with white racial suprema­cy, anti-black­ness, a gun, and a badge. But at least I did­n’t get arrest­ed. Or shot six times.
Rolling stops, ha,ha , I was not amused when a cop pulled me over near my home right there in the Town of Poughkeepsie a few years ago, dri­ving my old­er but shiny black Mazda Mellinia to work. I drove the same route to work every­day, that route took me to Dunkin Donuts where they made my large reg­u­lar as soon as I walked in. I was a reg­u­lar and my order was the same, they all knew it.
The Young cop who shall remain name­less for this arti­cle was sit­ting at the stop sign in the squad-car ‚there was no way to miss him , there was nowhere for him to hide. I came to a stop and con­tin­ued on my way as soon as it was safe. Even if I was pre-dis­posed to rolling through it would have been a bad idea that morn­ing with a cop sit­ting right there.
Knowing I had done noth­ing wrong I was mys­ti­fied when his lights came on and he pulled up behind me. I asked him what the stop was for? He respond­ed that I had crept through the stop sign ! Stunned I asked whether he was seri­ous? Why the hell would I have rolled through the stop sign when you are sit­ting right there? By this time you could see he was uncom­fort­able in the lie, he said noth­ing further.
Thankfully the Judge lis­tened when I explained it was a bla­tant lie and threw out the ticket.
Whether it was the quo­ta sys­tem or the black man dri­ving a shiny car , I may nev­er know , what I do know as a for­mer cop is that it was wrong.
I have had sev­er­al expe­ri­ences with them all of which con­vinced me they are real­ly not very bright. Yet they are real­ly quick on the lights.
On anoth­er occa­sion a cop was at a dead stop at a traf­fic light , the right fil­ter lane has a yield sign to traf­fic head­ing in the direc­tion he was head­ed. I drove through while he sat at the red, in a mat­ter of sec­onds he pulled me over. I asked him what was the rea­son for the stop? , He said quote “you did not stop” , I asked him “why should I have stopped”? He point­ed to the yield sign, I duti­ful­ly informed him the sign read yield , not stop. He said “you did not yield”! I asked him who should I yield to? He said me you should yield to me ! I asked him why should I yield to you when you are at a dead stop at a red light?
He looked at me then broke into a stu­pid grin then told me “you have good night sir”.
There are so many sto­ries I could relate and every­one left a bit­ter taste in my mouth. Imagine the expe­ri­ences oth­ers have had all across America at the hands of these weak mind­ed peo­ple with guns and badges.

In my next Article I will attempt to address some of the things Police and oth­er peo­ple face from black thugs.

I spent 10 years of my life as a front line Police Officer in Jamaica, one of the tough­est Countries to Police in the world.
Tough because the frame­work for the rule of law is not clear­ly estab­lished. The Island Nation is still mak­ing baby steps toward mov­ing toward a sys­tem of laws, even as it holds on tena­cious­ly to the sys­tem of the big-man which has char­ac­ter­ized it’s exis­tence since it’s Independence in 1962.

Jamaica has a record of Police extra-judi­cial killings as deter­mined by the United States, Britain and Canada. Western coun­tries with the worst his­to­ry and record of state abuse of their eth­nic minori­ties, yet the most vocal and demon­stra­tive fin­ger point­ers on the issue.. 

I have been shot at on more occa­sions than I care to remem­ber, I have been shot once, yet I have nev­er killed anoth­er human being. I have recov­ered count­less weapons and yes, that includes tak­ing ille­gal weapons from the per­son of known crim­i­nals with­out fir­ing a sin­gle shot.
Which brings us to the issue on the minds of most blacks and con­sci­en­tious oth­ers. I refer to the on-going issue of Police killing of unharmed black men. We begin on the premise that Police Officers are hired to pro­tect the pub­lic not to intim­i­date and or kill mem­bers of the public.

Unless of course there are issues far deep­er and much more sin­is­ter influ­enc­ing the way Cops approach their jobs across America. Issues like Race, or that cer­tain sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion has no rights they have to respect. How about an amal­ga­ma­tion of both?
It must be under­stood that not all Police Officers are bad, not by any stretch of the imagination.
As human beings we have a nat­ur­al pre­dis­po­si­tion to cir­cle the wag­ons when we feel chal­lenged, attacked or criticized.
I chal­lenge my fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends and all good Police offi­cers not to feel besieged when the police come under scruti­ny. I was one of those peo­ple who would get high­ly indig­nant when we were crit­i­cized, even years after I left law-enforce­ment. I still jump to the defense of police offi­cers when crit­i­cisms come from some quar­ters. Some peo­ple will crit­i­cize law enforce­ment just for the sake of doing so.

Police offi­cers are trained to save lives. Police offi­cers are trained to be restrained when it comes to the use of force. On the instances a police offi­cer is forced to use force to effect an arrest, the lev­el of force employed must not exceed the lev­el of resis­tance which neces­si­tat­ed the force. Since it is not always easy or prac­ti­cal for a cor­rect assess­ment of force lev­el employed to be done, Police offi­cers are giv­en wide lat­i­tude to com­plete an arrest.
The use of lethal force may only be used when an offi­cer rea­son­ably believes his/​her life, or that of anoth­er is in immi­nent dan­ger. The fear must be rea­son­able. It can­not be fear con­coct­ed to cov­er up the killing of an inno­cent person.
It is not unrea­son­able to assume that for many police offi­cers there may not be a need to un-hol­ster a weapon for the dura­tion of their ser­vice. I have spo­ken to many offi­cers from dif­fer­ent depart­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in New York State, a racial­ly diverse state,who have nev­er point­ed their weapon at anyone.

The lat­i­tude giv­en cops seem to get wider and less dis­tin­guish­able when Police come in con­tact with African-Americans. Of late there is a long list of unarmed black men killed by police. In lit­er­al­ly all of those cas­es no cop have been held account­able. Have the laws gov­ern­ing the use of lethal force changed? If so ‚who changed them? If they haven’t been changed how come killer cops are not held accountable?
Trey Ellis Novelist, Screenwriter, and Associate Professor at Columbia University sums it up this way. Quote:

In the 1970s, when I was first learn­ing this les­son, the spilt blood of the Civil Rights movement

was still fresh. Today, in a world of black pres­i­dents, elec­tric cars and talk­ing iPhones, it’s so hard to con­vince young black men, like my 13-year-old son, that if a police offi­cer mere­ly per­ceives you are a lethal threat, he is explic­it­ly allowed to shoot you dead. However, since the mere com­bi­na­tion of your sex, race and age ensures that you are per­ceived as a threat, police offi­cers are autho­rized to kill you Q.E.D. So what I have to drill into him, since I want him to con­tin­ue to live, is to lis­ten to his Guardian Slave and be preter­nat­u­ral­ly polite and respect­ful no mat­ter how ugly and unrea­son­able the police­man’s demand. Then at least he’ll prob­a­bly only be tased. Huffingtnpost​.com

Professor Ellis’ pre­scrip­tion for his 13 year-old son is one of survival.Why should this be, 50 years after Dr, King, Malcolm X and oth­ers fought and paid the ulti­mate price for this land? This land their ances­tors slaved in and died for. This land that is inher­ent­ly and exclu­sive­ly theirs. Why should a black man now have to teach his son how to stay alive after all the black blood which has drenched and fer­til­ized these soils?

The first order of busi­ness for Blacks is that they take own­er­ship of their coun­try. That comes with respon­si­bil­i­ties. I have spo­ken at length about those respon­si­bil­i­ties here. I will con­tin­ue to expand on those respon­si­bil­i­ties . That may include but not con­fined to drop­ping the idiom African-American.
How about American?
The term African-American gives oth­ers the belief you are not an equal own­er here! They do not go around call­ing them­selves Dutch, Irish, British, Spanish or any oth­er type of American. Why do you?
No race has more right to this land than you, except Native Americans of course. No race have paid even close to the price you have paid for this land. When the Criminal Columbus came here our ances­tors were already here , over two hun­dred years pri­or to them real­iz­ing they would not fall off the face of what they believed was a flat earth.

When your Ancestors got here they nev­er claimed to dis­cov­er a place peo­ple had set­tled hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of years before they arrived.
Once you have dis­pelled that myth­i­cal lie, now stand tall and take charge of your own destiny.

There are some who have nev­er walked in the shoes of a black per­son, nev­er been exposed to the indig­ni­ties and the dis­re­spect expe­ri­enced by black peo­ple. Disrespect at the hands of peo­ple they pay a salary to. Whatever you say about the respon­si­bil­i­ties blacks have to under­take, no one deserves to be killed because a cop feels he/​she can get away with it.

Whatever Michael Brown may have done pre­vi­ous­ly, the fact is he did not deserve to have 12 bul­lets fly­ing toward him . He absolute­ly did not deserve to have the sys­tem rape and dehu­man­ize him with a faux inves­ti­ga­tion, the out­come of which was pre­de­ter­mined before it began.
How stu­pid do they real­ly believe we are? It was the same Faux-inves­ti­ga­tion/pros­e­cu­tion they did in the Trayvon Martin case. An indict­ment done sole­ly to quell pub­lic out­cry. Never mind that Zimmerman was no cop, but a vig­i­lante wannabe cop. If the sys­tem can­not or more pre­cise­ly, will not con­vict a non-cop-vig­i­lante how can the black com­mu­ni­ty trust that same sys­tem to pros­e­cute it’s own functionaries? 

How much more black blood do they need? How much longer will the black com­mu­ni­ty fight over lin­gerie on black Fridays while in the streets black-blood is being washed from pave­ment after pave­ment, after pavement?

Lets lis­ten to what Melissa Harris Perry ‚pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics and inter­na­tion­al affairs at Wake Forest University, and a pletho­ra of oth­er dis­tinc­tions includ­ing Host of her own show on MSNBC and oth­ers, have to say.

As a New York grand-jury goes over the evi­dence in the Police killing of Eric Garner, news Organizations report that they jury is near­ing a deci­sion. I nev­er quite under­stood what that meant. Is near­ing a deci­sion based on the length of time they have been impan­eled? Is it based on reveal­ing a pre-deter­mined ver­dict, as the one in Ferguson was. Done at night, after thou­sands of cops and National Guards-men were first strate­gi­cal­ly placed to sti­fle the peo­ple’s out­rage? I nev­er quite under­stood what it meant​.It is either you have reached a ver­dict or you haven’t . I stand to be informed and edu­cat­ed on this.

As a trained offi­cer I nev­er quite fig­ured out how I would explain killing an unarmed sus­pect. I do under­stand that each case is dif­fer­ent. I do under­stood that offi­cers must have some lee­way when we ask them to bring dan­ger­ous offend­ers to justice.
Giving cops carte-blanche to kill mem­bers of one com­mu­ni­ty we hate is dan­ger­ous and unten­able. Make no mis­take about it that is what’s at issue here. Whether you feel com­fort­able with my assess­ment is of no con­cern to me. 

With the so-called Black Friday sales con­clud­ed, I took the lib­er­ty to reflect a lit­tle on what it meant for the aver­age person. 

My first incli­na­tion was dis­dain, as a small busi­ness own­er I offer my cus­tomers a fair price all year round. I hate to hag­gle back and forth over prices, I have always believed it demeans me, demeans the cus­tomer and well,.…… my business.

So I looked at some of the peo­ple who own large cor­po­ra­tions, like Wal-Mart, Best ‑Buy, Sears, to name a few . These are peo­ple who are real­ly wealthy, mak­ing mon­ey is a game to them. A recent expose revealed that each of Sam Walton’s four chil­dren give to char­i­ty, the equiv­a­lence of a sin­gle pen­ny, when their wealth is com­pared to the Average American.

Why then would these peo­ple pay their work­ers min­i­mum wage salaries and run pho­ny sales which shop­pers can only access imme­di­ate­ly after they have swal­lowed the last bit of Thanksgiving Turkey ? Or worse yet, being made to stand in line at un-Godly hours of the night/​morning to get a price discount.

Where are these filthy rich own­ers at that time of the night/​morning while peo­ple are camped out wait­ing to be fed a bone?
Then I had a change of thinking.
What would hap­pen if these stores offered these deals and no one showed up to their stores at 2:am in the morning?
Is it at all pos­si­ble that they would have to revert to respect­ing their customers ?

How can the major­i­ty 99% allows itself to be manip­u­lat­ed in this way ?
Then it occurred to me that they basi­cal­ly get some of us to vote against our own self- inter­est among oth­er things, so why not insult us with these false sales attain­able only in the dead of night and at great per­il to life and limb.
If we are stu­pid enough to leave our fam­i­lies to stand in line in the dead of night to save a few bucks then maybe we deserve the dis­dain and dis­re­spect their mar­ket research sug­gest they heap on us.

I would guess that the wealthy 1% and their fam­i­lies were com­fort­ably tucked away in warm beds at the time these peo­ple are wait­ing patient­ly in sub zero tem­per­a­tures or fight­ing with their fel­low cit­i­zens over some­thing as triv­ial as a piece of garment.

Despite my dis­gust on Friday one woman actu­al­ly made my day . She was my first cus­tomer, she walked in and want­ed to know about the deals my busi­ness had for black Friday.
I lov­ing­ly told her I respect­ed her too much to play num­bers games with her. We had a good laugh, then she told me she had vis­it­ed and seen a phone which she want­ed . The price in my store was $189.00 so she admit­ted that she was on QVC shop­ping and the price of the phone was $189.00 for a few hours, after which the price went back to .….…
Wait for it.….….
$279.00, wow !
She asked to pur­chase the phone.
I thanked her for her hon­esty and gave her an extra $20 off.

I do agree that as a small busi­ness own­er I am biased against the large box stores. Nothing that I said how­ev­er is meant to be inju­ri­ous, they are just fac­tu­al statements.
It’s time that we the 99% stop allow­ing the 1% to manip­u­late us like string puppets.

St Louis County pros­e­cu­tor Robert McCulloch pulled off one of the biggest three-card*monty on the Justice sys­tem in America in mod­ern history.
McCulloch was able to defy com­mu­ni­ty calls to step aside in the Michael Brown mur­der out­rage stay on and sub­vert the course of justice.
Robert McCulloch used and abused the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers vest­ed in him turn­ing those pow­ers on the very peo­ple who empow­ered him. The cha­rade of a Grand-jury inves­ti­ga­tions staged my McCulloch fooled only those who want­ed to be fooled. The Prosecutor’s office was coun­sel for Darren Wilson.
His actions were so egre­gious it was shame­ful that in a coun­try which claim to have the best jus­tice sys­tem, this kind of banana-repub­lic the­atrics could be per­pet­u­at­ed, in a homi­cide case no less.

Case in point .
McCulloch’s pros­e­cu­tors Kathi Alizadeh and Sheila Whirley made no bones about being defense attor­neys for Darren Wilson.
The entire Transcript of the pro­ceed­ings are so dis­gust­ing it is beyond me that this could pass with­out McCulloch and the two lack­eys not pros­e­cut­ed for per­pet­u­at­ing fraud.
One does not need to be a lawyer to come to terms with the enor­mi­ty and the mag­ni­tude of the fraud they pulled off on the fam­i­ly of Michael Brown, Brown’s mem­o­ry, and on the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Michael Brown was on tri­al. There was no attempt to indict Darren Wilson.

Here is how Lisa Bloom saw it.

A cur­so­ry read of the ques­tions posed to Dorian Johnson by Whirley the Prosecutor , reveals Whirley the wolf in sheep cloth­ing act­ing on Darren Wilson’s behalf.
The Transcript made me sick to my stomach.
As a for­mer police offi­cer who spent untold hours in court­rooms lis­ten­ing to evi­dence and giv­ing evi­dence, I was stunned that this kind of thing could happen.
It made me angry.
It made me sad for humanity.
It filled me with rage that any person.
Any system.
Anyone with a shred of decen­cy , a shred of human­i­ty ‚could be that hate­ful of it’s own cit­i­zens that it would go to such lengths to cov­er for their murderers.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/evidence-released-in-michael-brown-case.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar

A National out­cry erupt­ed in the black com­mu­ni­ty after Darren Wilson fired 12 shots at 18 year-old Michael Brown killing him on the spot in Ferguson Missouri. A Federal inquiry was com­menced, par­al­lel local inves­ti­ga­tions were sup­pos­ed­ly underway.
Now I am not a Lawyer,so I defer to the legal lumi­nar­ies on this, but I do believe local and fed­er­al author­i­ties do share what infor­ma­tion they gather.

I also believe that both fed­er­al and local should be after the same thing, justice.
You see I ask these ques­tions because at the off­set one of the Ferguson com­mu­ni­ty’s com­plaint was that they want­ed St Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch off the case. Several elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives and reg­u­lar res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty argued that McCulloch had a record of par­tial­i­ty toward the police.

In fact they argued that he was over­ly chum­my and def­er­en­tial to law enforce­ment. They point­ed to the fact that.
(1 Robert McCulloch’s father was a police Officer.
(2 That his father was killed, alleged­ly by a black assailant.
(3 That there are sev­er­al oth­er glar­ing instances where Police have killed or oth­er­wise abused mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty and McCulloch has been neg­li­gent in pros­e­cut­ing any officer.

As a result of the fore­gone they stat­ed he could not be trust­ed to be fair, impar­tial or dili­gent in bring­ing jus­tice to this case, in which they thought clear­ly, a crim­i­nal act was com­mit­ted by the cop.
Bob McCulloch refused to recuse him­self from the process, a move which would have paved the way for an inde­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor to col­lect, Marshall and present the evi­dence to an impar­tial grand jury, so that jus­tice would be served.

Such a move would have tak­en from the com­mu­ni­ty any poten­tial alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety, neg­li­gence or lack of due dili­gence it would lev­el at pros­e­cu­tors pur­su­ing the Investigations.
Residents demand­ed that Governor , Jay Nixon step in and remove McCulloch in order that there may be trans­paren­cy and more impor­tant­ly con­fi­dence in the process.
Jay Nixon cow­ard­ly or duplic­i­tous refused to remove McCulloch.

Bob McCulloch open­ly crit­i­cized Jay Nixon the Governor for bring­ing in a State Police Captain to take over secu­ri­ty after vio­lence erupt­ed over the shoot­ing. He open­ly chal­lenged the Governor to remove him and replace him with a spe­cial prosecutor.
McCulloch must have known that the Governor did not have the balls to do whats right. He must have cal­cu­lat­ed that Nixon’s cow­ardice would grant him cov­er to do what he wanted.
McCulloch com­menced the process, then dumped all of the crap he col­lect­ed at the feet of the 12 per­son grand-jury.

It should be not­ed that it required 9 mem­bers of the 12 per­son jury to indict.
Quite by coin­ci­dence McCulloch’s grand-jury just hap­pened to have had a veto-proof 9 whites and 3 token blacks [sic].
McCulloch has always main­tained that he was impar­tial, that he would col­lect the evi­dence and present it all to a grand jury so the jury could make a deci­sion which would absolve him of any wrongdoing.
The only prob­lem with McCulloch’s asser­tions is, that is not what is required of a com­pe­tent pros­e­cu­tor who wants an indictment.

Grand jury pro­ceed­ings are much more relaxed than nor­mal court room pro­ceed­ings. There is no judge present and fre­quent­ly there are no lawyers except for the pros­e­cu­tor. The pros­e­cu­tor will explain the law to the jury and work with them to gath­er evi­dence and hear tes­ti­mo­ny. Under nor­mal court­room rules of evi­dence, exhibits and oth­er tes­ti­mo­ny must adhere to strict rules before admis­sion. However, a grand jury has broad pow­er to see and hear almost any­thing they would like. 

It should also be not­ed, that it is pure­ly up to the pros­e­cu­tor what he/​she presents to the grand-jury. Grand jury pro­ceed­ings are kept in strict confidence. 
(1 It encour­ages wit­ness­es to speak freely and with­out fear of retaliation.
(2 It pro­tects the poten­tial defen­dan­t’s rep­u­ta­tion in case the jury does not decide to indict.
So we are good right? 
A Prosecutor who wants a poten­tial killer brought to jus­tice is going to active­ly pur­sue a path with the grad-jury that will give him/​her the best chance at an indict­ment right?
But what if the Prosecutor real­ly only want the appear­ance that he/​she is doing his/​her job?
What is the for­mat, how is evi­dence , argu­ments , tes­ti­monies pre­sent­ed? Is it done in a way that makes it impos­si­ble for the grand ‑jury to indict?
Remember that the grand ‑jury process is sup­posed to be secret for the rea­sons laid out above. So what made Bob McCulloch decide to do a doc­u­ment dump on the pub­lic by releas­ing all of the tes­ti­monies to the public?
In fact with a Federal inves­ti­ga­tions ongo­ing why would the pros­e­cu­tor come out and berate the very wit­ness­es who he as the pros­e­cut­ing Attorney depend­ed on to gain an indictment?
To gain a Federal Indictment the stan­dard is even high­er than that which a local grand-jury need­ed to indict. 
So why did Bob McCulloch come out lam­poon­ing the very wit­ness­es both his office and the Feds need­ed for a poten­tial prosecution.
Well let me allow you to lis­ten to Bob McCulloch in per­son then we continue.

You see there are times when peo­ple do things and they pre­tend that all is above board. 
It’s not too dif­fi­cult to miss things if you aren’t pay­ing attention.
Here’s the truth, these peo­ple have zero respect for the black community.
They con­trol pow­er, this is insti­tu­tion­al­ized racist pow­er which allows them to game the sys­tem while mak­ing it seem to an unsus­pect­ing sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion that they are doing all they can to deliv­er jus­tice when they are actu­al­ly doing the exact opposite.

The Prosecutor in the case has a duty to present the evi­dence which will lead the grand ‑jury to the result he/​she wants. 
If how­ev­er the Prosecutor does not real­ly want an offend­er indict­ed the pros­e­cu­tor can present the evi­dence in a way that cast doubt on the wit­ness­es and even present an inor­di­nate amount of what appears to be excul­pa­to­ry evidence.
Let me pause here because the legal hawks are going to jump in and remind me that it is only fair that excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence is presented.
I agree , in the inter­est of jus­tice it should be presented.
However the duty of the grand-jury is not to decide inno­cence or guilt, it is mere­ly to decide that a defen­dant has a case to answer.

When asked whether there was any­thing he could have done dif­fer­ent­ly that would have pre­vent­ed that killing from hap­pen­ing? Darren Wilson repeat­ed­ly said .
No.
I did my job!
No emo­tions, no remorse,no sor­row, cold dispatch.
Yet revealing.
This is the way they are trained nowa­days it appears, weapon or not , lethal force is justified.

Justice can­not be one-sided, or lopsided.
It can­not be what you say it is , it must be what all peo­ple say it is.
It can­not be that a white man pre-med­i­tat­ed­ly ambush cops, killing one and injur­ing anoth­er, at a Barrack in Pennsylvanian and is arrest­ed with­out being shot or oth­er­wise harmed 6 weeks lat­er. While Christopher Dorner,ex mil­i­tary, ex-cop who did basi­cal­ly the same thing was burned to a cin­der in the California mountains.

There are just too many instances of this for peo­ple of sound mind to turn away any longer.
As my nephew a young police offi­cer said recently.
Quote
Not all cops are bad.
Not all whites are racist.
Not all black peo­ple are criminals.
There are some peo­ple who speak about these issues with­out the ben­e­fit of know­ing what it feels like to be black in America.
This is not a prob­lem cre­at­ed by black people.
It is a prob­lem cre­at­ed and per­pet­u­at­ed by wicked and igno­rant peo­ple for over four hun­dred years.
The end of that era of un-earned priv­i­lege and oppres­sion is com­ing to an end.
Before you speak on these issues walk awhile in a black man’s shoes.

Bob McCulloch the Prosecutor who refused to recuse him­self from the process which would hear the evi­dence in the Micheal Brown case announced what most black peo­ple already knew.

That Darren Wilson the Ferguson Cop who fired 12 bul­lets at the unarmed Michael Brown will not have to answer in a State court why he used lethal force to kill an unarmed 18 year old youth.

The hopes of the Ferguson com­mu­ni­ty is now pinned to the Federal Investigations which is still on-going. This is not new , in fact it is par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult for black fam­i­lies to receive jus­tice in state courts when police are the aggressors.

This brings into seri­ous ques­tion the grand jury process, when cops are involved. For some rea­son grand

juries are reluc­tant to indict cops even when there seem to be an abun­dance of evi­dence point­ing to the offi­cer’s guilt.

It is a process which fer­til­izes itself .Cops com­mit crimes they are sent on leave with full pay , a sham inves­ti­ga­tion is done after which there is an announce­ment that the cop act­ed appro­pri­ate­ly, Cops go out and com­mit more atroc­i­ties. It feeds on the acqui­es­cence of the grand jurors.

Something will have to give, police kill black and brown peo­ple almost with wan­ton dis­re­gard .It appears some­times cops are total­ly uncon­cerned that they poten­tial­ly may be asked to account for their actions.

We learned that Darren Wilson got mar­ried last month, we also learned he was shop­ping for a net­work tele­vi­sion inter­view to his liking. 

Doesn’t seem like a man who was par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about being indict­ed. In the end the St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch rigged the sys­tem to get the result he wanted .

A non-Indictment for Darren Wilson. Bob McCulloch was a Defense Attorney for Darren Wilson, not a Prosecuting Attorney.

Where this will end I do not pre­tend to have the answer.

Main stream Media are report­ing that the Jury con­sid­er­ing the Michael Brown case in Missouri have reached a deci­sion. It is report­ed that the Grand jury will announce it’s deci­sion at 9:pm tonight. In the mean­time Authorities are brag­ging they will be pre­pared to deal with what­ev­er emanates from the deci­sion. They tell News Organizations they have over a thou­sand police in place to quell unrest and if that is not enough the state’s Democratic Governor Jay Nixon have already acti­vat­ed the state’s nation­al guard.

Protesters are lin­ing up for the ver­dict all across the coun­try, whether Officer Darren Wilson is guilty or not we don’t know, how­ev­er Wilson does not seem too wor­ried about the out­come of the case we learned Wilson recent­ly mar­ried. According to a report from the New York Times’ Julie Bosman and Campbell Robertson, Wilson man­aged to get mar­ried in October to a fel­low offi­cer in the Ferguson Police Department, Officer Barbara Spradling, 37, with­out any­one find­ing out.

We don’t want to pre­judge what is going on in the mind of Darren Wilson, how­ev­er it seem he is not par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried one way or the oth­er about the out­come of this case.

Conventional wis­dom dic­tates that he would have stayed low and away from the lime-light. Salon​.com reports.

The cou­ple obtained their mar­riage license in Clayton, Mo., out­side St. Louis, in the recorder of deeds office on the fourth floor of the Lawrence K. Roos admin­is­tra­tive build­ing, steps away from the cour­t­house where the grand jury has been meeting.

While secu­ri­ty guards ques­tion peo­ple going in and out of the build­ing, the deeds office itself is a bland­ly bureau­crat­ic place where clerks sit in open cubi­cles. A clerk at the mar­riage license desk said on Monday that she was sur­prised that Officer Wilson went there, as opposed to anoth­er coun­ty or state — pos­si­bly Las Vegas, she said — where he could have filled out paper­work with a greater guar­an­tee of privacy.

Authorities seem tone deaf to what cit­i­zens in Ferguson are say­ing, some peo­ple are hap­py to tell the President he is not a King. The same peo­ple are woe­ful­ly inca­pable of under­stand­ing that black peo­ple are Americans. They are going nowhere. The soon­er they lose the sense of sole own­er­ship the bet­ter every­one will be.

There will need to be a lot more of the hand hold­ing than the guns and mil­i­ta­riza­tion . The soon­er they real­ize that the better.