The subjective standard of ‘reasonable suspicion,’ when left up to immoral, racist actors, is another weapon of oppression against marginalized people in America.
American police, from its inception at best, were always the foot soldiers of white supremacy. It is inconceivable to imagine something designed with malice and hatred to graduate into a force for good. For those reasons, the very construct of American policing is so fundamentally flawed that it cannot be remediated.
For starters, it is not as if America is becoming a better nation, one free from its ignoble racist past; racial hatred is so deeply entrenched into the American body politic that the two can scarcely be separated.
In September 2015, a year after a white cop, Darren Wilson, murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 58 percent of Americans said that race relations were worsening and not improving…
More than 150 years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, most U.S. adults say the legacy of slavery continues to impact the position of black people in American society today. More than four in ten say the country [hasn’t made enough progress toward racial equality], and there is some skepticism, particularly among blacks, that black people will ever have equal rights with whites, according to a new (Pew Research Center survey).
In 2021 the right-leaning (Brookings Institution) stated in an article that systemic racism is not simply a thing of the past but is deeply embedded within American society.
It is not just that the enforcers of the laws are, in many cases, racist jack-booted murderous thugs who gleefully live out their most base fantasies against Blacks; it is that in many cases, the legislatures pass unjustly written laws to ensure nefarious desired outcomes.
The Judges who administer the sentences apply stiffer sentences to Black defendants than to whites for the same crimes. According to data, penalties are over 40% harsher than whites receive.
From minor traffic infractions in which police target Black communities, which are the poorest in the nation, for traffic enforcement, not necessarily for real moving violations but for ones they dredge up to justify the stops. And, of course, unless there is video evidence to contradict the allowable pretextual stops, prosecutors and judges dutifully exact fines that the defendants can barely afford.
Worse yet, many traffic infractions directly result from the driver’s financial vulnerabilities, broken taillights, burnt-out bulbs around tags, etc. So the poverty that caused the violation in the first place becomes a crime for which the defendant is punished with a fine and forced to pay monies to the municipality they could not afford to fix the problem in the first place.
Failure to pay results in an arrest warrant being issued for the defendant. This ignoble racist type of policing unleashes the state’s power on the poorest people, resulting in police engaging in even more pretextual stops to check drivers’ licenses for warrants. It is the vicious cycle of state tyranny in which people in the Black community exist daily.
The privileged sit on the sidelines and opine, why not just obey the laws? The financial poverty of the underclass is surpassed only by the poverty of humanity in this privileged class. Targeting one community for enforcement will surely skew the data, creating the false impression that the targeted group has a greater propensity for law-breaking.
It also incentivizes those not targeted to sit on the sidelines and offer opinions bereft of intellectual maturity or critical thinking. This class of sheep is useful idiots. They recite what they are told verbatim.
To understand the duplicity of the system, one must have a lived experience. It is not just a vicious system that unleashes well-trained killer cops, many of them former military members, into the black community. It is a skillfully woven system from bottom to top that is designed to criminalize, ensnare, incarcerate, or worse- as many members of the Black community as possible.
Blacks are not more inclined to be criminals; it is that the Black community has been set up to appear that way.
In the video above, you will have an opportunity to see evidence of what I speak. This is what obtains for policing.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.