Twenty years after the events of September 11^th, 2001, America is out of Afghanistan, out of Iraq, and in a lot of trou­ble internally.
Out of the events of September 11^th, 2001 came the cliché Americans were indoc­tri­nat­ed by the Bush Administration to adopt, “If you see some­thing, say some­thing.”
As much as I dis­liked the Bush pres­i­den­cy, its actors, and its poli­cies, I do not hold the view that they cre­at­ed that doc­trine with mal-intent.”
At the height­ened fears of anoth­er ter­ror attack, the idea was for each per­son to be an extra pair of eyes and ears in vig­i­lance against what they per­ceived was sus­tained and orches­trat­ed Islamic ter­ror cru­sade against the United States.
Not a bad idea since the secu­ri­ty forces can­not be every­where and are lim­it­ed in num­bers; it made sense that the aver­age cit­i­zen would be the eyes and ears of the secu­ri­ty forces.
Little did African-Americans know that when Bush and Chaney cre­at­ed that doc­trine, white men and women would weaponize it, turn­ing Police into weapons of assault against them.

By now, we are all famil­iar with the many ways that this sim­ple idea of call­ing the author­i­ties in case you see some­thing that draws your sus­pi­cion was weaponized and used by white peo­ple against Blacks.
The old idea that no tragedy should go unex­ploit­ed was in full effect; Blacks became the new ene­my for the sol­diers who had returned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and had woven their ways into police depart­ments across the coun­try. The police made them­selves the pro­tec­tors of white fragility.
White men and women took it upon them­selves to be the decider where Black peo­ple exist­ed or whether they exist­ed at all. Whether it was a small Black child sell­ing bot­tled water, a Black fam­i­ly grilling in the park, a young Black col­lege stu­dent sit­ting in a col­lege dorm, they called police because the Black peo­ple had no right to be where they were.
Police were not shy about act­ing as race sol­diers; they killed indis­crim­i­nate­ly and still do, regard­less of the spot­light that has been direct­ed at them.
Elijah McClain walk­ing down the street, Philando Castile dri­ving home from work with his fam­i­ly, Botham Jean sit­ting in his house, Eric Graner sell­ing loose cig­a­rettes, Alton Sterling sell­ing CDs, John Crawford, Atatiana Jefferson mur­dered as she played video games with her nephew in her own home. The list grows each day, all mur­dered by police.
The male and female Karen Meme was born, but this has been no laugh­ing mat­ter to Black people.
White peo­ple re-upped on the old idea that police depart­ments are their pri­vate armies to exact pun­ish­ment and even death on oth­ers they do not like, usu­al­ly peo­ple of a dark­er hue.
From 12 ‑year-old Tamir Rice gunned down in a Cleveland Park as he played with his toy gun, to Elijah McClain mur­dered, choked, and inject­ed with Ketamine as he skipped home from the store lis­ten­ing to music, cops have been hap­py to be cop pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and executioners.

As out­rage grew after George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin and his cohorts in Minnesota, cit­i­zens all across America took to the streets in protest; at the same time, America’s law enforce­ment agen­cies came togeth­er, not to change their prac­tices, but as a de fac­to oppo­si­tion force to the Black Lives Movement that had begun to solid­i­fy across the coun­try, opposed to police vio­lence against minor­i­ty communities.
The American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) reports that since the mur­der of mis­ter Floyd, Police still kill about three peo­ple a day, and 58 per­cent of police killings this year began when offi­cers respond­ed to an inci­dent like traf­fic enforce­ment or a men­tal health need. Black peo­ple are still three times as like­ly to be killed by police than white peo­ple and 1.3 times more like­ly to be unarmed when they are.
(In short, what has not changed since George Floyd’s mur­der is that com­mu­ni­ties of col­or con­tin­ue to be patrolled by mas­sive­ly fund­ed — $115 bil­lion a year — and heav­i­ly armed police forces that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly stop, arrest, jail, abuse, trau­ma­tize, and kill peo­ple of col­or. It con­tin­ues a gen­er­a­tions-old sta­tus quo of racial injus­tice, while alter­na­tives that reduce harm and vio­lence — med­ical and men­tal health care, schools, hous­ing, employ­ment, social ser­vices, and more — remain woe­ful­ly under­fund­ed. What has changed in the last year, from coast to coast, in big cities and small, is that the move­ment to reduce police role, pow­er, and resources is steadi­ly gain­ing ground and build­ing pow­er. The focus is shift­ing from what is done after the police have already com­mit­ted harm and toward pre­vent­ing it from hap­pen­ing in the first place”, the (ACLU) said…

After the irra­tional killing of peo­ple of col­or by police cul­mi­nat­ed in George Floyd’s killing, Americans of all ages, races, and creeds went into the streets to reg­is­ter their disgust.
The Trump admin­is­tra­tion encour­aged police to be more bru­tal, even sug­gest­ing that the mil­i­tary open fire on pro­test­ers. Trump and his Attorney General William Barr ordered Federal offi­cers to tear gas and beat pro­test­ers in Lafayette Park, effec­tive­ly remov­ing legit­i­mate pro­test­ers from the area so that he could have a pho­to opp in front of a church where he held up a Bible-albeit upside down.
The year 2020 was a year of the COVID-19 Pandemic; Americans were sequestered in their own homes and were able to con­cen­trate on the hor­rors of what was occur­ring under the guise of law enforce­ment. Conscientious Americans stepped into the streets to reg­is­ter their dis­gust; black, white, and brown, from across val­leys, ham­lets, and towns, they came in droves to say, “we do not want this.
But police did not change their ways; instead, as the move­ment inten­si­fied, police became more bru­tal, more lethal. Even more shock­ing than their refusal to change was that offi­cers saw them­selves as the oppo­si­tion to the Black Lives Matter Movement, and they cer­tain­ly act­ed as a vio­lent opposition.
They drove their patrol cars into pro­tes­tors, beat, shot, pep­per-sprayed, and com­mit­ted all kinds of crimes against legit­i­mate pro­tes­tors who dared to stand up to the state tyran­ny they exemplified.

These atroc­i­ties will not end any­time soon because the pow­ers that entrenched the vicious sys­tem of apartheid did not put them in place to eas­i­ly be uprooted.
Adolph Hitler is report­ed to have looked to the American sep­a­ra­tion mod­el when he decid­ed to excom­mu­ni­cate the Jews from German society.
The Apartheid sys­tem that was estab­lished in South Africa was mod­eled after the American sys­tem, and of course, Israel uses the same sys­tem to mur­der and oppress the Palestinian people.
In addi­tion to that, white Americans have been raised through­out many gen­er­a­tions to (a) either believe they are enti­tled to the spoils of white priv­i­lege, (b) has been social­ized into full accep­tance that every­thing is theirs, or © both.
Hardly any­one gives up their priv­i­lege of any sort; racial priv­i­lege is no excep­tion; there­fore, the fight ahead will be dif­fi­cult and unpredictable.
The sys­tem of oppres­sion was put in place to main­tain white pow­er. It was cre­at­ed explic­it­ly to bla­tant­ly oppress Blacks into per­pe­tu­ity; chang­ing that sys­tem will require all hands on deck.
Despite some changes at the local lev­els, real and mean­ing­ful change has been dif­fi­cult because Republicans have fought tooth and nail to retain in place those stric­tures of oppres­sion against the African-American com­mu­ni­ty ad oth­er com­mu­ni­ties of color.
The ACLU and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions have won some con­ces­sions along the way; how­ev­er, even the ACLU argues that at the fed­er­al lev­el, it is work­ing along­side many allies on the Justice in Policing Act that could over­haul the judge-invent­ed doc­trine of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, among oth­er changes.
“In the courts, we will be push­ing to over­turn these recent­ly-passed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al laws intend­ed to blunt the pow­er of protest and suing to hold police depart­ments account­able for sys­temic abus­es,” the Organization reported.
In the mean­time, Black and Brown Americans find them­selves the ene­my in their own coun­try, fac­ing down an esti­mat­ed 18,000 police depart­ments across the coun­try, with almost a mil­lion sworn offi­cers, many of whom are for­mer sol­diers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and who are ded­i­cat­ed, white supremacists.
Any chance they get to use lethal force is backed up by the sys­tem, includ­ing the pros­e­cu­tors whose jobs are to pros­e­cute crimes.

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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. 

‘Not Going to Do This Anymore’: Fed-Up Prosecutor Is Done With BS Traffic Stops, John Choi, the Minnesota prosecutor who charged the cop who killed Philando Castile, is already earning enemies for his groundbreaking new policy.

By Andrew Boryga…

John Choi said he will nev­er for­get July 6, 2016 — the day 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed by a St. Anthony Police Department offi­cer dur­ing a sim­ple traf­fic stop over a bro­ken taillight.
When asked for his license and reg­is­tra­tion, Castile told offi­cer Jeronimo Yanez he had a licensed gun. Yanez, fear­ful Castile might reach for it, told him not to. But despite Castile’s insis­tence that he was not reach­ing for the gun, Yanez fired sev­en shots from close range, killing him. Later, Yanez and anoth­er offi­cer in the car believed Castile resem­bled a rob­bery sus­pect before they pulled him over.
Choi, the Ramsey County Attorney in Minnesota who charged Yanez for the shoot­ing and lat­er saw Yanez acquit­ted by a jury, told The Daily Beast he’s nev­er stopped think­ing about the way Castile’s inter­ac­tion with Yanez began — over an innocu­ous infrac­tion. Choi said it’s the sort of traf­fic stop that Black peo­ple like Castile, who’d been stopped over 40 times before his death, are sub­ject to dai­ly by police offi­cers often fish­ing for drugs, guns, and an easy arrest.
In hon­or of Castile, Choi announced Wednesday his office would no longer pros­e­cute felony cas­es result­ing from minor traf­fic stops for vio­la­tions like an expired reg­is­tra­tion, over­ly tint­ed win­dows, or bro­ken lights. The change, Choi said, is a delib­er­ate attempt to cut down on what he said are unnec­es­sary stops by police of peo­ple of col­or that too often spi­ral into fatal incidents.
“I’m not going to do this any­more,” Choi told The Daily Beast. “I am not going to per­pet­u­ate these unjust prac­tices that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact my community.”

Valerie Castile, Philando’s moth­er, praised Choi for the change and said she hopes it inspires oth­er coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors and police depart­ments to do the same. She told The Daily Beast her son’s bro­ken tail light was sim­ply an “excuse” to pull him over, just as he’d been pulled over dozens of times before. “You went from a sim­ple traf­fic stop to a mur­der,” she said. “He end­ed up being mur­dered because of a bro­ken taillight.”
Despite the praise from some cor­ners, Choi told The Daily Beast he’s been work­ing behind the scenes to get police depart­ments in his coun­ty onboard with the change. The hope, he said, is that his new strat­e­gy isn’t just a top-down deci­sion. Still, one that would also inspire depart­ments to amend their own inter­nal poli­cies and prac­tices — which experts said often train police to stop dri­vers of col­or and those in high crime areas with low-lev­el traf­fic stops in the hopes of find­ing drugs or guns.
But Allison Schaber, the pres­i­dent of a union rep­re­sent­ing Ramsey County Sheriff Office deputies, told The Daily Beast that Choi’s new pol­i­cy “is anoth­er exam­ple of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office cir­cum­vent­ing the leg­isla­tive process to sat­is­fy his own polit­i­cal ambi­tions.” Schaber said Choi fur­thers the “mis­nomer” that valid traf­fic stops for small vio­la­tions “are any­thing less than legal stops that tar­get activ­i­ty already deemed illegal.”
Like oth­ers crit­i­cal of Choi’s change, Schaber said she believes the new pol­i­cy will only lead to more crime. “County Attorney Choi should focus on reduc­ing the crime wave his con­stituents are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing instead of try­ing to find more ways to jus­ti­fy crim­i­nal behavior.”
Brian Peters, the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers union exec­u­tive direc­tor, fired a mis­sive at Choi dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, call­ing the pol­i­cy “absurd” and “a slap in the face” to vic­tims of crime. “Ramsey County res­i­dents be warned: those that break the law won’t even get a slap on the wrist — they’ll get a high-five from the coun­ty attor­ney and be left to com­mit more and more seri­ous offens­es,” he said in a state­ment on Facebook.

Choi said Peters’ state­ment was an “out­dat­ed mod­el” of val­ues that led the coun­try to amass incar­cer­a­tion cri­sis and racial dis­par­i­ty in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Choi told The Daily Beast that after meet­ing with police chiefs in his coun­ty in June, about half the chiefs seemed will­ing to make their own changes due to his decision.
On Wednesday, ahead of Choi’s announce­ment, Chief Todd Axtell of the St. Paul Police Department announced a new set of guid­ance that aligns with Choi’s deci­sion, accord­ing to an email to his staff obtained by The Daily Beast.
Axtell said he would direct patrol offi­cers to pri­or­i­tize enforce­ment on reduc­ing crash­es, injuries, and death by focus­ing on vio­la­tions relat­ed to speed­ing, reck­less dri­ving, dri­ving under the influ­ence, and run­ning lights.
He said that minor vio­la­tions like expired tabs, a sin­gle burned-out head­light or tail­light, small wind­shield cracks, lack of license plate lights, and small objects hang­ing from mir­rors are “ille­gal and impor­tant to note.” Still, he said that they have lit­tle effect on the safe­ty of citizens.
“I want to be per­fect­ly clear: We should not use these vio­la­tions as a pri­ma­ry rea­son for a traf­fic stop unless there’s an artic­u­la­ble pub­lic safe­ty con­cern,” Axtell wrote.
The Roseville Police Department has also made pub­lic their sup­port of Choi’s deci­sion. In a press release on Wednesday, the depart­ment acknowl­edged that focus­ing on “equip­ment vio­la­tions” dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and “under­mines law enforcement’s legitimacy.”
The release states that on August 1, the depart­ment changed their traf­fic pol­i­cy, and “absent oth­er fac­tors,” they will no longer enforce “equip­ment vio­la­tions, expired reg­is­tra­tions, or oth­er non-mov­ing vio­la­tions that do not cre­ate a pub­lic safe­ty con­cern or a dan­ger­ous con­di­tion.” (This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the Daily Beast)

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If the American vot­er were an intel­li­gent elec­torate, the Republican par­ty would no longer be viable. Alas, it real­ly isn’t, so the peo­ple’s ene­mies con­tin­ue to cre­ate main­tain the struc­tures that have made America one of the worst Human Rights offend­ers in human history.
Yes, I said it; talk­ing about human rights and human rights are two dif­fer­ent things. After keep­ing oth­er peo­ple in bond­ed servi­tude for hun­dreds of years, refus­ing to pay them for their ances­tor’s blood and labor, and insti­tut­ing anoth­er form of slav­ery since the Civil War, America is by far the world’s great­est human rights offend­er in my book.
The actions America took, imme­di­ate­ly after recon­struc­tion to insti­tute the black codes, redlin­ing, jim crow, the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, and oth­er white pow­er laws which are intact today, makes it clear that America has no legal or moral author­i­ty to speak to any oth­er nation about human rights abus­es when it is itself still one of the great­est offenders.
Only in America can police offi­cials decide what the laws will be. This kind of tail-wag­ging the dog sce­nario is only pos­si­ble because the American police offi­cer, white or black, enforces whiteness.
I speak out against com­plic­it pros­e­cu­tors and judges dai­ly; I have car­ried this sto­ry with great pride and joy because it does not val­i­date my con­cerns about pros­e­cu­tors and judges being com­plic­it with mur­der­ous cops. It shows that I have been on to some­thing that runs much deeper.
Thank you, Prosecutor Choi.…..

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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. 

As part of our deci­sion to con­tin­ue to shine a light on American police cor­rup­tion, bru­tal­i­ty, Racism, and mur­der­ous prac­tices, here is anoth­er exam­ple of America’s finest.
The fol­low­ing is a case in which they mur­dered Ronald Green then lied to his fam­i­ly that he died in a traf­fic acci­dent. They cov­ered up evi­dence, and when it was dis­cov­ered that they mur­dered mis­ter Green an African-American man, as you must have imag­ined, they com­menced an inves­ti­ga­tion and found them­selves not guilty.….Look at these dement­ed sub­hu­man crea­tures lit­er­al­ly killing Ronald Greene.

Well, why don’t I let you see for yourself?

Louisiana State Trooper Accused of Hiding Body Camera Video From Ronald Greene Case Will Not Be Disciplined…

An inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the Louisiana State Police has con­clud­ed that Lt.John Clary, an offi­cer accused of hid­ing body cam­era footage of the bru­tal beat­ing and death of Black motorist Ronald Greene, will not be dis­ci­plined or charged. In a state­ment from the state police spokesman, the admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that no evi­dence proved or dis­proved the alle­ga­tions that Clary lied about the footage or pur­pose­ly hid it. According to ABC affil­i­ate WBRZ on Tuesday, the inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed in July.
When Ronald Greene died in police cus­tody after attempt­ing to elude a traf­fic stop in May 2019, offi­cers told his fam­i­ly that he died after his car crashed into a tree. Both the fam­i­ly and med­ical exam­in­er noticed that Greene’s severe injuries showed a lot more than a car crash had hap­pened that night. Still, Clary, accord­ing to the Associated Press, told detec­tives that he didn’t have any­body’s cam­era footage from the incident.
Then last year, a graph­ic video mirac­u­lous­ly emerged show­ing that Greene was beat­en, choked, dragged, and tased by offi­cers. Clary’s body cam­era took it.NOLA reports that Clary’s footage was miss­ing from the inves­tiga­tive file sent to Union Parish District Attorney John Belton in 2019 and only turned up this past March after a State police train­ing instruc­tor told inves­ti­ga­tors that it existed.

A fed­er­al civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion is under­way into Greene’s death, along with the beat­ings of at least three oth­er Black motorists by troop­ers with Monroe-based Troop F in 2019 and 2020. The troop, with about 60 mem­bers cov­er­ing a dozen north­east Louisiana parish­es, is almost entire­ly White.

When Clary arrived, Greene was already shack­led and face­down on the road­side. Master Trooper Kory York was strad­dling Greene and hold­ing him down while he moaned and howled.

Clary’s video shows troop­ers final­ly prop­ping up Greene, who had gone limp and stopped breath­ing by the time emer­gency tech­ni­cians arrived, accord­ing to a report by Trooper Albert Paxton, a State Police detec­tive assigned to the case. Clary gave a state­ment say­ing troop­ers sat up Greene and “held his head up so he could get a clear air­way,” but his video shows oth­er­wise, Paxton wrote.

Computer logs show that Clary, the high­est-rank­ing troop­er on the scene that night, down­loaded the footage from his body cam­era a few hours after Greene died, along with those of DeMoss and Hollingsworth. But accord­ing to Paxton, the videos Clary gave him that day end­ed up includ­ing three copies of his dash­cam video and none from his body camera.

Clary also claimed he’d reached the scene only after “every­thing was over,” and that he didn’t have body-cam­era video, the report said.

In February, State Trooper Kory York was sus­pend­ed with­out pay after the body cam­era footage showed him kick­ing and drag­ging Greene by his leg shack­les. According to AP, Chris Hollingsworth, who has since died in a car crash, was caught on audio from his body cam­era brag­ging about beat­ing and chok­ing Greene.

State troop­ers were also involved in the police bru­tal­i­ty cas­es of Aaron Bowman and Antonio Harris.

Over the week­end, Clary was seen guard­ing LA Tech head foot­ball coach Skip Holtz at a team game with Mississippi State on nation­al tele­vi­sion. That’s pret­ty high pro­file for some­one who alleged­ly lied about body­cam footage and qui­et­ly got away with it.

Let’s take a moment to real­ize that if Clary con­tin­ued to for­get about his body cam­era footage con­ve­nient­ly, Greene’s fam­i­ly and the pub­lic would still be left ques­tion­ing his death. It feels a bit cheap that he’s get­ting off with­out dis­ci­pline, but you can’t expect great results when the police are told to inves­ti­gate themselves.

The fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the troop­ers, includ­ing Greene’s case, is still underway.

The idea behind the actions of these race sol­diers is to cause max­i­mum hurt to Black people.
Almost a decade ago, the FBI, which is itself no paragon of virtue, warned that white suprema­cists and skin­heads were infil­trat­ing and tak­ing over police departments.
Nothing was done about it; now imag­ine that those peo­ple are well entrenched in the almost 18,000 police depart­ments across all 50 states almost two decades later.
Their way of think­ing and actions has become the cul­ture that now guides how police react to Black and Brown cit­i­zens across the country.
Added to that is the con­tin­ued mil­i­ta­riza­tion of these police forces, which are mere mili­tias with badges and the pow­er to act under the col­or of law.
Shocked?
Don’t be shocked; get involved.
This is clas­sic American polic­ing; they bru­tal­ize and mur­der Black Americans, then lie about their crimes, pros­e­cu­tors in most cas­es know that they com­mit crimes, and they move moun­tains to cov­er the tracks of those mur­der­ous cops.
The Judges are no bet­ter; they accept the word of dirty cops and use that taint­ed evi­dence to con­vict peo­ple of col­or, then give Blacks, in par­tic­u­lar, expo­nen­tial­ly more prison time for the same crime than they do white defendants.
These mur­der­ous beasts mute the sounds and turn off body­cams that are sup­posed to record their con­tacts with the pub­lic, and yet they suf­fer no con­se­quences for these actions, which clear­ly are criminal.
The aver­age per­son who takes steps to con­ceal a crime is charged with felonies, not so for these pro­tect­ed mur­der­ers oper­at­ing under the col­or of law.
Even with clear evi­dence that this mur­der co-con­spir­a­tor Cleary, was part of the mur­der con­spir­a­cy, nei­ther he nor the oth­er mur­der­ous hea­thens have been held account­able by the so-called jus­tice sys­tem (MB)

After Gregory McMichael and his son Travis mur­dered Amhaud Arbury in 2020, aid­ed by their neigh­bor William(Roddy) Bryan, this writer argued that the case was mis­han­dled by the then pros­e­cu­tor Jackie Johnson who clear­ly had shown favoritism toward the two killers, one of whom was a for­mer cop who worked in her office as an investigator.
Well, we are hap­py to see that your hum­ble ser­vant was not the only per­son who thought that Jackie Johnson had com­mit­ted crimes in the way she han­dled the inves­ti­ga­tions until it blew up in her face.

However, it was not only Johnson, whom I per­son­al­ly believed was crim­i­nal­ly cul­pa­ble; I also believe the pros­e­cu­tor from the neigh­bor­ing coun­ty, George Barnhill, may have also com­mit­ted crim­i­nal acts to pro­tect the father and son mur­der team.
Below is a video and a link to an arti­cle I did dis­cussing the ins and outs of the cor­rup­tion as I saw it then, even as much of the con­ver­sa­tion was cen­tered on the killing itself.

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

Jackie Johnson is accused of direct­ing police not to arrest one of the sus­pects and show­ing “favor and affec­tion” to anoth­er. Ms. Johnson has pre­vi­ous­ly denied any wrong­do­ing in her han­dling of the case. The Georgia attor­ney gen­er­al’s office indict­ment claims Ms. Johnson “know­ing­ly and will­ful­ly” hin­dered police offi­cers from arrest­ing sus­pect Travis McMichael.

It also alleges that Ms. Johnson showed “favor and affec­tion” to Travis’ father, Gregory McMichael, a for­mer dis­trict attor­ney employ­ee. In the indict­ment, Jackie Johnson also failed to treat Mr. Arbery and his fam­i­ly “fair­ly and with dig­ni­ty” by not dis­clos­ing she had sought the help of anoth­er dis­trict attor­ney, George Barnhill.
Those of you who both­er to take the time to read or lis­ten to the con­tent on this medi­um will recall that I have con­sis­tent­ly point­ed out that though police are the actu­al killers, pros­e­cu­tor’s offices and judges are equal­ly as guilty of the cor­rupt racism; plagu­ing American policing.

As a con­se­quence of Jackie Johnson’s con­duct, police did not charge the McMichaels until the shoot­ing gained wide­spread atten­tion and sparked nation­wide protests. Jackie Johnson was vot­ed out of office lat­er that year after the nation­al uproar over the case.
In the mean­time, I will con­tin­ue to shine a light on the pros­e­cu­tors who not only shield cor­rupt, mur­der­ous cops they hin­der full and trans­par­ent inves­ti­ga­tions into their crim­i­nal conduct.

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Not only was the former military killer not held accountable, but he was also promoted to sergeant after shooting Dontrell Stephens four times.
Dontrell Stephens was unarmed.

Gut-wrench­ing? Yes. A tear-jerker?.….….….sure!!!
As a for­mer cop, when I first read this sto­ry, I wept openly.
I wept because in my decade long ser­vice as a law-enforce­ment offi­cer in a coun­try that has been char­ac­ter­ized as the fifth most vio­lent coun­try in the world, one that has borne the brunt of America’s manip­u­la­tion when it comes to polic­ing, I have had hun­dreds, prob­a­bly thou­sands of expe­ri­ences like the one in which Dontrell Stephens was murdered.
Yet, I nev­er once shot a sin­gle per­son in any of those encounters.
I said encoun­ters in which Dontrell Stephens was killed because that dement­ed, demon­ic beast that shot him that day intend­ed to kill him on the spot. His psy­chi­cal death 8‑years ‑lat­er was just a delayed event.
Adams Lin is char­ac­ter­ized as a mil­i­taris­tic cop who car­ries extra mag­a­zine clips above what his depart­ment requires. When ques­tioned about it, he replied, “As we say in the Army, ‘We pray for peace, but we train for war.”
This is the most direct state­ment we have heard from a killer cop that American polic­ing bad­ly needs revamping.
They are trained killers, not peace offi­cers. These degen­er­ates do not belong on our streets; they see parts of the pop­u­la­tion as their ene­my to be exterminated.
Since shoot­ing Dontrell Stephens, Adams Lin has been pro­mot­ed to sergeant.
It is the typ­i­cal path for an aggres­sive cop who wants to be pro­mot­ed or com­mend­ed; shoot, kill or maim a Black per­son, and you are pro­mot­ed rather than held accountable.
It hap­pens all the time across the Country in depart­ments small and large; from Ferguson, Missouri to Westchester County New York to Palm Beach, Florida, and all places in between, aggres­sive killer cops shoot and kill an unarmed Black per­son and lies about being afraid for their life and rather than be impris­oned for betray­ing their oaths and lying, they are pro­mot­ed and held up as heroes.
It is atyp­i­cal of any oth­er [gang] that has cer­tain rites as part of their ini­ti­a­tion process; mur­der a Black per­son, and you have demon­strat­ed that you are one of us.
The Black com­mu­ni­ty will have to decide whether it will sit around and allow this to con­tin­ue or whether it will get up forty-plus mil­lion strong and put an end to the genocide.
Mike Beckles.….….….….…

Nearly eight years after Dontrell Stephens was shot by police and left par­a­lyzed, the 28-year-old has died.
According to The Palm Beach Post, Stephens died due to com­pli­ca­tions from paral­y­sis. He report­ed­ly passed away on Sunday, August 29.
Dontrell had an unfor­tu­nate and dif­fi­cult life. His attor­ney Jack Scarola said to The Palm Beach Post, “It was a vari­ety of issues, includ­ing bed sores. I hope that as a con­se­quence of the res­o­lu­tion of his case that he had some relief. But what­ev­er relief he had was very short-lived.”
In June of 2020, Stephens even­tu­al­ly received a set­tle­ment for $6 mil­lion. Nearly $1 mil­lion of his set­tle­ment went to out­stand­ing med­ical bills, WPTV reports.
On Sept. 13, 2013, Dontrell Stephens was rid­ing his bicy­cle when a police offi­cer’s car was fol­low­ing him. The dash­cam video, obtained by The Palm Beach Post, showed the police car pulls him over. Stephens got off his bike and walked toward the deputy. Seconds lat­er, the deputy shot Stephens four times. Stephens could be seen run­ning away as the bul­lets struck him. Stephens, 20 at the time, was car­ry­ing a cell­phone and was unarmed.

The following historical narration was pulled from (History​.com) in totality.
Thanks for your indulgence. (MB)

In the lead-up to the lib­er­a­tion of enslaved peo­ple under the Thirteenth Amendment, abo­li­tion­ists argued about the fate of slaves once they were freed. One group argued for col­o­niza­tion, either by return­ing the for­mer­ly enslaved peo­ple to Africa or cre­at­ing their own home­land. In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln rec­og­nized the ex-slave coun­tries of Haiti and Liberia, hop­ing to open up chan­nels for col­o­niza­tion, with Congress allo­cat­ing $600,000 to help. While the col­o­niza­tion plan did not pan out, the coun­try set forth on a path of legal­ly man­dat­ed seg­re­ga­tion. The first steps toward offi­cial seg­re­ga­tion came in the form of “Black Codes.” These were laws passed through­out the South start­ing around 1865 that dic­tat­ed most aspects of Black peo­ples’ lives, includ­ing work­ing and liv­ing. The codes also ensured Black people’s avail­abil­i­ty for cheap labor after they abol­ished slavery.

Segregation soon became an offi­cial pol­i­cy enforced by a series of Southern laws. Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a deroga­to­ry term for Blacks), leg­is­la­tors seg­re­gat­ed every­thing from schools to res­i­den­tial areas to pub­lic parks to the­aters to pools to ceme­ter­ies, asy­lums, jails, and res­i­den­tial homes. There were sep­a­rate wait­ing rooms for whites and Black peo­ple in pro­fes­sion­al offices, and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state even to seg­re­gate pub­lic phone booths.
Colleges were seg­re­gat­ed, and sep­a­rate Black insti­tu­tions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were cre­at­ed to com­pen­sate. Virginia’s Hampton Institute was estab­lished in 1869 as a school for Black youth, but with white instruc­tors teach­ing skills to rel­e­gate Black peo­ple in ser­vice posi­tions to whites.

The Supreme Court and Segregation

In 1875 the out­go­ing Republican-con­trolled House and Senate passed a civ­il rights bill out­law­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion in schools, church­es, and pub­lic trans­porta­tion. But the bill was bare­ly enforced and was over­turned by the Supreme Court in 1883.
In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that seg­re­ga­tion was con­sti­tu­tion­al. The rul­ing estab­lished the idea of “sep­a­rate but equal.” The case involved a mixed-race man who was forced to sit in the Black-des­ig­nat­ed train car under Louisiana’s Separate Car Act.

Black Codes

Black codes were restric­tive laws designed to lim­it the free­dom of African Americans and ensure their avail­abil­i­ty as a cheap labor force after slav­ery was abol­ished dur­ing the Civil War. Though the Union vic­to­ry had giv­en some 4 mil­lion enslaved peo­ple their free­dom, the ques­tion of freed blacks’ sta­tus in the post­war South was still very much unre­solved. Under black codes, many states required Black peo­ple to sign year­ly labor con­tracts; if they refused, they risked being arrest­ed, fined, and forced into unpaid labor. Outrage over black codes helped under­mine sup­port for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party.
When slav­ery end­ed in the United States, free­dom still elud­ed African Americans who con­tend­ed with the repres­sive set of laws known as the black codes. Widely enact­ed through­out the South fol­low­ing the Civil War—a peri­od called Reconstruction—these laws both lim­it­ed the rights of Black peo­ple and exploit­ed them as a labor source.
In fact, life after bondage didn’t dif­fer much from life dur­ing bondage for the African Americans sub­ject­ed to the black codes. This was by design, as slav­ery had been a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar enter­prise, and the for­mer Confederate states sought a way to con­tin­ue this sys­tem of subjugation.

“They may have lost the war, but they’re not going to lose pow­er civi­cal­ly and social­ly,” says M. Keith Claybrook Jr., an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach. “So, the black codes were an attempt to restrict and lim­it freedom.”
Losing the Civil War meant the South had lit­tle choice but to rec­og­nize the Reconstruction-era poli­cies that abol­ished slav­ery. By using the law to deny African Americans the oppor­tu­ni­ties and priv­i­leges that white peo­ple enjoyed, the one-time Confederacy could keep these new­ly lib­er­at­ed Americans in vir­tu­al bondage. White planters in these states denied Black peo­ple the chance to rent or buy land and paid them a pit­tance. The 1865 rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the 13^th Amendmentpro­hib­it­ed slav­ery and servi­tude in all cir­cum­stances “except as a pun­ish­ment for crime.” This loop­hole result­ed in Southern states pass­ing the black codes to crim­i­nal­ize activ­i­ties that would make it easy to imprison African Americans and effec­tive­ly force them into servi­tude once more

First enact­ed in 1865 in South Carolina and Mississippi, the black codes var­ied slight­ly from place to place but were gen­er­al­ly very sim­i­lar. They pro­hib­it­ed “loi­ter­ing, vagrancy,” Claybrook says. “The idea was that if you’re going to be free, you should be work­ing. If you had three or four Black peo­ple stand­ing around talk­ing, they were actu­al­ly vagrant and could be con­vict­ed of a crime and sent to jail.” In addi­tion to crim­i­nal­iz­ing job­less­ness for African Americans, the codes required Black peo­ple to sign annu­al labor con­tracts that ensured they received the low­est pay pos­si­ble for their work. The codes con­tained anti-entice­ment mea­sures to pre­vent prospec­tive employ­ers from pay­ing Black work­ers high­er wages than their cur­rent employ­ers paid them. Failing to sign a labor con­tract could result in the offend­er being arrest­ed, sen­tenced to unpaid labor, or fined. Fees were the eas­i­est way to rein­sti­tute servi­tude, as African Americans earned so lit­tle that pay­ing a steep fine was out of the ques­tion for most of them. Failure to pay fines allowed the state to order them to work off their bal­ances, a debt peon­age sys­tem. Typically this work was agri­cul­tur­al in nature, just as Black Americans had per­formed while enslaved.

Black chil­dren were not spared from forced labor. If their “par­ents were seen to be unfit or weren’t around, the state received these chil­dren as orphans, and they would be put into appren­tice­ships,” Claybrook says. “Again, they are doing work with­out compensation.”
Read more at https://​www​.his​to​ry​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​o​d​e​s​-​r​e​c​o​n​s​t​r​u​c​t​i​o​n​-​s​l​a​v​ery

If you are going to lec­ture oth­er nations on human rights, you damn sure bet­ter have your human rights record intact. And so when America decides to become the arbiter on what human rights look like, it was and is always fair that those coun­tries look at what America’s human rights record looks like.
It is, there­fore, no sur­prise that Russia, China, Iran, and oth­ers laugh at the United States’ record on human rights when chal­lenged on their record.
It is noble to be a voice that speaks out against human rights abus­es glob­al­ly. Still, nobil­i­ty with­out account­abil­i­ty is called hypocrisy .….…and that is where nations are draw­ing the lines.

In seek­ing to cement its author­i­ty on the rest of the world, part of what the United States has done has been to cut fund­ing to coun­tries whose secu­ri­ty forces it has deemed to be in con­tra­ven­tion of accept­able inter­na­tion­al norms.
Many small coun­tries, includ­ing Jamaica with lim­it­ed resources, have strug­gled to main­tain order and deal with the mass influx of ille­gal American guns flood­ing the Island through their porous borders.
In deal­ing with those transna­tion­al chal­lenges, the secu­ri­ty forces have some­times had to resort to uncon­ven­tion­al means and, in the process, seen fund­ing from the United States cut and the visas of indi­vid­ual offi­cers revoked.

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

But were those ham­fist­ed approach­es always jus­ti­fied giv­en America’s own heavy-hand­ed approach to deal­ing with its own cit­i­zens who com­mit far less seri­ous transgressions?
Is the American approach legit­i­mate giv­en America’s shame­ful his­to­ry regard­ing how it has han­dled its African-American and Native-American pop­u­la­tion, or even what it did to the Japanese pop­u­la­tion dur­ing World War II?
But while America’s his­to­ry on race rela­tions has been any­thing but good, its con­tin­ued oppres­sion of racial minori­ties leg­isla­tive­ly is even more shock­ing, as the world watch­es in hor­ror the play­ing ou of ver­i­ta­ble exe­cu­tion dai­ly of American cit­i­zens by agents of the state.
It is not just that state agents kill; the lev­el of cal­lous­ness and bru­tal­i­ty that char­ac­ter­izes those killings make them nauseating.

Surely, state actors who act with such impuni­ty must be con­fi­dent in the sys­tem they serve to pro­tect them from account­abil­i­ty, and it sure does.
New York Times writ­ers John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro wrote in 2020, “A famed Black artist is beat­en by two police offi­cers in Midtown Manhattan and false­ly charged. It sounds like it could be any one of count­less news sto­ries from the past year, but in fact, we’re talk­ing about 1959. The artist was Miles Davis. in the eyes of the American pub­lic, Davis was an icon. In the eyes of the New York City Police Department, he was Black”.

The sav­agery of American police is not man­i­fest­ed only in the every­day killings, usu­al­ly of unarmed cit­i­zens. People expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal break­downs run­ning around naked are not spared a bar­rage of bul­lets; it is man­i­fest­ed in the beat­ings that occur with such fre­quen­cy that they do not get cov­ered by the media.
Today, thanks to cell­phones with cam­eras and the pow­er of social media, cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists can show­case the grue­some bar­barism and the cal­lous ani­mal­is­tic sav­agery of what pass­es for polic­ing in the United States.
As that hap­pens and the world becomes more sen­si­tized to what has real­ly been hap­pen­ing while American lec­tures them for far less­er trans­gres­sions, I have cau­tioned that across America and even at the Federal lev­el, expect that leg­is­la­tures will begin tak­ing away the right to film cops.
Already police have been approach­ing inno­cent cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists claim­ing to divide their atten­tion between what they are doing and the cam­era per­son film­ing them.
They know that the per­son film­ing pos­es no threat to them except when they break the laws. Still, by con­tin­u­al­ly claim­ing that it is a secu­ri­ty issue to them and the vic­tim they stop and abuse, Republicans will begin draft­ing laws sup­pos­ed­ly to pro­tect the peo­ple stopped; when cleary those laws will be aimed at giv­ing police more cov­er to com­mit more atroc­i­ties against those they hate.

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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.