She walked in this morn­ing and greet­ed me as she always did when she comes in to trans­act busi­ness. I real­ized some­thing was wrong as soon as I looked up to return her greet­ing. She told me her cousin was shot and killed in Jamaica last night. Killing is nor­mal now more-so in some places than oth­ers. In Jamaica it’s more-so.

My heart went out to her, she was very much there for me and my fam­i­ly in April when we lost our beloved son Kodi.
I felt a sense of empa­thy for her loss. I do so now even more than I did before. Death of a loved one does that to you.
Then she tells me her cousin was a police offi­cer and my heart dropped. Not because police offi­cers lives are worth more than that of any­one else, but because they stand between those who would do us harm and ourselves.

Jamaican Police say Constable Preddie who was off duty and unarmed was relax­ing with friends at a bar in the remote com­mu­ni­ty of Farm in the Asia police divi­sion of south­ern Manchester when sev­er­al men armed with guns entered the premis­es. The crim­i­nals pro­ceed­ed to rob patrons and in the process of going through their pock­ets dis­cov­ered Preddie’s police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. One of the gun­men prompt­ly shot him in the head. He report­ed­ly died on the spot. Preddie was mar­ried with two chil­dren aged eight years and 18 months.

The death of this offi­cer sends a chill­ing mes­sage to law abid­ing cit­i­zens, “we will kill any­thing and any­one who stand in our way”. The fact that con­sta­ble Preddie was unarmed is some­what trou­bling. Why would a police offi­cer not have a ser­vice weapon in this day and age is beyond me?
Did Preddie have access to a weapon but naïve­ly allowed him­self to be lulled into a false sense of security?
Did the depart­ment take their weapon after they fin­ished using him dur­ing his tour of duty?
Those are per­ti­nent ques­tions which begs swift answers.
Jamaican author­i­ties and civ­il soci­ety, places extra­or­di­nary stock on the lives of crim­i­nals and con­vict­ed felons, not on the lives and inter­est of police offi­cers. My heart goes out to his fam­i­ly ‚to my friend Trish and more than any­one else, his wife and two lit­tle kids.
May God give you com­fort and peace.
To the scum who took his life, may you rest easy in the knowl­edge you do not have some­one like me on your trail for this killing .
Demonizing police offi­cers gives pow­er to garbage like these scum, that is the Jamaican way.
I ask that all offi­cers take this death per­son­al­ly, go get these pieces of garbage.Whether you bring them to jus­tice or you bring jus­tice to them is all the same to me.

“RACE RELATIONS HAVE GOTTEN BETTER, MORE PROGRESS NEEDED”. 

Those are the words of Barack Obama President of the United States. 
President Obama made those com­ments in an in depth inter­view with People Magazine.
In the inter­view the President detailed being mis­tak­en for a wait­er and Valet.’ The President’s wife, first lady Michelle Obama recalls that once they were at a black tie affair and some­one asked her hus­band to get coffee.
According to the cou­ple these events occurred just pri­or to mis­ter Obama’s ascen­dan­cy to the Presidency.
In actu­al­i­ty with­in this decade. 
Barack Obama has come under severe scruti­ny and endured much crit­i­cisms on his response to recent police killing of unarmed peo­ple, large­ly African American males.
By the way that cri­tique is com­ing from some of his staunchest sup­port­ers , includ­ing Professors Michael Eric Dyson, Cornell West and oth­ers. Supporters believe he vac­il­lates between speak­ing out stri­dent­ly against oppres­sion and pla­cat­ing white America. Mister Obama’s demeanor seem to be one that shies away from con­fronta­tion. In some quar­ters that may give the appear­ance of weak­ness. However Obama’s stance on the issue of race is not nec­es­sar­i­ly one of weak­ness per sey.

Obama spoke out when his friend Tenured Harvard Professor Henry Lewis Gates was wrong­ly pro­filed and arrest­ed on his own prop­er­ty by a Boston cop. The new President said then:
“I don’t know, not hav­ing been there and not see­ing all the facts, what role race played in that [Gates case]. But I think it’s fair to say, num­ber one, any of us would be pret­ty angry; num­ber two, that the Cambridge police act­ed stu­pid­ly in arrest­ing some­body when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, num­ber three, what I think we know sep­a­rate and apart from this inci­dent is that there’s a long his­to­ry in this coun­try of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforce­ment dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly. That’s just a fact.”

Obama also spoke out on the Travyon Martin Killing, stating :

“The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his fam­i­ly, or for any one com­mu­ni­ty, but for America. I know this case has elicit­ed strong pas­sions. And in the wake of the ver­dict, I know those pas­sions may be run­ning even high­er. “But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spo­ken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflec­tion from two par­ents who lost their young son. “And as we do, we should ask our­selves if we’re doing all we can to widen the cir­cle of com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing in our own com­mu­ni­ties. We should ask our­selves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun vio­lence that claims too many lives across this coun­try on a dai­ly basis. “We should ask our­selves, as indi­vid­u­als and as a soci­ety, how we can pre­vent future tragedies like this. As cit­i­zens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to hon­or Trayvon Martin.”

These were pret­ty defin­i­tive state­ments com­ing from the President, the prob­lems is not that he does­n’t speak out , it’s what he does after white peo­ple push back, he seem to pull back. In the Gates saga he capit­u­lat­ed by invit­ing the cop to the white house for a beer. A def­i­nite no no if you ask me. That was a sign of weak­ness in my estimation.
Since then Obama seem to be at pains not to get involved in the thorny issue of race in America. Now many say “well he is the pres­i­dent of all America he can­not take one side over another!
Perfectly true and he shouldn’t.
But no one is ask­ing him to. 
The President is the high­est elect­ed Official in the coun­try, he can­not run for anoth­er office after his sec­ond term is over. If Obama can­not stand firm­ly and deci­sive­ly against racial hatred in America now, when will he?
Strongly con­demn­ing entrenched racist atti­tudes in some sec­tors of white America is not tak­ing sides. It is the right thing to do.
Who cares about the howls of con­dem­na­tion which are sure to fol­low? To hell with those who scream, if you chose neu­tral­i­ty you actu­al­ly chose the side of the oppressor. 

Those who scream about the pres­i­dent should not take sides, are those who ben­e­fit the most from over 400 years of White suprema­cy and racial enti­tle­ments in this country.
Racism can go away today if white America chose to end it.
They start­ed it,they per­pet­u­ate it, they can end it.
This is the rea­son I strong­ly dis­agree with the pres­i­dent that race rela­tions are get­ting bet­ter. The fact that Barack Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent is a net pos­i­tive for him. It’s a net pos­i­tive for the coun­try and to some extent in the long run black America. At the moment how­ev­er, there is a seri­ous white-lash against his pres­i­den­cy which is hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for oth­ers less pow­er­ful than he.
No race has author­i­ty over another. 
No race is supe­ri­or to the other.
No race is more enti­tled to this plan­et than others.
On that basis alone black Americans should wait not one minute more to be treat­ed equal­ly and fair­ly in this land their fore-par­ents vis­it­ed first. They should wait not one minute more in this land their fore-par­ents slaved and died for, got raped and muti­lat­ed for.
Many whites speak about America with a sense of own­er­ship, as if every­one else are mere intruders,or vis­i­tors at best. Intruders and vis­i­tors there to be treat­ed based on their per­son­al feel­ings and bias­es. Blacks must seize the moment, but most impor­tant­ly they must assume own­er­ship of their coun­try, and be pre­pared to die for it. They must be pre­pared to die so that their chil­dren may live out the promise this land has for their chil­dren, all chil­dren. Once and for this refugee in their own land sta­tus must come to an end.
“We have …come to this hal­lowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the lux­u­ry of cool­ing off or to take the tran­quil­iz­ing drug of grad­u­al­ism. Now is the time to make real the promis­es of democ­ra­cy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and des­o­late val­ley of seg­re­ga­tion to the sun­lit path of … jus­tice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick­sands of … injus­tice to the sol­id rock of broth­er­hood. Now is the time to make jus­tice a real­i­ty for all of God’s children.” 
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

President Obama can­not be con­sumed by polls which indi­cate falling num­bers on his han­dling of race. There will be howls of dis­con­tent and anger. Those howls will come from those who are sat­is­fied ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the sta­tus quo. That is unten­able, that is unacceptable.
There comes a time when doing what is right trumps what is pop­u­lar, now is the time.

Two NYPD cops attached to the depart­ments legal affairs bureau were alleged­ly assault­ed on the Brooklyn Bridge , sup­pos­ed­ly dur­ing a peace­ful march over the week­end. The two, Patrick Sullivan and Phillip Chan are both Lieutenants. The pair were sup­pos­ed­ly wear­ing NYPD jack­ets with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and were there to ensure pro­test­ers rights were pro­tect­ed , as report­ed by CBS​.com and the Associated Press. 
Which brings us to ask why are spe­cial cops there to ensure cit­i­zens fun­da­men­tal right to protest against their gov­ern­ment? Aren’t all cops sup­posed to be par­tic­u­lar­ly alert­ed and informed on that fact? What hap­pens when legal affairs is not there?

I believe we all know what hap­pens when they are not.
The NYPD has since arrest­ed Eric Linkser a 29-year-old Baruch College Professor who teach­es Composition. Notice how quick­ly they arrest­ed some­one who alleged­ly attacked one of their own? The Commissioner William Bratton said quote: “We do not take attacks on our police offi­cers light­ly, we nev­er have and nev­er will,”. I bet New Yorkers of col­or would like that sense of res­olute­ness when it comes to police vio­lence on them. 
The Department says there are oth­ers involved in the alleged attack , which they say occurred when the two cops inter­vened when Linkser alleged­ly tried to toss a 50-pound garbage can from the ele­vat­ed walk­way at offi­cers on the road­way below. They are sup­pos­ed­ly putting togeth­er a twelve thou­sand dol­lar ($12,000.00 reward to fer­ret out oth­ers involved in the assault. 
The young man who video­taped NYPD cops killing Eric Garner was arrest­ed on weapons charges, rather con­ve­nient­ly after the video became pub­lic. Pantaleo the cop who killed Garner and the oth­er mur­der­ers who aid­ed and abet­ted him have so far faced no crim­i­nal sanctions.

In respond­ing to the inci­dent New York City’s Mayor Bill deBlasio called the inci­dent an “alleged assault” That char­ac­ter­i­za­tion drew the ire of the sergeants benev­o­lent asso­ci­a­tion. Union pres­i­dent Ed Mullins labeled the Mayor a “nin­com­poop”. The PBA pres­i­dent Patrick Lynch who encour­aged mem­bers to sign a peti­tion demand­ing that the Mayor and city Council pres­i­dent not attend their funer­al in the event they are killed in the line of duty, said “It is very clear to me that the may­or has no idea of just how angry New York City police offi­cers are at him for his lack of sup­port and for lay­ing decades of soci­ety’s prob­lems unde­served­ly at their feet.”

Does any­one recall when Rudolph Giuliani led a rag-tag throng of drunk­en cops in 1992 onto the steps of City Hall in protest against Mayor David Dinkins? Yup, they called Dinkins a N****r, they called him a wash-room atten­dant. Do you detect the same kind of dis­re­spect to this Mayor who is mar­ried to a black woman ?
In 2007 the New York dai­ly news Mike Mcalary wrote ” This city has two police forces: one small and hor­ri­ble, and one great and noble. People see the uni­form and fig­ure all cops are part of the hor­ror. That’s not true. In the 1820s, the city had two police forces, and they fought on the steps of City Hall. That police riot occurred when one force tried to arrest the may­or. The clos­est we’ve come to that was when Giuliani encour­aged a police mob to rat­tle then-Mayor David Dinkins in 1992”.

The depart­ment is active­ly seek­ing oth­ers involved in the mele. Bratton said the video of the assaults has been enhanced to help find the sus­pects. Isn’t it incred­i­ble how quick­ly they will enhance a shaky video to prove some­one attacked one of their own but will not acknowl­edge they mur­dered an inno­cent man on a video which need­ed no enhancement ?
I don’t know whether or not there are two police forces in new york city., Many peo­ple of col­or have nev­er seen the noble depart­ment Mike Mcalarry spoke of sev­en years ago, even though they are decent law abid­ing citizens.
What they see dai­ly is the “hor­ri­ble” the one above the law, the thug­gish one which demands respect even as it heaps scorn, deri­sion ‚con­tempt and dis­re­spect on oth­ers, even those set above them.
Every grouse, every gripe of the PBA and oth­er unions seem to be about respect. The unions would do them­selves and their mem­bers a tremen­dous ser­vice by being respect­ful to the Mayor, City Council President and peo­ple of col­or in the city, maybe then they will see a turn around in the way peo­ple respond to them.
As a very famous Pastor say from time to time,“If you want some­thing from God, give that thing to some­one else”. Give respect, you get respect. You do not demand respect , you com­mand respect. Stop whin­ing and com­plain­ing about just how dan­ger­ous your job is . No one forced you to join the police depart­ment, you did so of your own free will, and you are paid well to do it.
People have a right to demand that they be treat­ed fair­ly and just­ly, the laws does not only apply when the police say they apply.
If utter­ances and behav­ior are any­thing to go by, this police depart­ment is expo­nen­tial­ly worse than most peo­ple know. People in under served com­mu­ni­ties will tell you they do not call cops. Cops to them are no dif­fer­ent from reg­u­lar gang­sters. Many rob, beat, rape, steal, plant drugs, fal­si­fy reports and kill peo­ple with­out consequence.
These res­i­dents of the city have nev­er seen the “great and noble”.
Too many in the NYPD see them­selves above the laws and the peo­ple who hire and pay them. The media Houses are active cheer-lead­ers in this process, mak­ing them feel above being held account­able. It is time the back of this men­tal­i­ty is bro­ken once and for all.

Thousands , maybe mil­lions col­lec­tive­ly, march hand in hand dai­ly across America. They march in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the unarmed, killed by Agents of the states. The bod­ies are many, the ages diverse. Their col­or the only thing which binds them together.
I want to talk a lit­tle about the role states play in these deaths, but before I do I want to take a sec­ond to address a com­mon dis­claimer I hear from many who speak on this issue. Some black, some white , some cop, some not.

THEY ARGUE BLACKS DO NOT MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT BLACK-ON-BLACK VIOLENCE

Civil Rights groups, church­es, NGO’s and a pletho­ra of oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties have done much work in com­bat­ing vio­lence in the black com­mu­ni­ty. Communities and indi­vid­u­als have done heavy lift­ing toward remov­ing the scourge of drug-deal­ing, drug-addic­tion, and oth­er vices which lead to vio­lence. Activists and Organizations like the Urban league , National Action Network, NAACP, and oth­ers are heav­i­ly invest­ed in com­bat­ing crime in urban centers.
Much more is required in deal­ing with the prob­lem of teenage preg­nan­cy , mass-incar­cer­a­tion of black male, gang affil­i­a­tion and violence.
With that said, black peo­ple com­mit­ted to chang­ing police aggres­sion toward them do not need a lec­ture from any­one, black, white or

pur­ple, cop, or not on black on black vio­lence. Blacks have a duty to fig­ure out their prob­lems, what­ev­er they are. What our com­mu­ni­ty does not need is to pay police Officers to kill our children.
Police offi­cers are employed and paid to inves­ti­gate crimes. When black crim­i­nals com­mit crimes they are arrest­ed and incar­cer­at­ed. In more instances than I care to dis­cuss, blacks are incar­cer­at­ed and exe­cut­ed even when they are inno­cent of the crimes they are accused of com­mit­ting. America’s pris­ons are brim­ming with black and brown men , over 65% of those locked up in America’s pris­ons are black and brown. Despite on a per-capi­ta whites com­mit more crimes than they do.

It is this dis­par­i­ty that has peo­ple of con­science up in arms about the con­tin­ued injus­tice in America. A spe­cial word of advise to the igno­rant blacks who par­rot the talk­ing points of igno­rant racist whites on this issue, go read a book, do some research before you open your stu­pid mouths or make moron­ic Youtube videos. You are stu­pid and you look stupid.
Go research what 400 years of Slavery, Chain-Gang, Jim-Crow,separate but equal, and exist­ing insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism has done to peo­ple of African ancestry. 

In a Bee colony the Queen lays eggs , mil­lions of them, this ensures that the specie con­tin­ue to exist.
Worker Bees gath­er pollen into the pollen bas­kets on their back legs, to car­ry back to the hive where it is used as food for the devel­op­ing brood. Pollen car­ried on their bod­ies may be car­ried to anoth­er flower where a small por­tion can rub off onto thepis­til, result­ing in cross pol­li­na­tion. Almost all of civ­i­liza­tion’s food sup­ply (maize is a note­wor­thy excep­tion) depends great­ly on crop pol­li­na­tion by hon­ey bees, whether direct­ly eat­en or used as for­age crops for ani­mals that pro­duce milk and meat. Nectar is sucked up through the pro­boscis, mixed with enzymes in the stom­ach, and car­ried back to the hive, where it is stored in wax cells and evap­o­rat­ed into hon­ey.
Drones, fig­u­ra­tive sense of ‘idler’ or ‘lazy work­er’, as male bees make no hon­ey, which is some­times giv­en as a folk ety­mol­o­gy of the word ‘drone’ itself.[Wikipedia]
In the great scheme of things there are those who do and there are those who don’t, at least the drones have the good sense to mate with the Queen. For you blacks who have no con­tri­bu­tion to make, even as you ben­e­fit from the strug­gles and sac­ri­fice of oth­ers, do every­one a favor and shut your stu­pid mouths.

Cops abuse and kill because States and munic­i­pal­i­ties want them to. Police are peo­ple, good peo­ple in many cas­es. Give the best guy/​girl a gun, badge , and unfet­tered pow­er and no need to account and you got a real prob­lem on your hands, their atti­tudes change, all of a sud­den the very peo­ple they are sworn to serve and pro­tect becomes their ene­my. Unworthy of respect, they become the big man, Gods even.
It’s not about the need for sup­port and some lee­way to do what we ask them to do . As we have seen over and over again states make extra effort to ensure when they kill they are not held accountable.
They kill as Agents of the state. They kill on behalf of the states. Eric Garner was mur­dered for what must have been the most infin­i­tes­i­mal white col­lar crime. Even if he was sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes ‚(not proven) who was the vic­tim? Who was hurt?
I’ll tell you who, the State of New York was hurt. They are so des­per­ate for the few un-recov­ered pen­nies, it took sev­er­al well paid Thugs to kill Garner over those pennies.

States Legislators, Governors and oth­er offi­cials are heav­i­ly behold­en to Police Departments . Never mind what they say in pub­lic, cops know whose side they are on. Governors, Legislators and Mayors are large­ly white Caucasian male., The women they are more testos­terone laden than their male coun­ter­parts. Police abuse is going nowhere fast.
Anthony Baez was choked to death by Francis Livoti a tough-guy cop with mul­ti­ple com­plaints against him. Baez’s crime was a non-crime. His foot­ball struck a NYPD patrol car.
In sen­tenc­ing Livoti Judge Scheindlin issued a broad attack on the depart­men­t’s han­dling of Mr. Livoti’s case, and said that she had refrained from impos­ing an even greater sen­tence because the depart­ment shared some respon­si­bil­i­ty in Mr. Baez’s death. ”The Police

Department did Mr. Livoti and the peo­ple of this city a grave injus­tice when it per­mit­ted Mr. Livoti to remain on active patrol know­ing of his propen­si­ty toward vio­lence,” Judge Scheindlin said. ”There is no doubt in my mind that the depart­ment knew, or should have known, that Mr. Livoti was dan­ger­ous.” She said that nine ear­li­er police bru­tal­i­ty com­plaints against Mr. Livoti should have been enough ”to alert those in charge to the fact that Mr. Livoti should be off the streets, if not off the force.”
Francis Livoti was a pro­tégée and one of the poster child of Rudolph Giuliani’s dis­dain and dis­re­spect for black and brown res­i­dents of New York City. Anthony Baez and many oth­ers paid with their lives.

”The Police Department let him remain on the streets, know­ing that one day a real tragedy would occur,” she said.

State pro­ce­dures make it dif­fi­cult for cops to face a court of law. If police offi­cers do not have to face courts of law to account for their actions they become the law. They act that way, they say they are the law. Not enforcers of the law.
As black America and oth­ers take to the streets to protest , it is impor­tant to note that even as racism and dis­re­spect dri­ves many deci­sions police make to pull the trig­ger or oth­er­wise abuse blacks, they also do the same to whites.
It is impor­tant that whites rec­og­nize that even though police may be some­what less quick on the trig­ger on poor whites than they do peo­ple of col­or now. It is becom­ing more and more obvi­ous that pret­ty soon drunk with unmit­i­gat­ed pow­er they too will be killed with equal alacrity.
The peo­ple who draft leg­is­la­tion and those who sign them into laws are mere cor­po­rate tools. They are picked and placed by cor­po­rate oli­garchs to car­ry out their dictates.
Those dic­tates do not line up with that of the 99%..
Prisons have to be filled, cor­po­rate pup­peteers who run them are suing states because they are sup­pos­ed­ly los­ing mon­ey from too many emp­ty jail cells. Look around you , yes you , in your state they will be build­ing more pris­ons, while they close schools.
We are all in this togeth­er, black, white, yel­low brown, the soon­er we rec­og­nize this the better.

The list of Bill Cosby accusers has anoth­er — and very promi­nent — name.

Beverly Johnson, the pio­neer­ing 1970s-era super­mod­el who was the first African-American woman to be on the cov­er of American Vogue, alleges in an essay post­ed onVanity Fair’s web­site that Cosby drugged her in the mid-1980s and noth­ing fur­ther hap­pened seem­ing­ly only because she real­ized what was hap­pen­ing and unquiv­o­ca­bly told him off. Cosby’s attor­ney did not respond to VF and has not yet respond­ed to a request for com­ment from E! News. Johnson wrote that she went to lunch at Cosby’s New York apart­ment one day, after her agent informed her that the come­di­an want­ed her to audi­tion for the role of one of his patients on The Cosby Show and she sub­se­quent­ly met the man at a tap­ing of the then mega-hit sit­com. Cosby had also pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed her and her young daugh­ter at his home for brunch on a pre­vi­ous occasion.

“He was the Jell‑O Pudding man; like most kids, my daugh­ter loved him,” Johnson recalled their first out­ing. She wrote: “Looking back, that first invite from Cosby to his home seems like part of a per­fect­ly laid out plan, a way to make me feel secure with him at all times. It worked like a charm.” According to Johnson, on her solo vis­it to his place, they ate lunch and then Cosby asked her to try out play­ing a scene, instruct­ing her to act as if she were drunk. “When did a preg­nant woman ever appear drunk on The Cosby Show? Probably nev­er, but I went with it,” she wrote, a ref­er­ence to the fact that Cosby’s char­ac­ter, Dr. Cliff Huxtable, was an OBGYN and she was sup­pos­ed­ly being asked to play one of his patients.

Johnson alleges that Cosby insist­ed that she have a capuc­ci­no, made on his ritzy-look­ing espres­so machine, and that after she had a few sips, “My head became woozy, my speech became slurred, and the room began to spin non­stop. Cosby motioned for me to come over to him as though we were real­ly about to act out the scene. He put his hands around my waist, and I man­aged to put my hand on his shoul­der in order to steady myself. “As I felt my body go com­plete­ly limp, my brain switched into auto­mat­ic-sur­vival mode. That meant mak­ing sure Cosby under­stood that I knew exact­ly what was hap­pen­ing at that very moment.”

Johnson claims that she called Cosby a “moth­erf – ker” to his face, mul­ti­ple times, and ulti­mate­ly he grabbed her by the arm, guid­ed her out of the apart­ment, took her down­stairs and put her in a cab. “I sat in there still stunned by what hap­pened the night before, con­fused and dev­as­tat­ed by the idea that some­one I admired so much had tried to take advan­tage of me, and used drugs to do so. Had I done some­thing to encour­age his actions?” the mod­el alleges. “In real­i­ty, I knew I’d done noth­ing to encour­age Cosby but my mind kept turn­ing with ques­tion after question.”

She claims that it took a few days for the effects of the drug to wear off and, when she called Cosby’s pri­vate num­ber to con­front him, his wife answered. Camille Cosby was very polite, Johnson wrote, adding that she apol­o­gized for call­ing so late and then nev­er tried call­ing again.

“How could I fight some­one that bold­ly arro­gant and out of touch?” Johnson wrote. “In the end, just like the oth­er women, I had too much to lose to go after Bill Cosby. I had a career that would no doubt take a huge hit if I went pub­lic with my sto­ry and I cer­tain­ly could­n’t afford that after my cost­ly divorce and on going court fees.”

The now 62-year-old mod­el, actress and real­i­ty-TV star fur­ther explained that Cosby accuser Barbara Bowman’s op-ed in the Washington Post and Janice Dickinson’s explo­sive inter­view with Entertainment Tonight, both of which con­tributed to the onslaught of revived accu­sa­tions against Cosby, helped inspire her to come for­ward now after all these years. http://​www​.eon​line​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​6​0​5​8​2​5​/​m​o​d​e​l​-​b​e​v​e​r​l​y​-​j​o​h​n​s​o​n​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​s​-​b​i​l​l​-​c​o​s​b​y​-​d​r​u​g​g​e​d​-​h​e​r​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​1​9​8​0​s​-​w​r​i​t​e​s​-​i​n​-​v​a​n​i​t​y​-​f​a​i​r​-​s​h​e​-​t​o​l​d​-​h​i​m​-​o​f​f​-​s​o​-​h​e​-​p​u​t​-​h​e​r​-​i​n​-​a​-​cab

Hannibal Buress did­n’t real­ly say any­thing about Bill Cosby that was­n’t already out there with the help of a Google search.

But for what­ev­er rea­son, the crack that the come­di­an made now (or, more accu­rate­ly, in mid-October) in which he referred to the revered fun­ny­man as a rapist was the key tremor that result­ed in the avalanche of alle­ga­tions, con­tro­ver­sy and hind­sight-is-20/20 analy­sis cur­rent­ly envelop­ing Cosby.

The for­mer sit­com star’s attor­ney has flat­ly denied mount­ing claims from, at last count, 16 women who have come for­ward as alleged Cosby vic­tims, but it seems as though every day a new per­son has sur­faced with a sto­ry alleg­ing an assault or attempt­ed assault. Since there has been so much to keep track of in such a rel­a­tive­ly short amount of time (not count­ing the nine years since an accuser sued Cosby for dam­ages), here’s a run­down of every­thing that has hap­pened since Buress’ fate­ful show:

Oct. 16: It seems like longer, but it was just in mid-October when Buress told an audi­encedur­ing a show in Philadelphia : “He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up, black peo­ple. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a suc­cess­ful sit­com.’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a cou­ple notch­es.” Someone was record­ing and released the clip to PhillyMag​.com, which post­ed it on Oct. 17. It took a cou­ple of days for the “news” to go viral, but when it did…

Oct 21: In what have been his only pub­lic com­ments about the firestorm he ignit­ed, Buress said on The Howard Stern Show: “This was unex­pect­ed. I did­n’t want to do that [make head­lines]. If I were going to do that, I would have done it on my own. It was­n’t my inten­tion to make this part of a big dis­cus­sion. It was just some­thing I was doing at that venue right then.”

Oct. 30: Cosby’s planned appear­ance on The Queen Latifah Show was can­celed at his request, accord­ing to show pro­duc­er Sony Pictures Television.

Nov. 6: Cosby gives an inter­view to the Associated Press in which he’s asked about past alle­ga­tions and repeat­ed­ly says he has noth­ing to say and there’s no com­ment. Cosby tells the reporter he would “appre­ci­ate it” if this exchange could be “scut­tled” from the tran­script or broad­cast. The inter­view­er said.

Nov. 10: Someone on Team Cosby got the idea to make a meme gen­er­a­tor so that fans could put fun­ny tag lines on seem­ing­ly inno­cent pics of father-fig­ure-era Cosby. Instead, cap­tions refer­ring to the alle­ga­tions against him won the day. That’s prob­a­bly when arti­cles (both old and new) recall­ing how Cosby’s oth­er­wise illus­tri­ous career has been shad­owed by alle­ga­tions that he mis­treat­ed women, plus the eas­i­ly search­able sto­ry about a 2005 law­suit filed against him by Andrea Constand that stat­ed a num­ber of oth­er women who were ready to tes­ti­fy about their own alleged expe­ri­ences, real­ly start­ed pop­ping up. Constand, a stu­dent at Cosby’s alma mater Temple University, accused the enter­tain­er of drug­ging and assault­ing her in January 2004. A set­tle­ment notice was filed in 2008.

Nov. 13: A day after she appeared on CNN Tonight, the Washington Post pub­lished an op-ed by artist Barbara Bowman in which she alleged that Cosby drugged and raped her at his home in 1985 when she was an aspir­ing 17-year-old actress.

Nov. 15: Scott Simon’s inter­view with Cosby for Weekend Edition Saturday airs on NPR. When asked about the con­tro­ver­sy and resur­faced alle­ga­tions, Cosby has noth­ing to say and Simon, who told the come­di­an it gave him “no plea­sure” to have to ask such ques­tions, tells the audi­ence that his guest is shak­ing his head. Meanwhile, an appear­ance sched­uled for Nov. 19 on Late Show With David Letterman is canceled.

Nov. 16: Cosby attor­ney John P. Schmitt issues this state­ment: “Over the last sev­er­al weeks, decade-old, dis­cred­it­ed alle­ga­tions against Mr. Cosby have resur­faced. The fact that they are being repeat­ed does not make them true. Mr. Cosby does not intend to dig­ni­fy these alle­ga­tions with any com­ment. He would like to thank all his fans for the out­pour­ing of sup­port and assure them that, at age 77, he is doing his best work. There will be no fur­ther state­ment from Mr. Cosby or any of his representatives.”

Nov. 17: Schmitt and an attor­ney for Constand release this adden­dum: “The state­ment released by Mr. Cosby’s attor­ney over the week­end was not intend­ed to refer in any way to Andrea Constand. As pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, dif­fer­ences between Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand were resolved to the mutu­al sat­is­fac­tion of Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand years ago. Neither Mr. Cosby nor Ms. Constand intends to com­ment fur­ther on the matter.”

• Entertainment Tonight airs an inter­view with Janice Dickinson in which the for­mer mod­el alleges that Cosby drugged and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her in 1982 and that she want­ed to include the sto­ry in her 2002 auto­bi­og­ra­phy but was pres­sured by Cosby’s attor­neys to leave it out. Cosby attor­ney Martin Singer issues a state­ment call­ing her sto­ry a “com­plete lie.”

• Netflix announces the post­pone­ment of the launch of the planned com­e­dy spe­cial Bill Cosby 77.

Nov. 19: NBC pulls the plug on a devel­op­ment deal with Cosby, who was in talks to play the patri­arch in a pro­posed multi­gen­er­a­tional fam­i­ly sitcom.

• TV Land pulls reruns of The Cosby Show from its schedule.

• Raven-Symoné, who played lit­tle Olivia on The Cosby Show, slams a hoax sto­ry that claimed Cosby molest­ed her as “a dis­gust­ing rumor I want no part of.”

Nov. 20: The afore­men­tioned AP inter­view starts mak­ing the rounds, the news agency stat­ing that the entire exchange was on the record and no agree­ment was made to with­hold any of Cosby’s com­ments at any time.

• Martin Singer calls a Facebook post, in which one Linda Joy Traitz accused Cosby of try­ing to rape her more than 40 years ago, “the lat­est exam­ple of peo­ple com­ing out of the wood­work with unsub­stan­ti­at­ed or fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ries about my client.”

• Rumor Fix pub­lish­es alle­ga­tions made by Carla Ferrigno, wife of The Incredible Hulk starLou Ferrigno, that Cosby attacked her when she was a teenag­er in 1967.

• Singer slams a sto­ry giv­en to TMZ by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest actress Louisa Moritz, call­ing her claim — that Cosby forced his penis into her mouth while they were in the green room back­stage at The Tonight Show in 1971 — a new “point of absurdity.”

• Cosby Show pro­duc­ers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey say in a state­ment: “The Bill we know was a bril­liant and won­der­ful col­lab­o­ra­tor on a show that changed the land­scape of tele­vi­sion. These recent news reports are beyond our knowl­edge or comprehension.”

• Cosby does his standup show in the Bahamas in front of a cheer­ing audi­ence, jokes that he’s an “evil man.”

Nov. 21: Model-actress Angela Leslie becomes the eighth woman to come for­ward post-Hannibal Buress, telling the New York Daily News that Cosby got her drunk and made her fon­dle him in a Las Vegas hotel in 1992.

• Las Vegas’ Treasure Island hotel announceds that a Nov. 28 Cosby per­for­mance has been can­celed “by mutu­al agree­ment.” The Virginia Theatre in Champaign, Ill., and the Tacoma Center in Washington state cross Cosby’s sched­uled appear­ances in April 2015 from the sched­ule. The Diamond Desert Casino in Tucson, Az., can­cels Cosby’s Feb. 15, 2015, appearance.

• The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art states that there is no plan to can­cel or alter its “Conversations” exhib­it, sched­uled to run until 2016, fea­tur­ing a num­ber of pieces from Cosby and his wife Camille’s per­son­al collection.

Nov. 18: Joan Tarshis tells CNN Tonight’s Don Lemon that Cosby sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her when she was 19

• Bruce Castor, a for­mer dis­trict attor­ney of Alabama’s Montgomery County tells the Daily Mail that he want­ed to pros­e­cute Cosby when Constand came for­ward, but he did­n’t have the proof to have the come­di­an arrested.

• Entertainment Tonight airs an inter­view with Janice Dickinson in which the for­mer mod­el alleges that Cosby drugged and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her in 1982 and that she want­ed to include the sto­ry in her 2002 auto­bi­og­ra­phy but was pres­sured by Cosby’s attor­neys to leave it out. Cosby attor­ney Martin Singer issues a state­ment call­ing her sto­ry a “com­plete lie.”

• Netflix announces the post­pone­ment of the launch of the planned com­e­dy spe­cial Bill Cosby 77.

Nov. 19: NBC pulls the plug on a devel­op­ment deal with Cosby, who was in talks to play the patri­arch in a pro­posed multi­gen­er­a­tional fam­i­ly sitcom.

• TV Land pulls reruns of The Cosby Show from its schedule.

• Raven-Symoné, who played lit­tle Olivia on The Cosby Show, slams a hoax sto­ry that claimed Cosby molest­ed her as “a dis­gust­ing rumor I want no part of.”

Nov. 20: The afore­men­tioned AP inter­view starts mak­ing the rounds, the news agency stat­ing that the entire exchange was on the record and no agree­ment was made to with­hold any of Cosby’s com­ments at any time.

• Martin Singer calls a Facebook post, in which one Linda Joy Traitz accused Cosby of try­ing to rape her more than 40 years ago, “the lat­est exam­ple of peo­ple com­ing out of the wood­work with unsub­stan­ti­at­ed or fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ries about my client.”

• Rumor Fix pub­lish­es alle­ga­tions made by Carla Ferrigno, wife of The Incredible Hulk starLou Ferrigno, that Cosby attacked her when she was a teenag­er in 1967.

• Singer slams a sto­ry giv­en to TMZ by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest actress Louisa Moritz, call­ing her claim — that Cosby forced his penis into her mouth while they were in the green room back­stage at The Tonight Show in 1971 — a new “point of absurdity.”

• Cosby Show pro­duc­ers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey say in a state­ment: “The Bill we know was a bril­liant and won­der­ful col­lab­o­ra­tor on a show that changed the land­scape of tele­vi­sion. These recent news reports are beyond our knowl­edge or comprehension.”

• Cosby does his standup show in the Bahamas in front of a cheer­ing audi­ence, jokes that he’s an “evil man.”

Nov. 21: Model-actress Angela Leslie becomes the eighth woman to come for­ward post-Hannibal Buress, telling the New York Daily News that Cosby got her drunk and made her fon­dle him in a Las Vegas hotel in 1992.

• Las Vegas’ Treasure Island hotel announceds that a Nov. 28 Cosby per­for­mance has been can­celed “by mutu­al agree­ment.” The Virginia Theatre in Champaign, Ill., and the Tacoma Center in Washington state cross Cosby’s sched­uled appear­ances in April 2015 from the sched­ule. The Diamond Desert Casino in Tucson, Az., can­cels Cosby’s Feb. 15, 2015, appearance.

• The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art states that there is no plan to can­cel or alter its “Conversations” exhib­it, sched­uled to run until 2016, fea­tur­ing a num­ber of pieces from Cosby and his wife Camille’s per­son­al collection.

You can’t deny that Shonda Rhimes is an incred­i­bly influ­en­tial fig­ure in the mod­ern TV land­scape. Hey, she’s tak­en over the entire line­up for one of the biggest net­work’s biggest nights of the week! TGIT, y’all! But when the Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder exec­u­tive pro­duc­er was hon­ored with the Sherry Lansing Award for lead­er­ship dur­ing The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Breakfast this morn­ing, she gave an extreme­ly pow­er­ful speech that has us bow­ing down.

MORE: Shonda Rhimes says, “If you don’t like gay scenes, don’t watch my shows”

Why? Because even though she was being rec­og­nized for being a woman who is a pio­neer and a leader in her indus­try and break­ing the glass ceil­ing, she denied that she broke through any glass ceil­ings. Check out her full speech below, and be pre­pared to fall in love with Rhimes even more:

“When my pub­li­cist called to tell me that I was receiv­ing this hon­or, I screwed up my face and I said, ‘Are you sure? Me?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And then I said, ‘No real­ly, why?’ “And I made him call and ask for some writ­ten rea­son why I was get­ting this award. Because I real­ly and tru­ly was wor­ried that there might have been some kind of mis­take. “I want to pause for a beat here to say that I don’t say these things to be self-dep­re­cat­ing and hum­ble. I am not a self-dep­re­cat­ing, hum­ble per­son. I think I’m pret­ty fan­tas­tic. But I also think that The Hollywood Reporter Sherry Lansing Award is extra­or­di­nary — as is Sherry Lansing her­self. So…no, real­ly, why?

“They sent a writ­ten rea­son why I was get­ting this award. It said many nice things but the main thing that it was said was that I was get­ting the award in recog­ni­tion of my break­ing through the indus­try’s glass ceil­ing as a woman and an African-American.

“Well. I call my pub­li­cist back. Because I just don’t know about this. I mean, I’m con­cerned now.

“I come from a very large, very com­pet­i­tive fam­i­ly. Extremely com­pet­i­tive. And by com­pet­i­tive, I mean, my moth­er says we’re not allowed to play Scrabble any­more when we get togeth­er because of the injuries and the tears. One of the rules in my fam­i­ly is you don’t ever get a tro­phy for par­tic­i­pa­tion, you don’t get a tro­phy for just being you. So get­ting an award today because I’m a woman and an African-American feels…I was born with an awe­some vagi­na and real­ly gor­geous brown skin. I did­n’t do any­thing to make either of those things happen.

“To get all Beyoncé about it, peo­ple: ‘I woke up like this.’ Seriously. I know this isn’t an award because I’m a woman or because I’m African American. I know that it’s real­ly about break­ing the glass ceil­ing that exists in the face of being a woman and being black in this very male, very white town.

“But I haven’t bro­ken through any glass ceilings.

CLICK: See Scandal’s steami­est scenes

“Do they know I haven’t bro­ken through any glass ceil­ings? I ask my pub­li­cist. He assures me that I have. I assure him that I have not. I have not bro­ken through any glass ceil­ings. If I had bro­ken through any glass ceil­ings, I would know. If I had bro­ken through a glass ceil­ing, I would have felt some cuts, I would have some bruis­es. There’d be shards of glass in my hair. I’d be bleed­ing, I’d have wounds.

“If I’d bro­ken the glass ceil­ing, that would mean I would have made it through to the oth­er side. Where the air is rare. I would feel the wind on my face. The view from here — way up here where the glass ceil­ing is bro­ken — would be incred­i­ble. Right? So how come I don’t remem­ber the moment? When me with my woman-ness and my brown skin went run­ning full speed, grav­i­ty be damned, into that thick lay­er of glass and smashed right through it? How come I don’t remem­ber that happening?

“Here’s why: It’s 2014.

“This moment right here, me stand­ing up here all brown with my boobs and my Thursday night of net­work tele­vi­sion full of women of col­or, com­pet­i­tive women, strong women, women who own their bod­ies and whose lives revolve around their work instead of their men, women who are big dogs, that could only be hap­pen­ing right now.

http://​www​.eon​line​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​6​0​5​4​4​2​/​s​h​o​n​d​a​-​r​h​i​m​e​s​-​i​-​h​a​v​e​n​-​t​-​b​r​o​k​e​n​-​t​h​r​o​u​g​h​-​a​n​y​-​g​l​a​s​s​-​c​e​i​l​i​ngs

What will Police killings inspire in the way of change in America?
Over the lase sev­er­al months police have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mur­dered unarmed black men even in the face of nation­al out­cry from con­sci­en­tious people. 
The killings con­tin­ue with­out any care, recog­ni­tion or thought of “what if we are held account­able for this one” ?
Which leaves rea­son­able observers to con­clude they do not believe they will be held accountable .
After a Florida Jury exon­er­at­ed wannabe-cop George Zimmerman, Police have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly killed dozens of unarmed black men under ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances. Each time the lies they tell become more bizarre and out­landish. To hear them try to artic­u­late what caused them to use lethal force is dif­fi­cult to watch. 
Lying absolute­ly does that.

Police and oth­ers con­tin­ue the killing after this list was released.
Twelve year old Tamir Rice killed in a park with a toy gun when Police drove up and opened fire in less than two sec­onds the child laid on the ground dying from two bul­lets in his young body.
An unarmed Akai Gurley killed by a New York City Rookie hous­ing cop in a dark stair­well . Police was quick to say he did noth­ing wrong but label his death an accident.
Since Gurley’s killing the rash of police killing of black and Latino men have gone on unabat­ed, with no end in sight. In fact no one knows just how many peo­ple police kill each year, much less those killed under dubi­ous cir­cum­stances. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI does not have report­ing from the tens of thou­sands of police agen­cies in the coun­try on who or how many they kill. They aren’t even man­dat­ed by Law to report the num­ber of cit­i­zens they kill.

The United States Congress is large­ly silent, so too are state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try, even as police con­tin­ue to kill, giv­ing worn-out tired excus­es for the sum­ma­ry mur­ders they com­mit daily.
One of the expla­na­tions we hear is that police do not go out intend­ing to kill any­one. This is a load of crock , In instance after instance cops are caught telling cit­i­zens they want to kill them. They are caught on audio/​video record­ing devices threat­en­ing to murder. 
Rather than fix the prob­lem states are begin­ning to take more of the rights cit­i­zens have to record police abuse. Even though it is per­fect­ly legal as per the US Supreme Court for cit­i­zens to record Police activ­i­ty as long as they do not hin­der cops, Police con­tin­ue to assault, intim­i­date, arrest, and abuse cit­i­zens who do and destroy their prop­er­ty in the process with­out consequence.
Recently a NYPD cop was caught on cam­era harass­ing a black man dig­ging into his pock­ets and con­fis­cat­ing his mon­ey. When the man demand­ed that his mon­ey be returned to him he was roughed up while oth­er good cops (sic , stood by and did nothing.
His mon­ey was nev­er returned to him. When the gen­tle­man, his sis­ter and onlook­ers com­plained the cop pep­per-sprayed them in their faces, repeatedly. 

In this inci­dent no one was arrest­ed, the Police alleged­ly stat­ed only $67 was tak­en , as if that legit­imized the bla­tant armed rob­bery recorded.
Lamard Joye, and his sis­ter Lateefah Joye the vic­tims through their lawyer, say they have evi­dence of bank with­drawals done, in an effort to head of alle­ga­tions that the mon­ey may have been ille­gal­ly obtained.
The Police Union chimed in say­ing that ama­teur videos record­ed when police are involved in oper­a­tions are the prob­lem and should be outlawed.

Even when the crime is com­mit­ted in full view,the NYPDPBA head Patrick Lynch and his sup­port­ers con­tin­ue to dis­tort, obfus­cate and lie about what is actu­al­ly seen by cit­i­zens. The NYPD has for years stolen monies from cit­i­zens whom they claim are drug deal­ers. In many cas­es they do not report ever tak­ing these wads of cash and cit­i­zens are left to lick their wounds with­out recourse.
We con­tin­ue to hear that the NYPD is the world’s best Police depart­ment despite the crimes many in the depart­ment com­mit. If of course we take sup­port­ers of the depart­ment at their word that indeed it is the best, what does that say about the state of polic­ing in America?

It says that crit­ics are indeed cor­rect that most police depart­ments are now jack-boot­ed death squads, ded­i­cat­ed to abus­ing, rob­bing and killing peo­ple of color.
One of the talk­ing points com­ing out of this epi­dem­ic of mur­der is the ques­tion, “Why are white Americans not out­raged by these killings” The truth is that the demon­stra­tions have gar­nered the sup­port of white Americans of all ages and socio-eco­nom­ic stand­ing. It would be disin­gen­u­ous to sug­gest only blacks are out­raged. In fact white peo­ple are on the streets voic­ing their dis­plea­sure at events and are being abused and arrest­ed by police equal­ly with their black coun­ter­parts. They under­stand they are not safe if this is allowed to continue.

Notwithstanding, there is rough­ly one half of America which absolute­ly loves what is hap­pen­ing. To that part of the pop­u­la­tion the black and brown peo­ple must be cur­tailed, cor­ralled and con­tained , if not worse. Blacks for their part are far less like­ly to take assault from the Klux-Klux-Klan in this day and age with­out a fight.
They know it.
However, what if they placed police uni­forms on the Klan?
The peo­ple they don’t like can­not legal­ly fight back against the duly con­sti­tut­ed author­i­ty of the states, enshrined in their police officers.
Check-mate !!!.

The polit­i­cal right which is large­ly white Anglo-Saxon and male is like a wound­ed ani­mal. That demo­graph­ic iden­ti­fies itself as Republican , Conservative, and Tea ‑Party. They saw a man of col­or and his fam­i­ly occu­py the white house. They see a black man head the Justice Department.
Have you ever won­dered why they hate Barack Obama and Eric Holder with such venom?
I sug­gest you hold your noses switch to FOX tele­vi­sion and guar­an­teed you will come away with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of why police are mur­der­ing black peo­ple unchecked. You will also come to the real­iza­tion that absolute­ly noth­ing will be done to rein in killer cops.
Well over Four hun­dred years of white suprema­cy is com­ing to an end. Those who had lives of priv­i­leged and pow­er are not about to relin­quish them with­out a fight.

As such, those who shucked and jived after the mar­gin­al gains of the 50’s and 60’s will have to pre­pare to fight the very same bat­tles their par­ents and grand par­ents fought, only dif­fer­ence this time is that the ene­mies of jus­tice are doing so under the guise and cov­er of the law.
Not that they did not , in the fights of yester-year, they are much more deter­mined this time, too much is at stake. There is a col­ored man in the white house.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote to Governor Andrew Cuomo request­ing that the Governor give his office the Authority and respon­si­bil­i­ty to pros­e­cute Police who kill unarmed civilians.

Schneiderman said quote: “In New York, and across the coun­try, the promise of equal jus­tice under law has been erod­ed by a series of tragedies involv­ing the death of unarmed per­sons as a result of the use of force by law enforce­ment officers,”.

The Attorney General’s request a swift response from some of New York City’s District Attorneys.

Kenneth Thompson in Brooklyn and Richard Brown in Queens expressed oppo­si­tion while the Bronx’s Robert Johnson and Manhattan’s Cy Vance had seri­ous reservations. 
“As the duly elect­ed dis­trict attor­ney of Brooklyn, I am adamant­ly opposed to the request by the New York State Attorney General for author­i­ty to inves­ti­gate and poten­tial­ly pros­e­cute alleged acts of police bru­tal­i­ty,” Thompson said. “No one is more com­mit­ted to ensur­ing equal jus­tice under the law than I am.”

“It’s an insult to the intel­li­gence and the integri­ty of every pros­e­cu­tor in the state of New York, as well as every grand juror who exam­ined the facts and the evi­dence,” said Michael Palladino, pres­i­dent of the Detectives Endowment Association.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association endorsed Schneiderman for state attor­ney gen­er­al in October.

On Monday, the union pres­i­dent Pat Lynch said Schneiderman’s request was all wrong.“There is absolute­ly no rea­son to alter the exist­ing sys­tem because if the rule of law and rule of evi­dence as they stand in the State of New York are fol­lowed dis­pas­sion­ate­ly and hon­est­ly, then the out­come will be right and just regard­less of what office han­dles a case,” he said.

I am not sure whether Schneiderman’s inten­tions are right­eous, how­ev­er just because the Police Unions are opposed, I believe the Governor should con­sid­er­ing sign­ing that Executive Order. It appears that New York City’s DA’s are more inter­est­ed in allow­ing their egos to rule their judge­ment rather than heed the cry from the pub­lic. If for no oth­er rea­son Thompson of Brooklyn and Johnson of the Bronx should under­stand both being African Americans.

The tone deaf­ness of the city’s DA’s and their col­leagues in the Police Department is exact­ly what

the pub­lic is com­plain­ing about. Yet both the DA’s and Police are inca­pable of under­stand­ing that their rela­tion­ship are too close to engen­der trust.
As I stat­ed in a pre­vi­ous Article the prob­lem of police abuse is cer­tain­ly not a prob­lem of police only, but is much deep­er to include District Attorney’s offices and much more.

Attorney General Schneiderman not­ed that sim­i­lar pro­pos­als to require spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle cas­es in which cops kill unarmed civil­ians have been around for years in the state Legislature but nev­er enact­ed. He indi­cat­ed an exec­u­tive order by Cuomo might put pres­sure on the law­mak­ers to act.

In the past 15 years, police have been indict­ed in only four cas­es, and one of those indict­ments was lat­er dismissed.

As we deal with the avalanche of police mur­der of unarmed black men, cit­i­zens and oth­er stake­hold­ers con­tem­plate a way for­ward. We must rec­og­nize that this prob­lem is much deep­er than meets the eyes. Local DA’s are quick to step for­ward to defend their inde­pen­dence, no one but them­selves believe that baloney.
There is a lot more to wor­ry about when pro­pos­als to require spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle cas­es in which cops kill unarmed civil­ians lan­guish in the state Legislature with­out a vote.
The ques­tion is why? Police Unions are big donors , they deliv­er huge chunks of votes to politi­cians who tow the line. Most impor­tant­ly Police Unions in some regards are ordi­nary thugs, they use hard nosed tac­tics to keep leg­is­la­tors in line, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in swing dis­tricts. Being brand­ed soft on crime is more than enough to get one vot­ed out of office. This is a chance for Cuomo to step up and make a dif­fer­ence. Lets see if he will sign this order or bow to police and ego­tis­ti­cal District Attorneys.

Kings County, Brooklyn dis­trict attor­ney Kenneth Thompson began to impan­el a grand jury to decide the fate of Officer Peter Liang, the man who shot and killed 28-year-old Akai Gurley. 

Gurley was killed when Officer Peter Liang and his part­ner, also new to the force, were patrolling a pitch-dark stair­well with flash­lights late Thursday, police said. Gurley, 28, was leav­ing his girlfriend’s apart­ment after she had braid­ed his hair, accord­ing to the girl­friend, who is not his daughter’s mother.

Police said the offi­cers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor land­ing when Gurley and his girl­friend opened a stair­well door one floor down, after giv­ing up on wait­ing for an ele­va­tor. Police said Liang, patrolling with his gun drawn, fired with­out a word and appar­ent­ly by acci­dent, hit­ting Gurley from a dis­tance of about 10 feet.

Community Organizations includ­ing the grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion BK Nation, has demand­ed that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton bring things to an end:
BK Nation through a Representative Kevin Powell said ‚“We do not believe this was an acci­dent, but a pat­tern of reck­less dis­re­gard for the lives of young men of col­or in our community”.
Regardless of what hap­pens this will anger some groups. Residents and local African-American groups argue this case is just one more exam­ple of the low val­ue Police place on the lives of young men of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly black men.
Police Agencies and their sup­port­ers will point to the tremen­dous risks offi­cers face dai­ly as they patrol high crime Housing projects across the nation.
Both sides of the argu­ment has mer­it. Police have demon­strat­ed scant regard for the lives of Young men of col­or, and African Americans in particular.
On the oth­er hand it is incred­i­bly nerve-rack­ing for offi­cers who patrol these crime rid­den hous­ing projects. After all no one deserves to be killed sim­ply because they went to work.
Regardless of the NYPD’s pro­to­col to it’s offi­cers regard­ing how patrols should be done mis­takes were made which may be direct­ly or indi­rect­ly attrib­ut­able to the death of Akai Gurley.
Questions remain.
♦ Why two junior offi­cers were on patrol by themselves?
♦ Why were they doing ver­ti­cal patrols,( going from ground to roof, if they were told not to, as alleged?
♦Why did offi­cer Liang have his gun drawn?
♦Did the open­ing of the door below the offi­cers con­sti­tute enough of a fear fac­tor to cause Officer Liang to believe he and his part­ner were in danger?
♦ If Officer Liang’s part­ner did not un-hol­ster his weapon , it could rea­son­ably be con­strued that any per­ceived fear Liang had may not have been anchored in reality.
Despite all of this, and the tragedy of the loss of this young man and the trau­ma to his fam­i­ly , I believe it would be anoth­er tragedy were he to be indicted .
With what we know so far about this shoot­ing, it would appear that Officer Liang and his part­ner may have ignored Department guide­lines. Liang may not have the nerves or judge­ment required of a good offi­cer, but I see no intent to harm.
When every aspect of what we know is con­sid­ered, tak­ing police side into con­sid­er­a­tion, Officer Liang may need retrain­ing, or even more severe depart­men­tal penal­ty to include but not con­fined to dismissal.

Despite the harm some offi­cers do, we must be mind­ful that Cops face incred­i­ble risks while we sleep at nights. We need to remind our­selves that Officers are peo­ple too, they make mistakes.
It would be trag­ic were the law to pun­ish this offi­cer in light of what we know, because of some of the actions of oth­er police officers.
Lets not throw out the baby with the bath-water.

Those of you who like to pre­tend , what the world just wit­nessed is state execution.Carried out with­out a crime being com­mit­ted , a tri­al, or a ver­dict of guilt.
But it goes deep­er than that it is also state Thuggery at it’s finest. Cops who believe they are the Law. Not Law Enforcement Agents. But the law.
Stupid so-called black lead­ers talk about diver­si­ty in police depart­ments, as if that’s a panacea to the sys­temic prob­lem of police killings.
There was a female sergeant there, did she stop the mur­der? No she did noth­ing. Not only that, there were oth­er black cops there, obvi­ous­ly they were scared shit-less to inter­vene as their white killer com­rades abused and killed mis­ter Garner.

Black America is in seri­ous trou­ble.
When we talk about good cops every-time the ques­tion of mur­der­er cops comes up, we remove the shine from the ball.
We divert the nec­es­sary anger from this exis­ten­tial prob­lem.
You can­not claim to be a good cop if you stand by and watch abuse, to include mur­der hap­pen and take no action to stop it .
As a for­mer cop, for­mer col­leagues were some­times mad at me for step­ping in and pre­vent­ing abuse of cit­i­zens.
That in no way com­pro­mised theirs or my effec­tive­ness as tac­ti­cal offi­cers or as detec­tives.
If any­thing it allowed me/​us to be more effective.
Insofar as the New York inci­dents go there are enough bod­ies to show that this is a sys­temic prob­lem of cops who were indoc­tri­nat­ed under the Racial,divisive doc­trine of Rudolph Giuliani, exe­cut­ed by William Bratton and ex-con­vict Bernard Kerik.

It has been clear since slav­ery that blacks were not going to receive any­thing in America they are not pre­pared to fight and die for. For sev­er­al years now I have been lament­ing that the sac­ri­fices made by great Martyrs like Malcolm X and King among oth­ers are being squan­dered. I the­o­rized that this would come back to haunt Black-America. Unfortunately that time is here.
President Obama wants cops to wear body cam­era, as a way for America to see what Police offi­cers are doing in their name. As much as I sup­port the pres­i­den­t’s ini­tia­tive, I won­der what effect it will have when Prosecutors and Grand Juries take it upon them­selves to cir­cum­vent the law.
Eric Garner was killed on cam­era, in broad daylight.
Daniel M. Donovan Jr. Staten Island District Attorney indict­ed the young man who record­ed the killing on his cell-phone. Cops con­ve­nient­ly arrest­ed him pass­ing a gun to a woman. 
NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo who killed Eric Garner will not be asked to answer in a state court for his actions.
Ramsey Orta, 22, was alleged­ly arrest­ed out­side a known drug loca­tion on Staten Island by nar­cotics offi­cers who claimed Orta placed a hand­gun in his com­pan­ion’s waist­band, the New York Police Department said. Orta report­ed­ly told cops “You’re just mad because I filmed your boy,”.
Fast track to Ferguson Missouri, There was active talk about indict­ing the step-father of Michael Brown who was heard on tape say­ing “lets burn this B$#@!& down”, in response to the news that Darren Wilson would not be indicted. 
These are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a Police-state. Whenever cit­i­zens are not allowed to ques­tion or oth­er­wise demand answers of police, or hold them account­able, they are in a police state.
Police depart­ments are not laws onto them­selves. They are duty bound to obey the laws, even as they enforce them.
We are at crit­i­cal mass when peo­ple who pho­to­graph or record police crimes and fam­i­ly mem­bers already in griev­ing are tar­get­ed while killer cops walk free.

At this time there is much empha­sis on police depart­ments and indi­vid­ual offi­cers, the prob­lem is much deep­er than cops . There seem to be a sys­tem­at­ic effort on the part of pros­e­cu­tors to cov­er for cops. Some are con­vinced some Prosecutors are even crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it in the way they han­dle pros­e­cu­tion evi­dence involv­ing cops in the grand jury process. Prosecutors are sup­posed to be ser­vants of the peo­ple. There is much talk about the grand jury process and what may have occurred or not in these secret proceedings.
lost in this noise is the fact that pros­e­cu­tors have the pow­er and indeed a duty to pros­e­cute crimes, irre­spec­tive of who the offend­er is sep­a­rate from the grand jury process.
When Prosecutors decide to go the route of the grand-jury in cas­es like the Eric Garner’s , they are abdi­cat­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ty to their oath at best. Worse case they are doing all in their pow­er in assist­ing cops who break the laws to escape prosecution.
All Americans have a stake in what is hap­pen­ing present­ly. Blacks Whites and and every­one else.

There is much to be said about black lead­er­ship, or more impor­tant­ly the absence of one. As young peo­ple take to the streets demand­ing a new direc­tion for their coun­try, old civ­il rights func­tionar­ies are still stuck using the old talk­ing-points about jobs.
This fight is not a fight about jobs right now, it is a fight for jus­tice and fair­ness. In some cas­es it is an exis­ten­tial fight. Lets fight this fight and not con­fuse this fight with oth­er issues.

So let me get this straight the St. Louis Police was con­sid­er­ing pros­e­cut­ing the

step-father of slain teen Michael Brown for shout­ing “lets burn this *&^$# down” after the non-indict­ment but killer cop Darren Wilson is walk­ing around free?
What am I miss­ing here? 
What pow­er does this man have to influ­ence the actions of a mob ? How do they prove this? The Police brass and the entire sys­tem of IN-jus­tice in that state can­not con­trol it’s killers in uni­form but wants to use the very same sys­tem to pros­e­cute peo­ple for uti­liz­ing their free speech in a high­ly charged environment .

We under­stand Michael Brown’s step­fa­ther, Louis Head, apol­o­gized Wednesday.

“Something came over me as I watched and lis­tened to my wife, the moth­er of Michael Brown Jr., react to the gut-wrench­ing news that the cop who killed her son wouldn’t be charged with a crime,” Head said in a state­ment to CNN. “My emo­tions admit­ted­ly got the best of me.

“This is my fam­i­ly,” Head said. “I was so angry and full of raw emo­tions, as so many oth­ers were, and grant­ed I screamed out words I shouldn’t have screamed in the heat of the moment. I was wrong, and I humbly apol­o­gize to all those who read my anger and my pain as a true desire for what I want for the community.”

We will await the apol­o­gy from the real crim­i­nals in all this, the sys­tem which had it’s Agent kill an-unarmed man,then pull out all the stops to make sure he does­n’t even have to answer for his actions. Always remem­ber that a black man has no rights a white man is bound to respect. I would not hold my breath if I were you. They have no shame, no con­science , no humanity.

IN THE MEANTIME:

Some St. Louis Rams play­ers exer­cised their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed right to free speech Sunday when they came out with “hands up don’t shoot” hand-signs in sup­port of mur­dered Michael Brown. 
This of course drew the ire of the bul­ly­ing boys in blue in the St Louis Police Officers Association . The asso­ci­a­tion issued a release

press­ing the NFL do quote dis­ci­pline the play­ers who exer­cised their right. 
Who dis­ci­pline cops when they mur­der citizens

But I digress, as I write this a secret Staten Island Grand Jury decid­ed the mur­der­ing cop Pantaleo who choked Eric Garner to death would not face charges.

Back to the state­ment of the Saint Louis police offi­cers Association.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association is pro­found­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the mem­bers of the St. Louis Rams foot­ball team who chose to ignore the moun­tains of evi­dence released from the St. Louis County Grand Jury this week and engage in a dis­play that police offi­cers around the nation found taste­less, offen­sive and inflammatory.
Five mem­bers of the Rams enIered the field today exhibit­ing the “hands-up-don’t‑shoot” pose that has been adopt­ed by pro­tes­tors who accused Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson of mur­der­ing Michael Brown. The ges­ture has become syn­ony­mous with asser­tions that Michael Brown was inno­cent of any wrong­do­ing and attempt­ing to sur­ren­der peace­ful­ly when Wilson, accord­ing to some now-dis­cred­it­ed wit­ness­es, gunned him down in cold blood.

SLPOA Business Manager Jeff Roorda said, “now that the evi­dence is in and Officer Wilson’s account has been ver­i­fied by phys­i­cal and bal­lis­tic evi­dence as well as eye-wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, which led the grand jury to con­clude that no prob­a­ble cause exist­ed that Wilson engaged in any wrong­do­ing, it is unthink­able that home­town ath­letes would so pub­licly per­pet­u­ate a nar­ra­tive that has been dis­proven over-and-over again.”

Roorda was incensed that the Rams and the NFL would tol­er­ate such behav­ior and called it remark­ably hyp­o­crit­i­cal. “All week long, the Rams and the NFL were on the phone with the St. Louis Police Department ask­ing for assur­ances that the play­ers and the fans would be kept safe from the vio­lent pro­test­ers who had riot­ed, loot­ed, and burned build­ings in Ferguson. Our offi­cers have been work­ing 12 hour shifts for over a week, they had days off includ­ing Thanksgiving can­celled so that they could defend this com­mu­ni­ty from those on the streets that per­pet­u­ate this myth that Michael Brown was exe­cut­ed by a broth­er police offi­cer and then, as the play­ers and their fans sit safe­ly in their dome under the watch­ful pro­tec­tion of hun­dreds of St. Louis’s finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exon­er­at­ed offi­cer a mur­der­er, that is way out-of-bounds, to put it in foot­ball par­lance,” Roorda said.

The SLPOA is call­ing for the play­ers involved to be dis­ci­plined and for the Rams and the NFL to deliv­er a very pub­lic apol­o­gy. Roorda said he planned to speak to the NFL and the Rams to voice his organization’s dis­plea­sure tomor­row. He also plans to reach out to oth­er police orga­ni­za­tions in St. Louis and around the coun­try to enlist their input on what the appro­pri­ate response from law enforce­ment should be. Roorda warned, “I know that there are those that will say that these play­ers are sim­ply exer­cis­ing their First Amendment rights. Well I’ve got news for peo­ple who think that way, cops have first amend­ment rights too, and we plan to exer­cise ours. I’d remind the NFL and their play­ers that it is not the vio­lent thugs burn­ing down build­ings that buy their advertiser’s prod­ucts. It’s cops and the good peo­ple of St. Louis and oth­er NFL towns that do. Somebody needs to throw a flag on this play. If it’s not the NFL and the Rams, then it’ll be cops and their supporters.”

The state­ment start­ed out rea­son­able it did not take long how­ev­er for the true mind­set of the Organization to become clear. Bully-ish, Thuggish, threat­en­ing, enti­tled, above being questioned.
I nev­er quite under­stood their claim that they pro­vide secu­ri­ty so that cit­i­zens can oper­ate in safety>
Here’s a clue, People pay you to ensure their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, if you feel above doing what they pay you for give up the job and find anoth­er job that you are qual­i­fied to do. You do not have a right to being a Police Officer. 

There is also a grow­ing sense that in far two many cas­es Police offi­cers actions are indis­tin­guish­able from the actions of the KKK. There is also a crys­tal-clear per­cep­tion that a cer­tain sec­tion of the Caucasian com­mu­ni­ty is quite pleased with the actions of killer cops, Irrespective of their actions. In the 60’s it was admit­ted that many Police Departments like the LAPD and oth­ers had large amounts of mem­bers who were active mem­bers of the Klan.
If this was true for PD’s like the LAPD and oth­er large depart­ments what do you think is the case in small Lilly-white com­mu­ni­ties with all white police depart­ments and cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tems still invest­ed in the con­cept of racial superiority?

There were sup­posed attempts to change the make up of some of those Departments, bet­ter edu­cat­ed offi­cers and in some cas­es diver­si­ty. What they were not able to do is to remove the scourge of racism from the hearts of many who are still join­ing the ranks of police departments.

On Monday, Time Out Sports Bar & Grill post­ed on its Facebook page that it would no longer sup­port the foot­ball team “due to the bone head­ed ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ act by the num­ber of Rams play­ers.” The post said all signs and pho­tos of the Rams would be removed from the walls. “We need to stand up to thugs who destroy our com­mu­ni­ty and burn down local busi­ness­es, and boy­cott the oth­er thugs/​organizations who sup­port them,” the post read. The restau­rant lat­er post­ed again, say­ing it was “not tak­ing sides in the Ferguson tragedy” and sup­ports peace­ful protest and free speech, but dis­agreed with the Rams “bring­ing the protest to a nation­wide pro­fes­sion­al sport­ing event.” A few dozen pro­test­ers gath­ered at around 6 p.m. on Tuesday out­side one of Time Out’s loca­tions in St. Louis. Wearing Rams jer­seys and hats, the pro­test­ers chant­ed “We are Rams fans” and “We want ser­vice.” Protesters said a man who iden­ti­fied him­self as a co-own­er of the bar came to the door dur­ing the demonstration.
http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​1​4​/​1​2​/​0​3​/​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​-​s​t​-​l​o​u​i​s​-​r​a​m​s​_​n​_​6​2​5​8​5​8​2​.​h​tml

As President Obama asks Congress for funds to kick off a cam­paign for body cam­eras for cops, I am not sure what cam­eras will do to reduce this prob­lem of police abuse and extra-judi­cial killings. 
The entire killing of Eric Garner was cap­tured on Camera. Garner could clear­ly be heard on Camera say­ing “I can’t breathe< I can’t breathe” I can’t breathe”. Daniel Pantaleo did not think of releas­ing his death-grip on the man until the life drained out of him.
White Staten Island res­i­dents to whom cops can do no wrong, decid­ed not to break their tra­di­tion of pro­tect­ing killer cops. They sup­pos­ed­ly looked at the evi­dence of the case on the basis that there was no intent to kill, despite the Medical Examiner, rul­ing the death a homicide.
Even though the grand jury’s job is not to decide inno­cence or guilt the Staten Island Jury decid­ed to lit­er­al­ly try the case and decid­ed there was no case to answer. No “prob­a­ble cause”, no mur­der, no manslaugh­ter, no assault, no stran­gu­la­tion, no nothing.….….….

After Eric Garner stopped mov­ing they all stood around, they took no steps to ren­der CPR or any oth­er life sav­ing pro­ce­dure. They knew they had killed him.
They did noth­ing because they knew they did not need to.
There was no rea­son to care.
No rea­son to wor­ry about consequence.

In the ongo­ing debate after the death of Michael Brown the 18 year old Ferguson youth and oth­er killings of black men by police, every­one seem to have tak­en sides based on col­or and or life experiences.
Many blacks who are exposed to the dai­ly abuse and dis­re­spect of Police are enraged by the fact that yet anoth­er unarmed black man was killed by a white police offi­cer and the offi­cer was not even made to defend his actions in a court of law.
Many includ­ing this writer fer­vent­ly believe that St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch used his office and bent over back­wards to ensure that the cop in ques­tion, Darren Wilson would face no charges , at least at the State level.
Many are pin­ning their hopes to a pos­si­ble Federal Indictment of Wilson. Of course that indict­ment would have to come from new evi­dence yet unheard. The stan­dard for a Federal Indictment is much high­er than at the state level.
Of course McCulloch has already poi­soned that well with his pre-ver­dict press diatribe.
Federal Prosecutors would have to prove that Wilson killed Brown because he was black or any oth­er Federally pre­scribed char­ac­ter­is­tic that would neces­si­tate an indictment.
An uphill task at best.

I thought I would talk about the rash of killings by police, of large­ly, but not total­ly con­fined to unarmed black men.
Years ago despite what many thought were worse times for race rela­tions, it was rare to hear of a police offi­cer killing some­one, black or white.
This leads us to won­der at the rea­son for this rash of aggres­sive behav­ior on the part of police.
Once even an armed sus­pect would be giv­en mul­ti­ple chances to drop his weapon, some­times police would spend hours nego­ti­at­ing with armed assailants , hop­ing to have a blood­less resolution.
Many will argue offi­cers were nev­er that lenient with black offend­ers, I dis­agree. Yes race does play a part in how some cops behave but there are times depend­ing on the offi­cers of course,in which sit­u­a­tions involv­ing black assailants are resolved with­out lethal forced being employed.
However the soon­er peo­ple come to the real­iza­tion that there are some real­ly bad actors out there wear­ing police uni­forms the clos­er we are to fix­ing this prob­lem. Unless of course some do not want a fix. For some apol­o­gists cops can do no wrong, regard­less of the glar­ing abuse of pow­er some cops com­mit against cit­i­zens. There are those who find ways to ratio­nal­ize away their crim­i­nal actions.
You know for some they are the buffer between the big bad black-man, and the white race. Just ask FOX television.

Which brings us to why cops are so quick on the trig­ger today ?

♦If offi­cers know they will be held account­able for their actions, they would be much more cir­cum­spect in the way they car­ry out their duties
♦The mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police depart­ments have cre­at­ed mod­ern day Rombos who gets to act out their blood-lust fan­tasies with the toys giv­en them.

Cops these days are dressed like sol­diers pre­pared for bat­tle, full mil­i­tary regalia in too many instances and semi-auto­mat­ic weapons. They have become sol­diers look­ing for war.
To under­stand this phe­nom­e­non we must first look at the ill-advised war on drugs waged by this coun­try, a war which has cost the lives of thou­sands, dev­as­tat­ed the lives of count­less oth­ers, hun­dreds of thou­sands incar­cer­at­ed and tril­lions of dol­lars spent in what is wide­ly believed to be a los­ing effort.

Ever politi­cian run­ning for office wants to be a big shot so he/​she runs on law and order. Don’t get me wrong I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe in the rule of law, notwith­stand­ing, this pos­tur­ing has cre­at­ed a sce­nario in which we are now wound into a cocoon-like police state , one from which we do not have the will to extri­cate our­selves. Politicians from the Alderman to the President are behold­ing to law enforce­ment and their Unions. Some are pet­ri­fied of even crit­i­ciz­ing out­right police abuse out of fear of police back-lash.
This cre­ates even worse behav­ior by police. Unfortunately this is where we now find ourselves.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police offi­cer respond­ing to a 911 call sev­er­al days ago. The 12 year-old was killed just sec­onds after police drove up. The cop dri­ving did not even have a chance to exit the vehi­cle before his trig­ger-hap­py part­ner gunned down the 12 years old child who was armed with a pel­let gun. What lit­tle 12 year old boy does not play with fake guns? What lit­tle boy does not fan­ta­size that he is a cow­boy, or cop? Who knows what young Tamir was think­ing as he played in the park by him­self ? maybe, just maybe he was fan­ta­siz­ing he was a cop before he was gunned down two bul­lets to his tarso.

Kajieme Powell … A 25 year-old St. Louis man was killed 23 sec­onds after police arrived . Powell who had a small knife was walk­ing around on the pave­ment and on a grassy embank­ment , hands swing­ing at his side, he ignored police com­mands to drop the small knife he had in his hands. Powell was more of a com­ic spec­ta­cle to passers-by than a threat. Seconds lat­er Powell lay dead 9 police bul­lets punc­tur­ing his body, some as he lay dying on the ground.

Is it a‑okay to kill some­one sim­ply because you know the ele­ments are there to guar­an­tee that you will not be held accountable?
He had a knife.…
He refused our com­mands to drop the knife»…
He was mov­ing toward us»>
He was swing­ing his arms in a threat­en­ing way»>
He was shout­ing shoot me now, kill me now.….

The ele­ments are there for you to kill, yes, but did you have to use lethal force. When ques­tioned the St Louis Police Chief said cops want to go home to their fam­i­lies. Pressed fur­ther on the pos­si­ble use of Tasers he came up with the lame excuse that Powell was wear­ing a Jacket so Tasers may not have worked.
Hockey great Wayne Gretsky famous­ly said “you miss a hun­dred per­cent of the shots you do not take” . Of course we will nev­er know whether it would have worked, the two cops could­n’t both­er using non-lethal force , why should they ‚who was going to defend this men­tal­ly impaired black man with a knife ?

Do you kill sim­ply because you are told you are going on a gun run ? Police Brass in Cleveland said there was no con­fronta­tion between 12-year-old Tamir Rce and cops who arrived on the scene after some­one called that the young­ster was wav­ing around a gun. The caller twice told the dis­patch­er that the gun may have been a fake, she was how­ev­er too busy ask­ing whether the kid was black or white to assim­i­late that lit­tle nuisance.
Arriving cops did not both­er to stop with weapons drawn from a safe dis­tance. Observe the sequence of events as the car raced up to the lit­tle boy and instant­ly he was lay­ing on the ground two bul­lets in his body. It almost seem that some cops are look­ing for rea­sons to kill rather than enforce the laws.

♦Militarization of police depart­ments have made cops over­ly aggressive.
♦Heavy weapons and equip­ment makes them believe they are at war.
♦Not pros­e­cut­ing them vig­or­ous­ly when they break the law,emboldens them to be more dis­re­spect­ful and abusive.
♦Blind sup­port and cov­er-ups per­pet­u­ates and encour­ages bad behavior.

Some com­mu­ni­ties are at war with the police which is sup­posed to ser­vice their needs. There are Fergusons all across America. In far too many com­mu­ni­ties police are not ser­vants of the peo­ple but oppres­sors. Police Oppression may not be in the form of killings but in false tick­et­ing and arrests on con­coct­ed rolling stops by Police in the Town of Poughkeepsie New York, and myr­i­ad oth­er local­i­ties. In many local­i­ties peo­ple just keep their mouths shut and pay the fines, while police lie to fill quo­tas and the cof­fers fill up so the Politicians can spend and spend some more, all too often using the ill-got­ten monies to hire more police and the cycle continues.

Vassar Professor Kiese Laymon in a bril­liant piece writ­ten for Ghawker titled My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK
Wrote:
I was dri­ving down Hooker Avenue. When the white police offi­cer, whose head was way too small for his neck, asked if my truck was stolen, I laughed, said no, and shame­ful­ly showed him my license and my ID, just like Lanre Akinsiku. The ID, which ensures that I can spend the rest of my life in a lush state park with fat fear­less squir­rels, sur­round­ed by enlight­ened white folks who love talk­ing about Jon Stewart, Obama, and civil­i­ty, has been washed so many times it does­n’t lie flat. After tak­ing my license and ID back to his car, the police offi­cer came to me with a tick­et and two lessons. “Looks like you got a good thing going on over there at Vassar College,” he said. “You don’t wan­na it ruin it by rolling through stop signs, do you?” I sucked my teeth, shook my head, kept my right hand vis­i­bly on my right thigh, rolled my win­dow up, and head­ed back to cam­pus. One more tick­et. Two more con­de­scend­ing lessons from a lame armed with white racial suprema­cy, anti-black­ness, a gun, and a badge. But at least I did­n’t get arrest­ed. Or shot six times.
Rolling stops, ha,ha , I was not amused when a cop pulled me over near my home right there in the Town of Poughkeepsie a few years ago, dri­ving my old­er but shiny black Mazda Mellinia to work. I drove the same route to work every­day, that route took me to Dunkin Donuts where they made my large reg­u­lar as soon as I walked in. I was a reg­u­lar and my order was the same, they all knew it.
The Young cop who shall remain name­less for this arti­cle was sit­ting at the stop sign in the squad-car ‚there was no way to miss him , there was nowhere for him to hide. I came to a stop and con­tin­ued on my way as soon as it was safe. Even if I was pre-dis­posed to rolling through it would have been a bad idea that morn­ing with a cop sit­ting right there.
Knowing I had done noth­ing wrong I was mys­ti­fied when his lights came on and he pulled up behind me. I asked him what the stop was for? He respond­ed that I had crept through the stop sign ! Stunned I asked whether he was seri­ous? Why the hell would I have rolled through the stop sign when you are sit­ting right there? By this time you could see he was uncom­fort­able in the lie, he said noth­ing further.
Thankfully the Judge lis­tened when I explained it was a bla­tant lie and threw out the ticket.
Whether it was the quo­ta sys­tem or the black man dri­ving a shiny car , I may nev­er know , what I do know as a for­mer cop is that it was wrong.
I have had sev­er­al expe­ri­ences with them all of which con­vinced me they are real­ly not very bright. Yet they are real­ly quick on the lights.
On anoth­er occa­sion a cop was at a dead stop at a traf­fic light , the right fil­ter lane has a yield sign to traf­fic head­ing in the direc­tion he was head­ed. I drove through while he sat at the red, in a mat­ter of sec­onds he pulled me over. I asked him what was the rea­son for the stop? , He said quote “you did not stop” , I asked him “why should I have stopped”? He point­ed to the yield sign, I duti­ful­ly informed him the sign read yield , not stop. He said “you did not yield”! I asked him who should I yield to? He said me you should yield to me ! I asked him why should I yield to you when you are at a dead stop at a red light?
He looked at me then broke into a stu­pid grin then told me “you have good night sir”.
There are so many sto­ries I could relate and every­one left a bit­ter taste in my mouth. Imagine the expe­ri­ences oth­ers have had all across America at the hands of these weak mind­ed peo­ple with guns and badges.

In my next Article I will attempt to address some of the things Police and oth­er peo­ple face from black thugs.

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. 

With the so-called Black Friday sales con­clud­ed, I took the lib­er­ty to reflect a lit­tle on what it meant for the aver­age person. 

My first incli­na­tion was dis­dain, as a small busi­ness own­er I offer my cus­tomers a fair price all year round. I hate to hag­gle back and forth over prices, I have always believed it demeans me, demeans the cus­tomer and well,.…… my business.

So I looked at some of the peo­ple who own large cor­po­ra­tions, like Wal-Mart, Best ‑Buy, Sears, to name a few . These are peo­ple who are real­ly wealthy, mak­ing mon­ey is a game to them. A recent expose revealed that each of Sam Walton’s four chil­dren give to char­i­ty, the equiv­a­lence of a sin­gle pen­ny, when their wealth is com­pared to the Average American.

Why then would these peo­ple pay their work­ers min­i­mum wage salaries and run pho­ny sales which shop­pers can only access imme­di­ate­ly after they have swal­lowed the last bit of Thanksgiving Turkey ? Or worse yet, being made to stand in line at un-Godly hours of the night/​morning to get a price discount.

Where are these filthy rich own­ers at that time of the night/​morning while peo­ple are camped out wait­ing to be fed a bone?
Then I had a change of thinking.
What would hap­pen if these stores offered these deals and no one showed up to their stores at 2:am in the morning?
Is it at all pos­si­ble that they would have to revert to respect­ing their customers ?

How can the major­i­ty 99% allows itself to be manip­u­lat­ed in this way ?
Then it occurred to me that they basi­cal­ly get some of us to vote against our own self- inter­est among oth­er things, so why not insult us with these false sales attain­able only in the dead of night and at great per­il to life and limb.
If we are stu­pid enough to leave our fam­i­lies to stand in line in the dead of night to save a few bucks then maybe we deserve the dis­dain and dis­re­spect their mar­ket research sug­gest they heap on us.

I would guess that the wealthy 1% and their fam­i­lies were com­fort­ably tucked away in warm beds at the time these peo­ple are wait­ing patient­ly in sub zero tem­per­a­tures or fight­ing with their fel­low cit­i­zens over some­thing as triv­ial as a piece of garment.

Despite my dis­gust on Friday one woman actu­al­ly made my day . She was my first cus­tomer, she walked in and want­ed to know about the deals my busi­ness had for black Friday.
I lov­ing­ly told her I respect­ed her too much to play num­bers games with her. We had a good laugh, then she told me she had vis­it­ed and seen a phone which she want­ed . The price in my store was $189.00 so she admit­ted that she was on QVC shop­ping and the price of the phone was $189.00 for a few hours, after which the price went back to .….…
Wait for it.….….
$279.00, wow !
She asked to pur­chase the phone.
I thanked her for her hon­esty and gave her an extra $20 off.

I do agree that as a small busi­ness own­er I am biased against the large box stores. Nothing that I said how­ev­er is meant to be inju­ri­ous, they are just fac­tu­al statements.
It’s time that we the 99% stop allow­ing the 1% to manip­u­late us like string puppets.