Author Archives: Mike

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As Voting Begins Special Care Should Be Paid To Down Ballot Republicans Who Pose As Friends Of Our Community

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Many years ago I was with a for­mer col­league at the home of his dad in the Bronx hav­ing a dis­cus­sion about our for­mer life as police offi­cers. Dillo as we affec­tion­ate­ly referred to my friend turned to me and asked, “how come you speak out so much against the police and you were such a no-non­sense police officer”?
I was not put off by the ques­tion because we were what could be described as cops-cops, I sim­ply asked my friend, ” bro can you seri­ous­ly say that what these cops are doing to peo­ple of col­or is good polic­ing”?
Dillo looked stead­fast­ly at me for a good thir­ty sec­onds before low­er­ing his head and reply­ing, “Nah bro”.

After a decade of ser­vice in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) in which I saw ser­vice at the Beat & Foot Patrol, Mobile Reserves & CIB branch­es, being shot in the line of duty, and hav­ing mil­i­tat­ed for more and more pow­er for the police, I find it remark­able that I have now made a 180 degree turn away from much of those pow­ers be giv­en to police.
Now grant­ed that Jamaica and the United States are two sep­a­rate coun­tries with dif­fer­ent struc­tures, the cries in both nations for social jus­tice and the need to end police abuse is the same.

The prob­lem of police-relat­ed killings in the United States is not a prob­lem that is new. It is not a prob­lem for which the author­i­ties have cor­rect data, the author­i­ties do not have cor­rect data because the sys­tem is work­ing exact­ly the way they want it to work.
Without relit­i­gat­ing the his­to­ry of America’s entrenched racist poli­cies and how they influ­ence every­thing, includ­ing polic­ing, the shock­ing can­cer of police abuse in America should be aired out for the world to see.
It is so sys­temic that it goes far beyond just the killings, it has to do with evi­dence plant­i­ng, fal­si­fi­ca­tion of evi­dence, col­lu­sion by pros­e­cu­tors and police in the sys­temic cul­ture of oppres­sion of minori­ties, col­lu­sion between police, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges in the oppres­sion of minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, and more so the African-American community.
Judges are just as guilty as pros­e­cu­tors and cops, the dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harsh sen­tences African-Americans receive at their hands for the same offens­es com­mit­ted by whites, is both shame­ful and embar­rass­ing to them.

After George Floyd was mur­dered by Derek Chauvin and two oth­er cops in Minneapolis, there have been renewed calls for reimag­in­ing what polic­ing ought to look like. For the white pow­er struc­ture, Black peo­ple have no such right to self ‑deter­mi­na­tion, which includes no right to deter­mine how their tax dol­lars are spent by state and local governments.
Part of the strat­e­gy toward reimag­in­ing how Black com­mu­ni­ties ought to be policed, par­tic­u­lar­ly by white police is to elect pro­gres­sive pros­e­cu­tors that share the val­ues of the African-American community.
That does not mean [not] pun­ish­ing crim­i­nals, it means see­ing the dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of how the sys­tem is skewed against Blacks, and make deci­sions when to pros­e­cute or not to prosecute.
It is a tall order in a coun­try with such sys­temic and entrenched racism built-in, which ensures the abuse of minori­ties. Worse yet, Donald Trump and his lack­ey Bill Barr who heads the jus­tice depart­ment, are pulling out all of the stops to ensure that the sta­tus quo is not only retained but solidified.

Aramis Ayala

However, in Florida, State Attorney Aramis Ayala has launched a pro­gram to reduce the num­ber of peo­ple pros­e­cut­ed for non-vio­lent­ly resist­ing arrest.
Said Ms. Ayala, “We have con­sis­tent­ly heard that some mem­bers of law enforce­ment use this charge as a weapon when peo­ple don’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to their com­mands, or if they ask too many ques­tions before com­ply­ing, or sim­ply if they make an encounter more dif­fi­cult for the offi­cer.” In many cas­es, these peace­ful pro­test­ers have been met by efforts to silence them and to crush their First Amendment rights to get them off the streets and out of the pub­lic view.”
Unfortunately for African-Americans with­in Ms. Ayala’s sphere of influ­ence, she will not be seek­ing re-elec­tion come November.

In this elec­tion all things are on the bal­lot, it’s not just about get­ting rid of Donald Trump along with as many as pos­si­ble of the House and Senate Republicans who have enabled Trump’s crim­i­nal­i­ty, it is about remov­ing and replac­ing local Republicans that move around and pass around us like they are good peo­ple, they enjoy bi-par­ti­san sup­port and they gen­er­al­ly get elect­ed by pass­ing them­selves off as one of us.
Here in Dutchess County in New York’s Hudson Valley, Democrats con­tin­ue to vote Republicans like Sue Serino, Marc Molinaro, and oth­ers into office.
Despite a large­ly black com­mu­ni­ty in the city and town of Poughkeepsie and all around the coun­ty the Poughkeepsie com­mon coun­cil is con­trolled by Republicans, the coun­ty exec­u­tive is Republican, and all around the coun­ty, Republicans con­trol vir­tu­al­ly all of the local com­mon councils.

During the George Floyd protest in the city of Poughkeepsie, I rubbed shoul­ders with a few of those politi­cians, Republicans all, with the excep­tion of our Democratic Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney.
There was State Senator Sue Serino, County Executive Marc Molinaro, Mayor of the city of Poughkeepsie Rob Rollinson.
Like typ­i­cal politi­cians, they all had their canned answers, when I asked them why they found it nec­es­sary to be there? Nothing in their answers was worth my time, or worth writ­ing about.
Today there are protests still going on right here in New York State, in Minnesota, in Oregon, In Kentucky, and oth­er states, all across the coun­try peo­ple are call­ing out for changes in polic­ing prac­tices. Personally I believe that those calls do not go near­ly far enough.
But what I thought was a real affront was a social media post from Sue Serino days ago. I could not help myself so I had this to say in response to her gloat­ing about this endorsement.

Our local law enforce­ment goes above and beyond to build bridges and keep our com­mu­ni­ty safe. I am incred­i­bly proud to have the sup­port of so many brave men and women in this year’s elec­tion. At a time when out-of-touch New York City politi­cians con­tin­ue to put crim­i­nals ahead of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, this year’s elec­tion is crit­i­cal. We have to bring bal­ance back to Albany to help keep our com­mu­ni­ties safe and to ensure that vic­tims and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have a real voice in the process. #Serino4NY #StandWithSue

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Me:

Mike Beckles
I met you in Poughkeepsie at a protest when George Floyd was murdered.
You came across as nice, but I’m won­der­ing whether you were only there because oth­er lead­ers were there a‑la coun­ty exec­u­tive, con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive, etc.
You talk about police sup­port but do not utter a word about the harm police are doing to fam­i­lies and that is exact­ly why noth­ing gets done about dirty cops who abuse and kill inno­cent citizens.
Politicians like your­self are far too behold­en to them and their unions.

She DM-ed me

Hi Mike:
I absolute­ly have been very vocal in speak­ing out against the vio­lence of any kind and was at the prayer vig­il in Poughkeepsie to sin­cere­ly stand against that act of hate and sense­less vio­lence. There were also many offi­cers there them­selves, and at sub­se­quent protests, where they knelt along­side pro­tes­tors to denounce bru­tal­i­ty and violence.
I am proud of the sup­port I receive from the mem­bers of law enforce­ment who tru­ly serve our com­mu­ni­ty with hon­or and a sin­cere dri­ve to build con­nec­tions in the neigh­bor­hoods they serve, but I also absolute­ly under­stand that there is work to be done to ensure that every mem­ber of our com­mu­ni­ty feels heard, respect­ed and safe here. I believe that starts with encour­ag­ing open dia­logue which is some­thing I’ve been work­ing hard to fos­ter here.
Please know, I would wel­come a con­ver­sa­tion with you if ever you’d like to share your thoughts on this impor­tant issue more in-depth with me. Please feel free to call me on my cell any time at (XXX)XXX_XXXX, I redact­ed the sen­a­tor’s phone num­ber out of respect for her pri­va­cy. Our local law enforce­ment goes above and beyond.
Sincerely, Sue.

Notice that the Senator did not once men­tion the term (police vio­lence), not once. Reading her com­ments, one would believe that George Floyd was killed by some thug oth­er than the uni­formed thugs paid by the peo­ple of Minneapolis Minnesota.
Frankly, I haven’t yet called the sen­a­tor to give her my point of view or to hear her detail exact­ly what she will be doing here in New York state to pro­tect inno­cent cit­i­zens from amped-up police that are not the saints she described in uni­form. She is present­ly in the fight for her polit­i­cal life with her demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent [Karen] Smythe.
but I did send her a response.

Senator;

Thanks for respond­ing. The issue of police abuse of peo­ple of col­or has been here for as long as the black codes were enact­ed dur­ing recon­struc­tion. Today police abuse of Black cit­i­zens stands as the num­ber one issue affect­ing African-Americans. Not only have our peo­ple suf­fered through hun­dreds of years of slav­ery and all of the ignominy inher­ent in it, but still today we con­tin­ue to suf­fer at the hands of police who con­tin­ue to enforce a dif­fer­ent kind of slav­ery, but slav­ery nonethe­less. There needs to be a clear line of demar­ca­tion between the lies that call­ing out dirty cops and the dan­gers they pose, is syn­ony­mous with being anti-law enforce­ment. I spent a decade in law enforce­ment, I was shot in the line of duty albeit, in a dif­fer­ent coun­try, I am pro the rule of law. In no way shape or form could I sup­port what police are doing to peo­ple under the col­or of law. It requires strong denun­ci­a­tions from every elect­ed offi­cial. Police can­not set the rules, you the elect­ed offi­cials are elect­ed to enact the peo­ple’s agen­da and the police must fol­low that agen­da. It is for that rea­son I believe that police unions should be banned from giv­ing to polit­i­cal cam­paigns and should not be allowed to give endorse­ments. I also believe that qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty should be done away with, and some of the resources spent on police should be divert­ed to fix­ing some of the socio-eco­nom­ic ills that affect dis­ad­van­taged communities.
Mike Beckles. Mikebeckles52@​gmail.​com
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Not all police offi­cers are bad, we all know that, it should not be a prob­lem for any­one to make the sim­ple dis­tinc­tion between the good and the bad. There should be no mealy-mouthed response from any­one least of all elect­ed officials.
In 2014 I lost my 20-year old son who was a Junior at Plattsburg State University, the actions of the New York State police, the Plattsburg Police, and University Police were noth­ing short of exem­plary to me and my family.
I will always hold those offi­cers dear to my heart in the way that they not only car­ried out their duties in find­ing our son but in their gra­cious­ness to me and my family.
With all of the fore­gone and hav­ing been a law enforce­ment offi­cer myself, I am still not con­flict­ed about speak­ing out against bad cops.
We should expect no less from our elect­ed offi­cials, they are the ones who are sup­posed to enact the agen­das we elect them to enact.
READ AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.
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Donald Trump The Ultimate Con Artist

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From Contributor Conrad Tucker.

Mineral Pyrite, aka Fool’s Gold, is a chem­i­cal found in Iron and known for its bril­liant lus­ter. It was fre­quent­ly mis­tak­en for gold by min­ers dur­ing the California Gold Rush ((1848 – 1855). Fast for­ward to 2016, when a bom­bas­tic and charis­mat­ic New York real estate devel­op­er declared his can­di­da­cy for President of the United States to replace the then 44th President, Barack Obama. By now, you must know that the can­di­date was no oth­er than Donald Trump. By then end of this piece, you will under­stand why I pref­aced this arti­cle about Mineral Pyrite and cor­re­lates it to one of the biggest con­men in American history.

Racism

The day Trump announced that he was run­ning for office, nobody took him seri­ous­ly or gave him a remote chance of becom­ing the 45th President of the great­est coun­try on earth. To begin his cam­paign, he attacked Mexicans and brand­ed them as crim­i­nals and rapists, and accused Mexico of not send­ing their best, but rather the worst among them. Trump con­tin­ued his racist tirades against America’s south­ern neigh­bor and promised to build a wall that Mexico would pay for to keep its nation­als from get­ting into the coun­try ille­gal­ly. He then called for a ban on all Muslims from enter­ing the USA.

The Justice Department charged Trump in the 1980s for not rent­ing his prop­er­ty to black peo­ple, a case he sub­se­quent­ly set­tled. He also took out a full-page ad in a local New York news­pa­per accus­ing the inno­cent five black men of the rape and mur­der of a female in Central Park, the media dubbed the case the Central Park Five. Since becom­ing President, Trump made many racists remarks, espe­cial­ly against minor­i­ty women, some of whom are in con­gress. Yesterday, he called Sen. Kamala Harris, the Vice Presidential Candidate on the Democratic tick­et, a mon­ster. During last week’s debate against Joe Biden, he refused to con­demn white suprema­cy and told The Proud Boys — one of his rightwing groups, prone to vio­lence to “stand by and stand back.” In 2017, he called white suprema­cists “very fine peo­ple,” after one of them use a car to mow down and killed a young woman who was protest­ing against them in Virginia. Yet, he took the oath of office to pro­tect the peo­ple of America, but only to fan the flames of racism and divi­sion with his racist rhetoric.

Who remem­bers the birther scan­dal he per­pe­trat­ed to dimin­ish and dis­re­spect the legit­i­mate President of the United States because he is black.

Wealth

Trump pro­mot­ed him­self as a self-made bil­lion­aire and par­layed that into a suc­cess­ful TV real­i­ty show, which ran for many years. Many peo­ple admired him as the flashy and wealthy real estate devel­op­er with an affin­i­ty for blonde hair Eastern European women. However, many did not pay atten­tion to the many bank­rupt­cies filed by his com­pa­nies. Most notable among his bank­rupt­cy fil­ings are a casi­no, air­lines, and the dis­graced Trump University. Who bank­rupts a casi­no; isn’t a casi­no sup­posed to be a cash cow?

The New York Times (NYT) recent­ly ran a piece expos­ing Trump’s dirty secret regard­ing tax eva­sion and tax avoid­ance. Many Americans were furi­ous to found out that Trump only paid $750.00 in Federal Income Tax for 2016 and 2017. Meanwhile, peo­ple who make less than six-fig­ure in earn­ings paid more than ten times the amount the President paid. The Times sto­ry also found out that the con­man is in a moun­tain of debt, up to the tune of 421 mil­lion dol­lars. The lender of this enor­mous sum of mon­ey is unan­i­mous, which has become a cause for con­cern to Americans that the President is com­pro­mised. It is an open secret that Trump is not a bil­lion­aire as he por­trayed him­self to be. The sto­ry in the NYT stat­ed that he has bor­rowed against his real estate assets and rumored that he owed anoth­er one hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars on Trump Tower, which could fore­close as ear­ly next year. And the paper also report­ed that all of his busi­ness­es, espe­cial­ly his golf cours­es, are los­ing money.

By all accounts, Trump, the oppor­tunist, ran for the pres­i­den­cy, not because he wants to help the American peo­ple but to raise his pro­file, which will enable him to make mon­ey to pay off the moun­tain of debt he is own­ing. Trump does­n’t care about the American peo­ple; he only cares about him­self, and more impor­tant­ly, his image. In essence, he sees it as anoth­er way to build wealth that he will inevitably lose, based on his his­to­ry. To sim­ply put, Trump is as broke as a church mouse. That is the main rea­son why he is hell-bent on not releas­ing his tax returns.

Empty Promises

What is astound­ing is the fact that so many peo­ple believe this inept, incom­pe­tent buf­foon, who is noth­ing but an abject fail­ure. He riled up his Obama haters with inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric and then fed it like raw meat them, and they devoured every ounce of it. Remember how he promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, aka Obama Care, with 26 days left in his pres­i­den­cy, he has not deliv­ered on his emp­ty promise. I ear­li­er allud­ed to the “wall,” the big, pow­er­ful wall that he was going to build, and Mexico would pay for it. Where is it? Another emp­ty promise fed to his acolytes.

Handling of Covid-19

Trump con­tin­ues to lie to the American peo­ple about his han­dling of the dead­ly virus. His fail­ure to act when told about it has cost tens of thou­sands of Americans their lives, with mil­lions more infect­ed and the unem­ploy­ment rate hov­er­ing around 14% ear­li­er this year. Remember, dur­ing the height of the first wave of the virus, how he pro­mot­ed Hydroxychloroquine as a ther­a­peu­tic to treat the virus? He did this against the advice of the doc­tors that com­prised his task force and oth­er promi­nent epi­demi­ol­o­gists. And, as you know, he is infect­ed with the virus, and none of the med­i­cines he got was Hydroxychloroquine. What does that tell you about this man? That he is truth­ful to Americans? That he cares about them? That he has their best inter­est at heart? The answers are no. Trump cares only about Trump, and the fools who sup­port him are obliv­i­ous to his dis­hon­esty and deceit. I pity them.

He is Fake

But those are the char­ac­ter­is­tic of an ego­ma­ni­ac con­man, who has a vast fol­low­ing of like-mind­ed racists, who believe and preach the same doc­trine as the President. Trump likes to label the media as fake, but he is per­haps the biggest fake that coun­try has seen. Sensible Americans know who this con artist is, and the polls are show­ing that he will be washed away by a tsuna­mi of Democratic voters.

Now, the empire has no clothes, and like Mineral Pyrite, he too is no gold.

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Protests Continue Over Arrest Of Pregnant Black Woman Kneed In Back By Officer/​cop Still On Duty

THE QUESTION HERE IS RATHER SIMPLE; WOULD THIS COP DO THIS TO A 9‑MONTHS-PREGNANT WHITE WOMAN, I’LL ANSWER THAT FOR YOU HELL NO!!!

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Kansas City, Missouri — A nine-months-preg­nant Black woman whose arrest by a Kansas City police offi­cer sparked out­rage and occu­pa­tion of City Hall grounds was so over­come with emo­tion Thursday that she was unable to address a ral­ly demand­ing police reform.
Deja Stallings end­ed up on the ground with an offi­cer’s knee in her back dur­ing the Sept. 30 arrest that was cap­tured on video. Civil rights orga­ni­za­tions and oth­ers have camped out at City Hall since and have vowed not to leave until the offi­cers involved and Police Chief Rick Smith are fired.
The pro­test­ers also want the city to redi­rect 50% of the police depart­men­t’s bud­get to social ser­vices sup­port­ing the Black com­mu­ni­ty. On Thursday, Stallings strug­gled to walk from the car to the steps of City Hall, where she was expect­ed to address the crowd. When her time to speak arrived, she man­aged to get out only a few words before she start­ed to cry and had to sit down.
Stallings’ lawyer, Stacy Shaw, read her state­ment, in which she described the phys­i­cal pain and a bruise she still has from the arrest.
“I cry every day because I am scared for my baby,” she said. “My baby girl has not even been born yet and she is a vic­tim of police bru­tal­i­ty. I am try­ing to stay strong but I know my baby is a fight­er. She needs to be the last child who is a vic­tim of the KCPD. She needs the demands of this occu­pa­tion to be met.”

Protesters hold signs out­side City Hall on October 8, 2020, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Shaw said doc­tors have checked the unborn baby, named Dsyre, and she appears to be healthy.
Stallings was issued a munic­i­pal cita­tion for hin­der­ing arrest after police said she inter­fered when they tried to arrest a man, and that she was put on the ground to be hand­cuffed because she resist­ed arrest.
Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Jean Peters-Baker is review­ing the arrest. Police said in a state­ment Thursday that the offi­cers involved remain on duty.
“We are review­ing the inci­dent as well,” spokesman Sgt. Jacob Becchina said, adding that police are coop­er­at­ing with the pros­e­cu­tors’ investigation.
Civil rights groups have said for months that Smith should resign or be fired because his depart­ment is plagued by racism and does­n’t inves­ti­gate or respond to unnec­es­sary force or fatal shoot­ings of Black peo­ple by officers.
Smith has said repeat­ed­ly that he does­n’t intend to resign but oth­er­wise has made no state­ment since the arrest.
Mayor Quinton Lucas has said he does­n’t believe it’s fea­si­ble to reduce the police bud­get by 50%.
Shaw said the pro­test­ers are not swayed.
“We have stat­ed that we will occu­py the seat of gov­ern­ment, right here on this lawn, until our demands are met or we are forcibly and vio­lent­ly removed from the prop­er­ty,” Shaw said.
“And if we are vio­lent­ly removed, we’ll be back the next day,” she said. (Adapted)

City Councilmen Brandon Ellington and Eric Bunch spoke in sup­port of police reform and vowed to help the pro­test­ers achieve their goals. Bunch said he would push the coun­cil to take the nec­es­sary action to “com­plete­ly re-imag­ine what pub­lic safe­ty means.”
He said the police depart­men­t’s $272 mil­lion bud­get this year is more than the com­bined bud­gets of sev­er­al oth­er depart­ments, includ­ing parks, health, neigh­bor­hood ser­vices, indi­gent med­ical care, and hous­ing and home­less ser­vices. He not­ed that as the city con­tin­ues to steer more mon­ey to police, vio­lent crime and homi­cides keep increas­ing. “We lit­er­al­ly do not have the mon­ey to sup­port the vital health care and qual­i­ty of life issues pre­cise­ly because we have resigned our­selves to a real­i­ty in which law enforce­ment is the only tool to address these com­plex issues,” he said.

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Mike Pence’s Unrepentant Mendacity.…

One of the things I am always mind­ful of as a Christian, even when I am at the height of an anger spell, (yes I do get angry, I am not a saint), is to try to always keep one foot on the ground. Always seek­ing to be hum­ble. It is dif­fi­cult to main­tain humil­i­ty when you have that fiery tem­per, that low tol­er­ance for BS.
I am am not about to judge any­one else, I am sim­ply self-cri­tiquing and admit­ting to my imperfections.
It is with that mind­set that I always try not to judge the motives of oth­ers, or to begin to decide whose actions are not Christ-like, while I am every day, trapped in a vicious strug­gle myself, to stay out of Hades.

I have watched Mike Pence’s career over the years, I under­stand just how dif­fi­cult it must be for a per­son of means and pow­er to remain true to their faith. I believe there is prece­dent for that in Matthew 19:21 when a rich young ruler asked Yeshua, “what should I do to be saved”/ Yeshua told him, “If you want to be per­fect, go and sell all your pos­ses­sions and give the mon­ey to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en. Then come, fol­low me.”
The young man went away sad, because accord­ing to the scrip­tures, he had great wealth, so nat­u­ral­ly, Yeshua’s answer would not res­onate well with him.
Mike Pence, the for­mer Indiana Congressman, and Governor turned Vice President comes straight from the fun­da­men­tal­ist cloth.
Don’t be fooled by the seem­ing pious, holi­er than though exte­ri­or, behind that thin façade of decep­tion, lies a cal­cu­la­tive method­i­cal plot­ter who waits for Donald Trump to be removed from office so that he will have default­ed into the most pow­er­ful office in the world.

On that basis, we already see that the pious soft-spo­ken Mike Pence would sell his soul for pow­er, from as far back as 2016. Donald Trump chose Mike Pence to be his run­ning mate in order to snag the white Christian fun­da­men­tal­ist vote. (Not to be con­fused with the Christian vote).
We all knew who Donald Trump was, cer­tain­ly, New Yorkers did, oth­ers could have found out if they cared to know any­thing about the can­di­date to whom they would be entrust­ing the nuclear codes.
In fair­ness to Mike Pence, he should not be demo­nized for accept­ing the num­ber two spot on Trump’s tick­et. What Mike Pence must cer­tain­ly be held account­able for, is sit­ting in a debate with Senator Kamala Harris and lying to the nation about Donald Trump’s record on issue after issue.
The fact that Mike Pence is far less dra­mat­ic than his blus­ter­ing idiot of a boss, does not mean that he is any less duplic­i­tous, decep­tive, or is any less mendacious.

My late Grandfather always told me “you can hide from a thief, but you can nev­er hide from a liar”, Mike Pence exem­pli­fies every bit of what Donald Trump rep­re­sents, It is the very same stinky s**t that attract­ed the fly to his head dur­ing the debate with Kamala Harris. You can always trust God’s crea­tures to keep it real.
Evil comes in many forms, Pence who pre­tends to be so moral that he refus­es to be in a room with a woman who is not his wife, had no prob­lem sit­ting there, and lying through his teeth, know­ing full well that every claim he made was laced with lies.
Tragically, fakes and frauds are all around, and as is evi­denced in Pence, they are in posi­tions of pow­er. It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that not all that says “Lord, Lord” shall enter.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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Major Arrest By FBI In Right-wing Plot To Kill Michigan Democratic Governor And Others…

Thirteen men includ­ing 7 from a right-wing mili­tia group known as the wolver­ines over two alleged plots to kid­nap Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and incite a civ­il war.

Adam Fox

Brandon Caserta

Kaleb Franks
Daniel Harris
William Null
Eric Molitor

Ty Garbin

Six of the men were tak­en into cus­tody in a raid on a house in sub­ur­ban Detroit on Thursday morn­ing. They have been named as Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, and 24-year-old Ty Garbin. The FBI says they con­spired to kid­nap Whitmer at her fam­i­ly’s vaca­tion home in Michigan. Another sev­en men have been charged by Attorney General Dana Nessel for alleged­ly plot­ting to over­throw gov­ern­ments, attack the Michigan State Capitol, and incite a ‘civ­il war’.

White Supremacists groups have long tar­get­ed the Michigan Governor over her COVID policy.

Those sev­en men are mem­bers of a mili­tia known as Wolverine Watchmen, one of the mul­ti­ple known mili­tia groups in Michigan. They are; Paul Bellar, 21, Shawn Fix, 38, Eric Molitor, 36, Michael Null, 38, William Null, 38, Pete Musico, 42, and Joseph Morrison, 42.

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The Ironic Twist In The Killing Of Jonathan Price…

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The sto­ry of Jonathan Price killing was just anoth­er case of a Black man mur­dered by police, noth­ing to see here right?
In fact, hard­ly an eye­brow has been raised in his killing which occurred in a small Texas town sev­er­al days ago.
We report­ed on the killing, sur­pris­ing­ly his killer has been arrest­ed on mur­der charges by the Texas Rangers.
It is not every day that a cop who sum­mar­i­ly mur­ders a Black man is even dis­ci­plined, let alone arrest­ed and charged with his murder.

There is a twist to this killing though, Black vic­tims of police vio­lence are gen­er­al­ly demo­nized by whites, made to be respon­si­ble for their own deaths.
If only he com­plied with police com­mands, if only he did not resist, if only he did not move, if only he showed his hands, if only he did not run, if only he did not stand, if only he did not sit, if only he did not talk back, if only he answered the cop’s ques­tions, if only he was not so big, if only .….……
But from all accounts this man Jonathan Price exem­pli­fied all of those [if only’s] .…..In a Facebook post below Jonathan Price had much to say about race, the police, and even slight­ed Black Lives Matter(BLM).
Many peo­ple point­ed to the irony of Price’s post and the fact that he was shot by the police, even though he cozied up to them and lit­er­al­ly dissed those who spoke out against sys­temic police violence.

Jonathan Price
June 15 
🦍🗣With all the ten­sion and ani­mos­i­ty going on with race and the 🚔1time ᴿᴺ. . I’m on the same fence as lil Wayne, with him say­ing a white cop saved his life, and hasn’t been too vocal based off EXPERIENCES 🧠
I was raised by the Malone’s and Woodruff’s in my home­town for a LARGE amount of my youth, was my 2nd fam­i­ly then, and still are in 2020 if I have to say any­thing. The amount of food fed to me 💵 they spent on me, out­weighs any BS about race or col­or right now. I have fam­i­ly that’s nev­er done a DAMN THING for me, or sup­port­ed my busi­ness ven­tures and they’re my BLOOD 👂🏾🤧🤐 They will FOREVER be 1,000,000 in my book🔒📖 & they know who they are! They’re to blame for my coun­try side and addic­tion to white women 🍑🤦🏾‍♂️not com­plain­ing one bit 🤠
There were times i should have been detained for speed­ing, out­stand­ing cita­tions, out dat­ed reg­is­tra­tion, doz­ing off at a red light before mak­ing it to my garage down­town Dallas after a lonnng night out🍾🙈 i’ve passed a sobri­ety test after leav­ing a bar in Wylie, Texas by 2 white cops and still let me dri­ve to where I was head­ed, and by the way they con­sid­er Wylie, Texas to be VERY racist 🤔💭I’ve nev­er got that kind of ENERGY from the po-po🚔🤷🏾‍♂️
Not say­ing black lives don’t mat­ter, ☝🏾but don’t for­get about your own, or your expe­ri­ences through growth /​“wak­ing up”.[sic]
It is exact­ly because of Jonathan’s Price’s stance on police vio­lence, that many peo­ple find his killing iron­ic. Members of his fam­i­ly are under­stand­ably upset at some of the com­ments from some Black peo­ple who are not bit­ing their tongues in call­ing out Price’s com­ments, albeit despite his demise.
The con­ver­sa­tion around Price’s death with all due respect, is larg­er than the anger his fam­i­ly mem­bers feel about social media com­ments. Truth be told he was not hes­i­tant about sav­aging them in a pub­lic forum either/​.…. so there is that.
Price’s death goes to the larg­er issue of how white police see every sit­u­a­tion in black and white and how it dan­ger­ous­ly expos­es lit­er­al­ly every Black per­son to vio­lence and death at the hands of state agents paid and sup­port­ed by their tax dollars.
The shock­ing thing is that the polit­i­cal right, led by Donald Trump, has con­tin­ued to gaslight this issue forc­ing Democrats to play defense on a sub­ject that ought to anger and incense all peo­ple regard­less of color.
The idea of sup­port­ing good Law enforce­ment and rad­i­cal­ly denounc­ing dirty racist cops who are vest­ed with the pow­er fo life and death, who bru­tal­ize and mur­der based on igno­rant bias­es is not a bina­ry choice.
The prob­lem for Politicians on both the polit­i­cal right and left is that they are all bought and paid for with mon­ey from police unions.
Because they are bought and paid for aggriev­ed par­ties can expect no response from their polit­i­cal lead­ers. If they take the union sup­port they are behold­en, if they refuse it, they are demo­nized as anti-law enforce­ment by the Unions.
It is a type of Mafioso vice grip in which police have held elect­ed offi­cials, most of whom lack the balls to break free from their law­less clutches.

According to a just-released report: Jonathan Price asked the cop if he was “doing good,” and apol­o­gized for the bro­ken glass around him, accord­ing to a prob­a­ble cause affidavit.
Trying to be friend­ly, try­ing to be that non-threat­en­ing Black man, try­ing to be treat­ed as a human being should by sur­ren­der­ing his dig­ni­ty on the altar of acceptance.
It did not help him!
In the moments before Jonathan Price was gunned down by a small-town police offi­cer out­side a Texas gas sta­tion, he extend­ed his arm for a hand­shake, accord­ing to court records. He asked the cop if he was “doing good.” He apol­o­gized for the bro­ken glass around him. Once Lucas arrived at the scene, Price, 31, approached to ask how the offi­cer was doing, accord­ing to the affi­davit, which relied on body-cam­era footage, phys­i­cal evi­dence, and eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of the incident.
“Price came very close to Officer Lucas ask­ing ‘you doing good’ mul­ti­ple times while extend­ing his hand in a hand­shake ges­ture,” the prob­a­ble cause affi­davit said. “Price apol­o­gized for bro­ken glass on the ground and stat­ed some­one had ‘tried to wrap me up.’”
Moments lat­er Jonathan Price was tased and shot four times, it was the end of a man who went out of his way to praise the police.

Robert Rogers the attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed Amber Guyger the cop who mur­dered Botham Shem Jean has been retained by Lucas.
Robert Lucas was quick to do what they always do.
“After Mr. Price refused repeat­ed instruc­tions and phys­i­cal­ly resist­ed, Officer Lucas deployed his Taser and con­tin­ued to give Mr. Price instruc­tions. Mr. Price resist­ed the effects of the Taser and attempt­ed to take it away from Officer Lucas,” “Officer Lucas only dis­charged his weapon in accor­dance with Texas law when he was con­front­ed with an aggres­sive assailant who was attempt­ing to take his Taser.”

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.
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Derek Chauvin Cop Who Murdered George Floyd Out On Bail…

Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop whom the world watch for nine min­utes kneel on the neck of George Floyd until he was dead, in May of this year has been released on bail.
Chauvin was freed after post­ing $100,000 through a bail bond agency. Hours lat­er, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota announced that he was mobi­liz­ing 100 mem­bers of the Minnesota National Guard “out of an abun­dance of cau­tion” at the request of lead­ers in Minneapolis, which was upend­ed by nights of protest imme­di­ate­ly after the killing of Mr. Floyd in May.
Which makes us won­der at the wis­dom of grant­i­ng him bail when author­i­ties know that protest will erupt, not to men­tion the cost of mobi­liz­ing all of the extra cops and nation­al guards-personnel?

Murder sus­pects are gen­er­al­ly not allowed out on bail across the United States, and so again Derek Chauvin is out on bail sole­ly on the basis that he is a white police offi­cer who is charged with mur­der­ing a black man.

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Sorely Lacking Infrastructure & Protections, Killing Innovation…

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It is the dream of most Jamaicans to see our coun­try become a first-rate coun­try with ade­quate infra­struc­ture so that the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it can thrive.
Yesterday I was sad­dened at the com­ments of a friend who is a loy­al Jamaican rear­ing to bring his skill set to work for the Jamaican peo­ple. This broth­er stayed home and has been will­ing to con­tin­ue to inno­vate for the good of the country.
In a social media post, he lament­ed the cor­rup­tion, and dare I say, the inep­ti­tude of *Government*, to see to the needs of Jamaican inno­va­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the tech indus­try. (the term *gov­ern­ment* is used par­ty neutral)
I point­ed out to my friend that now that oth­er nations are focused on tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments for their peo­ple, all across our tiny nation, there is a tremen­dous need for roads, where roads exist they are crater-filled.

These are what pass­es for roads all across the rur­al countryside.

The Government boasts about build­ing bridges, nev­er­the­less, in a sit­u­a­tion in which a bridge is erect­ed it is done for show, for the now, it is not con­struct­ed like an edi­fice that will stand the test of time, much less accom­mo­date the needs of an ever explod­ing population.
In the case of the bridge in this arti­cle shown above, there is a con­ver­sa­tion to be had, that there was none there before, but build­ing it should not be about brag­ging rights, it ought to be about putting in place a struc­ture that will be there for anoth­er hun­dred years, long after we are gone.

Chesterfield bridge in St Mary. It is a ford­ing for sure but is this any­one’s idea of a bridge that will last.

How can a gov­ern­ment focus on the needs of tech­nol­o­gy when it lacks the vision, com­mit­ment, and where­with­al to see to the most basic infra­struc­tur­al needs of the nation.
Roadways, bridges, water sup­ply, elec­tric­i­ty, schools, hos­pi­tals, fire sta­tions, pris­ons, police sta­tions, and yes, broad­band, that is the role of the gov­ern­ment, to put in place and main­tain those infra­struc­tures so that the peo­ple can innovate.
The tax­es derived from inno­va­tion if han­dled prop­er­ly, will be more than enough to main­tain those infrastructures.
Which brings me to the new toll road increases.
Jamaica should not be in a posi­tion that required for­eign­ers to come to Jamaica to build roads that Jamaicans should be build­ing and main­tain­ing themselves.
Decades of cor­rup­tion and theft of tax-pay­ers resources by the two polit­i­cal par­ties, result­ed in the door flung wide open for the Chinese to Waltz right in and dan­gle shiny new roads. Of course, with it, they need­ed to extract their pound of flesh, so away went prime Jamaican prop­er­ty dirt cheap, and that was just the begin­ning of it.

These are beau­ti­ful hotels for sure, but how many Jamaicans can afford to spend a sin­gle night in one of these lux­u­ry properties?

The cost of dri­ving on the new roads are so astro­nom­i­cal, that many motorists are forced to stay off them. So des­per­ate was the Government of the day when they nego­ti­at­ed with the oper­a­tors of the new Highway 2000, that they basi­cal­ly gave in to what­ev­er they want­ed. Those are the things devel­op­ing nations are forced to do when they nego­ti­ate from posi­tions of weak­ness. Those are the things cor­rupt devel­op­ing nations do when they squan­der and steal their peo­ple’s scarce resources.
It is under­stand­able that because of Jamaica’s ever depre­ci­at­ing dol­lar, costs will go up, which is a major chal­lenge for who­ev­er forms the government.
Notwithstanding, the gov­ern­ment must find ways to ease the bur­den from the poor peo­ple who are find­ing the crush­ing weight of the cost of liv­ing far too much to bear.
Already the pub­lic util­i­ty com­pa­ny does as it pleas­es with elec­tric­i­ty rates, there are hotels in our coun­try that the aver­age Jamaican will nev­er be able to sleep in, beach­es they can­not afford to enjoy in their own coun­try, and roads they can­not dri­ve on.
The devel­op­ment of a nation must include the peo­ple, it can­not be that we have a coun­try in which the natives are like sec­ond class cit­i­zens in their own country.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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Texas Cop Charged With Murdering Black Man Outside Store

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Jonathan Price was walk­ing away from Wolfe City Police Officer Shaun Lucas when Lucas opened fire, killing Price, offi­cials said

A white police offi­cer has been charged with mur­der in the fatal shoot­ing of a Black man fol­low­ing a report­ed dis­tur­bance at a con­ve­nience store in a small East Texas town over the week­end, author­i­ties said. Jonathan Price was walk­ing away from Wolfe City Police Officer Shaun Lucas when Lucas opened fire Saturday night, killing Price, the Texas Rangers said. Lucas, 22, was booked Monday into the Hunt County Jail on Monday night, the Texas Rangers said in a state­ment released by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Jail records show bail was set at $1 mil­lion. “The pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion indi­cates that the actions of Officer Lucas were not objec­tion­ably rea­son­able,” the state­ment said. It wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly known if Lucas had a lawyer who could com­ment on his behalf. According to the state­ment, Lucas respond­ed to a dis­tur­bance call on Saturday night fol­low­ing a report of a pos­si­ble fight. He encoun­tered Price, 31, who was report­ed­ly involved in the dis­tur­bance, and Price “resist­ed in a non-threat­en­ing pos­ture and began walk­ing away,” the Texas Rangers said. Lucas used a stun gun before shoot­ing Price, who was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal and died, the state­ment said.

People gath­er for a march, ral­ly, and can­dle­light vig­il in hon­or Jonathan Price on October 5, 2020, in Wolfe City, Texas. (Photo by Montinique Monroe/​Getty Images)

Police didn’t release details about the dis­tur­bance, but fam­i­ly and friends of Price said Monday that the one-time col­lege foot­ball play­er was inter­ven­ing in a domes­tic dis­tur­bance when he was shot. “When police arrived, I’m told, he raised his hands and attempt­ed to explain what was going on,” said civ­il rights attor­ney Lee Merritt in a Facebook post­ing. “Police fired Tasers at him and when his body con­vulsed from the elec­tri­cal cur­rent, they ‘per­ceived a threat’ and shot him to death.” After Lucas’ arrest was announced, Merritt post­ed: “This didn’t hap­pen quick­ly. It should (have) hap­pened the day he mur­dered JP. John should still be here.” Price’s rel­a­tives and friends said Price, a Wolfe City employ­ee, was a fig­ure well-known about the close­ly-knit com­mu­ni­ty. The town has about 1,500 res­i­dents about 70 miles (113 kilo­me­ters) north­east of Dallas. Price played foot­ball in 2008 for Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. Hardin-Simmons foot­ball coach Jesse Burleson tweet­ed that the uni­ver­si­ty “lost one of our own in a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion. Jonathan Price was an awe­some young man dur­ing his time with Cowboy football.”

Former Major League Baseball third base­man Will Middlebrooks, who grew up with Price, said on Facebook: “I’m sick. I’m heart­bro­ken… and I’m furi­ous.” Middlebrooks start­ed an online fundrais­er for Price’s fam­i­ly that sur­passed its $50,000 goal in less than 24 hours.

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Federation Concerns Legit, But JCF Must Do More For Itself

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I was some­what sur­prised at the recent news that a police offi­cer hand­ing over a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon at the Castleton Police Station, acci­den­tal­ly shot and injured a colleague.
My dis­be­lief was not about the fail­ure to observe safe­ty stan­dards alone, I have repeat­ed­ly con­tend­ed that the lack of prop­er ongo­ing train­ing and the lack of train­ing facil­i­ties, con­tin­ues to put offi­cers and the pub­lic at risk.
What alarmed me was that in a coun­try that is in the top (five)most vio­lent coun­tries in the world, offi­cers are still required to hand over sidearms after con­clud­ing their tours.
We can no longer argue that offi­cers can­not be trust­ed with firearms off duty if they are untrust­ed with them on duty. When we make those argu­ments we inex­orably ques­tion whole­sale, (a)the char­ac­ter of every­one in the JCF,(b) the abil­i­ty of the agency to select peo­ple who are not crim­i­nals, and © the char­ac­ter of every Jamaican cit­i­zen even.
If we are say­ing that we can­not trust the gate­keep­ers of our soci­ety, who then can we trust.
If we throw out all of the fore­gone, the obvi­ous default must be, that the lives of police offi­cers are still under­val­ued by their civil­ian bosses.

Patrae Rowe

No police offi­cer should be required to go out and pro­tect oth­ers, after which he/​she is stripped of the means to pro­tect his/​her own life, and that of his/​her fam­i­ly, after the tour of duty is com­plete. On this issue, the Police Federation must be unre­lent­ing. On the oth­er hand, it is imper­a­tive that the Federation also uses what­ev­er clout it has to ensure that only the best can­di­dates are select­ed for ser­vice in the depart­ment, and that the screen­ing process is con­stant­ly evolv­ing to ensure only the best and bright­est are allowed in.
Sergent Patrae Rowe, though still con­strained by the rules that gov­ern all mem­bers, has been a vocif­er­ous and fear­less voice for the men and women of the rank and file.
I share Rowe’s dis­gust that the (FLA). would con­jure up rea­sons to deny mem­bers of the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency the right to a firearm license.
It is impor­tant at this junc­ture to rec­og­nize that the issuance of Passports and firearm licens­es was once a func­tion of the JCF.
There is a legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion to be had as to (a) whether police cor­rup­tion caused those two func­tions to be removed from their port­fo­lio, or (b) those func­tions would have been removed regard­less, based on polit­i­cal calculations?

Power cor­rupts, absolute pow­er cor­rupts absolute­ly. When pow­er is placed into the hands of immoral peo­ple they gen­er­al­ly abuse it. The solu­tions are to have con­tin­ued vig­i­lance, and a sys­tem that holds those who would abuse their pow­er accountable.
The actions of the FLA must be viewed with­in that lens, at the same time shout­ing in the wind will do lit­tle to influ­ence change, par­tic­u­lar­ly with an admin­is­tra­tion that has been tone-deaf to the needs of the police.
The efforts of the Federation must be cen­tered on using the tools it has at its dis­pos­al to make the Government sit up and take notice of its demands.

The (FLA), like theJCF, are both arms of the very same gov­ern­ment, it requires tough and sus­tained lob­by­ing pres­sure to get the Parliament to make changes to parts of itself that are not work­ing cohesively.
On the oth­er hand, the inci­dents of attacks on police offi­cers and sol­diers must be cause for alarm, not just to mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces and their fam­i­lies, but to all law-abid­ing Jamaicans whom they serve.
The call by Sergeant Rowe for the death penal­ty to be acti­vat­ed for offend­ers who try to kill cops, not just for those who actu­al­ly do so, is under­stand­able, nev­er­the­less, it came off as shrill.

SSPWayne Cameron

I do not want to see a Jamaica in which the death penal­ty is on the table for any­one who is accused of attack­ing police.
There is more than enough evi­dence that when dra­con­ian mea­sures like what the Federation boss is propos­ing becomes law, it becomes a slid­ing scale for police to manip­u­late and abuse.
The JCF, for its own sur­vival and legit­i­ma­cy, must rad­i­cal­ly trans­form its intel­li­gence and inves­tiga­tive capabilities.
Officer’s safe­ty and secu­ri­ty are with­in their own remit, they must decide how they pro­tect them­selves. It is for those rea­sons I sup­port the Federation’s posi­tion as it relates to the FLA.

Nonetheless, mem­bers of the JCF must con­tin­ue to demon­strate that they are equal to the task of pro­tect­ing them­selves, even if oth­er arms of the gov­ern­ment are work­ing against them. The JCF can­not pur­port to be up to the task of pro­tect­ing the nation if it is demon­stra­bly unable to pro­tect itself.
This would be a good time for mem­bers of the Police Officers Association,(POA) the group that rep­re­sents gazetted mem­bers of the force, to throw its sup­port behind the Federation on this issue.
Together we are stronger, over to Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron and the POA.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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‘I Beg You, Master’: Aurora Police Department Releases Footage Of Officer ‘Punishing’ Black Woman Left Hogtied Upside Down In Patrol Car For 20 Minutes

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Footage released by the Aurora Police Department dur­ing a civ­il ser­vice com­mis­sion appeal hear­ing on Sept. 29 shows for­mer Officer Levi Huffine “pun­ish­ing” a Black woman in police cus­tody by leav­ing her hogtied in a face-down posi­tion in the back of a patrol car in the Denver, Colorado, sub­urb for 21 minutes.
Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson said the car video shows that Huffine “tor­tured” the woman, adding that she was dis­gust­ed by the footage.
Shataean Kelly, 28, was arrest­ed on munic­i­pal charges fol­low­ing a fight on Aug. 27, 2019. Bodycam footage shows that Huffine hogtied Kelly’s hands to her feet after he claimed she attempt­ed to escape by try­ing to open the locks in the back of the cruiser.

Wilson said that the locks in the back of the cruis­er do not open and restrain­ing Kelly in that way was unnecessary.“The hob­bling, in my opin­ion, was anoth­er form of pun­ish­ment,” said Wilson.
During the dri­ve to the jail, Kelly slipped off the seat with her hands and feet still cuffed togeth­er behind her back, and wound up pinned to the floor of the vehi­cle in a face-down position.
An inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that Kelly remained in that posi­tion for 21 min­utes. She plead­ed with Huffine for help dur­ing the trip.
“Please help me up, offi­cer! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe, officer!”Wilson said Kelly could have died from posi­tion­al asphyx­ia. “I’m about to break my neck,” she cried out as she was pinned on her face with her hips above her head. “I don’t want to die like this!” Huffine nev­er respond­ed to Kelly’s pleas.

IF YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAW WITH GEORGE FLOYD WAS BAD, TAKE A LOOK AT THIS

Watch video below

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​t​h​e​s​a​v​o​y​s​h​o​w​/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​1​0​5​2​8​8​3​4​9​1​8​0​0​721

“In my opin­ion, she was just tor­tured back there. It makes me sick,” said Wilson after watch­ing the video on Tuesday. “We are not judge, jury, and [the exe­cu­tion­er],” said Wilson. “We are not to treat peo­ple inhu­mane­ly like they don’t mat­ter.” At one point, Kelly referred to Huffine as “mas­ter,” say­ing: “I beg you, mas­ter,” while plead­ing with him for help. “As an African-American female she den­i­grates her­self to the point she actu­al­ly calls him ‘mas­ter.’ To me that is dis­gust­ing,” said Wilson. Charges against Kelly relat­ed to her arrest have been dropped Officials con­sid­ered bring­ing charges against Huffine but decid­ed against it because Kelly was not seri­ous­ly injured. He was fired by Wilson in February, six months after the inci­dent, after the chief over­ruled the review board’s rec­om­men­da­tion that Huffine receives a 180-hour sus­pen­sion. At the time, the details sur­round­ing Huffine’s ter­mi­na­tion were not revealed, and the depart­ment did not spec­i­fy beyond say­ing he was fired over “severe misconduct.”

PROUD BOY, YOU DECIDE?

The ongo­ing hear­ing that com­menced after Huffine appealed his ter­mi­na­tion will result in a deci­sion made by the city’s four-per­son civ­il ser­vice com­mis­sion, who will decide whether Huffine should keep his job. Huffine claimed he was too short to be able to see what was hap­pen­ing in the back seat dur­ing the dri­ve to the jail.
University of Colorado Denver pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice Dr. Paul Taylor tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing and said it is not a good prac­tice to keep a per­son hob­bled with­out a seat­belt on. “There is a ten­den­cy for peo­ple to peo­ple either roll-off or fall of the seat and onto the floor­board,” he said.
Wilson said Huffine is lucky Kelly did not die, because oth­er­wise, he would be “in an orange jump­suit right now.”
Huffine is sched­uled to tes­ti­fy again on Oct. 1.

In March 2019, this bum cop, [Nate Meier] was found drunk and unre­spon­sive in the driver’s side seat of an unmarked Ford Taurus patrol car stopped out­side Buckley Air Force Base.
His col­leagues were dis­patched to the car to per­form a well­ness check and he was found in the car with the engine still run­ning. Imagine what would hap­pen to a mem­ber of the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly an African-American man found in a car under the influ­ence of drink or drug?
We do not need to imag­ine, Rayshard Brooks, was mur­dered out­side an Atlanta fast-food restau­rant last June, he was sus­pect­ed to have been dri­ving under the influ­ence of alco­hol. Prosecutors said that the cop who shot Brooks Garrett Rolfe declared, “I got him,” after fir­ing the fatal shots at Mr. Brooks. Rolfe kicked the vic­tim, pros­e­cu­tors said, while his part­ner stood on the fatal­ly wound­ed man’s shoul­der. [So there is that]
Rolfe and his part­ner, Devin Brosnan, both of whom are white, then failed to ren­der aid for more than two min­utes, said prosecutors.

so what did respond­ing offi­cers, fire­men, and EMT do? Prosecutors revealed that they could not file charges against Meier as respond­ing offi­cers failed to pass along infor­ma­tion that he was like­ly intox­i­cat­ed. “I don’t think it’s a cov­er-up, but it’s a cou­ple of blocks from it,’ said District Attorney George Brauchler.
From time to time we high­light the cor­rupt alliance between police, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges in the jus­tice sys­tem. Here is a typ­i­cal instance in which a cop in uni­form was behind the wheel of an auto­mo­bile, engine still run­ning, passed out drunk and the pros­e­cu­tor tells us that it was not a cover-up.
This was a clas­sic cov­er-up and worse, they were sent to inves­ti­gate an inci­dent, they observed a drunk behind the wheel of a car with its engine run­ning, with a gun and badge, and the pow­er to take life, and what did they do, they cov­ered it up by not doing what they are paid to do.
To pro­tect the pub­lic from drunk dri­vers. In this case, this was far worse than a civil­ian dri­ving drunk, this bum had the pow­er to take some­one’s life under the col­or of law.
If that was not crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty of the respond­ing cops I don’t know what is?

on the oth­er hand, no one should be sur­prised about this crim­i­nal enter­prise that is oper­at­ing as a police depart­ment, this is the very same depart­ment in August 2019 mur­dered 23-year-old Elijah McClain. Aurora police received a call about a sus­pi­cious per­son wear­ing a ski mask and wav­ing his arms as he walked down a street on August 24. McClain refused to stop walk­ing and fought back when offi­cers tried to take him into cus­tody, accord­ing to police.
Paramedics gave McClain a med­ica­tion on the instruc­tions of Aurora police, he suf­fered a car­diac arrest on the way to the hos­pi­tal. His fam­i­ly said he sus­tained a brain injury and was tak­en off life sup­port in September 2019.
Can you imag­ine cops who are trained for six months or less instruct­ing Paramedics to give poten­tial­ly lethal drugs to peo­ple they are arresting?
Welcome to America.……

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Mississippi Father & Son Chases And Shoots At Black Teens Arrested

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AHMAUD ARBERY REDUX?

A Mississippi father and son were arrest­ed after chas­ing two Black teens rid­ing ATVs and shoot­ing at them over the week­end. Two white men, 48-year-old Wade Oscar Twiner and his 22-year-old son Lane Twiner have been charged with aggra­vat­ed assault after they pur­sued two Black teenagers rid­ing ATVs in Yazoo County, Mississippi, on Sunday, Sept. 27.
The father and son, “pur­sued them and tried to stop them and to shoot them and bump them with the four-wheel­er,” said Yazoo County Sheriff Jacob Sheriff told WBLT news. Authorities are inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent as a pos­si­ble hate crime. The teens were the only Black peo­ple on the road who were assault­ed, although it is a com­mon des­ti­na­tion for joyrides on ATVs, hors­es, and buggies.
“We’re still look­ing at some things on that to see if we can estab­lish a hate crime or not. We’ve got to get with the DA and look at the statutes to say whether that would be a hate crime or not,” Sheriff said.

ONE VICTIM’S MOHER SPOKE ABOUT HER SON’S ORDEAL

“Not only did they shoot at him, but they also ran into the back of his four-wheel­er, and that could also have been mur­der right then and there,” she said. Both teens’ iden­ti­ties remain undisclosed.
One of the teens report­ed that he can still hear the sound of the gun­shots when he clos­es his eyes. He said he had trou­ble sleep­ing the night of the inci­dent and could see both men shoot­ing at him at one point, one aim­ing from the driver’s side win­dow, and the oth­er reach­ing over the roof from the passenger’s side.
“It was kind of dif­fi­cult last night since it was the first night it hap­pened, so we just have to take it step by step, day by day to see how it plays out,” the victim’s moth­er said.
He also not­ed that he had not been tres­pass­ing on the Twiner’s prop­er­ty. The Twiners said that because they pay tax­es and own prop­er­ty on both sides of the road they should not have to deal with peo­ple rid­ing ATVs on the road.
The Twiners were booked at the Yazoo Regional Correctional Facility, with bonds set at $70,000. They were due to appear in court on Tuesday.

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There Aren’t Truthfully Any Undecided Voters, How Could There Be?

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Over the last cou­ple of years, I have come to a con­clu­sion that may not find favor with many peo­ple. To hell with con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, I do not believe there are any unde­cid­ed vot­ers in America.
Now, this the­o­ry may just piss off the peo­ple who believe in focus groups, even more so, those who par­tic­i­pate in them.
Here is the (cow manure), peo­ple who sit in those focus groups love the atten­tion of the spot­light on them.
How could any per­son who lived through the last three and a half years not know what side they are on? The con­trast could not be clear­er. If you say you are unde­cid­ed, you are either an idiot or a damn liar.
If you insist that you are unde­cid­ed you are say­ing so to get on tele­vi­sion. I learned a long time ago, that there is hard­ly any­thing Americans will not do to see their mugs on television.

Make no mis­take about it, the American elec­torate is high­ly polar­ized. Let us assume that it may have been more polar­ized at some pre­vi­ous time in the nation’s his­to­ry, after all the coun­try endured a civ­il war. Nevertheless, it seems that the wedge issues that sep­a­rate the two polit­i­cal camps are so diver­gent that each is hard­ened with no room for a meet­ing of the minds, much less to have a group of unde­cid­ed poten­tial vot­ers to be swayed one way or the other.
As I have said on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, the American elec­torate is cer­tain­ly far from sophis­ti­cat­ed, ——Donald Trump is in the White House. But the obsti­na­cy of the elec­torate runs immea­sur­ably deep­er than just a bad pres­i­den­tial pick.
The dis­con­nect is evi­dent on issues like health-care, immi­gra­tion, on social issues, vot­ers con­sis­tent­ly vot­ing against their best inter­est, empow­er­ing the very rich and pow­er­ful, at their own expense.

Business Insider report­ed; Only one New England state, Maine, makes the bot­tom 15, of the poor­est states in the Union.
While states in Appalachia, the South, and the Midwest tend to dom­i­nate. The states with the low­est incomes tend to be clus­tered togeth­er geo­graph­i­cal­ly, and it shows just how unequal­ly wealth is dis­trib­uted across the US.
I say it has pret­ty much noth­ing to do with wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion and every­thing to do with the way they vote.
If it was about wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion how does one explain that free slave labor was used for hun­dreds of years to enrich the south, yet today most of those very same states are among the poor­est in the union?
Additionally, States like California, Washington state, Oregon, Colorado, are nowhere near where the south­ern states are in terms of wealth, not to men­tion the New England states.

The fif­teen poor­est states by medi­an income, start­ing from worst to best. Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, *New Mexico*, Arkansas, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Nevada Missouri. Do you know what all of these states have in com­mon, with the excep­tion of New Mexico?
They have been run by Republicans for decades, and true to form, start­ing with the poor­est, Mississippi, the poor­est are the red­dest of red states.
It should come as no sur­prise that wher­ev­er the most hard­ened Republican vot­ers live and con­gre­gate, when asked about Donald Trump’s crimes and abus­es they blind­ly swat away the accu­sa­tions of his infi­deli­ty, tax eva­sion, lies, incom­pe­tence, mis­han­dling of COVID-19, abuse of Federal agen­cies, mon­e­tiz­ing the pres­i­den­cy, fraud­u­lent foun­da­tion, and the cor­nu­copia of oth­er crimes and abus­es he com­mits, not to men­tion his atro­cious fail­ure as the nation’s chief executive.
On the oth­er hand, they can­not artic­u­late a sin­gle intel­li­gent or cogent rea­son for their servile def­er­ence to a man who many his­to­ri­ans and experts con­clude, may actu­al­ly be the least intel­li­gent per­son ever to occu­py the office of president.
Instead, they recite lies they heard on FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion Television or on talk radio from some shriek­ing wild eye con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist racist loon.

If you are some­one who (a) want to raise a fam­i­ly, send your kids to school, live and work in a coun­try that is not torn apart by racial strife, and (b) if you have no prob­lem with all of the oth­er 320 mil­lion cit­i­zens of the coun­try hav­ing equal access to the oppor­tu­ni­ties that you have, then there is no way that you could sup­port what has been hap­pen­ing over the last 3 1⁄2 years.
The unde­ni­able truth about his cult-fol­low­ing, is that they are will­ing to pre­tend that they do not see what Donald Trump is doing, as long as he con­tin­ues to hate the peo­ple they hate, and to use the bull­horn of the pres­i­den­cy to advance racial divi­sions and white supremacy.
They are will­ing to live with him, despite hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly pos­tured and pon­tif­i­cat­ed about being supe­ri­or based on reli­gious and fam­i­ly values.
They rather believe a lie.….….….

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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Actions Have Consequences, Inactions Have Even More Devastating Consequences…

During the 2016 Election cam­paign, all of the polls showed Hillary Clinton beat­ing Donald Trump by a wide mar­gin, or at the very least, beat­ing Trump in all of the states she need­ed to win.
The states she need­ed were the states President Obama had won twice, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia, Florida, New Mexico Colorado, New Mexico, In addi­tion to the Northeastern and west­ern states.
She was required to defend the so-called blue wall.
Still to this day almost four years lat­er, not a sin­gle polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, pun­dit or poll­ster has explained what the hell hap­pened on elec­tion night 2016.
Was polling out­dat­ed as a barom­e­ter of under­stand­ing vot­er sen­ti­ment? Or did polling sim­ply set­tle in as to what they real­ly are, [snap­shots of moments in time]? Or did some­thing sin­is­ter hap­pen that can only be explained by the intel­li­gence agencies?
It has been remark­able to hear media types opine that maybe peo­ple sim­ply lied to poll­sters, or maybe poll­sters over-sam­pled Democratic voters.
If either of those nar­ra­tives is true then the entire dis­ci­pline of polling as a sort of qua­si-sci­ence is now dead.

During the 2016 Election, my wife and her mom, and two of our sons were on the way to South Carolina, we decid­ed that we would dri­ve down. I decid­ed to avoid the DC traf­fic so I took the long way along Route 81 down through the Pennsylvania back­coun­try, a lit­tle way through West Virginia, and I was shocked at what I saw.
Literally, every yard was lit­tered with trump signs.….….. People stick polit­i­cal signs on curb­sides, at stop­lights on entry and egress points to and from Highways, etc, that’s par for the course.
When they place them in their yards or allow some­one else to do so that means they have a devo­tion or at least intend to vote for that candidate.
Look, I will always be skep­ti­cal of the fact that Trump won the elec­tion in three states, ‑Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin by less than 70,000 votes.
If you ask me, it just seems much too sur­gi­cal to me to be accept­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly when Hillary Clinton won the raw total by over three mil­lion votes. It just seems a tad bit too sur­gi­cal, a tad bit too pre­cise right down the mid­dle of that blue wall.
But then again those yard signs, right?

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I real­ly had a fun­ny feel­ing from as ear­ly as August of 2016 that Hillary Clinton was going to be toast. For the entire month of August 2016. For the entire month of August 2016, Secretary Clinton did not do a sin­gle large cam­paign event. At the time I wrote that she was throw­ing the elec­tion. Donald Trump hav­ing evis­cer­at­ed all of his pri­ma­ry oppo­nents, was putting the large Trump embla­zoned plane at every air­port hangar he could and was draw­ing humungous crowds.
Even though the elec­tions were for Hillary Clinton to lose, she went ahead like Al Gore did before her in 2000, and gave the elec­tion to the Republicans.
Actions have con­se­quences, inac­tion some­times has even more dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences. And so elec­tions mat­ters, before this is all done, even though the American vot­ers turned out and gave Democrats the plu­ral­i­ty of their votes in 2000,& 2016 Democrats allowed them­selves to be rail­road­ed and now the Country is in dire straits as it faces the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sec­ond Trump term in office, hav­ing appoint­ed three Supreme Court Justices and placed over 200 of the Federal Appeals bench.
Potentially even before the elec­tions are through, there will be a 6 – 3 Republican major­i­ty on the high­est court, plac­ing in jeop­ardy all of the pro­gres­sive gains that have been made arguably since the 1960s.

Elections are not always won on who is right on the issues, they are not about who has the bet­ter poli­cies, if that was so Donald Trump would not be sit­ting inside that old house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue watch­ing FOX and rage tweet­ing. That hon­or would have been Hillary Clinton’s.
Much of what elec­tions are about is press­ing the flesh, being there, peo­ple tend to acquaint that with car­ing, instead of bla­tant vote pan­der­ing. Polls car­ried out before the George Bush pres­i­den­cy, revealed that some vot­ers said they would vote for Bush because he seemed like some­one they could have a beer with.
The sad real­i­ty is that their chance of hav­ing a beer with Bush was less than being struck by light­ning twice, but they vot­ed for him based on those perceptions.
Which begs the ques­tion of why would peo­ple who worked hard to make a liv­ing all their lives would find com­mon cause with a life-long draft-dodg­ing con-artiste who lived 50 floors up into the Manhattan skies in a gaudy, gild­ed penthouse?
He pre­tend­ed to share their pain and that’s all they cared about. Not all of those peo­ple are racists, but Trump knew the issues that they cared about, as I explained in the linked arti­cle above, he exploit­ed those con­cerns to the max­i­mum and has solid­i­fied his sup­port with that base of sup­port, to the point he need not wor­ry about their vote, even though he may not have deliv­ered on his promis­es to them.
He con­tin­ued to speak to those wedge issues they care about, the supreme court,(on that he has deliv­ered), Immigration, and a range of oth­er issues. He hates the same peo­ple many of them hate, and now they hate the peo­ple he hates.
It is a cult fol­low­ing that has only hard­ened since 2016, that will not be deterred by any news that may sur­face about Donald Trump. One such Guy said he went to a Trump ral­ly and based on where he was stand­ing he could not hear what Trump was say­ing but he so loved Trump he clapped sim­ply because they were clap­ping. Such is the lev­el of feal­ty and loy­al­ty that they have for him.

The first of what should have been a debate end­ed with Donald Trump telling the [proud boys] white suprema­cists group to “STANDBACK AND STAND BY”. It was not a debate, it was an embar­rass­ing dis­play of bul­ly­ing and out of con­trol behav­ior by Trump, not only could Trump not say he would abide by the elec­tion results, he called on white suprema­cists groups to stand by.
Years ago I wrote that American was flirt­ing with anoth­er civ­il war.…… My God, I nev­er thought that I would live long enough to hear an American pres­i­dent call on a Militia to stand by to fight if he lost the elections.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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A Cornered Man With The Most Lethal Nuclear Arsenal Is A Dangerous Man…

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Was any­one sur­prised at the rev­e­la­tions by the New York Times, that Donald Trump paid $0 in tax­es in 10 of 15 years, or that he only paid $740 in fed­er­al tax­es in 2016 the year he was run­ning for president?
According to the report, Trump paid $750 in fed­er­al income tax, by that mea­sure, he would have to have earned $17,900 in order to pay that pal­try amount.
This leaves us with three assump­tions, (a) either Trump is real­ly nowhere as rich as he would like the world to believe, [by virtue of his tax pay­ments] (b) Trump is guilty of lying on the returns he does file, and there­fore guilty of defraud­ing the gov­ern­ment of much-need­ed rev­enue, & © the oth­er nov­el idea is that both of the two for­mer sce­nar­ios are true, and prob­a­bly the most plau­si­ble of the three
If I was a bet­ting man I would wager that Donald Trump, the life­long con-artist is lying about his wealth, has lied to avoid pay­ing his fair share of tax­es, lied in 2016 when con­front­ed by Hillary Clinton that he paid no tax­es, and is lying now with the worn-out malarky that he is under audit and there­fore can­not release his returns.
There is no truth to the idea that giv­en a sit­u­a­tion in which he is being audit­ed he would be pre­clud­ed from divulging his tax returns.
This has already been debunked by the IRS, even though the agency is con­strained from say­ing whether any American, includ­ing Trump, is under their audit micro­scope or not.

It makes a lot of sense now to some, [it made sense to this writer in 2016], that despite the ban­ter, when Hillary Clinton accused him of not pay­ing any fed­er­al income tax, he chimed in, “that’s because I’m smart”, that Hillary had nailed it.
Don the Con was not pay­ing any taxes.
Donald Trump’s entire life was one of lies and dis­tor­tions, a trust fund baby who was pushed by his father to be what he was not cut out for.
He cre­at­ed an image in New York, bur­nished and facil­i­tat­ed by New York Media.….The gold­en boy of suc­cess, tall, blond, the all-American sym­bol of suc­cess, the draft-dodg­ing Trump was allowed to main­tain a lie, all but­tressed by the media.
Donald Trump, who for all intents and pur­pos­es may have nev­er earned a degree, nev­er ran a suc­cess­ful busi­ness, was able to pass as a sym­bol of American suc­cess, and not the pam­pered, racist, con artist, that he tru­ly is.
Donald Trump conned his way into the most pow­er­ful office in the world, has access to the world’s most lethal nuclear arse­nal, and poten­tial­ly places the American Democracy in a per­ilous posi­tion from which it may nev­er recover.
For his life of lies, there can be noth­ing but recog­ni­tion for Trump, he has shown the world that a man devoid of hon­or, morals, con­science, or con­vic­tion can lie his way through life and acquire the great­est prize, the American presidency.

That may speak vol­umes about Donald Trump, but the real tragedy is what it says about the syco­phants who wor­ship at his feet, even as he express­es dis­gust, at the mere thought of hav­ing to shake their hands.
It’s real­ly not too dif­fi­cult to under­stand why Donald Trump can­not, and will not say he will accept the out­come of the upcom­ing elec­tions in my estimation.
Trump’s gam­bit to use the pres­i­den­cy to save him­self may be back­fir­ing. By some reports that we have not val­i­dat­ed, Donald Trump holds $421 mil­lion in debt, much of which becomes due in the next four years, addi­tion­al­ly, he may owe the IRS $100 mil­lion accord­ing to the Huffington Post.
The fact that he will not say that he will con­cede if he los­es in November may speak to his fear of impris­on­ment. He was alleged­ly named by the Southern District of New York, an unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor with his for­mer lawyer and fix­er Michael Cohen with whom he is now estranged. Cohen was impris­oned and is still under the con­trol of the state’s cor­rec­tion­al juris­dic­tion and control.

Donald Trump is seem­ing­ly will­ing to do any­thing to hold on to the pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy. He is deter­mined to ride out what he obvi­ous­ly believes is the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on any charges that may be pend­ing, ‑await­ing his exit from office.
One more rea­son for the jus­tice depart­ment pol­i­cy not to indict a sit­ting pres­i­dent should be dis­card­ed. The idea that a sit­ting pres­i­dent should not be indict­ed because it dis­tracts them from being pres­i­dent, does sev­er­al things, not the least of which is to (a) embold­en pres­i­dents to com­mit crimes, and (b) sets pres­i­dents above the laws.
Based on his finan­cial and poten­tial legal woes Trump may be pre­pared to burn the whole house down in order to save himself.
The thing to watch is whether those poten­tial charges may be made to dis­ap­pear by William Barr. If Barr inter­feres with those pro­ceed­ings he should be pros­e­cut­ed along with Trump.
A cor­nered man is a dan­ger­ous man, a man with the codes to the most lethal nuclear arse­nal .…well.…..

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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Family Of Man Slain By Prince George’s Police Officer Reaches $20 Million Settlement

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Prince George’s County says it has reached a Twenty mil­lion dol­lar ($20M) set­tle­ment agree­ment with the fam­i­ly of a man who police says was killed while he was hand­cuffed and in cus­tody in the back­seat of a police cruis­er in January 2020.
The announce­ment by County Executive Angela Alsobrooks on the coun­ty’s agree­ment comes eight months after the shoot­ing death of William Green.
Alsobrooks released a state­ment that she will announce the details of the agree­ment on Monday at 11:30 a.m. She says she will be joined by Green fam­i­ly attor­ney Billy Murphy and mem­bers of the Green family.

William Greene

911 calls came in for reports of a dri­ver hit­ting mul­ti­ple vehi­cles on St. Barnabas Road, and William Green was pulled over on Winston Street in Temple Hills. The respond­ing offi­cer said he smelled PCP in Green’s car, accord­ing to Prince George’s County Police. The offi­cer hand­cuffed Green and placed him in the police cruis­er’s front pas­sen­ger seat as oth­er offi­cers inves­ti­gat­ed the scene for drugs with a K9, which is the stan­dard oper­at­ing procedure.

Shortly after, a strug­gle ensued inside the police cruis­er between the offi­cer and Green.
The offi­cer who shot Green, Ofc. Michael Owen Jr., was arrest­ed at his home and tak­en into cus­tody, then charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der and manslaughter.

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The Blatant Injustice In America’s Justice System Is Embarrassing

The lack of what any­one could call a real inves­ti­ga­tion into the Breonna Taylor killing is just one more exam­ple of the tox­ic col­lu­sion between police, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges in the American jus­tice system.
It is not just that the jus­tice sys­tem does not work for African-Americans, it is a sys­tem that works decid­ed­ly against them.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT work­er was killed in her home by Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) offi­cers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, on March 13, 2020.
The tragedy inher­ent in her killing, is that Ms. Taylor had com­mit­ted no crime. If she ever did, the Police would have led with Her record as the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for her killing. they could not lead with a crim­i­nal record because she had none, but it did not stop the District Attorney from offer­ing a plea deal to her for­mer boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, con­tin­gent on his crim­i­nal­iz­ing the mur­dered Ms. Taylor.
Jamarcus Glover was the intend­ed tar­get of the raid that fate­ful night, accord­ing to pub­lished reports Taylor was already in cus­tody on a sep­a­rate charge on the night the hap­less (LMPD) bust­ed down the door and killed Breonna Taylor.
Her Killing only came to the atten­tion of the broad­er pub­lic after the grue­some killing of George Floyd, by three cops in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

She was killed when the police bust­ed her door down on the author­i­ty of a no-knock war­rant that has been signed by a judge. The war­rant was the prod­uct of bad intel that drugs were being deliv­ered to her apart­ment for a for­mer boyfriend of Ms. Taylor. No drugs were ever found, but Ms. Taylor’s Boyfriend Kenneth Walker, fired a sin­gle shot at the peo­ple break­ing his door down.
Mister Walker who was arrest­ed that night and con­ve­nient­ly charged, with try­ing to mur­der police offi­cers, insist­ed he had no idea the peo­ple break­ing his door down were police offi­cers. Neighbors also told the media they did not hear the police announce that themselves.
Of course, the police claimed that even though they were in pos­ses­sion of a no-knock war­rant, they had repeat­ed­ly announced them­selves. This makes no sense what­so­ev­er, announc­ing them­selves would have defeat­ed the whole pur­pose of get­ting a no-knock war­rant in the first place.
On the oth­er hand, by claim­ing that they had announced them­selves, they were cer­tain to get the attempt­ed mur­der of police offi­cers charges they dredged, up to stick to Kenneth Walker.

Kenneth Walker filed a law­suit over his arrest the Night Breonna was killed, his suit asked the court to declare him immune from pros­e­cu­tion based on the state’s stand your ground law. Mister Walker said he fired only because he had no idea who was break­ing down his door that night.
The charges were lat­er dropped, but his attor­neys asked the court to ensure that the charges will not be filed again.
It is incred­i­bly telling, that a Black cit­i­zen would have to go to such lengths to ensure that the vin­dic­tive crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does not retal­i­ate against him, even though he act­ed with­in the bound­aries of the law.
Isn’t it remark­able how the lives of their agents are worth more to them, than the lives of cit­i­zens? The speed with which they arrest cit­i­zens, (even more so black cit­i­zens), and file charges, even with­out evi­dence, is astounding.
There are no year/​s‑long inves­ti­ga­tions, no grand jury involve­ment, no dot­ting of I’s and cross­ing of T’s. No allow­ing cops to get their lies straight before they give account for their actions.
The cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of mon­ey in the cam­paigns of District Attorneys, Attorney’s Generals, Public Defenders, & Judges, make it impos­si­ble to have an equi­table and fair dis­pen­sa­tion of justice.
These egre­gious instances of cor­rup­tion were not as obvi­ous before the advent of cam­eras and social media. The default option was sim­ply to believe what the police said, even though there were entire com­mu­ni­ties that were com­plain­ing that police offi­cers were beat­ing them. The abused par­ties are accused of lying.

When they com­plained that police offi­cers were plant­i­ng drugs on their per­son, in their cars, and in their homes, the aggriev­ed par­ties were accused of lying, “sure every­one is inno­cent”, they say.
When the same com­mu­ni­ties com­plained that the police mur­dered their loved ones in cold blood, no one believed them, because the police were deemed vir­tu­ous and beyond killing any­one in cold blood.
The word of the police is always believed over that of the cit­i­zen, and that embold­ens them to act with impuni­ty, they brag about it.
“Who do you think the judge will believe, you or me”?
Additionally, the qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty doc­trine imposed on the coun­try by the Supreme Court, all but insu­lat­ed police offi­cers from account­abil­i­ty for their crimes. — –But that is only the beginning.
The abil­i­ty of police Unions to cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials through huge mon­e­tary dona­tions to their respec­tive cam­paigns, and their col­lec­tive strength through their abil­i­ties to bul­ly and intim­i­date, cre­at­ed the war­rior cop, not just in their aggres­sive­ness, but in the inabil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to hold them account­able for their crimes.

It took me a minute to fig­ure out the inher­ent cor­rup­tion and hypocrisy in the American Justice that seeks to crit­i­cize oth­er nations, par­tic­u­lar­ly small­er depen­dent nations strug­gling to get it right.
America is [not] strug­gling to get it right. American now has the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, the sys­tem is work­ing exact­ly how the design­ers want it to work. And that means against peo­ple of color.
Yes, the hypocrisy is absolute­ly galling.

If you ever won­dered how come there are so many cops, even as they keep hir­ing more and more, don’t. They serve two basic functions,(a) to keep the pop­u­la­tion in check & (b) to be back­door tax collectors.
The Government fig­ured out to actu­ar­i­al­ly the cost of pay­ing a cop, all expens­es con­sid­ered. They train them to abuse and kill then turn them loose large­ly where?
In big cities and towns. Big cities and towns are heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed with black and brown peo­ple, they bear the brunt of over-polic­ing. They are usu­al­ly the poor­est and least able to pay for traf­fic tick­ets, but they are the most tick­et­ed for minor infrac­tions and minor dis­re­pair to the automobiles.
The sys­tem is designed to be so puni­tive, that even when a per­son has a tick­et dis­missed they are more often than not required to pay court cost.
So the inno­cent is penal­ized for hav­ing being penal­ized. There are those who will quick­ly argue, that it puts every­one at risk, not just some. The sad real­i­ty is that it’s all in the enforce­ment, who gets pulled over the most, who do you think that is?
Those who can­not pay for the aggres­sive minor infrac­tions have war­rants issued for their arrests, and if they could­n’t pay for the tick­et, there is no way they can pay for the rapid­ly accu­mu­lat­ed penal­ties and fees.
So it’s off to the [for-prof­it] prison you go. See the link below.
https://​www​.prop​ub​li​ca​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​-​j​e​r​s​e​y​-​l​a​w​-​s​a​y​s​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​c​o​p​s​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​g​o​-​t​o​-​j​a​i​l​-​r​e​c​o​r​d​s​-​r​e​v​e​a​l​-​t​h​e​y​-​o​f​t​e​n​-​d​ont

In the Breonna Taylor case, the police got a war­rant, most like­ly from a com­pli­ant judge that sim­ply rub­ber-stamp what the police bring to them for a sig­na­ture. The intel was faulty, and so every­thing that occurred from that faulty intel ought to be ille­git­i­mate under the law. Nevertheless, though Breonna Taylor and her Boyfriend Kenneth Walker had every right to stand their ground in their own home, the state’s posi­tion is that it’s right to bust down their door and enter to look for illic­it drugs, super­sedes their right to be safe and secure in their per­sons & property.
At least, that is the nar­ra­tive pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic by the Attorney General, in out­lin­ing that the offi­cers had a right to return fire after being fired on, regard­less of the. fact that they had no busi­ness being there and mis­ter Walker had every right to shoot to kill any­one bust­ing down his door.
Again, ask your­selves the ques­tion, why would police secure a no-knock war­rant then knock and announce their presence?
It only makes sense to the most ardent cop-apol­o­gists, because the high prob­a­bil­i­ty is that it nev­er happened.
For any­one with a law-enforce­ment back­ground, it is absolute­ly shock­ing to see just how far the pow­ers will go to shield police crim­i­nal­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they trans­gress against Black people.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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What Does The Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Look Like, The People Have A Right To Know?

Any secu­ri­ty or intel­li­gence offi­cial will tell you that they would rather deal with threats that are on the out­side. It is expo­nen­tial­ly more prac­ti­cal to dis­lodge and dis­pel threats that emerge from the out­side, rather than deal with entrenched threats that have embed­ded them­selves to the inside.
Keeping out rad­i­cals is a much eas­i­er task than to find and root out rad­i­cals that are oper­at­ing from the inside.
Simply put, it is much eas­i­er for the hens to peck away at the Fox try­ing to get in than to defend them­selves from a Fox already in the Henhouse.
In America’s racist soci­ety, Black Americans strug­gle dai­ly, as they have strug­gled for hun­dreds of years, for civ­il rights, dig­ni­ty, auton­o­my, self-deter­mi­na­tion, and equality.
That chal­lenge is vast­ly com­pro­mised when the heads of Agencies in which racism is being chal­lenged hap­pens to have Black skin.
Even though the racist poli­cies are no less inher­ent, a black leader enforc­ing racist poli­cies, makes the case more dif­fi­cult to prove.

Get the picture?

It was that way dur­ing slav­ery, slaves work­ing in the big house would tell [mas­sa] what they knew about run­away plans. It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to deal with the mole that oper­ates from within.
Today, even though African-Americans have won some of the rights they craved, those rights are under seri­ous threat from three ele­ments that con­tin­ue to enforce white supremacy,(1) the sen­ate that empow­ers white rur­al states with sparse pop­u­la­tions, through the two Senators per state rule, while can­cel­ing out the voic­es of heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed states with large pop­u­la­tions. (b) The Electoral College, which has caused Democrats two elec­tions, 2000 and 2016, in which they won the pop­u­lar vote by wide mar­gins, to the tune of mil­lions of votes, but lose the white house through the archa­ic elec­toral col­lege law. © And The unelect­ed Supreme Court that con­tin­ues to strip away the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of ordi­nary Americans, while sys­tem­i­cal­ly empow­er­ing the rich and powerful.

Breonna Taylor

When the bul­lets from a way­ward Black cop hit and kills an inno­cent unarmed Black man, he is no less dead because the bul­let did not come from a white cop. The racist white poli­cies that gave the black cop the free­dom to shoot is equal­ly as guilty.
A 5 – 4 deci­sion from the supreme court, (a) in Shelby coun­ty Alabama Vs Holder, in which Clarence Thomas vot­ed to strip away vot­ing rights pro­tec­tions for African-Americans, or (b) in cit­i­zens United, or any oth­er vote he made that evis­cer­ates pro­tec­tions for the aver­age per­son, and African ‑Americans in par­tic­u­lar, are no less oner­ous and dev­as­tat­ing because Clarence Thomas is black.
It is said that a pros­e­cu­tor can pros­e­cute a ham sand­wich. The evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the grand jury is what the pros­e­cu­tor wants the grand jury to rule on. The grand jury process, a closed process, is part of the ring around the mil­i­tary arm of white pow­er, the police.
What is remark­able, is that Breonna Taylor’s neigh­bors were endan­gered and offi­cer Brett Hankison was indict­ed for endan­ger­ing them. Breonna Taylor is dead and no one is being held account­able for mur­der­ing her in her own home.

Daniel Cameron/ His com­mit­ment to work­ing with law enforce­ment was fur­ther acknowl­edged by the endorse­ment of the Kentucky Fraternal Order of Police. Did any­one expect that this sell­out would pro­vide any kind of jus­tice to a poor Black woman who was gunned down in her own home?

It should come as no sur­prise then, that Daniel Cameron, the Republican Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Former coun­sel to Mitch McConnell, after many months of a sup­posed inves­ti­ga­tion into the killing of Breanna Taylor, would refuse to tell the pub­lic the racial make­up of the grand jury that decid­ed only on endan­ger­ment charges against one cop.
One of the guid­ing prin­ci­ples in the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, is that it must not only be done, but it must also appear to be done.
The Attorney General works for the peo­ple, is paid by the peo­ple, and there­fore answer­able to the people.
It is bad enough that Breonna Taylor was mur­dered in her own home, as a con­se­quence of bad intel, signed and legit­imized by a judge.
That Ms, Taylor and her boyfriend, Mr.Kenneth Walker were the vic­tims of an arm of the state that is unac­count­able, is no sur­prise. That the Attorney General would seek to cov­er up the racial make­up of the grand jury that looked at the evi­dence is absolute­ly cor­rupt and indefensible.
We all know of the Uncle Tom fig­ures that have been part of the land­scape through­out this jour­ney which brought Black peo­ple from the shores of Africa, to America in chains.
It is no sur­prise then that the black-skinned coon that occu­pies the Attorney General’s office in Kentucky, and is seen in this pic­ture, coon­ing with Donald Trump, would sell out his own peo­ple for a mere pat on the back from [mas­sa].
Standing in the Oval Office, and being allowed to address the Republican Convention, was way more than enough to get that Black man to sell the entire Black race back into slavery.

Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove are three of the (LMPD) offi­cers, who on March 13th, 2020, fired dozens of bul­lets into the home of Ms. Taylor, as they tried to exe­cute a no-knock war­rant, signed by a judge.
The loss of life in this nev­er-end­ing fight, which is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the war on Black peo­ple com­menced under the Nixon Administration has tak­en an incal­cu­la­ble toll on the black community.
Ms. Taylor is dead, she com­mit­ted no crime, yet no offi­cer has been charged with her death. If Ms. Taylor is dead,(which she is), and her death is not demon­stra­bly an acci­dent, how can there be no true bill returned on her killing?
Who made the deci­sion only to charge Brett Hankison with endan­ger­ment and what do they look like.
Breonna Taylor was not endan­gered, she is dead.

THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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