Those of you who are pay­ing atten­tion may recall this case from 2020 where a Black Virginia man was bru­tal­ly tased by a mon­ster in a police uni­form while he was expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal event.
It is kin­da redun­dant that I wrote, ‘black Virginia man’, who else would those mon­sters abuse in such a way?
Just to recap, the vic­tim La Monta Gladney, a 38-year-old Black man of the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax coun­ty was pac­ing in a cir­cle and try­ing with­out suc­cess, to com­mu­ni­cate with emer­gency per­son­nel on the scene that he need­ed help.
Other reports note he was ram­bling inco­her­ent­ly and lat­er was found to have had phen­cy­cli­dine, a street drug known as PCP or angel dust, in his system.
Another cop arrived on the scene, this time an eight-year vet­er­an Rambo Tyler Ryan Timberlake, he imme­di­ate­ly pulled his taser and shot Gladney then kneeled on his back and neck. As Gladney falls to the ground, the offi­cer places his knee on the man’s back and neck. Timberlake, with­out lift­ing his knee, smacks him in the face and shoots him with the stun gun anoth­er time. Gladney cries out, “No!” He also yells, “I can’t breathe.”
Mister Gladney was arrest­ed on [trumped] up charges of pub­lic drunk­en­ness and resist­ing arrest, the charges were lat­er dropped. 

Well, now the coun­ty has decid­ed to set­tle the fed­er­al law­suit filed by mis­ter Gladney for an undis­closed sum accord­ing to Atlanta Blackstar. La Monta Gladney assert­ed that Timberlake vio­lat­ed his civ­il rights by tas­ing him with­out provo­ca­tion, kneel­ing on his back and neck, and then arrest­ing him with­out cause.
In a state­ment, Jeff McKay, Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said the set­tle­ment does not include an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty or guilt.
So I guess Fairfax coun­ty in Virginia is just in the busi­ness of cut­ting checks willy-nil­ly to peo­ple to whom its employ­ees have done noth­ing wrong!!!
The sad irony here is that this mon­ster thug Tyler Ryan Timberlake who was charged with assault­ing mis­ter Gladney was found [not] guilty by a white jury ear­li­er this year. He lied in his tes­ti­mo­ny to the jury that he mis­took mis­ter Gladney for anoth­er man who was want­ed on a war­rant. He con­tra­dict­ed that state­ment in the same tes­ti­mo­ny that he felt he had grounds to arrest Gladney for being intox­i­cat­ed in pub­lic. Ultimately, he said he wasn’t try­ing to hurt Gladney, but get him help. I guess the way to help a per­son suf­fer­ing is to tase them repeat­ed­ly and hit them in the head while they are in distress.
This was the same lying cop who teste­fied that he thought the vic­tim was a dif­fer­ent person
“It was first and fore­most we need­ed to get him med­ical treat­ment, it’s com­mon to have to take into cus­tody indi­vid­u­als on PCP in order to get them med­ical care.” [Yea just attempt to kill them to save them].

Timberlake told jurors his Taser was the best way to do that because peo­ple on PCP can be unusu­al­ly strong and often don’t respond to pain the same way a sober per­son does, so oth­er tools like a baton or pep­per spray are ineffective.
During the tri­al droves of Timberlake’s thug col­leagues attend­ed court because they were upset that he was charged criminally.
But they nee­dent have wor­ried the white jury had no inten­tion of find­ing him gul­ty for his crimes, but the coun­ty is using tax­pay­ers mon­ey to com­pen­sate mis­ter Gladney.
The irony, in the mean­time the mon­ster is all­lowed to con­tin­ue wear­ing a police uni­form, and will con­tin­ue to cause harm to the public.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that the first offi­cer on the scene did see the need for force and did not use any force on mis­ter Gladney. The police chief after view­ing the video of the encounter said what he saw was outrageous.

.

.

.

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

This F*****g Judge said releas­ing the footage of POLICE using a canine to kill an inno­cent man could cause chaos and jeop­ar­dize police safety.
This goes to the heart of what this writer has been say­ing all along, that pros­e­cu­tors and judges are crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it in the bur­geon­ing and exis­ten­tial cri­sis of police vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or in America.

The lash and shack­les remain two pri­ma­ry sym­bols of mate­r­i­al degra­da­tion fixed in the his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of slav­ery in the Americas. Yet as recount­ed by states, abo­li­tion­ists, trav­ellers, and most impor­tant­ly slaves them­selves, per­haps the most ter­ri­fy­ing and effec­tive tool for dis­ci­plin­ing black bod­ies and dom­i­nat­ing their space was the dog. This data is drawn from archival research and the pub­lished mate­ri­als of for­mer slaves, nov­el­ists, slave own­ers, abo­li­tion­ists, Atlantic trav­el­ers, and police reports to link the sys­tems of slave hunt­ing in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the US South through­out the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth centuries.
Slave hounds were skill­ful­ly honed biopow­er pred­i­cat­ed upon scent­ing, hear­ing, sight­ing, out­run­ning, out­last­ing, sig­nal­ing, attack­ing, and some­times ter­mi­nat­ing, black run­aways.
These ani­mals per­me­at­ed slave soci­eties through­out the Americas and bol­stered European ambi­tions for colo­nial expan­sion, indige­nous extir­pa­tion, eco­nom­ic extrac­tion, and social dom­i­na­tion in slave soci­eties. as dogs were bred to track and hunt enslaved run­aways, slave com­mu­ni­ties uti­lized resources from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment to obfus­cate the ani­mal’s height­ened sens­es, which pro­duced suc­cess­ful escapes on mul­ti­ple occasions.
This insis­tence of slaves’ human­i­ty, and the inten­si­ty of dog attacks against black resis­tance in the Caribbean and US South, both served as proof of slav­ery’s inhu­man­i­ty to abo­li­tion­ists. Examining racial­ized canine attacks also con­tex­tu­al­izes rep­re­sen­ta­tions of anti-black­ness and inter­species ideas of race. An Atlantic net­work of breed­ing, train­ing and sales facil­i­tat­ed the use of slave hounds in each major American slave soci­ety to sub­due human prop­er­ty, actu­al­ize legal cat­e­gories of sub­ju­ga­tion, and build effi­cient eco­nom­ic and state regimes.
This inte­gral process is often over­looked in his­to­ries of slav­ery, the African Diaspora, and colonialism.
By vio­lent­ly enforc­ing slavery’s regimes of racism and prof­it, expos­ing the human­i­ty of the enslaved and deprav­i­ty of enslavers, and enrag­ing transna­tion­al abo­li­tion­ists, hounds were cen­tral to the rise and fall of slav­ery in the Americas.(aca​d​e​m​ic​.oup​.com)

Though rather beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten this pré­cis miss­es the mark in its final con­clu­sion when it opined,“hounds were cen­tral to the rise and fall of slav­ery in the Americas”.
Police slavers across America con­tin­ue to use Canine hounds on the bod­ies of Black Americans with cal­lous and degen­er­a­tive dis­re­gard backed up by pros­e­cu­tors, and judges all the way up the Federal judiciary.
The fol­low­ing exam­ple is just one iter­a­tion of the macabre and demon­ic prac­tice that is cou­pled with the pre­pos­ter­ous asser­tion that releas­ing video footage of these atroc­i­ties will jeop­ar­dize police safe­ty. When police act in that way they endan­ger their lives, no one does it to them.
(mb)

A fed­er­al judge in Alabama denied a family’s motion to have footage released show­ing a police dog maul­ing their loved one until he died from those injuries. The offi­cer believes mak­ing the footage pub­lic could “jeop­ar­dize police safe­ty” and prompt “civ­il unrest.”
On Wednesday, May 18, Chief U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks denied Joseph Pettaway’s fam­i­ly a motion ask­ing her to remove the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty des­ig­na­tion from police body­cam videos of the deceased being bit­ten to death by a Montgomery Police Department canine. While the fam­i­ly and their attor­ney believe releas­ing the footage will pro­mote trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the four-year-old case, the judge is stand­ing with the city’s lawyers, who claim, that releas­ing the video will cause chaos.
The fam­i­ly of mis­ter Pettaway filed a civ­il law­suit in 2019 against the city and the police depart­ment for vio­lat­ing Pettaway’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The claim alleges on Sunday, July 8, 2018, police engaged in exces­sive force when they allowed Niko, a dog on the force, to sink his teeth so deeply into the thigh of the man (even before ver­i­fy­ing if he was a crim­i­nal) caus­ing his wrong­ful death. 

At the time, police believed Pettaway might have been a bur­glar break­ing into a most­ly emp­ty house at 3809 Cresta Circle. They were alert­ed by “an anony­mous report that there appeared to be an unknown per­son inside the house,” the law­suit alleges.

This is when they released Niko on Pettaway and cap­tured the fatal attack on the body­cams in ques­tion. The suit also claims the police failed to pro­vide med­ical aid to the man dur­ing crit­i­cal moments after the dog bite, allow­ing him to bleed to death.

The fam­i­ly attor­ney, told Atlanta Black Star Pettaway “was in a house that was being remod­eled,” but unlike pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, “he was not in his mother’s house.”

While he was in the house, there was anoth­er per­son in there with him. Both men (at some point) believed they were alone in the house.

The Attorney states, “There was a per­son in the house when Mr. Pettaway entered who did call 911 because he could not [rec­og­nize] JLP’s face. This per­son had been work­ing with Joseph Lee remod­el­ing the house. He has lat­er acknowl­edged that he knows JLP but did not know it was JLP at the time. The time of entry was about 2:40am.

The Montgomery police say the home­own­er also approved them to come into their home with the dogs in an effort to pro­tect their prop­er­ty, the Montgomery Advertiser states.

Still, the law­suit says there was “at no time” a rea­son­able threat to the MPD, and no rea­son for the ani­mal to be released, and once released, they had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to save Pettaway’s life.

The law­suit read, “From the screams and/​or pleas of Mr. Pettaway heard by MPD police dur­ing the attack … They knew that the police dog was attack­ing Joseph Lee Pettaway and knew that he was being vio­lent­ly injured by the dog, i.e., he was being mauled and his flesh was being torn and ripped by the police dog .”

“After the police dog began attack­ing Mr. Pettaway inside the house, [MPD police] allowed the police dog to con­tin­ue this vio­lent attack on Mr. Pettaway, dur­ing which time no MPD police­man entered the house and inter­vened or took any actions that effec­tive­ly restrained or ceased the police dog’s attack on Mr. Pettaway.”

Nix told ABS that the city doesn’t believe the offi­cers were in error dur­ing any part of the inci­dent, say­ing, “The City and its offi­cers are claim­ing that exces­sive force was not used and that the release of the dog was prop­er. They also claim that the depart­ment pol­i­cy was to not ren­der aid to a sus­pect injured by them and that , there­fore, they are not liable to Mr. Pettaway’s estate for the fact that he bled to death.”

“The police on the scene, about 6 or 7 of them, did not even try to stop his bleed­ing with direct pres­sure,” the lawyer continued.

The fam­i­ly filed a motion to have the footage show­ing the gris­ly killing released but has been blocked at every turn. 

“Our claim is that med­ical aid is a require­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion in this cir­cum­stance and that it was the pol­i­cy enact­ed and enforced by the city that caused the vio­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion and JLP’s death, there­fore, cre­at­ing a cause of action called a Monell claim. We argue that med­ical aid should have been ren­dered to stop the bleed­ing,” Nix maintains. 

The city’s attor­neys were first to object to their dis­tri­b­u­tion. They argued the release of the video could put offi­cers in dan­ger. They fur­ther argued the footage is so dis­turb­ing it pos­si­bly could wind up “facil­i­tat­ing civ­il unrest” and would impact law enforce­ment pri­va­cy, caus­ing “annoy­ance, embar­rass­ment” for those on duty believ­ing they were doing their jobs in good faith.

A judge has filed the videos under a pro­tec­tive order, stop­ping it from being released to the public.

The lawyer reveals the fam­i­ly has heard the 911 call and seen the police body­cam video. The lawyers also ren­dered to the court a time­line of events based on the video. It was sub­se­quent­ly sup­pressed from the pub­lic record. On Wednesday, May 18, Griffin Sikes, anoth­er attor­ney on the case, said these claims are not valid and the peo­ple have a right to see the footage, which is cru­cial evi­dence in the civ­il suit. “The United States courts are the people’s courts,” he remind­ed the city.

A viral video shows a Black woman vicious­ly assault­ed in a racial­ly moti­vat­ed attack by a white Jacksonville, Florida, man that left the vic­tim trau­ma­tized. Kevin Williamson, 59, has been arrest­ed and charged with bat­tery, but the vic­tim wants Williamson to face stiffer hate crime charges.
Rayme McCoy, 23, is still heal­ing from a vicious attack last week after being beat­en at a gas sta­tion in Jacksonville on May 16. McCoy says as she walked into the gas sta­tion for a rou­tine gas sta­tion expe­ri­ence, she over­heard Williamson yelling
“He came in the store after me, and said the remark, go back to where y’all came from, and I’m tired of y’all kind,” McCoy said.
McCoy says Williamson direct­ed his anger toward her and start­ed berat­ing her with racist com­ments, and then got in her face. “I was like, sir, can you just back up and he said he had his gun in his car and I said, I’ll call my dad,” McCoy said.

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

Surveillance video cap­tured what hap­pened next that left McCoy in com­plete shock as Williamson start­ed hit­ting McCoy repeat­ed­ly in the face. The after­math of the assault left the 23-year-old bruised and swollen on parts of her face and eyes.
“She’s obvi­ous­ly still trau­ma­tized by this event and is still going through it as you can plain­ly see,” said Ben Frazier, civ­il rights activist and founder of North Florida Coalition, who is also advo­cat­ing for McCoy.
Frazier draws a con­nec­tion between what hap­pened to McCoy and what hap­pened just two days ear­li­er in Buffalo, New York, when anoth­er white man unleashed a racist attack killing 10 Black peo­ple inside a gro­cery store.
“We rec­og­nize there is a direct con­nec­tion between what hap­pened in Buffalo and what hap­pened in Jacksonville, Florida,” Frazier said.

Frazier says racial vio­lence has been part of the America’s his­to­ry for gen­er­a­tions. This coin­cides with recent Justice Department data that shows anti-Black hate crimes and inci­dents spik­ing since 2020, far sur­pass­ing any oth­er racial or eth­nic group.
Data released last year shows anti-Black hate crimes reach­ing 2,871 report­ed inci­dents, which is up from 2019 fig­ure of 1,930 report­ed inci­dents. Reported anti-white hate crimes and inci­dents were 869, Anti-Latino hate crimes and inci­dents were 517, Anti-Asian hate crimes and inci­dents were 279. “To be attacked bru­tal­ly and vicious­ly by a white man who had noth­ing on his mind but per­pet­u­at­ing the kind of racism and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vio­lence and ter­ror,” Frazier said.
Both McCoy and Frazier say they want Williamson to face fed­er­al hate crime charges for the attack. “We’re demand­ing that the FBI inves­ti­gate this, and the Justice Department call it exact­ly what it is; it is in fact a hate crime,” Frazier said.
“I just hope he actu­al­ly gets charged,” McCoy said.
Jacksonville Sheriff’s deputies arrest­ed Williamson on Friday, four days after the attack, and charged him with bat­tery for the attack and was booked into a pre-tri­al deten­tion facil­i­ty. WJXT report­ed Williamson appeared before a judge on May 21, and was ordered to be held on a $20,000 bond.(First appeared in Atlantablackstar)

Thoughts and prayers are all you will get from Republicans if you are white or of any oth­er race; if you are Black, you won’t even get that; it’s stone-cold silence.
The inci­dents of mass shoot­ings are so fre­quent these days that fam­i­lies of the last mas­sacre haven’t even buried their dead before there is anoth­er. The nation is so numb that the lat­est shoot­ing gar­ners noth­ing more than a pass­ing glance and a cur­so­ry mention.
The sad real­i­ty is that racism is so deeply entrenched into the coun­try’s fiber that they are blind­ed by the destruc­tion it is wreak­ing on the nation.
Republicans do not care that Black peo­ple are gunned down mer­ci­less­ly as they shop for food in Buffalo, New York, but a ris­ing tide rais­es all boats, so there will always be white col­lat­er­al dam­age, sad­ly whites died as well.

Whether it’s Robb Elementary School, Santa Fe High School, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or Sandy Hook Elementary School, it is not Black or Brown chil­dren being slaugh­tered- American chil­dren are dying.
Yet, there are fifty Republican United States Senators in Washington DC head­ed by Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and two Democrats, Kirsten Sinnema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who do not care about the chil­dren dying dai­ly in what should be sacred spaces,.…… their schools.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​o​n​e​-​o​f​-​t​h​i​s​-​i​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​t​h​e​-​r​i​g​h​t​-​t​o​-​b​e​a​r​-​a​r​ms/
Never for one moment would I expect them to give a shit about a group of Black peo­ple mas­sa­cred as they went about their dai­ly lives in Buffalo, New York, but the cal­lous dis­re­gard they show toward the lives of their won lit­tle white babies is most telling about those monsters.
Mitch McConnell did not only break the United States Senate; he broke America. Texas has two of those US sen­a­tors, John Cornyn and Raphael Cruz, and the gov­er­nor of the state, Gregg Abbot, who are all part of the prob­lem. However, to the extent that either of the three may be up for reelec­tion, the ‘bril­liant’ Texas vot­ers will cast votes to reelect all three.
I will not say those vot­ers are stu­pid; I will leave the name-call­ing to oth­ers, suf­fic­ing to say that in most cas­es, those sin­gle-issue vot­ers are not above sac­ri­fic­ing their chil­dren on the altar of the sec­ond amendment.
As I said in the arti­cle linked above own­ing the guns and mak­ing the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion an absolute right are about stock­pil­ing weapons for a war of sur­vival, they con­coct in their heads.

What’s hap­pen­ing in America is like stand­ing par­a­lyzed on the tracks with a fast-mov­ing freight train bar­rel­ing toward you. The Republican par­ty is hell-bent on destroy­ing the nation if they can­not con­trol pow­er. They are unable to win elec­tions so they cheat. Even when they cheat they do not have the votes to win nation­al elec­tions so they foment a coup d’é­tat. At the state lev­el, they pass all kinds of laws that hin­der the abil­i­ty of seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion to vote.
If the major­i­ty of the coun­try is opposed to your ideas I believe it is time you take stock of what you are sell­ing. The major­i­ty of the American peo­ple are stuck in a night­mare sce­nario in which they vote for Democrats but the racist elec­toral col­lege gives their win to Republicans.
Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, says that dis­par­i­ty is grow­ing. “The way this is start­ing to work is that elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives who col­lec­tive­ly have gath­ered 10 mil­lion, maybe 12 mil­lion, maybe by the year 2030 30 mil­lion few­er votes are going to stack the judi­cia­ry and entrench minor­i­ty rule,” Schatz, a Democrat, said dur­ing last year’s debate about con­firm­ing Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. “And so some­thing has to give.”
Senator Schatz is off by almost a decade minor­i­ty rule has already over­tak­en the American democracy.
The vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in the most pop­u­lat­ed states like California, New York, and Chicago have had their votes nul­li­fied by the two US Senators per state across the board.
So South Dakota with a pop­u­la­tion of eight hun­dred and sev­en­ty-nine thou­sand, three hun­dred and thir­ty-six cit­i­zens (879,336) gets the same two sen­a­tors as California with its forty mil­lion cit­i­zens (40,000,00).

In the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Al Gore won the pop­u­lar vote, and George Bush was made pres­i­dent of the United States. In 2016 Hillary Rodham-Clinton won the pop­u­lar vote and we all know how that turned out, don­ald trump was made pres­i­dent of the United States. The stench of both those pres­i­den­cies will con­tin­ue to linger for a very long time to come.
Technically, the Senate fil­i­buster that Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinnema refused to end has brought America to a stand­still. The coun­try is now a minor­i­ty-ruled nation.
An NPR report cit­ed data that shows that right now, the Senate is split even­ly in half, but the 50 Democratic sen­a­tors rep­re­sent 41.5 mil­lion more peo­ple than the 50 Republican sen­a­tors. By 2040, if pop­u­la­tion trends con­tin­ue, 70% of Americans will be rep­re­sent­ed by just 30 sen­a­tors, and 30% of Americans by 70 sen­a­tors. This inequity affects every sec­tor of American life, includ­ing the Supreme Court which is now set to over­turn Roe V Wade which has been the law of the land for 49 years. that court evis­cer­at­ed 51 years of prece­dent when it destroyed the 1965 Voting Rights act to favor Republicans in elections.
Since then Republicans have passed a raft of anti-vot­ing laws across states they con­trol that sur­gi­cal­ly tar­get Black voter’s abil­i­ty to vote.
In 2021 writ­ing for the Atlantic Adam Jentleson said the next two years may be America’s last chance to pro­tect the basic demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple of major­i­ty rule.
The stag­na­tion includ­ing the mas­sacres of inno­cent chil­dren is a clear man­i­fes­ta­tion of minor­i­ty rule. When the votes of the major­i­ty are cast aside for a white agen­da this is the result. That win­dow may be open only until the last votes are cast in 2022.

.

.

.

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

Once we are set­tled on some­thing we have been taught for years or real­ly want to believe because they val­i­date our own feel­ings, we are some­times reluc­tant to let go of those beliefs. Regardless of the lev­el of verac­i­ty in new infor­ma­tion avail­able, some peo­ple are pre­dis­posed to turn­ing their backs on new infor­ma­tion because it makes them uncomfortable.
As a result, we some­times end up in a cir­cle of lies that fail to advance us indi­vid­u­al­ly or collectively.
The death of Youtube rela­tion­ship sen­sa­tion Kevin Samuels should have been a sad moment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Black com­mu­ni­ty. Across the American expe­ri­ence, Black men are the least pro­tect­ed, most hat­ed, and hunted.
Unfortunately, black-skinned folks have fall­en vic­tim to the same web of deceit and lack of uni­ty that caused us to be shack­led and brought here over four hun­dred years ago, not as proud peo­ple but as dehu­man­ized chat­tel to be exploited.
Whether or not mis­ter Samuels died poor in a small sub­let apart­ment, was his mes­sage any less what it was because he may or may not have had a huge bank account?
Kevin Samuels did not have a tele­vi­sion or radio show; he was rel­e­gat­ed to a Youtube chan­nel. Despite that, women and men logged on to his chan­nel to ask him for rela­tion­ship advice.
I did not know about Kevin Samuels until a few months before his pass­ing. Being curi­ous, I watched a few of his shows; admit­ted­ly, not always in their entire­ty, I do have a short atten­tion span.
I observed that what­ev­er he said must be processed with­in the con­text of the ques­tion or the state­ment made to him.
The sad real­i­ty is that crit­ics gen­er­al­ly don’t care about [con­text]; their objec­tive is not to be ratio­nal and fair; they want to tear down and destroy.

The women who called Kevin Samuels sought him out; he did not call them, so when a woman tells him she want­ed a so-called ‑high-val­ue man, ‑what­ev­er that is? It is only fair that he asked her about her edu­ca­tion, weight, age, and how many chil­dren she has, among oth­er questions.
After all, we live in a shal­low-Al-style soci­ety that val­ues how peo­ple look and how much mon­ey they have. Acquiescing to those real­i­ties, Samuels made deter­mi­na­tions based on what the woman brought to the table and what, in his judg­ment, he believed her pros and cons would attract.
People do not like to hear truths, so they dis­par­age the mes­sen­ger rather than process the mes­sage. That has been one of the Achilles heels of Black America. It is eas­i­er to ridicule the mes­sen­ger than look in the mir­ror and change. They had so much ven­om and dis­gust for Bill Cosby because he chal­lenged young men to pull up their damn pants. They were over­joyed when Cosby was brought down because it made them feel bet­ter about themselves.
Kevin Samuels spoke the truth to women, but that was not what they logged onto his pro­gram for; they were there for him to val­i­date their bullshit.
They want­ed him to tell them that with three chil­dren for three dif­fer­ent baby-dad­dies, no edu­ca­tion, and weigh­ing 280 pounds, they were enti­tled to a man mak­ing six fig­ures, who would cater to her every desire, and he must have no baby-mom­ma drama.
These fan­tasies may exist on plan­et Utopia, and I recent­ly heard they might also be on plan­et Uranus.

If you watch tele­vi­sion and do not like the con­tent, thank God we still have the free­dom to turn the chan­nel. The peo­ple who called and watched Kevin Samuels were there because they want­ed his advice; I find it odd that those who did not like what he had to say or how he said what he said would find joy and com­fort in his pass­ing. That includes not just some of the women who tell them­selves they are queens (small q), but also some sor­ry-ass brothas, who have noth­ing going for them­selves out­side of their pathet­ic abil­i­ties to tear down. Any fool can tear down, it takes real men and women of char­ac­ter to build up. Those who can only tear down include some so-called preach­ers who can­not cut it in the real world, so they pros­ti­tute God’s word to enrich them­selves. There is a spe­cial hell for those demons.
I am all for wok­e­ness, but we delude our­selves when we con­tin­ue to lie to our­selves that we are kings and queens because it makes us feel good in our negativity.
Far too many women seem to think they have a right to be treat­ed with def­er­ence because she is a queen, with four kids, for four dif­fer­ent men and noth­ing else but a bad atti­tude with genitalia.
No one owes you any­thing in rela­tion­ships; add val­ue to your­self, and hope­ful­ly, some­one will see that as some­thing appealing.
Demanding that a man make six fig­ures to allow you to buy fake ass­es, fake hair, fake nails, fake eye­lash­es, fake every­thing is sil­ly. Real men do not want to see you in any of that stuff, for starters.……You attract what you dress for.

Accusing dis­senters of your BS of being misog­y­nis­tic or hav­ing a pho­bia is sim­plis­tic, disin­gen­u­ous & self-serv­ing. Hard truths are not misog­y­ny, regard­less of how often the cor­po­rate media say it is. Far too many women want ready-made wealth rather than com­mit to work­ing with a man who has a good plan. Many of you lie to your­selves that you do not want a man because you can­not get or keep a good man.
You harm your chil­dren through your tox­ic behav­ior toward the fathers who leave you because of that tox­i­c­i­ty. You then weaponize their chil­dren against them, then claim they are dead-bead dads.
You fall prey to the lure of a sys­tem that delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed the envi­ron­ment to insti­tu­tion­al­ize Black men leav­ing their chil­dren father­less so they can become fod­der for the prison indus­tri­al com­plex. But you are either too stu­pid or too pride­ful to real­ize it because you are a queen, right?
You are hurt­ing your chil­dren when you sep­a­rate them from their fathers. You are hurt­ing your chil­dren when you fol­low blind­ly behind an American soci­ety that has laid the trap that incen­tivizes you to dis­re­spect your man in front of his chil­dren and call the police and accuse him of abus­ing you.
Society wants the Black man in prison because it knows a child with­out a father in the home is more like­ly to end up in prison and less like­ly to become a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of society.
But you under­stand none of this because you are a queen.…… that thir­ty-five-year-old, six foot five Black man liv­ing with you is not your man but your son; your baby, right? And he, in his igno­rance, sees wher­ev­er you live as his crib, too.
Because of your tox­i­c­i­ty, you raise him to believe the world owes him a liv­ing, but you not only destroy his rela­tion­ship with his father, you make it impos­si­ble for him to become the father he should be. But guess what he most like­ly will be a father to sev­er­al chil­dren, a dys­func­tion­al one. One that the racist sys­tem rev­els in, one that the sys­tem designed with you in mind.

Whether or not Kevin Samuels had mon­ey is not impor­tant. A man’s worth can­not ratio­nal­ly be mea­sured by the mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions he acquired but by the lega­cy of ser­vice he gave to his fel­low man. Assigning cred­i­bil­i­ty to wealth is asi­nine; it is the rea­son immoral char­ac­ters with mon­ey, and even those who lie about being rich are ele­vat­ed to posi­tions of power.
The most con­se­quen­tial peo­ple to ever grace this earth had no mate­r­i­al wealth of which to speak, yet their lega­cy con­tin­ues to guide the way we live.
Celebrating the death of some­one who held up a mir­ror to your face does not say any­thing neg­a­tive about the depart­ed; it speaks to your char­ac­ter, or should I say the lack thereof?.…
Rest in peace, King!!!

.

.

.

.

.

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

It hap­pens dai­ly, repeat­ed­ly, and usu­al­ly, the back­sto­ry is the same. Oftentimes it ends with a Black per­son dead, a fam­i­ly shat­tered, and no one held accountable.
Police con­tin­ue to barge into the homes of Black peo­ple, usu­al­ly on the flim­si­est of evi­dence of wrong­do­ing. Raids are pred­i­cat­ed on the infor­ma­tion of some­one they have over a barrel.
Despite the dan­gers inher­ent in using the infor­ma­tion of a sin­gle infor­mant to break into some­one’s home, police con­tin­ue to do so in black neigh­bor­hoods with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy while look­ing for drugs.
Set aside the fact that, in gen­er­al, even if African-Americans do have drugs in their homes, they most assured­ly are the low­est on the totem pole. Poor Black peo­ple lack the means to import drugs into America; the dirty lit­tle secret in this sor­did affair is that the importers of these con­tra­band face no scruti­ny in their lily-white sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, let alone fear police raids.
Usually, crim­i­nals fac­ing pres­sure from police to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on oth­er law­break­ers are inclined to give false infor­ma­tion about peo­ple they do not like.
Using infor­ma­tion derived from pres­sur­ing career crim­i­nals is a dan­ger­ous game that police engage in that endan­gers inno­cent Black American lives.

Police dressed up as sol­diers act out war­rior fan­tasies they see in video games, but the result for their vic­tims is no laugh­ing mat­ter. Dead rel­a­tives, trau­ma­tized chil­dren, bul­lied and abused by white police offi­cers in what ought to be the sacred sanc­tum of their homes.
Usually, they barge into the wrong homes, trau­ma­tiz­ing chil­dren with their Rambo per­sona, leav­ing a trail of destruc­tion to per­son­al prop­er­ty. The bot­tom line is that when those white cops oper­ate in Black com­mu­ni­ties, they oper­ate as over­seers. To them, every­one in the com­mu­ni­ty is beneath them; every­one is a criminal.
They do not serve the com­mu­ni­ties; they go out to bru­tal­ize and sub­ju­gate. This is what Black Americans are sub­ject­ed to.
Despite a long-run­ning his­to­ry of these night­mare sce­nar­ios occur­ring with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences, judges con­tin­ue to sign off on no-knock war­rants cost­ing inno­cent lives and count­less mil­lions in prop­er­ty dam­age as the state agents oper­ate with total impuni­ty when they enter the homes of Black families.
They make sure they cause as much prop­er­ty dam­age as pos­si­ble, and there are no con­se­quences for their actions.
They snuffed out the lives of Breonna Taylor using a no-knock war­rant; one would have thought that the prac­tice would have end­ed after they wrong­ly entered her home and mur­dered her, but her Black life is of no con­se­quence to them, so the prac­tice con­tin­ues on steroids.
Police are mere tools of Government; if the politi­cians want­ed those prac­tices end­ed, they would end imme­di­ate­ly. The unmit­i­gat­ed truth is that those who wield polit­i­cal pow­er have no inter­est in defang­ing the war­rior cop phe­nom­e­non that has over­tak­en America. That goes for Republicans and Democrats.

In Chicago, police rou­tine­ly use no-knock war­rants to look for drugs in Black peo­ple’s homes. The results are usu­al­ly the same, it was the wrong house, and the infor­ma­tion came from a sin­gle informant.
Nevertheless, the police go in guns drawn, yelling and scream­ing at small chil­dren and sub­ject­ing them to hours of humil­i­a­tion even when they are told they are in the wrong homes.
This is state-spon­sored tyran­ny made worse by police depart­ments loaded with white suprema­cists oper­at­ing under the col­or of law.

A Flint fam­i­ly is suing the Michigan State Police for what they call acts of dis­crim­i­na­tion and vio­la­tions of their civ­il rights. Just over a year ago, Michigan State Troopers knocked down their door to look for evi­dence in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing. However, nobody in the fam­i­ly was actu­al­ly involved. Lawyers for the fam­i­ly say this inci­dent vio­lat­ed one of Michigan’s non-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, as well as the fam­i­ly’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion. They’re seek­ing dam­ages for the fam­i­ly’s emo­tion­al trau­ma from the event. “I am just so grate­ful that this day did­n’t turn out like so many oth­er days for peo­ple who look like us. So many peo­ple who did­n’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stand up in front of you and tell you how wrong­ly they were treat­ed because they were killed by the peo­ple who were sup­posed to pro­tect them,” said Aaron Dunigan, whose moth­er and sis­ter were the sub­jects of an alleged no-knock raid last April. But he said the trau­ma is still with them.
On April 21, 2021, Michelle Colston was get­ting her chil­dren ready for bed with the help of her moth­er, Renee Dunigan, when they said Michigan State Troopers used a bat­ter­ing ram to enter their apart­ment unannounced. 

They say the troop­ers made them keep qui­et as they inves­ti­gat­ed the home, with no access to their phones to let their fam­i­ly know they were okay. Lawyers for the Dunigan/​Colston fam­i­ly allege that troop­ers’ bias­es led them to rush the inves­ti­ga­tion. “What hap­pened was they saw a car in the dri­ve­way and jumped to a con­clu­sion that it belonged to one fam­i­ly… And what this real­ly was was slop­py police work. It would not have occurred in a white com­mu­ni­ty. It’s police work that says they’re all the same, they’re all guilty,” said Attorney Will Goodman. They said this alleged pro­fil­ing vio­lat­ed Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, and that the Troopers’ behav­ior in the home vio­lat­ed the fam­i­ly’s 4^th and 14^th Amendment rights. They’re seek­ing dam­ages to help cov­er men­tal health­care and ther­a­py costs as they work to regain their sense of secu­ri­ty. “There are small chil­dren in this fam­i­ly, who- before this hap­pened- trust­ed the police. They were told to respect the police. Now, when they see the police, they ask their mom and grand­ma, and uncle ”are they going to kill us?’ ” said, Attorney Julie Hurwitz. A spokesper­son for Michigan State Police had no com­ment but in a state­ment last year, they said they used a cruis­er’s P.A. sys­tem to noti­fy the fam­i­ly from out­side. The Duncan/​Colston legal team said that claim is false.

Bunch of liars.
Whenever there is an out­cry about the police attack on the rights and dig­ni­ty of Black cit­i­zens, the default nar­ra­tive is that the police need more train­ing. Reflexively, this for­mer Jamaican cop says those hood­lums do not need more train­ing because they do [not] com­mit the same crimes against priv­i­leged white men and women.
This writer con­tin­ues to make the point that the aggres­sion that those police offi­cers live out in the Black com­mu­ni­ty has been bred in them from inside their dirty homes where igno­rant par­ents, unable to jus­ti­fy their fail­ures, use race to jus­ti­fy not mak­ing it in America despite their white skin and its atten­dant privileges.
They are taught aggres­sion in the police acad­e­mies; the Black com­mu­ni­ty is their ene­my; it is a com­mu­ni­ty of worth­less, no-good crim­i­nals who deserve no respect; these tropes are rein­forced in their depart­ments head­ed by degen­er­ates like State Police Director Col. Kriste Kibbey Etue.
It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to have clean water any­where if the head of the stream is pol­lut­ed with the kind of poi­son spewed from degen­er­ates like the one pic­tured above.

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

Where is this attack­er, why is he not arrest­ed? If a black man had done that to a white woman he would either be in jail or killed by police.

A Florida man was caught on cam­era bru­tal­ly attack­ing a woman in a gas sta­tion. Seemingly unpro­voked, the white male is accused of using racist lan­guage before assault­ing the woman — mak­ing the crime appear to be a hate crime. Civil rights activists have called for the man to be arrested.

She alleges the man was already upset from an ear­li­er alter­ca­tion out­side of the estab­lish­ment and upon com­ing in shift­ed his atten­tion to the Black woman, who was already at the counter. The man was “rant­i­ng and rav­ing” in the gas station’s con­ve­nience store. From a short dis­tance, she could hear him using racial epi­thets with­out regard for oth­ers around. She told First Coast News, “I went in BP to get gas and I was walk­ing in … there was a guy argu­ing with an Indian guy, and when I walked around him to go inside, he came in after me and was basi­cal­ly yelling y’all kind, you need to go back where you came from.” McCoy says the man came up to the counter and stood too close to her. When she asked him to step back, he threat­ened her by say­ing he had a firearm in his car — as he would use it on her. “So, at that point, I felt threat­ened,” the woman said. “He put his beers on the counter in front of my stuff and I slid them over and at that point, that’s when he start­ed punch­ing me in the face.”
The store video shows him punch­ing her 10 times.

There is a cor­nu­copia of rea­sons why American police open­ly and with­out care sum­mar­i­ly vio­late the rights of the peo­ple they are sup­posed to pro­tect, not the least of which is gov­ern­ment sup­port for their crimes. The fol­low­ing sto­ry lays bare the cor­rup­tion, racism, and crim­i­nal­i­ty that exist in one police depart­ment where senior police offi­cers use their posi­tions of pow­er and author­i­ty in racist ways to bru­tal­ize and crim­i­nal­ize inno­cent peo­ple of col­or they hate. Not only are they pathet­ic racist clowns they are patho­log­i­cal liars, who com­mit crimes but are too cow­ard­ly to man up to their own actions. Of course, they are not wor­ried because even in the face of damn­ing evi­dence of bla­tant crimes they are not pros­e­cut­ed. In extreme cir­cum­stances where the evi­dence is so over­whelm­ing that it can­not be cov­ered up or swept under the rug tax­pay­ers’ funds are used to offer a small mon­e­tary stipend to their vic­tims while they remain in the depart­ment col­lect­ing hefty salaries, pen­sions, and oth­er ben­e­fits but far worse for the tax­pay­ers these pathet­ic crea­tures are allowed to keep police pow­ers they should nev­er have in the first place.

This hap­pens because cor­rupt politi­cians, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges allow these crim­i­nals to hide while the very same aggriev­ed par­ties are paid with their own tax dol­lars appro­pri­at­ed from them.
Literally, every poll that will ever be com­mis­sioned in the United States on the sub­ject of whether or not the police should be defund­ed will come back with a major­i­ty think­ing defund­ing the police is a bad idea.
Of course, many are too stu­pid to under­stand log­ic, or it is their own polit­i­cal inter­est to kiss the ass of pro-police inter­est groups. That goes for Democrats like Joe Biden and a raft of others.
What the polls will nev­er reveal is that sup­port for police in America and their Nazi tac­tics began around slav­ery, and grad­u­at­ed from slave-catch­ers to some­thing we now call the police.
In terms of their atti­tudes, noth­ing has changed.
In terms of them serv­ing the white pop­u­la­tion to the detri­ment and cha­grin of Blacks, noth­ing has changed either. It is there­fore imper­a­tive to under­stand that whites will nev­er agree to defang an enti­ty that has served their inter­est to the per­il of Blacks.
Their oppo­si­tion to hold­ing police account­able for their crimes has noth­ing to do with crime.
(mb)

Minneapolis to Pay Army Vet Who Was Beaten to a Pulp After Returning Fire At Officers In Unmarked Vehicles $1.5M; Terms Include No Admission of Guilt…

The city of Minneapolis has set­tled a case for over $1 mil­lion with an Army vet­er­an who filed a law­suit against the munic­i­pal­i­ty and its employ­ees after his civ­il rights were vio­lat­ed. He sued the city after he was acquit­ted of shoot­ing at law enforce­ment on the grounds of self-defense, and says the law­suit was nev­er about “a check,” but “jus­tice and accountability.”On Tuesday, May 17, Jaleel Stallings was offered and accept­ed a $1.5 mil­lion-plus costs and attor­ney fees set­tle­ment from the city of Minneapolis. The law­suit, accused offi­cers in the Minneapolis Police Department of lying about the May 30, 2020 inci­dent, includ­ing their instruc­tions to police to “delib­er­ate­ly con­ceal their appear­ance so that they could hunt civil­ians by sneak­ing up and shoot­ing them with 40mm rounds.”
An inves­ti­ga­tion con­firmed that offi­cers fal­si­fied reports about the evening, includ­ing the fact a cop shot him first with­out iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as law enforce­ment or pre­sent­ing just cause, a swarm of cops beat him for up to 30 sec­onds and oth­er badges failed to inter­vene when they saw their col­league using exces­sive force. 

Initial reports claimed Stallings vio­lat­ed a man­dat­ed cur­few and shot at the offi­cer dur­ing the chaot­ic protests days after George Floyd’s death. Bodycam of the event was released by Stallings’ lawyer, Eric Rice, show­ing his client was shot with plas­tic bul­lets from an unnamed source from an unmarked car, and only then did he fire his pistol.
A fed­er­al court deci­sion agreed that the mil­i­tary man, who was law­ful­ly allowed to car­ry his weapon and pro­tect him­self, oper­at­ed in self-defense on that Saturday night and acquit­ted him of the charges against him by the offi­cers. The Star Tribute reports the attor­ney for the city offered a set­tle­ment to stop the case from going to tri­al. Court records show Stallings accept­ed the terms that say the city and offi­cer will not admit lia­bil­i­ty, and “express­ly deny the valid­i­ty of [Stallings] claims.” Stallings said, “It’s dis­ap­point­ing because the goal of the civ­il suit was not a check.” “It was get­ting jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty,” he con­tin­ued. “And I don’t feel like I’ve received that. I don’t feel like any­thing has been done to hold the offi­cers account­able or change the cul­ture of polic­ing that leads to these inci­dents” Stallings said. When dis­cussing the process, he said he was glad the footage came out, show­ing the behind-the-scenes belief sys­tems some offi­cers hold about their patrolling duties and the peo­ple they are hired to serve.

“I’m grate­ful that we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to release that body­cam footage to the pub­lic so they could see and come to their own opin­ions and con­clu­sions about what hap­pened that night, how police were using force through­out those riots,” said Stallings. One rank­ing offi­cer, Lt. Johnny Mercil is heard on the footage pro­fil­ing pro­test­ers, say­ing they must be white “because there’s no loot­ing.” Another rank­ing offi­cer Cmdr. Bruce Folkens was cap­tured on cam­era brag­ging he was “hunt­ing peo­ple.” Public out­rage from these com­ments fur­ther stressed the rela­tion­ships between civil­ians and Minneapolis law enforcement.

Deputy Minneapolis City Attorney Erik Nilsson said his office con­sult­ed with the City Council and agreed to the settlement.“The City Attorney’s Office, after con­sul­ta­tion with the City Council, served on the Plaintiff, in this case, a Federal Rule 68 Offer of Judgment in the amount of $1.5 mil­lion,” reads a state­ment from Nilsson. “The plain­tiff accept­ed this judgment.
“The city hopes that an ear­ly res­o­lu­tion to this mat­ter will allow all of the par­ties to move for­ward,” Nilsson said. Stallings is but one of three set­tle­ments the city has made over the last two months relat­ed to the protest. In April, the City Council sanc­tioned $1.8 mil­lion to be giv­en to two women who allege they were shot in the face with pro­jec­tiles by offi­cers dur­ing the protest, and in March, Soren Stevenson received $2.4 mil­lion, after los­ing his left eye from the blunt impact of pro­jec­tile from a 40mm firearm used by offi­cers in an attempt to dis­perse a group of protesters. 

By Daniel Nyamekye

Payton Gendron record­ed his plans to car­ry out the racial mas­sacre in East Buffalo for months in a chat on the Discord social media plat­form, reports show. Just 30 min­utes before the white suprema­cist fired his first set of rounds in the Tops Friendly Markets in the Black neigh­bor­hood Saturday, he invit­ed a small group of peo­ple to the pri­vate chat room to see his plans.

Gendron’s goal was to kill three dozen Black peo­ple, he said in the mes­sages. No one in the cha­t­room alert­ed author­i­ties, accord­ing to reports. He killed 10 Black peo­ple on Saturday. 

“What we know at this time is that a pri­vate, invite-only serv­er was cre­at­ed by the sus­pect to serve as a per­son­al diary chat log,” Discord offi­cials said in a statement.

“Approximately 30 min­utes pri­or to the attack, how­ev­er, a small group of peo­ple were invit­ed to and joined the serv­er. Before that, our records indi­cate no oth­er peo­ple saw the diary chat log in this pri­vate server.”

Gendron also live-streamed the shoot­ing ram­page and post­ed a 180-page man­i­festo online.

The Washington Post reviewed 672 pages of Discord mes­sages post­ed by some­one with the same han­dle used by Gendron on oth­er social media plat­forms. The mes­sages includ­ed self­ies of the suspect.

The paper also ver­i­fied a speed­ing tick­et that Gendron men­tioned he received. The user ref­er­enced Gendron’s men­tal health eval­u­a­tion last June, which was record­ed by New York State Police, accord­ing to reports.

The 18-year-old said in the mes­sages he lied when he told med­ical eval­u­a­tors his threat to com­mit a mur­der-sui­cide when he grad­u­at­ed high school was a joke. He believed the deci­sion allowed him to stay off the FBI’s radar.

“It was not a joke,” he said in the Discord mes­sages. “I wrote that down because that’s what I was plan­ning to do.”

On April 29, a copy of the first install­ment of the Gendron’s mes­sage was uploaded on the file-host­ing plat­form MediaFire. The Washington Post report­ed that it was not avail­able to down­load until Monday.

The sec­ond batch of mes­sages was post­ed on Thursday. MediaFire has removed the doc­u­ment and dis­abled the account. The platform’s chief exec­u­tive said the records would be kept for law enforcement.

“This is where I’m gonna end it, thanks for the fun,” the last mes­sage says.

The records on Discord go back as far as November, accord­ing to reports. They show that Gendron vowed in December to kill “replac­ers.”

He select­ed the Tops store in Buffalo by February after con­sid­er­ing attack­ing sites in Rochester. He also planned on tar­get­ing two oth­er spots in Buffalo.

According to reports, the assailant esti­mat­ed how many Black peo­ple he could kill between each loca­tion and worked out the dis­tance and how much time he would need for each shooting.

The mes­sages also revealed that the assailant con­sid­ered car­ry­ing on the ram­page at a Black school or church but changed his mind.

“I would con­sid­er break­ing into a Buffalo ele­men­tary school, but those places are locked up tight, plus I get a strange feel­ing when think­ing about mas­sacring chil­dren,” he wrote.

In addi­tion to those killed, three peo­ple were injured in the attack on Saturday before police offi­cers arrest­ed Gendron. Witnesses said he had tak­en off his tac­ti­cal gear and turned the gun to his neck before police took him down.

A por­tion of a live stream of the attack showed Gendron paus­ing after point­ing his assault rifle at a white man in the store to apol­o­gize, and walk­ing away. A longer ver­sion of the video showed Gendron had already shot about four or five peo­ple, shoot­ing one woman on the floor twice.

The white suprema­cist jour­naled three vis­its to the Tops store on March 8 where a secu­ri­ty guard con­front­ed him. He told the guard he was “col­lect­ing con­sen­sus data,” accord­ing to reports. In addi­tion to two secu­ri­ty guards, he count­ed 53 Black peo­ple in the super­mar­ket that day and six white people.

Gendron also feared that his par­ents would uncov­er his plan. He wrote about hid­ing his guns in his bed­room and clothes in his car. The sus­pect said he bought and sold sil­ver coins to acquire the ammu­ni­tion for the massacre. 

When Gendron’s par­ents saw a speed­ing tick­et from his recon­nais­sance vis­it to the store 200 miles away from his home, he told his father on March 26 that he skipped school to go on a hike at a state park, accord­ing to reports.

Gendron had secret­ly dropped out of com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, how­ev­er. Fearing that his par­ents could have caught on to his plan, Gendron wrote that he wished he had launched the attack right away

“My par­ents know lit­tle about me,” he wrote on Feb. 22. “They don’t know about the hun­dreds of sil­ver ounces I’ve had or the hun­dreds of dol­lars I’ve spent on ammo. They don’t know that I spent close to $1000 on ran­dom mil­i­tary s — . They don’t even know I own a shot­gun or an AR-15, or ille­gal magazines.”