Merely Calling The Killing Of Michael Brown A Tragedy Is Not Enough

I spent 10 years of my life as a front line Police Officer in Jamaica, one of the tough­est Countries to Police in the world.
Tough because the frame­work for the rule of law is not clear­ly estab­lished. The Island Nation is still mak­ing baby steps toward mov­ing toward a sys­tem of laws, even as it holds on tena­cious­ly to the sys­tem of the big-man which has char­ac­ter­ized it’s exis­tence since it’s Independence in 1962.

Jamaica has a record of Police extra-judi­cial killings as deter­mined by the United States, Britain and Canada. Western coun­tries with the worst his­to­ry and record of state abuse of their eth­nic minori­ties, yet the most vocal and demon­stra­tive fin­ger point­ers on the issue.. 

I have been shot at on more occa­sions than I care to remem­ber, I have been shot once, yet I have nev­er killed anoth­er human being. I have recov­ered count­less weapons and yes, that includes tak­ing ille­gal weapons from the per­son of known crim­i­nals with­out fir­ing a sin­gle shot.
Which brings us to the issue on the minds of most blacks and con­sci­en­tious oth­ers. I refer to the on-going issue of Police killing of unharmed black men. We begin on the premise that Police Officers are hired to pro­tect the pub­lic not to intim­i­date and or kill mem­bers of the public.

Unless of course there are issues far deep­er and much more sin­is­ter influ­enc­ing the way Cops approach their jobs across America. Issues like Race, or that cer­tain sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion has no rights they have to respect. How about an amal­ga­ma­tion of both?
It must be under­stood that not all Police Officers are bad, not by any stretch of the imagination.
As human beings we have a nat­ur­al pre­dis­po­si­tion to cir­cle the wag­ons when we feel chal­lenged, attacked or criticized.
I chal­lenge my fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends and all good Police offi­cers not to feel besieged when the police come under scruti­ny. I was one of those peo­ple who would get high­ly indig­nant when we were crit­i­cized, even years after I left law-enforce­ment. I still jump to the defense of police offi­cers when crit­i­cisms come from some quar­ters. Some peo­ple will crit­i­cize law enforce­ment just for the sake of doing so.

Police offi­cers are trained to save lives. Police offi­cers are trained to be restrained when it comes to the use of force. On the instances a police offi­cer is forced to use force to effect an arrest, the lev­el of force employed must not exceed the lev­el of resis­tance which neces­si­tat­ed the force. Since it is not always easy or prac­ti­cal for a cor­rect assess­ment of force lev­el employed to be done, Police offi­cers are giv­en wide lat­i­tude to com­plete an arrest.
The use of lethal force may only be used when an offi­cer rea­son­ably believes his/​her life, or that of anoth­er is in immi­nent dan­ger. The fear must be rea­son­able. It can­not be fear con­coct­ed to cov­er up the killing of an inno­cent person.
It is not unrea­son­able to assume that for many police offi­cers there may not be a need to un-hol­ster a weapon for the dura­tion of their ser­vice. I have spo­ken to many offi­cers from dif­fer­ent depart­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in New York State, a racial­ly diverse state,who have nev­er point­ed their weapon at anyone.

The lat­i­tude giv­en cops seem to get wider and less dis­tin­guish­able when Police come in con­tact with African-Americans. Of late there is a long list of unarmed black men killed by police. In lit­er­al­ly all of those cas­es no cop have been held account­able. Have the laws gov­ern­ing the use of lethal force changed? If so ‚who changed them? If they haven’t been changed how come killer cops are not held accountable?
Trey Ellis Novelist, Screenwriter, and Associate Professor at Columbia University sums it up this way. Quote:

In the 1970s, when I was first learn­ing this les­son, the spilt blood of the Civil Rights movement

was still fresh. Today, in a world of black pres­i­dents, elec­tric cars and talk­ing iPhones, it’s so hard to con­vince young black men, like my 13-year-old son, that if a police offi­cer mere­ly per­ceives you are a lethal threat, he is explic­it­ly allowed to shoot you dead. However, since the mere com­bi­na­tion of your sex, race and age ensures that you are per­ceived as a threat, police offi­cers are autho­rized to kill you Q.E.D. So what I have to drill into him, since I want him to con­tin­ue to live, is to lis­ten to his Guardian Slave and be preter­nat­u­ral­ly polite and respect­ful no mat­ter how ugly and unrea­son­able the police­man’s demand. Then at least he’ll prob­a­bly only be tased. Huffingtnpost​.com

Professor Ellis’ pre­scrip­tion for his 13 year-old son is one of survival.Why should this be, 50 years after Dr, King, Malcolm X and oth­ers fought and paid the ulti­mate price for this land? This land their ances­tors slaved in and died for. This land that is inher­ent­ly and exclu­sive­ly theirs. Why should a black man now have to teach his son how to stay alive after all the black blood which has drenched and fer­til­ized these soils?

The first order of busi­ness for Blacks is that they take own­er­ship of their coun­try. That comes with respon­si­bil­i­ties. I have spo­ken at length about those respon­si­bil­i­ties here. I will con­tin­ue to expand on those respon­si­bil­i­ties . That may include but not con­fined to drop­ping the idiom African-American.
How about American?
The term African-American gives oth­ers the belief you are not an equal own­er here! They do not go around call­ing them­selves Dutch, Irish, British, Spanish or any oth­er type of American. Why do you?
No race has more right to this land than you, except Native Americans of course. No race have paid even close to the price you have paid for this land. When the Criminal Columbus came here our ances­tors were already here , over two hun­dred years pri­or to them real­iz­ing they would not fall off the face of what they believed was a flat earth.

When your Ancestors got here they nev­er claimed to dis­cov­er a place peo­ple had set­tled hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of years before they arrived.
Once you have dis­pelled that myth­i­cal lie, now stand tall and take charge of your own destiny.

There are some who have nev­er walked in the shoes of a black per­son, nev­er been exposed to the indig­ni­ties and the dis­re­spect expe­ri­enced by black peo­ple. Disrespect at the hands of peo­ple they pay a salary to. Whatever you say about the respon­si­bil­i­ties blacks have to under­take, no one deserves to be killed because a cop feels he/​she can get away with it.

Whatever Michael Brown may have done pre­vi­ous­ly, the fact is he did not deserve to have 12 bul­lets fly­ing toward him . He absolute­ly did not deserve to have the sys­tem rape and dehu­man­ize him with a faux inves­ti­ga­tion, the out­come of which was pre­de­ter­mined before it began.
How stu­pid do they real­ly believe we are? It was the same Faux-inves­ti­ga­tion/pros­e­cu­tion they did in the Trayvon Martin case. An indict­ment done sole­ly to quell pub­lic out­cry. Never mind that Zimmerman was no cop, but a vig­i­lante wannabe cop. If the sys­tem can­not or more pre­cise­ly, will not con­vict a non-cop-vig­i­lante how can the black com­mu­ni­ty trust that same sys­tem to pros­e­cute it’s own functionaries? 

How much more black blood do they need? How much longer will the black com­mu­ni­ty fight over lin­gerie on black Fridays while in the streets black-blood is being washed from pave­ment after pave­ment, after pavement?

Lets lis­ten to what Melissa Harris Perry ‚pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics and inter­na­tion­al affairs at Wake Forest University, and a pletho­ra of oth­er dis­tinc­tions includ­ing Host of her own show on MSNBC and oth­ers, have to say.

As a New York grand-jury goes over the evi­dence in the Police killing of Eric Garner, news Organizations report that they jury is near­ing a deci­sion. I nev­er quite under­stood what that meant. Is near­ing a deci­sion based on the length of time they have been impan­eled? Is it based on reveal­ing a pre-deter­mined ver­dict, as the one in Ferguson was. Done at night, after thou­sands of cops and National Guards-men were first strate­gi­cal­ly placed to sti­fle the peo­ple’s out­rage? I nev­er quite under­stood what it meant​.It is either you have reached a ver­dict or you haven’t . I stand to be informed and edu­cat­ed on this.

As a trained offi­cer I nev­er quite fig­ured out how I would explain killing an unarmed sus­pect. I do under­stand that each case is dif­fer­ent. I do under­stood that offi­cers must have some lee­way when we ask them to bring dan­ger­ous offend­ers to justice.
Giving cops carte-blanche to kill mem­bers of one com­mu­ni­ty we hate is dan­ger­ous and unten­able. Make no mis­take about it that is what’s at issue here. Whether you feel com­fort­able with my assess­ment is of no con­cern to me.