Being A Big Black Man May Now Be A Death Sentence.…

Amidst the wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the terror events in Minnesota , New Jersey and right here at home in New York City , one thing has not slowed down, that is the incessant killing of unarmed black men by police across America.

For those of us who had any train­ing as police offi­cers we recall the rules as it relates to when we could legal­ly dis­charge our weapons, much less at anoth­er human being. We look on in hor­ror at the con­stant pret­zel-type forms police and their apol­o­gists take to jus­ti­fy police killings.

Oh my God, we love our police offi­cers, we love the fact that they run to dan­ger on our behalf. They lit­er­al­ly place their lives on the line when we run in the oth­er direction.
But for the love of God, pre­tend­ing that there is no police prob­lem in America is being tone deaf, or worse, will­ful­ly not car­ing about the pile of dead bodies.
It is a sick dement­ed mind­set which crit­i­cizes a social­ly con­scious Colin Kaepernick for tak­ing a knee while turn­ing a blind uncar­ing eye to the pile of dead black bod­ies each year.
When you do that you lose ratio­nal peo­ple, you lose a place in the dis­cus­sion because you made your­self irra­tional and there­fore irrel­e­vant to the conversation.

The peo­ple who make excus­es for police mis­con­duct have made the deci­sion they do not care about the loss of lives, as such the black com­mu­ni­ty must tune them out as well.
How much is enough, how long will the same nar­ra­tive be used ‚“offi­cer fired because they were in fear for their lives?
The fear in police offi­cers can­not be a death sen­tence for others!

I recalled many years ago when I was a serv­ing police offi­cer, there was much talk that there were instances of extra­ju­di­cial killings by the Jamaican police.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that Jamaica as a nation has been, and still remain a small nation which does not give police offi­cers the sup­port they need to get the job done.
It bears men­tion­ing also that the Island is among the most vio­lent places on earth and is with­in the top five most mur­der­ous places on the planet.
Within that con­text, activists groups began to attach the term extra­ju­di­cial to all police shoot­ings. Even though the Island was expe­ri­enc­ing an aver­age of four mur­ders dai­ly and up to 1600 annu­al­ly , every police shoot­ing was labeled an extra­ju­di­cial shooting.

Each shoot­ing elicit­ed protest action and howls of con­dem­na­tion. Most notably the United States Leahy bill with­drew fund­ing from spe­cial­ized units with­in the JCF as a result of these alle­ga­tions, most of which were unproven.
First spon­sored in the late 1990s by Senator Patrick Leahy (D‑VT), the “Leahy laws” (some­times referred to as the “Leahy amend­ments”) are cur­rent­ly man­i­fest in two places. One is Section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA), as amend­ed, which pro­hibits the fur­nish­ing of assis­tance autho­rized by the FAA and the Arms Export Control Act to any for­eign secu­ri­ty force unit where there is cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the unit has com­mit­ted a gross vio­la­tion of human rights.

If the Americans gov­ern­ment care enough to with­draw fund­ing from groups with­in cer­tain mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary groups in oth­er coun­tries which are accused of human rights abus­es, why is it pow­er­less to stop what we see hap­pen­ing day in day out right here in America?
Not every shoot­ing is racial shoot­ing, not every shoot­ing is a bad shooting .
But as a police offi­cer who became keen­ly con­scious of the envi­ron­ment and the per­cep­tions sur­round­ing shoot­ings by offi­cers in my time, it can­not be out of the realm of the under­stand­ing of American cops that they must be appro­pri­ate­ly sure before using lethal force.

It can be done and must be done, cit­i­zens can­not be killed because police offi­cers are scared. It can­not be that an offi­cer pulls the trig­ger because she is in fear as is being alleged in the killing of 40-year-old Terence Crutcher in Tulsa Oklahoma. Neither can the per­cep­tion that some­one is a “big bad dude” be a death sen­tence for that person.
This is insan­i­ty, every sane law enforce­ment offi­cer past and present knows these rea­sons giv­en for shoot­ing peo­ple they sus­pect, stretch­es the bound­aries of credulity.

How much longer will it be before police offi­cers are held account­able for killing unarmed cit­i­zens rather that the con­stant twist­ing of the laws to jus­ti­fy their ille­gal actions?
The notion that a per­son can be legal­ly shot and killed by police because that per­son seemed to be putting his hand into a vehi­cle can­not con­tin­ue to stand.
An armed, trained police offi­cer already with gun drawn, can­not sim­ply be allowed to gun down cit­i­zens using those guises.
Did he pull a gun ?
Did you see a gun?.….….….. No one can rea­son­ably argue with an offi­cer who shoots some­one who pulls a gun , but we sim­ply can­not sup­port the unlaw­ful killing of peo­ple based on fears and bias­es with­in peo­ple who are sup­posed to be trained to pro­tect lives.