Thanks to the advent of the inter­net, voic­es that were pre­vi­ous­ly silenced are now the loud­est. People who hith­er­to had no way of get­ting their views heard, are now read all over the world. Credible research infor­ma­tion is just a click away.
The ben­e­fit that those pos­si­bil­i­ties present are incal­cu­la­ble, all in all, no one can claim with any degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty, that before they made cru­cial deci­sions, they were unable to access good and cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion or data on a giv­en subject.
Today’s JCF seems to be about pos­tur­ing, form over sub­stance, a nev­er-end­ing crab in a bar­rel fight to be promoted.
I under­stand the need to fight to be pro­mot­ed with­in the exist­ing JCF con­struct. After all, when a slight pay increase is tied to a high­er rank it is incon­ceiv­able that this race to the top would not result.
Unfortunately, in this mad rush to the top, the focus is not on polic­ing where it ought to be. For years I have sug­gest­ed a senior­i­ty sys­tem that guar­an­tees senior­i­ty pay that is not tied to promotions.
Additionally, pay­ing police offi­cers for over­time work is also anoth­er way in which offi­cers could begin to improve their earn­ings. That process would ease the stress on the pro­mo­tion process, more impor­tant­ly, it would reduce, if not elim­i­nate, some aspects of police corruption.

Over the years I have writ­ten hun­dreds of arti­cles in sup­port of the rule of law in Jamaica. Among those arti­cles are some that sim­ply sup­port the rule of law, and by exten­sion our police officers.
In oth­ers, I have been crit­i­cal of the tac­tics, poli­cies, and fail­ures of the force. During my ten-year stint in the force, those who knew me will recall that I had zero tol­er­ance for medi­oc­rity. As such I have felt oblig­at­ed to call out indi­vid­ual offi­cers for what I per­ceived to be incom­pe­tence and or cor­rup­tion. That too in my hum­ble opin­ion, is a con­tri­bu­tion to the JCF and by exten­sion the coun­try at large. An incom­pe­tent police force is no good for anyone.
A police force that can­not ful­fill its man­date can­not be a dump­ing ground for peo­ple who can­not find jobs or cut it in the pri­vate sec­tor or oth­er areas of the pub­lic sector.
By objec­tive­ly hold­ing every­one’s feet to the fire I sub­mit, we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a bet­ter country.
From the start, I under­stood the very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that much of what I wrote would only be rel­e­vant as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence point, as opposed to being a tem­plate that the JCF would find use­ful in help­ing itself become a more pro­fes­sion­al and effec­tive agency.

I want to address today, the con­tin­ued inep­ti­tude of the JCF, and it’s per­sis­tent inabil­i­ty to present itself as a cred­i­ble intel­li­gence-dri­ven law-enforce­ment agency.
An intel­li­gence-led JCF would pos­sess the capa­bil­i­ty to ensure that those pre­dis­posed to using mur­der­ous scare tac­tics to usurp the crim­i­nal jus­tice process would fear, and have sec­ond thoughts about using vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, on those who would step for­ward to tes­ti­fy against them.
There is no greater threat to the safe­ty, sta­bil­i­ty, and secu­ri­ty of a nation, than the abil­i­ty of crim­i­nal net­works to use vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, to keep oth­ers from tes­ti­fy­ing in a court of law.
Allowing this to hap­pen is bow­ing to terrorism.
Make no mis­take about it, those who kill their fel­low coun­try­men, then use mur­der as a scare tac­tic to pre­vent wit­ness­es from tes­ti­fy­ing against them are indeed domes­tic terrorists.
They must be treat­ed as such. And so the nation needs a strong, com­pe­tent law enforce­ment agency that is up to the task.

I believe that even among my great­est detrac­tors, there is hard­ly a cred­i­ble argu­ment to be made that the JCF has pro­gressed to the point where it is equal to the task of effec­tive­ly deal­ing with the rag-tag- crim­i­nals oper­at­ing on the Island. Are they suf­fi­cient­ly being mon­i­tored, or remote­ly con­cerned about the con­se­quences the JCF could exact on their oper­a­tions? I think not.
I under­stand the real­i­ties fac­ing the agency. There are crim­i­nals among the elect­ed offi­cials, I get that. There is crim­i­nal sup­port in gov­ern­ment agen­cies, I get that. There is sup­port for crim­i­nals cul­tur­al­ly, I get that.
There is sup­port for crim­i­nals in the judi­cia­ry, I get that. And yes, there is sup­port for crim­i­nals across the broad­er soci­ety, I get that too.
But by God, none of that pre­vents the JCF from being a capa­ble agency that is com­pe­tent respect­ed, and feared, not for its bru­tal­i­ty but for its effectiveness.

No police agency can total­ly pro­tect all of its mem­bers form being attacked, injured, and even killed. But when a police agency is unable to find the shoot­er who just shot and killed an offi­cer sim­ply because he ran around a cor­ner, that agency has problems.
Recent, and pre­vi­ous attacks on mem­bers of the JCF with­out a sin­gle arrest has demon­strat­ed that the JCF is fly­ing blind.
An Agency that can­not pro­tect its own mem­bers can­not make the claim that it can pro­tect a nation.
Those are the hard truths.
There are ways that each and every vio­lent crim­i­nal that pass­es through the sys­tem can be mon­i­tored and kept in check. That is not to say that they will not be able to com­mit more crimes, what it means is that when they do, the agency will know what it is that they did, and will find them quick­ly and hold them accountable.

An Agency that is tasked with the secu­ri­ty of a nation, sim­ply can­not oper­ate as a stop-clock. Even with the best strate­gies in mind, mon­i­tor­ing, and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, data pro­cess­ing, and dis­sem­i­na­tion are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing an edge in secur­ing the country.
Police agen­cies can no longer oper­ate in the dark, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and data col­lec­tion, are fun­da­men­tal­ly crit­i­cal to mod­ern polic­ing, not large guns and show of force, even though those too have a place.
Simply react­ing to a piece of intel­li­gence is not intel­li­gence-dri­ven policing.
The intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing must be con­tin­u­ous, it must be dri­ven towards a pur­pose and the data derived must be col­lat­ed towards the strate­gic exe­cu­tion of well thought out strategies.
If the JCF is doing this we can­not see it. Members still con­tin­ue to be shot and at best the JCF can only guess as to who is behind the attacks, if they even both­er to think about those attacks.
The JCF still con­tin­ues to be an out­dat­ed reac­tive force, and that is the bot­tom line. The fail­ings of the force are not with the rank and file, they rest sole­ly on the inabil­i­ty of its lead­er­ship to step up and do the job they were appoint­ed to do.

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.

Over the decades, Ginsburg was con­stant­ly broad­en­ing her under­stand­ing of “unjus­ti­fied inequal­i­ty” beyond her own expe­ri­ence. The justice’s expla­na­tion of “unjus­ti­fied inequal­i­ty” in Sessions drew from the Supreme Court’s 2015 deci­sion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which rec­og­nized same-sex cou­ples’ fun­da­men­tal right to mar­ry. Her con­nec­tion between sex dis­crim­i­na­tion and anti-gay dis­crim­i­na­tion was pre­scient. A few months after Obergefell came down, Ginsburg not­ed that fem­i­nism and mar­riage equal­i­ty are deeply inter­twined. “It’s a facet of the gay rights move­ment that peo­ple don’t think about enough,” the jus­tice said. “Why sud­den­ly mar­riage equal­i­ty? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s ‘head and mas­ter rule,’ ” which gave hus­bands total con­trol over mar­i­tal prop­er­ty. “Marriage was a rela­tion­ship between the dom­i­nant, bread­win­ning hus­band and the sub­or­di­nate, child-rear­ing wife,” Ginsburg con­tin­ued. States locked both part­ners into gen­der roles based on a stereo­typed vision of what mar­riage means. “What les­bian or gay man,” the jus­tice asked, “would want that?”https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​9​/​r​u​t​h​-​b​a​d​e​r​-​g​i​n​s​b​u​r​g​-​c​h​a​n​g​e​d​-​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​.​h​tml

Here is the state­ment from the Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky

People say American polic­ing is bro­ken and that it needs fix­ing. I dis­agree, American polic­ing is work­ing exact­ly the way it was designed to work, and it has worked since reconstruction.
Law enforce­ment in all of its forms was designed to be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and puni­tive to Black people.
Whether it be fire codes, health codes, build­ing codes, even the length of some­one’s lawn grass, the poor­est peo­ple, (blacks), were intend­ed to be pun­ished the most.
When a cop pulls over a Black per­son under the pre­text of a tail-light out, it is not ran­dom. The dri­ver in many instances can scarce­ly afford the gas in the tank much less repair a bro­ken tail-light and the pow­ers that cre­ate those laws knows that.
It is just anoth­er strat­e­gy to fur­ther impov­er­ish the already poor Black com­mu­ni­ty and con­tin­ue the mass incar­cer­a­tion of the Black population.
Or as a Wisconsin Sheriff David Beth said, “They just need to dis­ap­pear.” speak­ing of Black offend­ers. “They need to be ware­housed for the remain­der of their lives and not be let out”, Beth went on.
Sheriff David Beth was ref­er­enc­ing a group of four black teens who had com­mit­ted the unfor­giv­able sin of shoplifting.
I won­der how many crimes David Beth com­mit­ted over the span of his mis­er­able life for which he should be ware­housed and nev­er see the light of day?

Does it seem that the worst kinds of humans are run­ning to fill those sher­iff jobs, remem­ber the looney toon self ‑hat­ing David Clarke from Milwaukee County? This self ‑hat­ing crud blamed Black peo­ple for what police are doing to them and insists there is no racism in America.
This detached from real­i­ty men­tal­i­ty, is what I call the Clarence Thomas syn­drome. Overcompensating, the ugly Black man who gets to mar­ry the white woman that the white men will not marry.(but I digress).

This brings me to anoth­er cop, this time the real­ly bril­liant Hispanic Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva who all but demand­ed that bas­ket­ball great Lebron Donate a large chunk of mon­ey to aid in find­ing the per­son who shot two of his deputies days ago.
In a radio call-in pro­gram in his state, the idi­ot­ic and tone-deaf Villanueva said the following.

“This chal­lenge is to LeBron James,” Villanueva said on 790 KABC Radio in Los Angeles. “I want you to match that and dou­ble that reward. Because I know you care about law enforce­ment. “You expressed a very, very inter­est­ing state­ment about your per­spec­tive on race rela­tions and on offi­cer-involved shoot­ings and the impact it has on the African American com­mu­ni­ty, and I appre­ci­ate that. But like­wise, we need to appre­ci­ate the respect for life goes across pro­fes­sions, across races, creeds. And I’d like to see LeBron James step up to the plate and dou­ble that.”
If this guy was­n’t such an idiot I would sep­a­rate his name and drop the last few let­ters. Villan_​(ueva_.However, he is clear­ly not smart enough to be a villain.
Villanueva has been crit­i­cized for rehir­ing fired deputy Caren Carl Mandoyan. Mandoyan, who had worked for Villanueva’s elec­tion cam­paign, had been dis­charged by McDonnell the for­mer Sheriff, after alle­ga­tions of domes­tic abuse and stalk­ing a woman he had met while work­ing at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. The Los Angeles Times report­ed that Mandoyan was a mem­ber of a secret soci­ety of deputies known as the Reapers and had on his left ankle the group’s tat­too — an image of the “Grim Reaper” hold­ing a scythe and the name of his Sheriff’s sta­tion. A judge ordered that Mandoyan be stripped of his badge and his gun, [yet] he remains an employ­ee of the Sheriff’s Department. Villanueva also has been crit­i­cized for rehir­ing a homi­cide detec­tive who had been banned from coun­ty jails after imper­son­at­ing a deputy and deliv­er­ing con­tra­band to an inmate.
He is also been scru­ti­nized for the hir­ing of his son, Johannes Jared Villanueva, sev­en months after he took office. The L.A. Times has report­ed that Johannes Jared Villanueva “was the sub­ject of two bench war­rants for fail­ing to com­ply with a court-ordered treat­ment pro­gram tied to his 2009 con­vic­tion of a mis­de­meanor DUI .” He also has been accused of mak­ing an Instagram post that made light of the Holocaust.

Here is a guy whose offi­cers mur­dered a man whom they could eas­i­ly have tak­en into cus­tody just days before. He runs a depart­ment that has faced a moun­tain of accu­sa­tions that deputies are actu­al gang­land mem­bers who sport nazi sym­bol tat­toos, they are accused of com­mit­ting all kinds of crimes against the peo­ple they are sworn protect.
This is not tone-deaf­ness, its idio­cy in high places, but idio­cy in high places is now the norm…
Rather than use this inci­dent as a wake­up call to attend to the crit­i­cal issues as it relates to the claims lev­eled at his depart­ment he seeks to go right-wing polit­i­cal by attack­ing Lebron James who cor­rect­ly calls out filthy mur­der­ing cops who com­mit atroc­i­ties against cit­i­zens whom they are sworn to protect.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I was always mind­ful that the actions of bad cops endan­ger the lives of all cops.
But we were real police offi­cers, not some moron who wins an elec­tion and slaps on a tin badge and believes he knows something.
When peo­ple can­not trust the laws to work for them they take the laws into their own hands. What’s worse is that this stu­pid Hispanic (white-in ‑wait­ing) believes that attack­ing a Black icon will serve his cause, so he decides to spew right-wing talk­ing points.
By doing so he revealed exact­ly where their heads are, fur­ther cement­ing the notion that many peo­ple hold that there are no good cops.
This is a Sheriff who ran his mouth on a radio pro­gram in July of this year, arguably slan­der­ing the Los Angeles County’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer, his boss, and is get­ting sued for slan­der and defamation.

And, as was to be expect­ed the back­lash was swift, even though Lebron James has cor­rect­ly, not ele­vat­ed him by respond­ing to his igno­rant arro­gance, Vanessa Bryant, the wid­ow of Kobi Bryant was swift to respond.
“How can he talk about trust­ing the sys­tem?” one of the tweets Bryant repost­ed read. “His sheriff’s depart­ment couldn’t be trust­ed to secure Kobe Bryant’s heli­copter crash scene, his deputies took and shared graph­ic pho­tos of crash vic­tims”. Vanessa Bryant is also suing the very same department.
Albeit for me to give advice to Lebron James as to what his response should be, [if any], nev­er­the­less it does seem that Villanueva is seek­ing media atten­tion on behalf of the racist right, or at the very least seek­ing to heap ridicule on those who speak out against sys­temic racism and police violence.
As such a response from Lebron James will inex­orably raise the pro­file of this cop with no dis­cern­able ben­e­fit to James, or the caus­es he supports.

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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Police say Ricardo Munoz threat­ened an offi­cer with a knife after a call about a domes­tic dis­pute in Lancaster.
Police deployed tear gas on a crowd of peo­ple protest­ing ear­ly Monday after an offi­cer shot and killed a man in Pennsylvania while respond­ing to a domes­tic dis­tur­bance call.
Hundreds of pro­test­ers took to the streets of Lancaster fol­low­ing the shoot­ing death of Ricardo Munoz, 27, on Sunday after­noon. The crowd formed out­side the police sta­tion. Police said mul­ti­ple build­ings and gov­ern­ment vehi­cles were dam­aged by demonstrators.
Munoz was fatal­ly shot after com­ing out of a home and chas­ing an offi­cer with a knife, police said. Body cam­era video showed the offi­cer fire sev­er­al shots at Munoz, who then falls to the ground.

The offi­cer was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave, accord­ing to local news outlets.
The Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office was lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. District Attorney Heather Adams acknowl­edged the protests in a news release late Sunday and called for calm.
“We ask that acts of protest remain peace­ful as vio­lence and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty will become head­lines and serve no pur­pose for the safe­ty and well­be­ing of our cit­i­zens and neigh­bor­hoods,” Adams stated.
As for the use of “chem­i­cal muni­tions” against pro­test­ers ear­ly Monday, the police depart­ment said in a state­ment that the crowd was giv­en sev­er­al warn­ings to dis­perse before the gas was deployed.

The crowd “failed to fol­low the instruc­tions,” police stat­ed, adding that items includ­ing glass bot­tles, gal­lon jugs filled with liq­uid, parts of plas­tic road bar­ri­cades, and more had been thrown at officers.

The Houston Police Department has fired four of its offi­cers for killing an emo­tion­al­ly dis­tressed man who they shot a total of 24 times dur­ing a response to a 911 call in April. The major­i­ty of the shots were fired after the man was on the ground and incapacitated.
Police Chief Art Acevedo announced the con­clu­sion of the five-month-long inves­ti­ga­tion Thursday, show­ing body­cam footage of the inci­dent and call­ing the offi­cers’ actions “not objec­tive­ly reasonable.”

“The chain of com­mand does not con­sid­er them objec­tive­ly rea­son­able, and I believe any­one that watch­es this would see they had a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties and a lot of oth­er options read­i­ly avail­able to them,” Acevedo said in Thursday’s press conference.
“You don’t get to shoot some­body 21 times, because at that time, when we dis­charged those 21 rounds, Mr. Chavez was at his great­est lev­el of incapacitation.”

On April 21, offi­cers Luis Alvarado, Omar Tapiam and Patrick Rubio and Sgt. Benjamin LeBlanc respond­ed to a 911 call about a dis­tressed man who was run­ning through traf­fic, enter­ing people’s prop­er­ty, and pos­si­bly ready to hurt himself.

When police arrived, they found 27-year-old Nicolas Chavez walk­ing around a park­ing lot hold­ing what they first believed to be a knife and was lat­er iden­ti­fied as a piece of rebar. Bodycam footage shows that the offi­cers spent about 15 min­utes try­ing to deesca­late the sit­u­a­tion through non­lethal means and ver­bal com­mands. Eventually, after fir­ing bean­bags and stun guns at Chavez to no avail, LeBlanc is seen fir­ing two shots at Chavez.

Chavez, who was now sit­ting on the ground, con­tin­ued to advance toward the offi­cers against the ver­bal orders of the police. A sec­ond offi­cer fired anoth­er shot, hop­ing to stop Chavez from mov­ing any clos­er, but failed to deter him.

Finally, Chavez began to pull a stun gun that was still attached to his body toward him. Despite repeat­ed warn­ings from offi­cers to stop mov­ing, the dis­tressed man con­tin­ued to pull on the stun gun spring and grabbed a hold of the weapon, which prompt­ed the four offi­cers to fire a total of 21 shots. Chavez was killed in the hail of gunfire.

Acevedo said that the sit­u­a­tion should have been han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly once Chavez was on the ground.

“It’s inex­plic­a­ble to me, when they had plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to back up to con­tin­ue doing what they were doing,” the chief said. “For them to stay the line and shoot a man 21 times, I can­not defend that.”

Before the release of the police body­cam footage, a 47-sec­ond cell­phone video of the shoot­ing, filmed by a bystander, went viral on social media. Chavez’s death, like many oth­ers killed by police this year, sparked months of protests in Houston, as both the pub­lic and Chavez’s fam­i­ly demand­ed the release of police body­cam footage of the dead­ly police encounter.

Chavez’s fam­i­ly lat­er told local news out­let KHOU-11 that their rel­a­tive had a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. Toxicology reports also revealed that Chavez had metham­phet­a­mine, amphet­a­mine, and ethanol in his sys­tem the night of the shooting.

The local Houston Police Officers’ Union pushed back against the fir­ings. Union President Joe Gamaldi reaf­firmed that the four offi­cers did every­thing they could to help Chavez before tak­ing lethal action.

“This unjust and deplorable deci­sion by Chief Acevedo has sent a shock wave through HPD. Even if you deesca­late, retreat, fol­low pol­i­cy, train­ing, and the law…you will still lose your job as a Houston Police Officer,” Gamaldi tweet­ed ThursdayThough the offi­cers involved have been fired, the shoot­ing is still being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. District Attorney Kim Ogg has said pub­licly that she plans to present the case before a grand jury to deter­mine whether the offi­cers involved com­mit­ted a pun­ish­able crime.

There is a cer­tain mind­set in the United States on the part of wealthy and pow­er­ful white peo­ple, that what­ev­er pow­er the police need to keep enforc­ing the sys­tem of white suprema­cy is jus­ti­fied, regard­less of the con­se­quences to inno­cent lives. (As far as they are con­cerned, those who fall, vic­tim to police vio­lence are col­lat­er­al dam­age, a nec­es­sary loss toward achiev­ing the larg­er goal).
The sys­tem pro­tects pow­er­ful whites, it was designed exact­ly to do so, it has indoc­tri­nat­ed poor whites to live in a per­pet­u­al­ly sus­pend­ed state of await­ing their turn.
They are indoc­tri­nat­ed into believ­ing in a mirage, that just over the hori­zon is an oasis of wealth and prosperity.
That they will become the next suc­cess sto­ry, the big man who owns the plan­ta­tion. Make no mis­take about it, this has been hap­pen­ing since slav­ery when the rich told whites they were bet­ter than blacks based on their white skin.
To this day poor whites still refuse to see the error of sup­port­ing a sys­tem that keeps them down, almost as it does minorities.

From the days of slav­ery, to the present, poor whites believed the lies they were told by the wealthy. The lies were designed to dri­ve a wedge between poor whites & Blacks, so that white planters and oth­er wealthy whites could con­tin­ue to stack up wealth and main­tain control.
Still today, poor whites wait expec­tant­ly that they will be next in line to move up to the gaudy, gild­ed pent­house, fifty floors into the Manhattan sky.
Today, even though the United States has acquired more wealth and pow­er than any oth­er nation in his­to­ry ever had, pover­ty con­tin­ues to rise, not just in the black com­mu­ni­ty but across all racial groups. According to the Census Bureau 29.9% of the pop­u­la­tion — or 93.6 mil­lion — live close to pover­ty, with incomes less than two times that of their pover­ty thresh­olds. The USDA esti­mat­ed that 11.1% of US house­holds were food inse­cure in 2018. This means that approx­i­mate­ly 14.3 mil­lion house­holds had dif­fi­cul­ty pro­vid­ing enough food for all their mem­bers due to a lack of resources. Rates of food inse­cu­ri­ty were sub­stan­tial­ly high­er than the nation­al aver­age for house­holds with incomes near or below the Federal pover­ty line. (Source: US Department of Agriculture)

Despite those glar­ing trend­lines, poor whites tend not to see inequities in the sys­tem much the same way that blacks do. Despite being poor, and in many cas­es more des­ti­tute than a large seg­ment of the black pop­u­la­tion, they cling to the sys­tem that has kept them in per­pet­u­al pover­ty, gen­er­a­tion after generation.
But it is hard­ly my point to show the pover­ty rate among white Americans. My intent is to demon­strate just how poor whites are also vic­tims of a sys­tem that is held up by their sheer numer­ic strength of white peo­ple. But under which they too suf­fer in pover­ty, and are seen as valu­able, only to the extent they con­tin­ue to mil­i­tate against their own self-interest.
As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic rages, and peo­ple are forced to stop. Take stock of their lives, and observe the things that are hap­pen­ing around them, the year 2020 has result­ed in some firsts.
For the very first time in the nation’s his­to­ry, the police killing of a black man, George Floyd took cen­ter stage across the coun­try, and cities and town across the coun­try were filled with pro­test­ers against police bru­tal­i­ty, most of the pro­test­ers have been white, that’s a first.

In the same way that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem treats two men, one who walks into a bank and com­mits an armed rob­bery, then runs out­side to a get­away car dri­ven by anoth­er, so must dis­senters view the sys­tem when it comes to pros­e­cu­tors and judges who enable and cheer­lead police mur­der, and cre­ates space (pros­e­cu­to­ri­al­ly, through non-action) and judi­cial­ly, through rul­ings and dis­sent, allow­ing it to con­tin­ue and to grow.
What has been clear as a result of (a) Trump’s ascen­den­cy to the exec­u­tive Mansion, (b) the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and © the unrest on the nation’s streets, is that Americans of all stripes have begun to see police bru­tal­i­ty for what it is.
Also evi­dent, is the bud­dy-bud­dy sys­tem that exists between police and pros­e­cu­tors offices, which makes it impos­si­ble for pros­e­cu­tors to appro­pri­ate­ly hold police account­able for their crimes.
What has not got­ten much atten­tion, is the com­plic­i­ty of unelect­ed judges who con­tin­ue to be shield­ed by their dark robes and ivory tow­ers, away from the blood and gore, many of whom help to cre­ate doc­trines that places the lives of peo­ple in inher­ent danger.
One such doc­trine is the qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty doc­trine cre­at­ed by the Supreme Court, which is not in the con­sti­tu­tion, is not law, but a stan­dard set by the Supreme Court to shield pub­lic employ­ees from civ­il lia­bil­i­ty when they are law­ful­ly car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al duties and may make mistakes.

The prob­lem with Qualified immu­ni­ty is that when it comes to police offi­cers who are giv­en pow­ers unequaled in any oth­er field, the courts have bent over back­ward to allow police to oper­ate in enforc­ing the nation’s laws..
Unfortunately, many police offi­cers use qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty as a shield, behind which they abuse, maim, and kill cit­i­zens with wan­ton dis­re­gard and abject impunity.
According to the Supreme Court’s estab­lished doc­trine, in order for a cop to be out­side the shield of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, he must com­mit an act so egre­gious, that any oth­er offi­cer would have known that the act was crim­i­nal. However, that is not all, in order for an errant cop to lose his immu­ni­ty, there must have already been one such case against anoth­er cop that has been pros­e­cut­ed and decid­ed in a court of law.
It is a high bar for pros­e­cu­tors who are doing their job prop­er­ly to meet. It is a bar behind which pros­e­cu­tors who side with police rather than do their jobs, find shelter.

Buzzfeed report­ed on a case in 2010 in which In police offi­cers respond­ed to a report that a teenag­er was walk­ing through a neigh­bor­hood in Garland, Texas, with a hand­gun. When offi­cers found the 17-year-old, he was hold­ing the gun to his own head. The cops imme­di­ate­ly shot the poor teen twice, hav­ing been shot, he invol­un­tar­i­ly pulled the trig­ger. The teen sur­vived but has per­ma­nent injuries that include paral­y­sis and brain damage.
(Way to save a per­son from harm­ing himself).
The fam­i­ly of the teen sued the police, they accused the cops of using exces­sive force and fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence. They argued that even though the young man was armed, the cir­cum­stances didn’t jus­ti­fy dead­ly force, and they accused one offi­cer of lying about the teen aim­ing a gun at the police.

In August 2019, the US Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit denied immu­ni­ty to the offi­cers, mean­ing the case would go to a jury. That’s great, but what is star­tling, is that the four Trump’s appointees dis­sent­ed, argu­ing, “No mem­ber of this court has stared down a flee­ing felon on the inter­state or con­front­ed a men­tal­ly dis­turbed teenag­er who is bran­dish­ing a loaded gun near his school.” Judges Andy Oldham and James Ho, both Trump nom­i­nees, wrote in a dis­sent­ing opinion.
The dis­sent gives a bird’s eye view of what is hap­pen­ing behind the scenes, whose actions are embold­en­ing the police vio­lence dai­ly, result­ing in the push­back from peo­ple tired of the abuse.
The word­ing itself caus­es one to rethink the whole notion of “learned judge”. It pre­sup­pos­es that a flee­ing felon or a men­tal­ly dis­turbed teenag­er, is fair game to be sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed by police.
God help those of you who have your won­der­ful kids, teenagers, or oth­er­wise, with men­tal health issues, who think it’s a good idea to call the police to your home to help.

The Buzzfeed report­ing went on to state that In cas­es where police have argued for immu­ni­ty, Trump’s nom­i­nees haven’t just split with their fel­low Republican appointees on how to apply the law — they’ve expressed full-throat­ed sup­port for law enforce­ment and made clear they believe courts should do more to shield offi­cers from lawsuits“If we want to stop mass shoot­ings, we should stop pun­ish­ing police offi­cers who put their lives on the line to pre­vent them’.
The unde­ni­able real­i­ty is that there is not a sin­gle case of a mass shoot­ing that was stopped by police officers.
Judge Ho wrote in anoth­er case in October 2019. He dis­sent­ed from his col­leagues — a mix of Republican and Democratic appointees — who denied immu­ni­ty to offi­cers accused of using exces­sive force when they respond­ed to reports of an armed man walk­ing through a neigh­bor­hood and shot and killed the sus­pect. (Buzzfeed)

In the case of a 17-year old boy shot by Garland Texas Police, the very same Ho & Oldham joined byJerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, blast­ed their col­leagues in the major­i­ty who ruled that it should be up to a jury to decide the case. Clearly this new cadre of earth­ly Gods do not feel that juries should make the call but it should be up to them the unelect­ed elites to decide to say police are above the laws.
“Supreme Court prece­dent “gives us no basis for sneer­ing at cops on the beat from the safe­ty of our cham­bers,” they wrote.
Judge Kyle Duncan, also a Trump nom­i­nee, pub­lished his own dis­sent, writ­ing that “by mak­ing the offi­cers run the gaunt­let of tri­al,” the court under­mined their abil­i­ty to make split-sec­ond deci­sions about using lethal force”.
In oth­er words, police offi­cers who are entrust­ed to make deci­sions of life and death, police offi­cers who are trained for only a few months, police offi­cers who har­bor deep racial bias­es, police offi­cers who use drugs and are some­times hopped up on mind-alter­ing sub­stances, should be held to zero stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty when they use dead­ly force result­ing in the death of citizens.
The nation is in for a rather rough ride, in some quar­ters there have been com­plaints about the lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tion of some of the over 200 appointees Donald Trump has man­aged to load up onto the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry, includ­ing two on the supreme court, the con­se­quences are going to be dire going for­ward. Andrew Oldham is only 42 years old.

The cold, cal­cu­lat­ed impuni­ty with which American police bru­tal­ize, and kill cit­i­zens, can­not be processed with­in a frame­work sole­ly of good cop Vs bad cop. It has to be addressed in a ful­some way, tak­ing into account the vast infra­struc­ture that oper­ates behind the scenes to pro­tect police from accountability.
This is not a sys­tem that will crum­ble and allow for jus­tice to pre­vail, it is a sys­tem that will take all hands on deck to dis­man­tle, and it will not be easy.

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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By JEREMY STAHL SEPT 08, 20206:49 PM

On Friday, a Salt Lake City police offi­cer shot a 13-year-old autis­tic child sev­er­al times after his moth­er called 911 to ask for a cri­sis inter­ven­tion team to take him to the hos­pi­tal dur­ing a men­tal health episode.

Linden Cameron, who is white, is cur­rent­ly hos­pi­tal­ized with injuries to his shoul­der, ankles, intestines, and blad­der, accord­ing to a GoFundMe page his moth­er set up.

Cameron’s moth­er, Golda Barton, told local CBS affil­i­ate KUTV that she called the police to report that she need­ed a cri­sis inter­ven­tion after her son, who has Asperger’s, strug­gled with “sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety” at her need to return to work.

According to Barton, two police offi­cers came to her home, told her to wait inside, and then one of them shot Cameron repeat­ed­ly with­in five min­utes of arriv­ing after he fled

As KUTV reported:

[Barton] thought her son was dead and the offi­cers didn’t imme­di­ate­ly say if he was or was not dead. They hand­cuffed him, accord­ing to Barton. Additionally, she said she heard from some­one that the oth­er offi­cer could be seen grab­bing his own head in dis­be­lief for what had hap­pened. He said out loud, accord­ing to what the moth­er was told, “He’s just a child, what are you doing?”

The police have not released the name of the offi­cer involved in the shoot­ing, or made pub­lic the police report, or explained gen­er­al­ly why the offi­cer shot the child, or said if he or she would be charged or face any dis­ci­pli­nary action. The depart­ment said it would release addi­tion­al details with­in 10 busi­ness days, which is when local ordi­nances require body­cam footage be released. During a press con­fer­ence after the inci­dent, Salt Lake City police Sgt. Keith Horrocks seemed to blame the child for the shooting.

Horrocks said that police were respond­ing to a call regard­ing “a vio­lent psych issue involv­ing a juve­nile male who had made threats.” He would not clar­i­fy who made the call or who was threat­ened by the 13-year-old, but he did allege that the threat was made with a weapon.

“Given the threats of the weapon, they arrived in the area and made con­tact with this male,” he said. “That male fled on foot away from the address, and dur­ing a short foot pur­suit, an offi­cer dis­charged his firearm, strik­ing that subject.”

But the 13-year-old was not found with a weapon, and his moth­er said she told offi­cers on the phone that her son did not have a weapon.

“I said, he’s unarmed, he doesn’t have any­thing, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and scream­ing. He’s a kid, he’s try­ing to get atten­tion, he doesn’t know how to reg­u­late,” she told KUTV.

The shoot­ing occurred as protests raged across the coun­try over the police killing of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York.* Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, was also in the mid­dle of a men­tal health cri­sis when police killed him. Like Cameron’s moth­er, Prude’s broth­er was the one who ini­tial­ly called 911 to get him help. It is not unusu­al for police to kill peo­ple with men­tal dis­abil­i­ties or ill­ness; the Washington Post esti­mat­ed that a quar­ter of peo­ple killed by police in the U.S. were in the throes of a men­tal or emo­tion­al crisis.

In her inter­view with the net­work, Barton repeat­ed­ly broke down cry­ing and said she did not under­stand why police had shot the boy.

“He’s a small child. Why didn’t you just tack­le him? He’s a baby. He has men­tal issues,” she said.

Editor’s Note; When we allow police to sim­ply shoot peo­ple tey deem dis­pos­able, this is the end result. For decades those dis­pos­ables were black and brown people.
Far too many white peo­ple remained silent because they fun­da­men­tal­ly believed their white skin is insu­la­tion against that savagery.
Unfortunately, white peo­ple are find­ing out that as Black peo­ple have tak­en to the streets to con­tin­ue to ham­mer home the point that far too many police offi­cers are killers, some of their white coun­ter­parts are awak­en­ing to the real­i­ty that they are not immune from that clear and present danger.
It may already be too late to put the Genie back in the bot­tle, many argue, we are in the clutch­es of a police state.

Rochester, N.Y. Police Chief La’Ron Singletary has resigned after a week of sus­tained protests over the March extra­ju­di­cial killing of Daniel Prude.

Singletary, who is Black, had received calls for his res­ig­na­tion after Prude’s fam­i­ly released body cam­era footage of his death last week. Prude was detained by police on March 22 after his broth­er called for a well­ness check for his sib­ling, who had men­tal health issues. Responding to the call, Rochester police placed a spit hood over the dis­tressed and unarmed man, pin­ning him to the ground in a chain of events that caused Prude to lose con­scious­ness. He died in a hos­pi­tal a week after the encounter.

But Singletary doesn’t appear to be bow­ing to the will of pro­test­ers, who have accused the police depart­ment and city gov­ern­ment of cov­er­ing up Prude’s death (there have also been calls for Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren to step down). According to a res­ig­na­tion let­ter obtained by WHAM-TV, Singletary’s quit­ting the job appears to be a protest in and of its own:
As a man of integri­ty, I will not sit idly by while out­side enti­ties attempt to destroy my char­ac­ter. The events over the past week are an attempt to destroy my char­ac­ter and integri­ty. The mem­bers of the Rochester Police Department and the Greater Rochester Community know my rep­u­ta­tion and know what I stand for. The mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and the politi­ciza­tion of the actions that I took after being informed of Mr. Prude’s death is not based on facts, and is not what I stand for.

According to reporters who were watch­ing the press con­fer­ence, includ­ing BuzzFeed’s Paul McLeod, Rochester’s entire com­mand staff has also stepped down.
The res­ig­na­tions also come just three days after New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced a grand jury would review Prude’s case, reports the New York Times. There has also been dis­agree­ment about how much was com­mu­ni­cat­ed between Singletary and Mayor Warren in the imme­di­ate after­math of Prude’s killing.

According to WHAM, Warren said she didn’t know the full details of Prude’s death, and that she had been told he died of a drug over­dose. During a news con­fer­ence last week, Warren said it wasn’t until August 4 that she saw footage of police arrest­ing Prude. Singletary said he called Warren on March 23 to alert her of the inci­dent, and that a crim­i­nal and inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion was underway.

Since Prude’s death has come to light, Warren has ordered that video of any in-cus­tody death be released with­in 24 hours. On Tuesday, Mayor Warren said the search has begun to find an inter­im police chief. It is unclear who will be in charge dur­ing tonight’s sched­uled protests.[from the root]