Tiffany Cross announced Friday that MSNBC can­celed her Saturday morn­ing news pro­gram after a less than two-year run. The move came after Cross had become a tar­get of attacks from Fox News and pun­dit Tucker Carlson, Huffington Post reported.

In late October, Carlson aired a seg­ment about Cross that swift­ly received crit­i­cism from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Fox host told his audi­ence that Cross was foment­ing a “race war” against white peo­ple. Carlson likened “The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross” and MSNBC to the Rwandan media out­let Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, which stoked the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Interestingly, MSNBC would bow to the vit­ri­olic slan­der of a putrid race-bait­ing dem­a­gogue who has spent his entire career spread­ing lies and foment­ing white resent­ment and griev­ance. MSNBC President Rashida Jones was “deeply involved” in the call to cut ties with Cross, accord­ing to The Washington Post, which said the net­work allowed the host’s con­tract to lapse. A rotat­ing cast of hosts will fill Cross’ time slot until a more per­ma­nent solu­tion is found, the Post reported.

Tiffany cross’ fir­ing was imme­di­ate and swift after she told a gath­er­ing that the state of Florida was the dick of the coun­try. Cross, whose show aired on week­ends, had been with the net­work for two years but, in recent weeks, had report­ed­ly clashed with man­age­ment over seg­ments on her show.
Ratings per­for­mance — the most com­mon cause of death for tele­vi­sion shows — was not a fac­tor in MSNBC’s deci­sion to pull the plug on The Cross Connection, which aired Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET.

Appearing on Comedy Central’s Hell of a Week with Charlemagne, Cross was asked which state Democrats could afford to lose in the upcom­ing mid-term elec­tions. “Florida lit­er­al­ly looks like the d — k of the coun­try, so let’s get rid of Florida,” Cross said. “Let’s cas­trate Florida.” In the same appear­ance, Cross said that it was impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the Republican Party from “right-wing extrem­ists,” say­ing they had “merged right now”:
Huh.… where is the lie? The Republican par­ty is a white suprema­cist, Insurrectionist fas­cist move­ment. Florida is a state filled with old retired and new up-and-com­ing racists, so what did she say that was a lie?
As they say in street ver­nac­u­lar, ‘it be your own peo­ple’. It appears Rashida Jones was more con­cerned about pro­tect­ing her own job than stand­ing up for Tiffany Cross when she need­ed to.

Ms. Cross tweet­ed the fol­low­ing after her abrupt firing»>

During the sum­mer of 2020, after mur­der­ous police lynched George Floyd in the light of day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there was a mass upris­ing of American cit­i­zens against what they had pre­vi­ous­ly refused to acknowl­edge; bla­tant police mur­der of African-Americans.
In the white house as pres­i­dent was Donald Trump, an igno­rant and vile racist in the vein of Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and a long line of racists to occu­py the office of president.
Trump, angry that Black peo­ple dared to demand equal rights under the laws, warned that “vicious Dogs” would be unleashed on pro­tes­tors who dared to protest against police vio­lence and murder.

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

(13 Amendment to the con­sti­tu­tion Sections 1 & 2.) Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion. Congress shall have the pow­er to enforce this arti­cle by appro­pri­ate legislation.

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

After the 13^th amend­ment was rat­i­fied, abol­ish­ing slav­ery as it was, slav­ery by oth­er means rapid­ly came into effect because of the clause,” except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, which was a delib­er­ate inclu­sion that cre­at­ed anoth­er form of slav­ery albeit by anoth­er name.
As a result of that wig­gle room, African Americans would be tor­ment­ed through peon­age prac­tices, Jim Crow, and oth­er forms of insti­tu­tion­al­ized Government oppres­sion for over 80 years cul­mi­nat­ing in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence move­ments that char­ac­ter­ized the 1960s.
Though sig­nif­i­cant, the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s did not change many of the struc­tur­al built-ins that remain a part of the American legal orthodoxy.
African peo­ple are con­vinced that they are free cit­i­zens of the United States. Still, the 13^th amend­ment, which sup­pos­ed­ly end­ed slav­ery, is the amend­ment that memo­ri­al­ized slav­ery of anoth­er kind, in the words “except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, “speak­ing of slavery.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​d​e​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​i​v​e​-​i​g​n​o​r​a​n​c​e​-​o​f​-​r​a​c​i​sm/

By def­i­n­i­tion, the very words” except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, lit­er­al­ly incen­tivize the mass crim­i­nal­iza­tion and incar­cer­a­tion of Black peo­ple, forc­ing them back into servi­tude, only by a dif­fer­ent name.
This is not a prac­tice that came to an end; it is 2022, and police are arguably the great­est dan­ger to black peo­ple in the United States.
Pew Research not­ed that Blacks have long out­num­bered whites in U.S. pris­ons, an under­state­ment if ever there was one. But a sig­nif­i­cant decline in the num­ber of black pris­on­ers has steadi­ly nar­rowed the gap over the past decade, accord­ing to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

At the end of 2017, fed­er­al and state pris­ons in the United States held about 475,900 inmates who were black and 436,500 who were white – a dif­fer­ence of 39,400, accord­ing to BJS. Ten years ear­li­er, there were 592,900 black and 499,800 white pris­on­ers – a dif­fer­ence of 93,100. (This analy­sis counts only inmates sen­tenced to more than a year.) The decline in the black-white gap between 2007 and 2017 was dri­ven by a 20% decrease in the num­ber of black inmates, which out­paced a 13% decrease in the num­ber of white inmates.
Notably, the num­ber of incar­cer­at­ed Blacks sen­tenced to a year or less in prison was not includ­ed in the data. Add the num­ber of Blacks incar­cer­at­ed for pet­ty offens­es, steal­ing a slice of piaz­za, mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion or sale, inabil­i­ty to pay a traf­fic fine, inabil­i­ty or unwill­ing­ness to pay child sup­port, and offens­es of that nature and the data change exponentially.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​a​n​d​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​t​w​o​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​g​o​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

Efforts by Democrats in some states to end cash bail and have non-vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit minor offens­es be giv­en non-cus­to­di­al sen­tences have also played a part over the same decade in low­er­ing the num­ber of Blacks locked up in American prisons.
The Republican par­ty, which is now a full-fledged Fascist white suprema­cist par­ty, is vehe­ment­ly opposed to these fair and humane ges­tures by the Democrats. So too, are police and their unions that ben­e­fit from the mass incar­cer­a­tion of black people.
In a shock­ing­ly illu­mi­nat­ing arti­cle in 2021, the Marshal Project detailed the mind-blow­ing sta­tis­tics behind police in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, use of dan­ger­ous canines on non-vio­lent Black peo­ple with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy, includ­ing chil­dren as young as 12 years old.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​d​-​b​y​-​t​h​e​-​f​e​d​s​-​f​o​r​-​s​t​o​m​p​i​n​g​-​o​n​-​a​-​h​a​n​d​c​u​f​f​e​d​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​a​n​s​-​f​a​ce/
A spokesper­son for the depart­ment told reporters, “Every sin­gle per­son that we caught was in the process of com­mit­ting a felony, they were pos­si­bly armed, and they were resist­ing arrest,” said Capt. Wayne Martin, a long­time K‑9 offi­cer and now com­man­der of the Uniform Patrol Bureau. “If any of those things are absent, we don’t use the dogs.”

It goes with­out say­ing that advo­cates have evi­dence that this cop-splain­ing are total and utter lies; we know they lie rou­tine­ly. The irony, many depart­ments do arrest a larg­er num­ber of armed and vio­lent felons with­out using dogs to inflict cop pun­ish­ment on them. Even more sig­nif­i­cant in America is that the police paid by the pub­lic to pro­tect and serve do not see them­selves as sub­ject to the dic­tates of their boss­es, the citizens.
Police have become pow­er­ful over­lords that law­mak­ers are ter­ri­fied of offend­ing, and this is the def­i­n­i­tion of a police state. For Black Americans, this is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the way things were dur­ing slav­ery, sure, some things have changed, but essen­tial­ly, the more things change in America, the more they remain the same.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​6​0​374 – 2/

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

The Sheriff claimed that race played no part in the stop, which may be true, *may be* because the words of police offi­cers in the United States are not worth the paper they are writ­ten on, thanks to the Supreme Court; they lie like old dirty rugs, with­out suf­fer­ing any consequences.
The Sheriff claims offi­cers could not see who was in the bus as the win­dows were tint­ed. That may be true, but once they approached the bus and spoke to the dri­ver, they sure­ly saw that the stu­dents were Black, and they absolute­ly knew they were col­lege students.
Now, the Sheriff claims he hates racism and can­not prac­tice it as his *jesus* would not allow it; please do not let me laugh until I barf.…
No one should be fooled by the pres­ence of the one black offi­cer; they are gen­er­al­ly there as win­dow dress­ing and are not allowed to make any deci­sions. Worse case is that black cops are worse than white ones, I mean, look at Clarence Thomas (TOM AZZ). Is there a worse judge, jurist, or what­ev­er they call him? He cer­tain­ly isn’t any­thing close to jus­tice so.…
After the offi­cers saw the stu­dents, why did they ask to search the bus?
I ask you to sus­pend your sense of bull­shit for a sec­ond and be real.…… why did they ask to search the lug­gage sec­tion of the bus?
I ask this ques­tion as a for­mer police offi­cer who did actu­al polic­ing, not as a race sol­dier doing race sol­der­ing. As an offi­cer see­ing stu­dents, I would cer­tain­ly have spo­ken to the dri­ver about dri­ving safe­ly, but I damn sure would not have asked to search the stu­den­t’s belong­ings; they would have been on their way.
It was out­ra­geous that they ran the Dog around the stu­den­t’s belong­ings and then rum­maged through their most inti­mate pos­ses­sions, clear­ly vio­lat­ing their four amend­ment rights.
This prac­tice of using canines to do end runs around the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is a prac­tice that has been made pos­si­ble again by the out-of-con­trol right-wing supreme court.
Experts warn that Dogs are wrong up to 70% of the time that they sig­nal a hit, and in any case, they sig­nal a hit because they expect to receive a treat from their handlers.
In the mean­time, the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is out the door, and cit­i­zens are sub­ject to the Gestapo tac­tics like we see in Spartanburg coun­ty South Carolina.
In the end, they found noth­ing and issued a warn­ing to the dri­ver, so the Sheriff’s response was that the stu­dents and the University should have no prob­lem with the stop.
The dri­ver had no author­i­ty to give police per­mis­sion to search prop­er­ty that did not belong to him; that is the first order of busi­ness. The President of Shaw University, Dr. Paulette Dillard, wrote about how out­ra­geous the stop was and that it was rem­i­nis­cent of ear­li­er times in the United States when this was the prac­tice of police.
The Sheriff argued he wish­es racism would die the ugly death it deserves; what the sher­iff does not acknowl­edge is that it is his peo­ple, white peo­ple, who cre­at­ed it, and it is up to white peo­ple to end it.
Once the offi­cers saw that it was a bus­load of stu­dents, they [should] have cit­ed the dri­ver, whichev­er way they chose to, and end­ed the stop there.
Regardless of what police do, no mat­ter how out­ra­geous, there is a seg­ment of the American pop­u­la­tion that sup­ports it; we are not speak­ing to those deplorables; we know who they are.
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»»>

A South Carolina sher­iff said a his­tor­i­cal­ly Black uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­den­t’s state­ment accus­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers of racial pro­fil­ing in a recent bus stop was “just false.”

Shaw University President Paulette Dillard wrote she was “out­raged” after law enforce­ment offi­cers in Spartanburg County on Oct. 5 stopped a con­tract bus trans­port­ing stu­dents from the his­tor­i­cal­ly Black uni­ver­si­ty in Raleigh, North Carolina to a con­fer­ence in Atlanta.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright empha­sized at a Monday morn­ing press con­fer­ence that police offi­cers stopped the unmarked, “Greyhound-like bus” with tint­ed win­dows because it had been swerv­ing. The stop occurred as part of “Operation Rolling Thunder,” the depart­men­t’s annu­al week­long anti-drug cam­paign in which deputies and offi­cers with agen­cies from around the state patrol the coun­ty’s highways.

Democratic mem­bers of North Carolina’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion last week asked the Justice Department to inves­ti­gate the incident.

Dillard wrote that the scene was rem­i­nis­cent of the 1950s and ’60s: “armed police, inter­ro­gat­ing inno­cent Black stu­dents, con­duct­ing search­es with­out prob­a­ble cause, and blood-thirsty dogs.”

“This behav­ior of tar­get­ing Black stu­dents is unac­cept­able and will not be ignored nor tol­er­at­ed,” Dillard wrote. “Had the stu­dents been White, I doubt this deten­tion and search would have occurred.”

Wright said that a stu­dent helped the dri­ver answer offi­cers’ ques­tions and that none of the stu­dents were asked to leave the bus. A leashed dog “ran through the bag­gage,” turn­ing up noth­ing ille­gal, accord­ing to Wright. Police body cam­era footage show offi­cers search­ing sev­er­al bags in the bus’ under­bel­ly stor­age. The dri­ver received a warning.

“I wish racism would die the ugly, cru­el death it deserves,” Wright said. “If any­thing we’re ever doing is racist, I want to know it, I want to fix it and I want to nev­er let it hap­pen again. But this case right here has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with racism.”

Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller said the offi­cers “did­n’t do any­thing wrong” and could not have known the races of the peo­ple inside the bus when they pulled it over.

Mueller added that the lead­ing cause of death in bus­es and com­mer­cial vehi­cles is dri­ver fatigue. Interstate 85, the high­way where offi­cers stopped the bus, is a “dead­ly cor­ri­dor,” accord­ing to Mueller.

“If my guys see a bus weav­ing in their lane, and they fail to stop it to check that dri­ver to make sure they’re not too sleepy, then we could have a bus­load of Shaw stu­dents that was involved in a trag­ic traf­fic fatal­i­ty,” Mueller said.

Body cam­era footage did not show any Shaw University insignia on the con­tract bus, which had the words “CHAUFFERED TRANSPORTATION” print­ed on its side. The Shaw University Communications Office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to an email seek­ing comment.

The traf­fic stop comes after an April inci­dent in Georgia, where sher­if­f’s deputies pulled over the Delaware State University wom­en’s lacrosse team bus and searched it for drugs. Tony Allen, the pres­i­dent of the HBCU, said he was “incensed” and accused the law enforce­ment offi­cers of intim­i­da­tion and humiliation.

Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman, who is Black, said in May that deputies had found drugs on a dif­fer­ent bus that same morn­ing. The team’s char­tered bus was stopped because it was trav­el­ing in the left lane, a vio­la­tion of Georgia law, accord­ing to Bowman, who said deputies searched the bus after a drug-sniff­ing dog “alert­ed” along­side it. No one was arrest­ed or charged and the dri­ver received a warning.

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Time and again in this medi­um, I have made the point that American polic­ing, or the con­cept of some­thing known as polic­ing, came from or (evolved) from evolved slave catch­ing. I want­ed to use the term evolve but *came from* works bet­ter as the very point of this short essay is that it [has not] evolved.
Over the last sev­er­al years, look­ing at the American body politic, I have ven­tured to opine to some friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers that it would not be too dif­fi­cult if African-Americans lose focus to find them­selves back on plan­ta­tions as enslaved people.
I have been chas­tised by some who argue that could nev­er hap­pen as this gen­er­a­tion would nev­er stand for it.
Today, I am here to admit that I was wrong. My state­ment that Blacks could find them­selves back on plan­ta­tions was com­plete­ly incor­rect because, accord­ing to the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, the igno­ble prac­tice of slav­ery has not been entire­ly abolished.
Now, if you are won­der­ing if I just came upon the word­ing of the 13^th Amendment to the con­sti­tu­tion, I want to set the record straight and clar­i­fy a few points.

THEN…

Thirteenth Amendment

Section 1
Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2
Congress shall have the pow­er to enforce this arti­cle by appro­pri­ate legislation.
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

After the so-called abo­li­tion of slav­ery on December 6^th, 1865, lit­er­al­ly every state imme­di­ate­ly began the process of cre­at­ing anoth­er form of slavery.
Remember that the 13^th amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion was writ­ten by men, many of whom believed that Blacks were not human beings and that it was their God-giv­en right to enslave oth­er human beings.
The word­ing of the 13^th amend­ment speaks specif­i­cal­ly to the fact that they were not done with the issue of slav­ery, so they wrote into the amend­ment a clause that would keep slav­ery intact to this very day.
(Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed.)
Reconstruction, the peri­od of rel­a­tive free­dom expe­ri­enced by the once-enslaved pop­u­la­tion, was trun­cat­ed when the Republicans sold blacks out to the Democrats after the bit­ter­ly con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 1876.

The Compromise of 1877 was an infor­mal agree­ment between south­ern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to set­tle the result of the 1876 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and marked the end of the Reconstruction era.
Immediately after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1876, it became clear that the race’s out­come hinged large­ly on dis­put­ed returns from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina – the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican gov­ern­ments still in pow­er. As a bipar­ti­san con­gres­sion­al com­mis­sion debat­ed over the out­come ear­ly in 1877, allies of the Republican Party can­di­date Rutherford Hayes met in secret with mod­er­ate south­ern Democrats to nego­ti­ate accep­tance of Hayes’ elec­tion. (History)
It was the death knell for Reconstruction.
The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes’ vic­to­ry on the con­di­tion that Republicans with­draw all fed­er­al troops from the South, thus con­sol­i­dat­ing Democratic con­trol over the region. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 (or Compromise of 1876), Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic again, effec­tive­ly end­ing the Reconstruction era.

The Republican Rutherford B Hayes became pres­i­dent, and with­in two years, all Federal troops sta­tioned in the South to pro­tect and look after the rights and wel­fare of the new­ly freed Blacks were removed.
The treach­ery between the two polit­i­cal par­ties against Blacks result­ed in a sec­ond form of slav­ery known as Jim Crow that last­ed from Hayes took office until the civ­il rights fights of the ear­ly nine­teen six­ties and to some degree to the present day.
Jim Crowe-era laws are still on the books in some south­ern states and arguably across the country.
Laws like loi­ter­ing made exist­ing in Black skin then a crime; it is the same today.
Hundreds of thou­sands of Black men who were scooped up by police and thrown in prison to join what was called the chain gangs died there and were nev­er seen by their loved ones ever again.
Historical record­ings said most end­ed up right back on the plan­ta­tions they were freed from and were mur­dered by their white for­mer owners.

It was no crime to mur­der Blacks because black peo­ple were not con­sid­ered human beings, and accord­ing to the laws, they had no rights that a white man must respect.
When mur­dered, the prisons/​states would send fresh bod­ies to work for free.
The few Blacks who could pur­chase their free­dom dur­ing their slav­ery had to car­ry their free­dom papers to show to any white man who demand­ed to see them.
I hope you are see­ing the nexus now.
Many of those sup­pos­ed­ly free Blacks had their free­dom papers ripped up and were returned to slav­ery by any boun­ty hunter, slave catch­er, or any oth­er white male who felt like it.

NOW…

It is today as it was dur­ing slav­ery and after the recon­struc­tion peri­od end­ed. More and more, we see video evi­dence of mil­i­ta­rized white police dressed like they are going to war, pulling up on peo­ple, most­ly Black Americans, and imme­di­ate­ly demand­ing Identification.
You look sus­pi­cious; show me your ID.
We were called, and some­one said they saw you stand­ing around; show me your ID.
You are tak­ing pic­tures, show me your ID.
You are video­tap­ing; show me your ID.
You are talk­ing back to me; show me your ID.
There is no end to the irra­tional and unlaw­ful demands cops make today; they demand ID from cit­i­zens even though, in most states, police can­not law­ful­ly demand iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from some­one who has­n’t com­mit­ted a crime, is about to com­mit, or is sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting a crime.
Yet they do so even when they know they are being video and audio record­ed with threats of arrest for non-compliance.
This is what they are trained and instruct­ed to do. It is; show me your papers, plain and simple.
The American Civil Liberties Union issued the fol­low­ing release to min­i­mize the threat to cit­i­zens police pose (usu­al­ly to peo­ple of color).

Know rights.
Stopped by Police.
Being stopped by police is a stress­ful expe­ri­ence that can go bad quick­ly. Here we describe what the law requires and also offer strate­gies for han­dling police encoun­ters. We want to be clear: The bur­den of de-esca­la­tion does not fall on pri­vate cit­i­zens but on police offi­cers. However, you can­not assume offi­cers will behave in a way that pro­tects your safe­ty or that they will respect your rights even after you assert them. You may be able to reduce risk to your­self by stay­ing calm and not exhibit­ing hos­til­i­ty toward the offi­cers. The truth is that there are sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple have done every­thing they could to put an offi­cer at ease yet still end­ed up injured or killed by the police.
It is a sad and sear­ing indict­ment of the qual­i­ty of polic­ing that obtains in the United States when cit­i­zens need to be cau­tioned about how to stay alive dur­ing encoun­ters with police.
The ques­tion one must ask as we are con­front­ed with this exis­ten­tial threat to life and limb is whether these are the actions of police offi­cers whose job is to serve and pro­tect or that of race sol­diers out to maim and kill.
The police now unlaw­ful­ly demand peo­ple’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, as a crack addict demands crack. So what is behind this stepped up demands for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, even when the laws do not autho­rize it?

The short answer is fill­ing jail cells in the for-prof­it prison sys­tem. You will recall that accord­ing to the 13^th amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion, Slavery is abol­ished, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion.
It gen­er­al­ly has pre­cious lit­tle to do with crimes but minor infrac­tions issued to poor dri­vers, bro­ken tail­light, missed a court date on that, and a war­rant is issued for the motorist.…usually poor and Black.
Cannot afford to pay the exor­bi­tant fines, and it’s prison for the poor offender.
That’s what the demand for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is about. Additionally, they demand iden­ti­fi­ca­tion so that each encounter is logged in their data­base to be used against the per­son at a lat­er date in any future encounter with police, even though the indi­vid­ual had com­mit­ted no crime.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of a police state, but it is being felt by black Americans in ways their white coun­ter­parts can­not imag­ine because it is not exe­cut­ed on whites in the same way. 

Your rights

• You have the right to remain silent. For exam­ple, you do not have to answer any ques­tions about where you are going, where you are trav­el­ing from, what you are doing, or where you live. If you wish to exer­cise your right to remain silent, say so out loud. (In some states, you may be required to pro­vide your name if asked to iden­ti­fy your­self, and an offi­cer may arrest you for refus­ing to do so.)
• You do not have to con­sent to a search of your­self or your belong­ings, but police may pat down your cloth­ing if they sus­pect a weapon. Note that refus­ing con­sent may not stop the offi­cer from car­ry­ing out the search against your will, but mak­ing a time­ly objec­tion before or dur­ing the search can help pre­serve your rights in any lat­er legal proceeding.
• If you are arrest­ed by police, you have the right to a gov­ern­ment-appoint­ed lawyer if you can­not afford one.
• You do not have to answer ques­tions about where you were born, whether you are a U.S. cit­i­zen, or how you entered the coun­try. (Separate rules apply at inter­na­tion­al bor­ders and air­ports as well as for indi­vid­u­als on cer­tain non­im­mi­grant visas, includ­ing tourists and busi­ness trav­el­ers. For more spe­cif­ic guid­ance about how to deal with immi­gra­tion-relat­ed ques­tions, see our immi­grants’ rights sec­tion.)

ID on Demand

March 2010 — By Eric Barker

Recently, on talk radio, the issue as to whether or not a police offi­cer could just walk up to any­body and demand that the per­son present some iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was debat­ed. Some thought that cit­i­zens must show iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to police when asked and that it may even be a crime not to have iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on you at all times. Others felt the police could­n’t ask us for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and that we don’t have to iden­ti­fy our­selves to law enforce­ment at any time for any rea­son. After all, we have the right to remain silent and not tell the police any­thing, includ­ing our names, don’t we?

The answer to this ques­tion is a def­i­nite maybe and depends on the cir­cum­stances. Generally speak­ing, the courts rec­og­nize that there are three lev­els of encoun­ters between police and cit­i­zens. The first and least obtru­sive is the “con­sen­su­al encounter”. This is where an offi­cer approach­es a cit­i­zen and makes a request, i.e., “Can I see your ID?”. The offi­cer in this sit­u­a­tion has no rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that the per­son is com­mit­ting a crime but, for what­ev­er rea­son, wants to ini­ti­ate con­tact with the per­son. The cit­i­zen is free to com­ply with the offi­cer’s request, ignore the offi­cer and walk away, or tell the offi­cer there is no way on earth he is giv­ing the offi­cer his or her ID. The offi­cer has the right to ask; the cit­i­zen has the right to walk away.

The sec­ond lev­el of inter­ac­tion between cit­i­zens and police offi­cers is called an “inves­ti­ga­to­ry stop”. This is when an offi­cer actu­al­ly detains a cit­i­zen, and that cit­i­zen does not have a legal right to walk away. For an offi­cer to make an inves­ti­ga­to­ry stop, the offi­cer must have a well-found­ed, rea­son­able, artic­u­la­ble sus­pi­cion that the per­son they are detain­ing has just com­mit­ted, is in the process of com­mit­ting, or is about to com­mit a crime. In this instance, if the offi­cer does indeed have this “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” that the per­son is involved in a crime, the offi­cer can detain the per­son and demand that the per­son iden­ti­fy them­selves. However, since there is no law that cur­rent­ly man­dates that we car­ry per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with us at all times (not yet any­way, but I won’t be shocked when that law pass­es), iden­ti­fi­ca­tion some­times can sim­ply be accom­plished by pro­vid­ing a name and date of birth. However, cit­i­zens should not give a false name as many offi­cers have lap­tops in their patrol cars and can quick­ly pull the dri­ver’s license pho­to of the name giv­en. If the pho­to on the lap­top does not match the name giv­en, under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, the per­son could be arrest­ed for giv­ing a false name or resist­ing arrest with­out vio­lence. This is true even if it is deter­mined that the offi­cer’s “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” that the per­son was com­mit­ting a crime end­ed up being not true.

The third and final lev­el of inter­ac­tion is when the offi­cer is mak­ing an arrest. As in the “inves­ti­ga­to­ry stop”, the cit­i­zen is required to iden­ti­fy themselves.

So, if you’re approached by an offi­cer who wants to ask you ques­tions and you don’t real­ly want to strike up a new friend­ship at that moment, sim­ply ask the offi­cer if you are free to leave. If he says yes, you may leave and go about your busi­ness (or con­tin­ue on in your slack­ing off) and walk away. If you are told that you are not free to leave, ask the offi­cer what rea­son he thinks he has to detain you. Make sure you let him know that you know your rights and you’re not acqui­esc­ing to his unrea­son­able and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al demands. Then, when you pick your­self off of the ground and dust your­self off, don’t for­get to ask the offi­cer if you can have your ID back.

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

The pub­li­ca­tion Complex is report­ing that Ye, the artist for­mer­ly known as Kanye West, is no longer a bil­lion­aire, accord­ing to Forbes.
According to the hot-off-the-press report­ing, Ye’s net worth plum­met­ed to a mere $400M.
Now $400M is a lot of mon­ey for peo­ple like me who have none of it, but for pow­er play­ers like Ye, ouch.…. that got­ta hurt.
According to the report, the lion’s share of Ye’s wealth was from his deal with the German sports appar­el com­pa­ny Adidas, val­ued at $1.5 billion.

The artist has been mired in con­tro­ver­sy after he appeared with Candace Owens, a racial provo­ca­teur wear­ing gar­ments embla­zoned with the words “white lives matter.”
He has also been accused of mak­ing a string of anti-Semitic com­ments against Jewish peo­ple and even claimed that the slav­ery of Black peo­ple was a choice.
Several com­pa­nies that did busi­ness with the artiste have since dis­tanced them­selves from him; how­ev­er, Adidas’ deci­sion to cut ties with him has got to hurt the most financially.
According to the report, Ye told an inter­view­er that he had about $120 mil­lion in his account.

Actions have con­se­quences, as they should. One is free to say what­ev­er one wants, but there is a price to pay for say­ing what­ev­er comes to one’s mouth unless you are Donald Trump or FOX misinformation.
Kanye West has tried to align him­self with Donald Trump and the Fox dis­in­for­ma­tion net­work and has made out­landish com­ments that have come back to bite him in the ass.
His com­ments got him kicked off Twitter and Instagram, upon which he expressed an inter­est in acquir­ing the hate plat­form Parler.

Whether or not Kanye, Ye, or what­ev­er he calls him­self is hav­ing a men­tal break­down, it is impor­tant that he try to remem­ber that regard­less of who he tries to be friends with, when the rub­ber meets the road, he is still a black man with some mon­ey. They gave it, and they can take it away.

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Like and share this article.

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

Publisher’s note:
Sgt. Alpha Caldwell, a spokesper­son for the Fayetteville Police Department, said Tuesday she did not know when the footage would be pub­licly released.
But of course, I guess it takes time to alter and destroy cru­cial evi­dence. As I have said time and again, it is incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous that courts con­tin­ue to accept the uncor­rob­o­rat­ed word of police as evi­dence to con­vict any­one, much less peo­ple of color.
And to the peo­ple who are con­fused as to why police offi­cers con­tin­ue to com­mit these acts of aggres­sion against the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black peo­ple, ask your elect­ed polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive how they vot­ed on body-cam leg­is­la­tion. Politicians make the laws. Ask them why they vot­ed to make it so that a court order is required to obtain footage that is pro­duced by police body cam­eras when it is the pub­lic that pays for the cam­eras, the footage, the salaries, and the ben­e­fits of the cops.
There was absolute­ly no rea­son for the cops involved to pull the young woman from her care and hand­cuff her. Their lying claims that they were look­ing for a vio­lent per­son in the area should fool no one. Even if they were look­ing for a dan­ger­ous per­son, what did it have to do with the young woman they assault­ed and brutalized?
The sad real­i­ty is that they would under no cir­cum­stances pull a young white woman from her car and abuse her. They decid­ed to engage her based on the col­or of her skin. We see this kind of behav­ior by these moron­ic racist turds in police uni­form. It must come to an end.
(mb)

Lexi Solomon, The Fayetteville Observer

Tue, October 25, 2022, 2:26 PM

This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at Yahoonews.……

I expect to be dragged for say­ing this, but that’s okay. I find it laugh­able that a police offi­cer who has been found to have ties to white suprema­cy groups would be giv­en a sus­pen­sion and allowed to return to polic­ing our streets.
Policing is a crit­i­cal dis­ci­pline in the sys­tem of jus­tice that is nec­es­sary for demo­c­ra­t­ic societies.
When the police, the first rung in the jus­tice sys­tem, can­not be trust­ed to be fair, just, car­ing, hon­est, and upstand­ing, the sys­tem can­not work.
When peo­ple do not trust the police and, by exten­sion, the jus­tice sys­tem, they take the laws into their own hands. Street jus­tice becomes the alter­na­tive. In com­mu­ni­ties of col­or in the United States, peo­ple do not trust the police, they are more inclined to han­dle things inde­pen­dent­ly, and the results are out in the open for all to see.
The high vio­lent crime rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty, direct­ly results from the jus­ti­fi­able mis­trust those com­mu­ni­ties have for the police, which has nev­er served their inter­est but has act­ed as over­lords and executioners.
No one expects police offi­cers to be per­fect; offi­cers are humans who are prone to mak­ing mis­takes like every­one else.
Additionally, police offi­cers are asked to deal with and con­tain some of the worst actors in our soci­eties. Those are not easy tasks; car­ry­ing out those func­tions is some­times ugly, messy, and controversial.
Regardless of race or sta­tion, the aver­age per­son sym­pa­thizes with police offi­cers when they make mis­takes or do what soci­ety asks them to do, regard­less of how ugly the process looks.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I was always con­ver­sant that the pow­ers vest­ed in me were giv­en to me by the peo­ple and that it was not sup­posed to be abused or used to abuse the very peo­ple who gave them to me.
The pow­ers vest­ed in police offi­cers are not and should not ever be so absolute that they ren­der police offi­cers immune from account­abil­i­ty to the point of impunity.
The American cop, if not total­ly at the point of oper­a­tional impuni­ty, is dan­ger­ous­ly close to it, made pos­si­ble by the United States Supreme Court.
Citizens are pre­pared to give the police the ben­e­fit of the doubt when they make mis­takes in the exe­cu­tion of their duties and cor­rect­ly so. After all, all cat­e­gories of work­ers make mis­takes on the job with­out being sub­ject­ed to imprisonment.
On the oth­er hand, hard­ly any oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers is vest­ed with the pow­er of life and death over the cit­i­zen­ry; the police have that power.
What cit­i­zens are jus­ti­fi­ably incensed about is that on top of the awe­some pow­ers police offi­cers are giv­en, the mech­a­nisms of account­abil­i­ty that have been put in place because police offi­cers and entire police depart­ments abuse their pow­ers don’t even hold police accountable.
On sim­ple issues like body-worn cam­eras, police offi­cers get to deter­mine if they turn on the devices before inter­act­ing with mem­bers of the pub­lic in some munic­i­pal­i­ties. Police offi­cers turn off their body-worn cam­eras when they want to abuse cit­i­zens and are not held account­able. Police depart­ments get to decide in some cas­es whether the pub­lic that pays for the cam­era has a right to the footage on said cameras.
Police depart­ments are allowed to delete or alter footage they deem not use­ful to the lies they tell the public.
At issue in the United States with polic­ing is that the Republican par­ty does every­thing in its pow­er to ensure that the bro­ken polic­ing prac­tices are main­tained and strengthened.
The immense pow­er giv­en to police allows police and pros­e­cu­tors to frame inno­cent cit­i­zens send­ing them to prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole and to the death chamber.
It allows cops to mur­der peo­ple of col­or and then malign their char­ac­ter to jus­ti­fy their demise. This, in effect, is mur­der­ing the vic­tims twice while leav­ing their fam­i­lies with­out redress in the system.
These are not anom­alies; they are well-orches­trat­ed poli­cies and prac­tices that have been put in place to keep one seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion on top and the oth­er in per­pet­u­al sub­ju­ga­tion. (mb)

Here is an example.

The dis­ci­pline of a Chicago police offi­cer who was inves­ti­gat­ed for alleged ties to a white nation­al­ist group became a flash­point dur­ing Friday’s wide-rang­ing police depart­ment bud­get hear­ing, which saw Superintendent David Brown on the defen­sive over dis­con­tent with his pub­lic safe­ty plan, bal­loon­ing over­time costs and more.

Ald. Jason Ervin, 28^th, ques­tioned Brown on why Officer Robert Bakker received only a 120-day sus­pen­sion over alle­ga­tions includ­ing that he didn’t reveal he was inter­viewed by fed­er­al author­i­ties about his alleged past involve­ment with the Proud Boys.

Brown defend­ed the choice not to fire Bakker and said the inves­ti­ga­tion did not turn up suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the offi­cer was affil­i­at­ed with the organization.

“The Chicago Police Department has zero tol­er­ance for any of its sworn mem­bers being mem­bers of hate groups or asso­ci­at­ed with hate groups,” Brown said in his first pub­lic remarks on the case. “The alle­ga­tions put forth on this offi­cer did not sup­port by a pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence, which is the legal stan­dard, that this mem­ber asso­ci­at­ed with or was a mem­ber of a hate group — Proud Boys or any oth­er hate group.

Brown con­tin­ued, “I will just say from a per­son­al note, I’ve been Black a long time. I would not tol­er­ate an offi­cer being a mem­ber of or being asso­ci­at­ed with a hate group.”

A “pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence” means the alle­ga­tions being inves­ti­gat­ed must be more than 50% like­ly to be true. Brown said that was not the case with Bakker’s ties to the Proud Boys, but there were “minor vio­la­tions” relat­ed to incon­sis­tent state­ments from the offi­cer to inves­ti­ga­tors about the extent of his inter­ac­tions with mem­bers of the group

Literally every day, we see these instances of blatant police brutality, inhumanity, and monstrosity. Despite overwhelming evidence that policing in America the way it was designed to work is no longer tenable, Republicans and Democrats continue to double down on this egregious concept called policing in its present construct.(mb)

By David Mack for Buzzfeed

Bodycam footage cap­tured Sgt. Eric Huxley stomp­ing on the face of Jermaine Vaughn, whom anoth­er offi­cer had wres­tled to the ground.
By David Mack

On Tuesday, a fed­er­al grand jury in Indiana indict­ed an Indianapolis police sergeant for vio­lat­ing a man’s civ­il rights by using exces­sive force dur­ing an arrest last year.

Body cam­era footage cap­tured Sgt. Eric Huxley stomp­ing on the face of Jermaine Vaughn, who had been hand­cuffed with his hands behind his back, on Sept. 24, 2021. Huxley’s col­leagues were wrestling Vaughn to the ground in the city’s down­town as they attempt­ed to arrest him for dis­or­der­ly conduct

“Stop! You’re done! You’re done! You’re done!” Huxley shouts at Vaughn after kick­ing him in the face.

“There you go. Police bru­tal­i­ty,” Vaughn responds as blood pours from his mouth.