You know we are roy­al­ly f****d in the head when we mourn the pass­ing of the very head of the shit-stim that has raped, enslaved, sodom­ized, and mur­dered our ances­tors and con­tin­ues to degrade us every day.
Stockholm syn­drome it is.….…
I mean, set aside the idea that we should speak no ill of the dead.…… because we will all die some­day. Why would peo­ple with a brain inside their cra­ni­ums allow any­one to tell them how to think or respond to events like the pass­ing of Elizabeth, queen of England?

It real­ly begs the ques­tion of why we should care about peo­ple who not only live priv­i­leged lives but come from a long line of oth­ers who ben­e­fit­ted from mur­der and the enslave­ment, dehu­man­iza­tion, and exploita­tion of oth­er humans for profit.
Take, for instance, Jamaicans who are mourn­ing the death of Elizabeth and have set aside twelve days (12) of mourn­ing, two (2) days more than the Brits them­selves who have decid­ed on ten days (10) of mourn­ing; what exact­ly are Jamaicans mourning?
Am I sup­posed to mourn the per­son who had his knee on my neck sud­den­ly had a heart attack, or should I be relieved?
Should I be the duti­ful slave who shucks and jive when mis­sus dies and mourn more than mis­sus’s fam­i­ly and friends?

Come on, peo­ple, I am ask­ing you to think.…take your eyes off the pomp and pageantry of the event on tele­vi­sion, dis­en­gage from the white­wash­ing of his­to­ry by the paid talk­ing-heads whose jobs it is to human­ize and can­on­ize the dece­dent as if that will restore their souls with a God that judges.
While the mur­der and may­hem were hap­pen­ing, what did you do?
Some of you rave about your edu­ca­tion; you pon­tif­i­cate about hav­ing more degrees than a ther­mome­ter, yet you are as dumb as a door­nail. You are unaware that the edu­ca­tion they gave you was designed to keep you fur­ther enslaved, slav­ish­ly ded­i­cat­ed, and def­er­en­tial to their caus­es, ways, cul­ture, and sense of superiority.
Maybe they are supe­ri­or to some of you, and maybe they were cre­at­ed to be served by some of you.
Because the way you fawn and try to ingra­ti­ate your­selves into accep­tance is frankly nau­se­at­ing. Maybe some of you were jump­ing from trees like mon­keys when they found you because some of you are lit­tle more than that now.

We need not go back to what the European pow­ers did to Africans to rec­og­nize that we as a peo­ple have no stake in mourn­ing any part of the destruc­tion or fall of the house of Babylon. From Africa to Asia, the Caribbean, and places in between, the British Government invad­ed, col­o­nized, bru­tal­ized, and sub­ju­gat­ed hun­dreds of mil­lions whose only sins were that they were going about their dai­ly lives.
It is not for me, a black man to wor­ry about what they did in India, Asia, or the Middle East. My con­cern is about what they did in Africa and the Caribbean. My con­cern is that 188 years after the abo­li­tion of slav­ery in Jamaica, what appears to be a plu­ral­i­ty of Jamaicans are still suf­fer­ing from sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, Stockholm syn­drome, or some oth­er type of psy­cho­log­i­cal disorder.
Digital his­to­ry placed the num­ber of Africans killed dur­ing the North Atlantic Slave trade between 6 – 150 mil­lion. Let us pause for a moment and assim­i­late the grav­i­ty of that charge.
The African holo­caust is some­thing no one wants to talk about. They wrote these atroc­i­ties out of their his-tory books then, and today what lit­tle we learned about their bru­tal­i­ty and bar­barism, they are try­ing des­per­ate­ly to wipe our brains clean of the brutish­ness that char­ac­ter­ized their ances­tors and their own actions.

They would have us believe that slav­ery was a nec­es­sary evil. A grand bar­gain between pow­er­ful white enslavers and well-fed enslaved peo­ple who were con­tent with being fed and tak­en care of as you would some pigs that would end up as bacon.
The sad irony is that even if any iota of the fore­gone were true, it would still be slav­ery where one group owns another.
The white­wash­ing of his­tor­i­cal events like the African slave trade and what it means for peo­ple both on the con­ti­nent and in the dias­po­ra depicts a dement­ed and depraved mind­set by a peo­ple deter­mined to con­tin­ue to lie and deceive even as their num­bers and pow­er are diminishing.
And so they are doing what they do best, divide and con­quer, and why not? They have always been able to get sil­ly negroes to look at them all google-eyed as if they are gods from anoth­er plan­et. Many Blacks still look at them that way today and will kill you if you dare speak out against these demons for the crimes they have committed.

The largest slave trade in the his­to­ry of the world was cre­at­ed by white Christian Europeans. Before it was over, as many as 60 mil­lion Africans would be killed for the prof­it of white Christian impe­ri­al­ism. A key rea­son for the high death toll was the tidal wave of war and des­o­la­tion that the slave trade unleashed into the heart of Africa. Huge num­bers of peo­ple died being marched to the coasts of Africa from the inte­ri­or, as well as in an end­less series of wars pro­duced by the quest for new­ly enslaved peo­ple. Millions more would die in con­cen­tra­tion camps at both ends of the sea jour­ney, and sig­nif­i­cant num­bers would die due to the appalling con­di­tions on the slave ships. The finan­cial prof­its of this slave trade helped build the eco­nom­ic foun­da­tions of America. It was not just the south. Northern busi­ness inter­ests made huge prof­its too. (world​fu​ture​fund​.org)
Richard Drayton wrote for the Guardian in 2005, “the wealth of the west was built on Africa’s exploita­tion.” A well-known fact and some­thing that ought to draw yawns and exhausted-‘yes we knows”. But this is no jok­ing matter.
Britain was the prin­ci­pal slav­ing nation of the mod­ern world. In The Empire Pays Back, a doc­u­men­tary called on the British to take stock of this past. Why had Britain not apol­o­gized for African slav­ery, as it had done for the Irish pota­to famine? Why was there no sub­stan­tial pub­lic mon­u­ment of nation­al con­tri­tion equiv­a­lent to Berlin’s Holocaust Museum? Why, most cru­cial­ly, was there no recog­ni­tion of how wealth extract­ed from Africa and Africans made pos­si­ble the vig­or and pros­per­i­ty of mod­ern Britain? Was there not a case for Britain to pay repa­ra­tions to the descen­dants of enslaved Africans?
I ask why are Jamaicans mourn­ing the death of Elizabeth, the head of the house of Windsor. The last time the sub­ject of repa­ra­tions was broached at the Prime Ministerial lev­el David Cameron was Prime Minister of England, and Portia Simpson Miller was in Jamaica House.

In 2020 Brooke Newman writ­ing for slate said: In Britain, as in the United States, the anti-racism protests that have erupt­ed since the police killing of George Floyd in late May have rein­vig­o­rat­ed cam­paigns for repa­ra­tions for slav­ery. Having only recent­ly acknowl­edged their his­tor­i­cal links to slav­ery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, British uni­ver­si­ties and London finan­cial insti­tu­tions are fac­ing calls to make amends for past injus­tices and pay repa­ra­tions to the descen­dants of enslaved peo­ple. But one insti­tu­tion has remained silent: the British monar­chy. Still, it’s no secret that the his­to­ry of the British roy­al fam­i­ly is inter­twined with slav­ery. The slave-trad­ing ini­tia­tives endorsed by the English monar­chy began with Queen Elizabeth I’s enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of John Hawkins’ slav­ing expe­di­tions in the 1560s. In three sep­a­rate voy­ages backed by gov­ern­ment offi­cials, London mer­chants, and the queen, Hawkins raid­ed African set­tle­ments on the West African coast and seized hun­dreds of enslaved cap­tives from Portuguese ships. In defi­ance of Portugal’s dom­i­nance over the European slave trade in Africans, Hawkins sold his car­go of African cap­tives in the Spanish Caribbean. After his prof­itable sec­ond voy­age, the queen hon­ored Hawkins with a coat of arms and crest fea­tur­ing a nude African bound with rope.
No, it was not this Elizabeth that recent­ly passed, but look at England today and a small glimpse of the insane wealth and opu­lence that the enslave­ment and mur­der of our ances­tors brought to the priv­i­leged in England today.

Cameron not only rebuffed demands for his gov­ern­ment to pay repa­ra­tions, but he also refused to apol­o­gize for its role in the slave trade dur­ing his vis­it to Jamaica.
David Cameron stood in the Jamaican par­lia­ment and told the Jamaican peo­ple that slav­ery was “abhor­rent in all its forms” but called for the two coun­tries to “move on” and look to the future.” Wait, what the f***?
Oh, sor­ry, my bad, I am not an elo­quent lau­re­ate from the Bourjois, I am a Jamaican Blackman with a brain in my head, and I am extreme­ly proud of that.
But I digress; the Ass‑w*** offered Jamaicans a prison.….. yes, a prison, a prison that would house British [sub­jects], many of whom nev­er set foot in Jamaica but were born to Jamaican par­ents who went to England to build that coun­try after Hitler dec­i­mat­ed it with his nazi bombs.
Those peo­ple heed­ed the call, and now that Britain used them up as it had used up their ances­tors for free, she want­ed them out.

Might make right for sure because you best believe that if I had the pow­er, I would march right in, over­turn every­thing not nailed down, and take every last ounce of what belongs to us. From the stolen African arti­facts to every pen­ny of repa­ra­tions owed us.

There is a strange unex­plained phe­nom­e­non that I am yet to under­stand; it is the propen­si­ty of some negroes to dis­re­gard all of the evils that white peo­ple did to them and their ances­tors and will lit­er­al­ly kill their own black broth­ers and sis­ters who dare point to those atrocities.
It gets worse when they are allowed to get some of the white man’s brain­wash­ing that they call get­ting an edu­ca­tion. I have a lot more to say, but Nah, I have made my point. And so, as a rebel, I harken to the words of anoth­er true Jamaican rebel.

“We don’t have edu­ca­tion; we have inspi­ra­tion; if I was edu­cat­ed, I would be a damn fool.”

.

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

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Lizzie Pugh, a Black Detroit pub­lic schools retiree, has filed a fed­er­al law­suit alleg­ing that white employ­ees at Fifth Third Bank in Livonia refused to cash and deposit her slot machine jack­pot check. She won it dur­ing a church out­ing to the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort in Mt. Pleasant.

The 71-year-old alleges that three white bank employ­ees told her the five-fig­ure check was fraud­u­lent and refused to give it back, reports Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press. Pugh, who is a dea­con at her church, says it’s bla­tant racism.

“I couldn’t real­ly believe they did that to me,” Pugh tells the Freep. “I was dev­as­tat­ed. I kept ask­ing, ‘How do you know the check is not real?’ … And they just insist­ed that it was fraud­u­lent. … I was terrified.”

The Aug. 29 law­suit filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit says after much per­sis­tence that day, she got the bank to return her check, which she then deposit­ed at a near­by Chase bank. It cleared the fol­low­ing day with­out issue, the law­suit says. Fifth Third Bank did­n’t respond to sev­er­al requests for comment.

The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of sim­mer­ing ten­sions between north­ern and south­ern states over slav­ery, states’ rights, and west­ward expan­sion. The elec­tion of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused sev­en south­ern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America; four more states soon joined them. The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, end­ed in the Confederate sur­ren­der in 1865. The con­flict was the costli­est and dead­liest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 mil­lion sol­diers killed, mil­lions more injured, and much of the South left in ruin

Causes of the Civil War

In the mid-19^th cen­tu­ry, while the United States was expe­ri­enc­ing an era of tremen­dous growth, a fun­da­men­tal eco­nom­ic dif­fer­ence exist­ed between the country’s north­ern and south­ern regions.

In the North, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and indus­try was well estab­lished, and agri­cul­ture was most­ly lim­it­ed to small-scale farms, while the South’s econ­o­my was based on a sys­tem of large-scale farm­ing that depend­ed on the labor of Black enslaved peo­ple to grow cer­tain crops, espe­cial­ly cot­ton and tobacco.

Growing abo­li­tion­ist sen­ti­ment in the North after the 1830s and north­ern oppo­si­tion to slavery’s exten­sion into the new west­ern ter­ri­to­ries led many south­ern­ers to fear that the exis­tence of slav­ery in America—and thus the back­bone of their econ­o­my — was in danger.

In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essen­tial­ly opened all new ter­ri­to­ries to slav­ery by assert­ing the rule of pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty over con­gres­sion­al edict. Pro- and anti-slav­ery forces strug­gled vio­lent­ly in “Bleeding Kansas,” while oppo­si­tion to the act in the North led to the for­ma­tion of the Republican Party, a new polit­i­cal enti­ty based on the prin­ci­ple of oppos­ing slavery’s exten­sion into the west­ern ter­ri­to­ries. After the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in the Dred Scott case (1857) con­firmed the legal­i­ty of slav­ery in the ter­ri­to­ries, the abo­li­tion­ist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 con­vinced more and more south­ern­ers that their north­ern neigh­bors were bent on the destruc­tion of the “pecu­liar insti­tu­tion” that sus­tained them. Abraham Lincoln’s elec­tion in November 1860 was the final straw, and with­in three months, sev­en south­ern states–South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas–had seced­ed from the United States.

Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threat­ened the fed­er­al-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to resup­ply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War. Sumter’s com­man­der, Major Robert Anderson, sur­ren­dered after less than two days of bom­bard­ment, leav­ing the fort in the hands of Confederate forces under Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Four more south­ern states–Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee –joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Border slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not secede, but there was much Confederate sym­pa­thy among their citizens.

Though on the sur­face, the Civil War may have seemed a lop­sided con­flict, with the 23 states of the Union enjoy­ing an enor­mous advan­tage in pop­u­la­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing (includ­ing arms pro­duc­tion), and rail­road con­struc­tion, the Confederates had a strong mil­i­tary tra­di­tion, along with some of the best sol­diers and com­man­ders in the nation. They also had a cause they believed in: pre­serv­ing their long-held tra­di­tions and insti­tu­tions, chief among these being slavery.

In the First Battle of Bull Run (known in the South as First Manassas) on July 21, 1861, 35,000 Confederate sol­diers under the com­mand of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson forced a greater num­ber of Union forces (or Federals) to retreat toward Washington, D.C., dash­ing any hopes of a quick Union vic­to­ry and lead­ing Lincoln to call for 500,000 more recruits. In fact, both sides’ ini­tial call for troops had to be widened after it became clear that the war would not be a lim­it­ed or short conflict.

The Civil War in Virginia (1862)

George B. McClellan–who replaced the aging General Winfield Scott as supreme com­man­der of the Union Army after the first months of the war – was beloved by his troops, but his reluc­tance to advance frus­trat­ed Lincoln. In the spring of 1862, McClellan final­ly led his Army of the Potomac up the penin­su­la between the York and James Rivers, cap­tur­ing Yorktown on May 4. The com­bined forces of Robert E. Lee and Jackson suc­cess­ful­ly drove back McClellan’s army in the Seven Days’ Battles (June 25-July 1), and a cau­tious McClellan called for yet more rein­force­ments in order to move against Richmond. Lincoln refused and instead with­drew the Army of the Potomac to Washington. By mid-1862, McClellan had been replaced as Union gen­er­al-in-chief by Henry W. Halleck, though he remained in com­mand of the Army of the Potomac.

Lee then moved his troops north­wards and split his men, send­ing Jackson to meet Pope’s forces near Manassas, while Lee him­self moved sep­a­rate­ly with the sec­ond half of the army. On August 29, Union troops led by John Pope struck Jackson’s forces in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas). The next day, Lee hit the Federal left flank with a mas­sive assault, dri­ving Pope’s men back towards Washington. On the heels of his vic­to­ry at Manassas, Lee began the first Confederate inva­sion of the North. Despite con­tra­dic­to­ry orders from Lincoln and Halleck, McClellan was able to reor­ga­nize his army and strike at Lee on September 14 in Maryland, dri­ving the Confederates back to a defen­sive posi­tion along Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg.

On September 17, the Army of the Potomac hit Lee’s forces (rein­forced by Jackson’s) in what became the war’s blood­i­est sin­gle day of fight­ing. Total casu­al­ties at the Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) num­bered 12,410 of some 69,000 troops on the Union side, and 13,724 of around 52,000 for the Confederates. The Union vic­to­ry at Antietam would prove deci­sive, as it halt­ed the Confederate advance in Maryland and forced Lee to retreat into Virginia. Still, McClellan’s fail­ure to pur­sue his advan­tage earned him the scorn of Lincoln and Halleck, who removed him from com­mand in favor of Ambrose E. Burnside. Burnside’s assault on Lee’s troops near Fredericksburg on December 13 end­ed in heavy Union casu­al­ties and a Confederate vic­to­ry; he was prompt­ly replaced by Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker, and both armies set­tled into win­ter quar­ters across the Rappahannock River from each other.

After the Emancipation Proclamation (1863−4)

Lincoln had used the occa­sion of the Union vic­to­ry at Antietam to issue a pre­lim­i­nary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all enslaved peo­ple in the rebel­lious states after January 1, 1863. He jus­ti­fied his deci­sion as a wartime mea­sure and did not go so far as to free the enslaved peo­ple in the bor­der states loy­al to the Union. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put inter­na­tion­al pub­lic opin­ion strong­ly on the Union side. Some 186,000 Black Civil War sol­diers would join the Union Army by the time the war end­ed in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives.

In the spring of 1863, Hooker’s plans for a Union offen­sive were thwart­ed by a sur­prise attack by the bulk of Lee’s forces on May 1, where­upon Hooker pulled his men back to Chancellorsville. The Confederates gained a cost­ly vic­to­ry in the Battle of Chancellorsville, suf­fer­ing 13,000 casu­al­ties (around 22 per­cent of their troops); the Union lost 17,000 men (15 per­cent). Lee launched anoth­er inva­sion of the North in June, attack­ing Union forces com­mand­ed by General George Meade on July 1 near Gettysburg in south­ern Pennsylvania. Over three days of fierce fight­ing, the Confederates were unable to push through the Union cen­ter and suf­fered casu­al­ties of close to 60 percent.

Meade failed to coun­ter­at­tack, how­ev­er, and Lee’s remain­ing forces were able to escape into Virginia, end­ing the last Confederate inva­sion of the North. Also, in July 1863, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) in the Siege of Vicksburg, a vic­to­ry that would prove to be the turn­ing point of the war in the west­ern the­ater. After a Confederate vic­to­ry at Chickamauga Creek, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in September, Lincoln expand­ed Grant’s com­mand, and he led a rein­forced Federal army (includ­ing two corps from the Army of the Potomac) to vic­to­ry in the Battle of Chattanooga in late November.

Toward a Union Victory (1864−65)

In March 1864, Lincoln put Grant in supreme com­mand of the Union armies, replac­ing Halleck. Leaving William Tecumseh Sherman in con­trol in the West, Grant head­ed to Washington, where he led the Army of the Potomac towards Lee’s troops in north­ern Virginia. Despite heavy Union casu­al­ties in the Battle of the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania (both May 1864), at Cold Harbor (ear­ly June), and the key rail cen­ter of Petersburg (June), Grant pur­sued a strat­e­gy of attri­tion, putting Petersburg under siege for the next nine months.

Sherman out­ma­neu­vered Confederate forces to take Atlanta by September, after which he and some 60,000 Union troops began the famous “March to the Sea,” dev­as­tat­ing Georgia on the way to cap­tur­ing Savannah on December 21. Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, fell to Sherman’s men by mid-February, and Jefferson Davis belat­ed­ly hand­ed over the supreme com­mand to Lee, with the Confederate war effort on its last legs. Sherman pressed on through North Carolina, cap­tur­ing Fayetteville, Bentonville, Goldsboro, and Raleigh by mid-April.

Meanwhile, exhaust­ed by the Union siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Lee’s forces made a last attempt at resis­tance, attack­ing and cap­tur­ing the Federal-con­trolled Fort Stedman on March 25. An imme­di­ate coun­ter­at­tack reversed the vic­to­ry, how­ev­er, and on the night of April 2 – 3 Lee’s forces evac­u­at­ed Richmond. For most of the next week, Grant and Meade pur­sued the Confederates along the Appomattox River, final­ly exhaust­ing their pos­si­bil­i­ties for escape. Grant accept­ed Lee’s sur­ren­der at Appomattox Court House on April 9. On the eve of vic­to­ry, the Union lost its great leader: The actor and Confederate sym­pa­thiz­er John Wilkes Booth assas­si­nat­ed President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14. Sherman received Johnston’s sur­ren­der at Durham Station, North Carolina, on April 26, effec­tive­ly end­ing the Civil War. (History​.com)

A Black Texas cou­ple were sub­jects of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty gone ter­ri­bly wrong as police search­ing for teenagers left the elder­ly cou­ple trau­ma­tized as they were held at gun­point and hand­cuffed. The cou­ple has since filed a law­suit against the depart­ment accus­ing them of exces­sive force.

A Black dis­abled man has filed a $50 mil­lion law­suit against the police he claims used exces­sive force after wrong­ly accus­ing him of a crime he did not com­mit. “I thought I was going to die in this sit­u­a­tion,” said Waverly Lucas, 48, an amputee who uses a pros­thet­ic leg. “The only rea­son they stopped him was because of the col­or of his skin,” said Heather Palmore, chief tri­al coun­sel with the Napoli Shkolnik law firm and Lucas’ attorney.

It’s been a year since Lucas of Long Island, New York was the vic­tim of a vio­lent arrest by Suffolk County police as he attempt­ed to vis­it the con­ve­nience store near his home.

“The gas sta­tion I was going to was at the cor­ner from my house that I lived for all my life so you might just go there to get a soda or some­thing to drink,” Lucas said.

Lucas says, he just pulled up to a Gulf gas sta­tion in the Long Island town of Wyandach, New York, on Aug. 18, 2021, and as he was get­ting out of his car prepar­ing to go inside, he was putting on his pros­thet­ic leg when Suffolk County police offi­cers Michael Casey and Michael Renna approached him, ask­ing for his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and accused him of uri­nat­ing in public.

“There’s no evi­dence of that, what’s clear is he had stopped his vehi­cle and he had attempt­ed to put his leg on to walk into the con­ve­nience store and there’s noth­ing else oth­er than that,” Palmore said.

Lucas began record­ing the police encounter on Facebook Live, which shows what hap­pened next, when police became phys­i­cal­ly aggres­sive with him. According to the law­suit filed over the inci­dent, an offi­cer placed Lucas in a choke­hold, then grabbed his arms and wrenched them. After hav­ing his arms pulled to be hand­cuffed, Lucas was shoved towards the police car and placed into the back seat.

“I thought I was going to die in this sit­u­a­tion because I’m being choked out and I don’t know if anybody’s ever been choked out, but you go to sleep, and I just thought I was going to die and there was noth­ing I could do,” Lucas said.

The law­suit also accus­es the offi­cers of pulling on Lucas’ pros­thet­ic leg and throw­ing it into the trunk of the police car, leav­ing the ampu­tat­ed Lucas in seri­ous pain.

“It was excru­ci­at­ing pain, when some­one is try­ing to bend some­thing that is con­nect­ed to your body and when you’ve got your kneecap pop­ping out at the same time, you’re not think­ing about any at the time but the pain that you’re going through and that’s all I can remem­ber think­ing at the time is the excru­ci­at­ing pain,” Lucas said.

Once tak­en to jail, Lucas’ trou­bles con­tin­ued as he was charged with obstruc­tion, resist­ing arrest and pos­ses­sion of his doc­tor-pre­scribed Oxycodone pain med­i­cine. Those charges were lat­er dropped.

“Maybe an hour or so pri­or to all of this hap­pen­ing, so it was a brand-new pre­scrip­tion, it was dat­ed and logged and it’s fed­er­al record every time you get a nar­cot­ic,” Lucas said

After first being sent to jail, Lucas was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal where he did not receive treat­ment — at least not at first, accord­ing to his attorney.

“He wasn’t treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal because he was in cus­tody at the time and the way he was being treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal is not that what you would expect,” Palmore said.

Palmore says Lucas returned back to jail to be processed and booked. When Lucas final­ly left the jail for good, he was tak­en by ambu­lance back to the hos­pi­tal but with­out his pros­thet­ic leg which had been tak­en by police, the law­suit claims Lucas was left to hop on one leg out of the police precinct. 

“When he returns back to the hos­pi­tal, he was made to crawl out of the precinct, crawl out of the precinct and was removed back to the same hos­pi­tal and had to stay overnight and that’s when he was diag­nosed with the frac­tured orbital due to the arrest,” Palmore said.

With a slew of alle­ga­tions lodged against the Suffolk County police, Atlanta Black Star request­ed a response from the Suffolk County Police Department. A spokes­woman said by phone, the depart­ment had no comment.

“They per­formed an ille­gal search of his vehi­cle after he was already in cus­tody, took the keys out of his hand and entered his vehi­cle although he wasn’t there so there are a lot of lay­ers here,” Palmore said.

Lucas filed a $50 mil­lion exces­sive force law­suit against the police on Aug. 8. He and his lawyer want to see pol­i­cy change so the department’s pat­tern of tar­get­ing peo­ple of col­or will stop.

“Policy change, dis­ci­pli­nary action against the offi­cers,” Palmore said. “This is a micro­cosm of what goes on every sin­gle day in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or here,” she continued.

Police con­tin­ue to shoot black peo­ple in ways that they dare not shoot ani­mals with­out con­se­quence. Worse yet, the sys­tem con­tin­ues to allow one police agency to inves­ti­gate anoth­er police agency and come to con­clu­sions of inno­cence or guilt as if it isn’t still police inves­ti­gat­ing police.
As a for­mer Police offi­cer, I am pre­dis­posed to giv­ing police offi­cers the ben­e­fit of the doubt in tense sit­u­a­tions where it’s life and death, and they are forced to make snap decisions.
In most of these killings, we are wit­ness­ing not sit­u­a­tions where offi­cers shoot because they see a gun; they are shoot­ing peo­ple based on the alle­ga­tions against them.
Please remem­ber that we are devolv­ing from a stan­dard where an assailant had to be in actu­al pos­ses­sion of an iden­ti­fi­able gun and point­ing, turn­ing, or lift­ing the [gun] to point it toward a per­son, includ­ing a cop, for police to be jus­ti­fied in shoot­ing that assailant.
We have now devolved to where police offi­cers are shoot­ing peo­ple who do not have weapons and have made [no]hostile moves toward police.

We can­not as a soci­ety have a devolv­ing stan­dard that jus­ti­fies police killing cit­i­zens as the stan­dard of law enforce­ment. Look how far we have devolved from freeze-drop your weapon to the present, where sim­ply awak­en­ing from deep sleep is enough to get one mur­dered by law enforce­ment officers.
President Biden, in a recent speech, said he is against defund­ing the police, and he is against defund­ing the FBI. one of his senior advis­ers, for­mer Atlanta Mayor Keish Lance-Bottoms, an African-American woman, puts it best on Tuesday, ‘we want law enforce­ment to keep our com­mu­ni­ties safe not warriors.
We can­not con­tin­ue to con­done police killing our peo­ple based on alle­ga­tions that they, the police them­selves, made against the per­son. This police depart­ment has been and still is one of the most vio­lent, bru­tal, and lethal­ly unlaw­ful police depart­ments in the United States. That speaks vol­umes about the lethal­i­ty of the depart­ment based on the vio­lence that char­ac­ter­izes most, if not all of the over 18,000 police depart­ments across the country.
We know quite well that a large per­cent­age of cops are absolute­ly no good. We should stop these killings once and for all.(mb).’

AP Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Footage shows an offi­cer imme­di­ate­ly shoot­ing Donovan Lewis after open­ing a bed­room door. The city’s police chief claims Lewis appeared to be hold­ing a vape pen.