Police Corporal sus­pect­ed of tak­ing his own life.

The Officer Corporal Osbourne Ximmines of the Gayle Police sta­tion St, Mary and from Threadways District Saint Catherine is believed to have com­mit­ted sui­cide at his home.
The police report­ed that they were called to the home, where they found the deceased offi­cer in a sit­ting posi­tion with a sin­gle bul­let wound to the head. His firearm was report­ed­ly in his left hand. 
At this time, we are unaware whether or not the deceased offi­cer was left-hand­ed; this is impor­tant as the police launch their inves­ti­ga­tions to deter­mine whether it was sui­cide or a staged murder.

A vet­er­an New York Police Department (NYPD) sergeant has plead­ed guilty for punch­ing two home­less men on two sep­a­rate occa­sions in 2019 and 2020.

Sgt. Phillip Wong plead­ed guilty at the Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday. He admit­ted to assault­ing the first man, who was in police cus­tody, and the sec­ond man, who was at the plat­form of West 96^th Street and Broadway sub­way station.

“Law enforce­ment offi­cials are sworn to serve and pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing New Yorkers in their cus­tody,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said dur­ing Wong’s hear­ing. “In this case, Sgt. Wong vio­lat­ed not only his oath – but the law – dur­ing the vio­lent arrests of two New Yorkers, on two sep­a­rate occasions.”

Wong alleged­ly assault­ed a 48-year-old man being escort­ed by oth­er police offi­cers into a hold­ing cell inside NYPD Transit District 3 in Hamilton Heights on Oct. 4, 2019. The man alleged­ly kicked the cell’s door and spat at the offi­cers, which angered Wong. The NYPD sergeant report­ed­ly charged at the man and punched him in the face, as NextShark pre­vi­ous­ly reported.

Wong was still under inves­ti­ga­tion for the first assault when he got involved in the sec­ond one. 

A 35-year-old man was report­ed­ly arrest­ed at the West 96^th Street and Broadway sub­way sta­tion on April 29, 2020, for punch­ing anoth­er pas­sen­ger. Wong was super­vis­ing the offi­cers at the scene of the incident.

The man report­ed­ly hurled anti-Asian slurs at Wong and kicked him in the leg after his arrest. In response, Wong and anoth­er offi­cer brought the man to the ground, and Wong knelt on his back.

At one point, the appre­hend­ed sus­pect alleged­ly told Wong, “I can’t breathe,” but the offi­cer con­tin­ued with his assault and replied, “I don’t give a f*ck if you can breathe or not.”

Wong even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­dered to author­i­ties fol­low­ing the inci­dent. However, he ini­tial­ly plead­ed not guilty to third-degree assault and third-degree attempt­ed assault charges. It is unclear what made him even­tu­al­ly change his mind.

The vet­er­an NYPD sergeant, who joined the force in 2006, was slapped with a two-year pro­ba­tion. He was also ordered to com­plete 70 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and under­take anger man­age­ment or oth­er counseling.

The dis­trict attorney’s office has request­ed for Wong to be giv­en a 60-day prison sen­tence. Wong, who has been on mod­i­fied duty, is expect­ed to face a depart­ment tri­al on March 22.

In many of my arti­cles, one of the things you have seen me talk about is the deep and per­va­sive cor­rup­tion that per­me­ates many of America’s 18,000 plus police depart­ments, large and small.
As con­vo­lut­ed as the notion of mak­ing a com­plaint against the police means that a cit­i­zen has to go to the same police depart­ment and be greet­ed with hos­til­i­ty and intim­i­da­tion. It is far worse when the sur­face is scratched away.
My con­tention has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly been those police offi­cers who vio­late their oaths do so with impuni­ty because they know they are protected.
A cit­i­zen who lies under oath is sum­mar­i­ly crim­i­nal­ized even when that cit­i­zen may have gen­uine­ly for­got­ten or omit­ted part of an inci­dent when talk­ing to law enforce­ment or prosecutors.
Think about the lev­el of com­plic­i­ty that goes into using tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to pur­chase body cam­eras. Still, the leg­is­la­tion says that the pub­lic that pays for those cam­eras has no right to the footage from the cam­era because they are not pub­lic property?
Never mind that they are pur­chased with the pub­lic’s mon­ey! Imagine the crim­i­nal intent inher­ent in the prac­tices that allow cops to turn off body cam­eras dur­ing encoun­ters with the pub­lic and turn them back on when­ev­er they feel like it?
The col­lu­sion from leg­is­la­tors and oth­ers expos­es to the American pub­lic the lev­el of cor­rup­tion that is deeply ingrained into the American police culture.

However, when police offi­cers are caught lying under oath or fal­si­fy­ing doc­u­ments, they suf­fer no consequence. 
This two-tiered sys­tem of jus­tice runs the gamut; it isn’t just an unhealthy alliance between cops and cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors but cor­rupt judges who active­ly shield crim­i­nal cops all the way to the high­est court and even the Federal Bureau Of Investigations (FBI) that is sup­posed to do their jobs as they are sworn to do.
Unfortunately, mak­ing a report to the FBI or a Federal Prosecutors’ office for action against police may not be such a good idea as there is evi­dence that some Federal Prosecutors and FBI agents are quite com­fort­able leak­ing evi­dence to the very sub­jects they’re sup­posed to be investigating.
In the link pro­vid­ed below, hear Attorney at law John H Bryan out­line his expe­ri­ences after sub­mit­ting evi­dence of a crime com­mit­ted by police offi­cers in West Virginia to the Federal Prosecutor in that state.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=search&v=491070869300435&external_log_id=7c506f9d-d5a9-4ab4-abfb-1d729309d9a5&q=john%20H%20bryan%20attorney%20at%20law%20fbi%20agent%20leaked%20my%20video

Another issue has cropped up, lawyers refus­ing to take cas­es that have to do with police depart­ments. I under­stand that no lawyer is oblig­at­ed to take a case if they believe they have no case or that it is unwinnable.
In fact, when lawyers are tak­ing cas­es that they are only reward­ed if they win, it is under­stand­able that they may be even more cau­tious about the cas­es they take.
With that said, there seems to be a pat­tern in many one hoss towns across the United States where an aggriev­ed per­son abused by police should not seek legal coun­sel in that town; it sim­ply won’t be there.
In some cas­es, the entire sys­tem of jus­tice, all sides (a) police, prosecutors,(b) defense attor­neys, © judges, (d) Legislators, all sip from the same bit­ter chal­ice. Justice is what they say it is- their brand of jus­tice is com­plete­ly divorced from the con­ven­tion­al expec­ta­tions of how the sys­tem is sup­posed to work.
In a June 7, 2020 arti­cle, the Cato Institute’s Clarke Neiley respond­ing to the tur­moil in the streets after the George Floyd mur­der, wrote the following.
Before you can fair­ly assess the legit­i­ma­cy of the ongo­ing protests or the qual­i­ty of the government’s response, you must under­stand the rel­e­vant facts. And the most rel­e­vant fact is that America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is rot­ten to its core. Though that cer­tain­ly does not jus­ti­fy the vio­lence and wan­ton destruc­tion of prop­er­ty per­pe­trat­ed by far too many pro­test­ers, it does pro­vide use­ful con­text for com­pre­hend­ing the inten­si­ty of their anger and the feck­less­ness of the government’s response. If America is burn­ing, it is fair to say that America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem — which is itself a rag­ing dump­ster fire of injus­tice — lit the fuse. (C Neiley)

The cit­i­zen­ry must have faith in gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly insti­tu­tions tasked with dis­pens­ing jus­tice, police, pros­e­cu­tors, and courts. I have always been and con­tin­ue to be a lit­tle unsure why the Black com­mu­ni­ty had any faith in the jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing Federal agen­cies and the FBI in par­tic­u­lar, giv­en that agen­cy’s record of hos­til­i­ty toward the community?
Sure, the entire polic­ing infra­struc­ture needs over­haul­ing, but bad police offi­cers are only bad because they are allowed to be so.
The entire sys­tem is guilty; the police are mere­ly foot sol­diers. The entire sys­tem is rot­ten to the core.
Neily wrote
...I feel moved to write these words because it appears from some of the com­men­tary I’ve been read­ing — includ­ing even from lib­er­tar­i­an cir­cles — that many peo­ple who con­sid­er them­selves to be gen­er­al­ly skep­ti­cal of gov­ern­ment and sup­port­ive of indi­vid­ual rights have no idea just how fun­da­men­tal­ly bro­ken our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is and how wild­ly anti­thet­i­cal it has become to our core con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues. I see three fun­da­men­tal patholo­gies in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that com­plete­ly under­mine its moral and polit­i­cal legit­i­ma­cy and ren­der it a men­ace to the very con­cept of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment. Those three patholo­gies are (1) uncon­sti­tu­tion­al over­crim­i­nal­iza­tion, (2) point-​and-​convict adju­di­ca­tion, and (3) near-zero account­abil­i­ty for police and prosecutors.
I con­cur wholeheartedly!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Police killings are not things that are going away they are things that are hap­pen­ing dai­ly in America, made pos­si­ble by behold­en pros­e­cu­tors, and politi­cians and rub­ber-stamped by courts.
The pro-killer cop sup­port­ers believe that police can con­tin­ue to mur­der lit­tle black and brown boys or even grown men and women and their chil­dren will remain unscathed, unfor­tu­nate­ly, that is not how the world works.
Again I invoke the words of Martin Niemoller as I have done ever so often in my articles.

First, they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

Police in Philadelphia fatal­ly shot a 12-year-old boy in the back moments after a bul­let struck an unmarked police car on Tuesday evening. The vic­tim, iden­ti­fied as Thomas Siderio, was pro­nounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center min­utes after he was shot while alleged­ly hold­ing a gun and run­ning away from two offi­cers, police said. Authorities described him as a white male. “The life of a young man was cut trag­i­cal­ly short, and we should all be ques­tion­ing how we as a soci­ety have failed him and so many oth­er young peo­ple like him,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a state­ment Wednesday. In her state­ment, Outlaw said that “a young child with a gun in their hand pur­pose­ly fired a weapon at our offi­cers and by mir­a­cle, none of the offi­cers suf­fered life-threat­en­ing injuries.” However, Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish said Wednesday that police were still inves­ti­gat­ing who fired at the vehi­cle, the Associated Press report­ed. He also could not say if Siderio was point­ing a gun at the police vehi­cle while fleeing.

Now comes the cop-splain­ing in an attempt to jus­ti­fy murder

Just because the vic­tim was run­ning away from the police and was shot in the back, Naish said, “does­n’t mean that he was­n’t con­tin­u­ing to be a threat to the offi­cer. None of the four offi­cers were wear­ing body cam­eras, author­i­ties said.

The offi­cers have been placed on admin­is­tra­tive duty fol­low­ing what Outlaw promised will be a “fair and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion” into the case. The inci­dent began when four plain­clothes offi­cers were in an unmarked vehi­cle around 7:24 p.m. on Tuesday in South Philadelphia as part of a task force inves­ti­gat­ing unlaw­ful firearms pos­ses­sion. They observed Siderio stand­ing in a cor­ner with a teenag­er who was want­ed for ques­tion­ing in the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, police said in a press release. The offi­cers drove toward the two indi­vid­u­als and acti­vat­ed the vehicle’s emer­gency lights.
“At that point, they heard gun­fire and glass shat­ter­ing from the rear pas­sen­ger win­dow,” police said. The bul­let struck the inner door­frame, went through the passenger’s head­rest, and stopped in the vehicle’s headliner.
The offi­cer sit­ting in the rear pas­sen­ger seat was struck by shards of glass in his face and eyes, accord­ing to the police.
Two oth­er offi­cers got out of the vehi­cle and began fir­ing at Siderio; author­i­ties said he was hold­ing a gun as he ran away. One of the offi­cers fired his gun twice at Siderio, strik­ing the boy in the upper right back with the bul­let exit­ing his left chest. Siderio was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal and pro­nounced dead at 7:29 p.m. on Tuesday.

The offi­cer hit by the glass was treat­ed at a hos­pi­tal and released. No oth­er offi­cers or civil­ians were injured.
In footage from a door­bell cam­era in the area, obtained by CBS Philly, one of the offi­cers appears to say, “I’m bleed­ing!” Police ques­tioned the 17-year-old who was with Siderio but lat­er released him.
“What I heard was when the cops pulled up in an unmarked car, they thought some­one was jump­ing them because they slammed on the brakes. So the kid shot because he thought some­body was going to shoot him,” the teenager’s step­fa­ther, Salman Khan, told Action News. Police alleged that the gun Siderio was hold­ing was a Taurus 9 mm semi­au­to­mat­ic hand­gun that had been stolen. The vic­tim was a sev­enth-grad­er at George W. Sharswood Elementary School. The school did not reply to BuzzFeed News’ request for com­ment. Siderio was report­ed miss­ing in 2020 when he was 11 years old, but he was found days lat­er. In a state­ment to BuzzFeed News, Keisha Hudson of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said, “While we real­ize that not all the facts are in, we’re deeply trou­bled by reports of a twelve-year-old child being shot in the back by police. Because police nar­ra­tives in these sit­u­a­tions are often incom­plete and ever-chang­ing, (e.g., the ini­tial reports of George Floyd’s death being a med­ical con­di­tion), we call on the police depart­ment and the dis­trict attorney’s office to con­duct a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into this shoot­ing and to be respon­sive and trans­par­ent with the public.”

The gains out­lined by the Jamaica Constabulary Force in a press con­fer­ence by Commissioner Antony Anderson are high­ly com­mend­able, both in the num­ber of weapons seized and the reduc­tion in the num­ber of vio­lent gun deaths.
However, the most sig­nif­i­cant take­away from this is that the suc­cess­es reaped by the JCF have been unques­tion­ably intel­li­gence-based, and of course, we have all seen the results.
Commissioner Anderson report­ed that since February 1^st, 28 high-pow­ered rifles had been seized by the JCF, and a total of 163 ille­gal firearms has been removed from the streets. He made the case that the num­ber of weapons removed from the hands of crim­i­nals rep­re­sents an increase of 37 per­cent over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
Anderson also bemoaned that 240 peo­ple have been report­ed killed since the start of the year.

There are a cou­ple of take­aways that we should not sweep under the rug.
(1) As I said ear­li­er, these are intel­li­gence-based suc­cess­es that can­not be attrib­uted to mas­sive amounts of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel stand­ing around in volatile com­mu­ni­ties. You do not just start dig­ging up riles and hand­guns from places in the ground unless some­one tells you where to look.
There is a case to be made that there are dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ties that intel­li­gence can be gath­ered from just the pres­ence of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel with­in the so-called Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO).
To the extent that that can be true, it would be a strong case for more com­mu­ni­ty policing.
(2) The police Commissioner spoke to the places the weapons were being retrieved from, and he out­lined the role the Jamaica Customs Agency played in one recent weapons find.
Anderson said that on Monday, dur­ing a non-intru­sive inspec­tion process car­ried out in Montego Bay, St James, the Jamaica Customs Agency iden­ti­fied firearms hid­den in a tele­vi­sion set. They engaged the police, who sub­se­quent­ly seized two rifles, one sub­ma­chine gun, four hand­guns, eight mag­a­zines, and 16 rounds of ammunition.
Though com­mend­able, this is by far not near­ly enough.
Every search done by the cus­toms should be intru­sive, only when the lev­el of scruti­ny of for­eign goods enter­ing the Island becomes extreme­ly intru­sive and com­pre­hen­sive will those who would use our ports to send guns into the coun­try desist from doing so.
I once again call on the Government to change the psy­che of the Jamaica Customs and make it a law enforce­ment agency that is more focused on pro­tect­ing the nation’s ports than the rev­enue focused-agency it cur­rent­ly is.
A com­pe­tent law enforce­ment-focused Customs Agency will not only add to the work­force of the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus by virtue of enhanced train­ing and focus; it will inex­orably increase rev­enue for the coun­try because of less corruption.

(3) Our coun­try requires immense human and mate­r­i­al resources to effec­tive­ly police our bor­ders. We do not have those resources, but we can bet­ter ensure that the weapons arriv­ing in the coun­try through Customs are dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.
This brings me to the ques­tion of the ship­ments of weapons enter­ing the Island hid­den in tele­vi­sions, refrig­er­a­tors, and oth­er house­hold goods.
Why are the ship­pers of these goods in the United States and wher­ev­er they live not being arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed for these weapons finds?
Every per­son ship­ping mer­chan­dise to the Island ships through a ship­per; the per­son must have an iden­ti­ty; why exact­ly are they not being arrest­ed and prosecuted?
It is time that the gov­ern­ment stop being a minor league play­er and step up to the plate. It is time for the Government to press the United States for greater coöper­a­tion in stem­ming the flow of guns into the Island.
No, not press, demand that the US use its vast resources to help stop the flow of American guns into Jamaica…
If the gov­ern­ment can­not stop the flow of guns enter­ing the coun­try, no amount of effort by the secu­ri­ty forces will make a dif­fer­ence through the recov­ery process.
There will always be more guns in the hands of crim­i­nals than the police can inter­cept. It is safe to say two or three more slips through for every ship­ment intercepted.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Former Minneapolis police offi­cers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane were found guilty of vio­lat­ing George Floyd’s civ­il rights by a fed­er­al jury in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Thursday. The 12 jurors — four men and eight women — found Lane, Kueng, and Thao guilty of depriv­ing Floyd of his civ­il rights by show­ing delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence to his med­ical needs as for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd for more than 9 min­utes on May 25, 2020 — ulti­mate­ly killing him. The jurors also found Thao and Kueng guilty of an addi­tion­al charge for fail­ing to inter­vene to stop Chauvin. Lane, who did not face the extra charge, tes­ti­fied that he asked Chauvin twice to repo­si­tion Floyd while restrain­ing him but was denied both times.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

How hath the mighty fall­en. The real trav­es­ty in all of this is that this SOB was allowed to sur­ren­der rather than being led out in cuffs like oth­er accused criminals.

I know some peo­ple are not exact­ly the bright­est bulb in the ceil­ing, but what this Chicago alder­man said in oppos­ing a set­tle­ment in a vio­lent police mis­con­duct case takes the cake in stupidity.
On Thursday, Feb. 17, the Chicago City Council Committee on Finance vot­ed 13 – 7 to set­tle for $1.675 mil­lion with Mia Wright and four oth­er peo­ple with her when she was pulled from a car by at least sev­en offi­cers in a mall park­ing lot on May 31, 2020. That encounter left Ms. Wright par­tial­ly blind in one eye.

The cops had been stak­ing out the mall on that day of loot­ing across Chicago, and the five were tar­get­ed as sus­pects. Of course, under no cir­cum­stances could the mon­sters in uni­form have dealt with the sit­u­a­tion with­out vio­lence, so they vio­lent­ly ripped the occu­pants from the car, and the result is that Ms. Wright almost lost an eye.
The com­mit­tee vote fell along col­or lines, with only the 13 Black com­mit­tee mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the meet­ing vot­ing for the set­tle­ment to the group of five African-Americans. The next step is a vote on the set­tle­ment by the full coun­cil this week.

In object­ing to the set­tle­ment, one idi­ot­ic Latino alder­man Raymond Lopez said that the city would be open­ing a “Pandora’s box” by set­tling the law­suit and would give “every­one an excuse to start suing.”
Here is the kick­er by ear­ly last December, the city of Chicago had already paid out more than $67 mil­lion in 2021 alone to resolve police mis­con­duct claims.
Instead of rec­og­niz­ing the mount­ing cost of police mis­con­duct, both in the loss of life and lib­er­ty to cit­i­zens & the loss of tax­pay­er’s trea­sure used to com­pen­sate peo­ple wronged by police; this idi­ot­ic alder­man pro­pos­es an end to the just settlements.
This moron would have done well to keep his trap closed and not con­firm that he is an idiot, but he could not.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The head of the Firearms Licencing Authority (FLA) should be called before a select com­mit­tee of the Parliament to tes­ti­fy open­ly as to the facts he out­lined in a speech he gave about over 200 crim­i­nals being giv­en gun licens­es over the objec­tions of the police.
In the list, Dalling out­lined that con­vict­ed crim­i­nals of all stripes, includ­ing mur­der­ers, have been giv­en licens­es to pos­sess firearms over the stri­dent objec­tions of the police who have sup­plied rea­sons for their objections.
At a press con­fer­ence, the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the FLA, Shane Dalling, assert­ed his right to speak, “my days of remain­ing silent are over Dalling assert­ed, I am going to speak on every mat­ter.”
Dalling said he want­ed to ven­er­ate the mat­ter of the grant­i­ng of firearm licens­es and what he called the con­stant attacks on his character.

He said he said he joined the FLA in June of 2017, and that was when he real­ized that peo­ple were get­ting gun licens­es under ques­tion­able circumstances.
He said he was first alert­ed when a Superintendent of police from Westmoreland sub­mit­ted a two-page let­ter to the FLA with what he char­ac­ter­ized as adverse find­ings on an indi­vid­ual involved in lot­to-scam­ming and gang activ­i­ties that had secured a firear­m’s license from the Board of the FLA…
In 2017 the entire board of the FLA resigned after it came to light that the same board was giv­ing crim­i­nals gun licens­es. To date, there have been no inves­ti­ga­tions by the police.
If peo­ple with crim­i­nal back­grounds are walk­ing around with licensed firearms, there is a prob­lem; why have the police not inter­viewed those board mem­bers to get an expla­na­tion of the rea­sons and on the basis by which those licensees were qual­i­fied to be issued licenses?

After MOCA and the FLA had done a review, it was dis­cov­ered that over two hun­dred (200) crim­i­nals from Saint James, Manchester, Clarendon, Trewlany, and Westmoreland were grant­ed gun licens­es. Dalling said the police warned that they should not be giv­en the right to have a legal firearm. None of those licens­es have been withdrawn.
Dalling said licens­es were issued to con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, Lotto-scam­mers, ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms, rob­bery with aggra­va­tion, rape, and drug trafficking.
Dalling assert­ed that he want­ed to be cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly clear that all of that infor­ma­tion was a part of the files, yet the FLA board still grant­ed licens­es to those criminals.
The fLA boss detailed the case of a man from Mandeville who was want­ed for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm; the man was held and even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced for the crime. He alleges that the man applied for a firearm license, and the request was denied because he had a crim­i­nal record and had also lied on his application.
Mister Dalling said that although the appli­cant did not file a new appli­ca­tion nor did he file an appeal the FLA board went ahead and grant­ed a license to the same appli­cant three months later.

Mister Dalling said that the issues plagu­ing the FLA were brought to the atten­tion of the Ministry of National Security in 2015, but nobody did any­thing about it. Instead, he said the prob­lem mushroomed.
Dalling said peo­ple are try­ing to tar­nish his rep­u­ta­tion because every­one is mak­ing mon­ey from the cor­rup­tion at the agency and that many of them have open­ly lob­bied to have him removed from the agency.
Here again, we have a sit­u­a­tion made pos­si­ble by ad hoc craft­ed leg­is­la­tion inten­tion­al­ly done to allow loop­holes for crim­i­nal corruption.
If the laws gov­ern­ing the issuance of firearm licens­es were well writ­ten, clear, and con­cise, there would be no pos­si­bil­i­ty that a board could issue per­mits to any­one who did not tick all of the box­es in the law.
It is a murky mess designed to make it pos­si­ble for the kind of cor­rup­tion Dalling speaks to. Who has the finals say in who gets a license to pur­chase and car­ry a firearm? Is it clear­ly stip­u­lat­ed in the law, or is it as we imag­ine, a man does­n’t pay, so he does­n’t play.
In October 2020, the chair­man of the Police Federation, Sergeant Petra Rowe, accused Shane Dalling of fail­ing to grant licens­es to police offi­cers based on claims that they had com­mit­ted domes­tic violence.
At the time, Dalling denied the claim to the media, but Rowe coun­tered, “I think that he was try­ing to jus­ti­fy the com­plaint we had made to make it seem like they had prob­a­ble cause to deny police offi­cers firearm licens­es in large numbers.”
Rowe told the media there was no over­whelm­ing report with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) to sug­gest that police are involved in high num­bers of domes­tic abuse and assert­ed that if that were the case, there would have been sev­er­al reports and inter­nal inter­ven­tions as there are poli­cies in the JCF that gov­ern such occurrences.

In his push back against Dalling, Sergeant Rowe said, “It is quite curi­ous to think that per­sons would com­plain to FLA over seek­ing to pur­sue crim­i­nal actions against our col­leagues for domes­tic vio­lence unless the FLA CEO is con­fus­ing police offi­cers with some oth­er group. We do not deny there may be cas­es in the JCF where police offi­cers, like any oth­er man from any oth­er group in this coun­try, would have offend­ed their spouse in that way. But the claim from the FLA CEO gives the coun­try an impres­sion that this action among police offi­cers is so promi­nent that it leads to mass denials. So we are not say­ing it is not hap­pen­ing or has nev­er hap­pened, but the impres­sion giv­en by the FLA CEO that it is a promi­nent rea­son for denial is absolute­ly false.
At the time, Sergeant Rowe point­ed out that he was dis­ap­point­ed in Dalling mak­ing a pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion that a mem­ber of the JCF’s firearm license was revoked because of men­tal issues when there has been no psy­cho­log­i­cal report on the state of the mem­ber’s health. Rowe said the mat­ter was before the court, and it is for the court to declare the mem­ber’s psy­cho­log­i­cal fit­ness to hold a firearm; thus, Dalling’s dec­la­ra­tion is irresponsible.
Was Shane Dalling lying then, or is he lying now? If he lied, then as was borne out, can he be believed now even if he is telling the truth?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Minnesota pros­e­cu­tors have appar­ent­ly backed away from their pur­suit of a longer-than-usu­al sen­tence for the sub­ur­ban Minneapolis police offi­cer who said she con­fused her hand­gun for her Taser when she killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist.

Kim Potter, 49, is sched­uled to be sen­tenced Friday fol­low­ing her December con­vic­tion of first-degree manslaugh­ter. In a court fil­ing this week, pros­e­cu­tors said a sen­tence of slight­ly more than sev­en years — which is the pre­sumed penal­ty under the state’s guide­lines — would be proper.

“The pre­sump­tive sen­tence takes into account the main ele­ments of the con­vic­tion: the death of Daunte Wright and Defendant’s reck­less­ness,” pros­e­cu­tor Matt Frank wrote.

Potter’s attor­neys are ask­ing for less than usu­al, includ­ing only pro­ba­tion. Frank wrote that pros­e­cu­tors dis­agree with the defense, but “the State rec­og­nizes that this is a unique case giv­en the con­text in which Defendant Potter reck­less­ly han­dled her firearm.”

Potter was con­vict­ed of first-degree and sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter in the April 11 killing of Wright, who was pulled over by Brooklyn Center offi­cers for hav­ing expired license plate tags and an air fresh­en­er hang­ing from his rearview mir­ror. Officers learned he had an out­stand­ing war­rant for a weapons pos­ses­sion charge, and he pulled away as they tried to arrest him.

Video shows that Potter shout­ed sev­er­al times that she was going to tase Wright, but she had her gun in her hand and fired one shot into his chest.

Under Minnesota statutes, Potter, who is white, will be sen­tenced only on the most seri­ous con­vic­tion of first-degree manslaugh­ter. State sen­tenc­ing guide­lines call for a penal­ty rang­ing from slight­ly more than six years to about 8 ¹⁄₂ years, with the pre­sump­tive sen­tence being just over sev­en years. The sen­tenc­ing guide­lines are advi­so­ry, but judges can’t go above or below them unless they find a com­pelling reason.

Prosecutors ini­tial­ly argued that aggra­vat­ing fac­tors war­rant­ed a sen­tence above the guide­line range. Among them, pros­e­cu­tors said Potter abused her author­i­ty as an offi­cer and that her actions caused a greater-than-nor­mal dan­ger to others.

There is no indi­ca­tion in the court record that they have for­mal­ly with­drawn that argu­ment, but the doc­u­ment filed Tuesday indi­cates they now believe the pre­sump­tive sen­tence is appropriate.

Defense attor­neys, in seek­ing a lighter sen­tence, have argued that Wright was the aggres­sor and that he would be alive if he had obeyed commands.

In their request for pro­ba­tion only, Potter’s attor­neys said she has no pri­or record, is remorse­ful, has had an exem­plary career and has the sup­port of fam­i­ly and friends. They also said her risk of com­mit­ting the same crime again is low because she is no longer a police offi­cer, and they said she would do well on probation.

Prosecutors dis­agreed with the defense’s rea­son­ing. In Tuesday’s fil­ings, Frank wrote that to sen­tence Potter to only pro­ba­tion, the judge would have to find that pro­ba­tion would serve society’s inter­ests, not Potter’s, and that the defense must estab­lish that. But Frank also said there could be some ben­e­fits to pro­ba­tion. Among them, Potter could speak to law enforce­ment groups or law­mak­ers about the dan­gers of con­fus­ing a hand­gun for a Taser.

Frank said she could also speak to man­u­fac­tur­ers about mak­ing design changes to avoid con­fu­sion. And, he said, she could acknowl­edge her fail­ure and try to help the com­mu­ni­ty heal to “hon­or the mem­o­ry of Daunte Wright.”

“No prison sen­tence can bring Daunte Wright back to life. A prison sen­tence is just a num­ber, and that num­ber can­not undo this tragedy or bring Daunte Wright back to his fam­i­ly,” Frank wrote. “Fostering heal­ing and com­mu­ni­ty restora­tion is valu­able too.”

He wrote that if the court finds that prison isn’t war­rant­ed, Potter should get 10 years of pro­ba­tion and be required to spend a year in jail, speak to law enforce­ment about the dan­gers of weapons con­fu­sion, and speak to Wright’s fam­i­ly about their loss if they want her to do so.

Frank also dis­agreed with defense argu­ments that Potter should be giv­en a sen­tence that goes below the guide­line range.

If the court finds that Potter’s case is less seri­ous than the typ­i­cal first-degree manslaugh­ter case, he wrote, the court should issue a sen­tence between four and slight­ly over sev­en years, the pre­sump­tive sen­tences for sec­ond-degree and first-degree manslaughter.

“To impose any­thing less would fail to take into account Daunte Wright’s death and the jury’s find­ing that Defendant Potter com­mit­ted first-degree manslaugh­ter,” Frank wrote.

In Minnesota, it’s pre­sumed that con­victs who show good behav­ior will serve two-thirds of their sen­tence in prison and the rest on super­vised release, com­mon­ly known as parole. That means if Potter gets the rough­ly sev­en-year pre­sump­tive sen­tence, she would serve about four years and nine months behind bars, with the rest on parole.

Potter has been at the state’s women’s prison in Shakopee since the guilty verdict.

Amidst the conversation of defunding the police in the United States is the idea that what people actually want is better policing; they don’t want to abolish the police.”
However, police unions and certain segments of the population have convinced the rest of the country that there is a movement afoot to get rid of the police. And for that segment of the population, God forbid that the institution that has been the single most dangerous to Black people be reformed or dismantled.
Unfortunately, black activists and other conscientious objectors to the rampant police violence have been inarticulate with their messaging and that has given an opening to the pro-police violence crowd to distort their message.
For the most part, many of the defunding that has been proposed hasn’t even taken place, haven’t even gotten off the ground.
In Minneapolis, where the idea of defunding the police was birthed after Derek Chauvin lynched George Floyd, voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to dismantle the city’s police force.
Emboldened, the same police department went into a home and murdered Amir Locke the same way they murdered George Floyd and countless others.
The people who support the lawlessness of wanton police violence and extrajudicial killings do not care about social justice; what they crave is social order. No amount of dead black bodies will change their hearts-dead black bodies is the point.

Criminals have cho­sen to take advan­tage of the uncer­tain­ty by engag­ing in more shoot­ing inci­dents and oth­er crimes. What has elud­ed every­one in this dis­cus­sion is that it has been the police who caused the out­cry for defund­ing in the first place.
Police have no way of stop­ping peo­ple from shoot­ing each oth­er; they have no way of stop­ping mur­ders if peo­ple are intent on mur­der­ing each oth­er. If the police could stop any of the fore­gone, the New York City Police Department, with its 36,000 uni­formed cops and 19,000 civil­ian employ­ees, would have ensured that no mur­der or shoot­ing occurred in their city year after year.
The sad real­i­ty is that the NYPD, with its army of cops, sup­port infra­struc­ture, and mam­moth bud­getary allo­ca­tion in 2020 of $10.2 bil­lion and $9.9 bil­lion in the fis­cal year 2021, would have ensured a safe and mur­der-free New York City.
The minus­cule amount of mon­ey removed from the police bud­get in New York in the fis­cal year 2021 was shaved from over­time and oth­er parts of the depart­ment that had noth­ing to do with oper­a­tional readiness.
For exam­ple, a class that was sup­posed to begin train­ing at the acad­e­my was canceled.
In New York City, two things of note happened,(1) the mam­moth out-of-con­trol police depart­ment was told that cops were no longer allowed to stop and frisk peo­ple mere­ly on a cop’s whim.
Police and their unions took umbrage at this direc­tive, and in many cas­es, they con­tin­ued doing it to poor Black men anyway.
(2) After Minneapolis cops mur­dered George Floyd, the cry around the coun­try has been to defund the police.
The idea behind the defund move­ment was to appro­pri­ate a part of the police bud­getary allo­ca­tion and divert those funds to youth pro­grams, drug treat­ment pro­grams, men­tal health pro­grams, and oth­er pro­grams that remove the prospect of armed cops show­ing up after every 911 call ready to shoot the peo­ple they are sup­posed to be helping.

The push­back against this sound pol­i­cy came from Republicans and Democrats, who believed that the answer to every prob­lem was to send armed police offi­cers with bat­ter­ing rams and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehi­cles (MRAPs).
Others in the cor­po­rate media, Brian Williams of MSNBC, Michael Smerconish on CNN, and oth­ers also joined in the push­back, claim­ing that the democ­rats lost seats in the US house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives because of the calls to defund the police.
This writer has seen no data that sup­ports that the­o­ry. They failed to explain that Joe Biden won the pop­u­lar vote and the pres­i­den­cy with the largest num­ber of votes cast for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the his­to­ry of the country.
Democrats’ loss of seats may have been that can­di­dates rest­ed on their lau­rels, believ­ing that anti-Trump sen­ti­ments were enough to get them elected.
It was not. None of the loss the feck­less Democrats suf­fered may be attrib­uted to calls to ‘defund the police.‘The mad­den­ing­ly stu­pid nar­ra­tive that defund­ing police is respon­si­ble for increased crime came from police unions and cops who take home hefty salaries through over­time pay for doing noth­ing, some as much as $200,000 annually.

There is no cor­re­la­tion between defund­ing the police and the rise in crime, but police and their unions want you to believe there is a cor­re­la­tion. Police depart­ments across the United States, all 18,000 plus of them, have the tools and the sup­port to fight crime; in many cas­es, they have what they do not need.
For example…

Rehoboth, Mass. (pop­u­la­tion 10,200), show­ing not only the town police department’s MRAP but also three Humvees, also obtained from the mil­i­tary. Orrville, Ohio (pop­u­la­tion 8,400), where the local police depart­ment also doesn’t have an MRAP, acquired a 1980s-era M‑113 armored fight­ing vehicle.
And then there’s Reeds Spring, Mo., which also has some oth­er sort of armored vehi­cle, as evi­denced by the pho­to the town’s police chief post­ed on the police department’s Facebook page. Reeds Spring’s pop­u­la­tion: 903.

Deming, N.M. (pop­u­la­tion: 14,800), got an MRAP in March 2013. You may remem­ber Deming as the site of a hor­rif­ic sto­ry last year in which a traf­fic stop for rolling through a stop sign esca­lat­ed into police sub­ject­ing a man to mul­ti­ple forced anal probes, X‑rays, and a colonoscopy because they sus­pect­ed him of hid­ing drugs in his rec­tum. There were no drugs.
Sweetwater, Fla. (pop­u­la­tion 13,500), elect­ed offi­cials approved the police chief’s request for an MRAP. The scan­dal-plagued police depart­ment also has a SWAT team (see a video of the SWAT team in action here) and at least one OH6 heli­copter, appar­ent­ly obtained from the Pentagon. Sweetwater has seen all of two mur­ders in 13 years.

Franklin Indiana MRAP — a bul­let­proof, 55,000-pound, six-wheeled behe­moth with heavy armor, a gun­ner’s tur­ret, and the word “SHERIFF” embla­zoned on its flank — a vehi­cle whose acronym stands for “mine-resis­tant ambush-protected.”
On and on, it goes all across the coun­try, police depart­ments gear­ing up for war. Who is the enemy?
You be the judge!!!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The very premise of the term restora­tive jus­tice is an oxy­moron, and it sug­gests that jus­tice is being restored to offend­ers who break the laws and are giv­en a sec­ond or third chance.
The fact is that the oppo­site is actu­al­ly the truth. Still, by fram­ing it as “restora­tive jus­tice,” the push­ers of lib­er­al­ism and sup­port for crim­i­nal­i­ty fool the pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing the par­rots in the media, into think­ing that this is all for good because jus­tice is being restored.
It is a clas­sic bull puck­er sto­ry why our coun­try is mired in such vio­lent crimes. Lies become truth, and truth becomes an aberration.
The idea of giv­ing a youth­ful offend­er a sec­ond or even a third chance is admirable; how­ev­er, Jamaica’s lib­er­al judges are a large part of the Island’s crime pan­dem­ic because they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe it is up to them to deter­mine whether vio­lent offend­ers spend time in prison for com­mit­ting heinous crimes, not the people.
For those rea­sons, I con­tin­ue to call for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes and truth in sentencing.
(1) Twenty-five [25] years for mur­der with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole unless there are spe­cial mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances that would allow for mitigation.
(2) Fifteen [15] years for any per­son found with an ille­gal gun- manda­to­ry, cod­i­fied in law, there­by remov­ing from judges remit the abil­i­ty to sub­vert the process and the peo­ple’s will.

Judges are tri­ers of facts, not gods.
Therefore, it is impor­tant that no judge, from the top judge to the last [appoint­ed] res­i­dent mag­is­trate, under­stand this concept.
A judge is [not] the total­i­ty of the jus­tice sys­tem but a mere cog in the wheel of jus­tice. Let me be clear; judges are fun­da­men­tal­ly delu­sion­al about who they are and what their roles are.
Jamaica is a demo­c­ra­t­ic and free soci­ety. We do not have a monarch that can order that some­one’s head be chopped from their body.
We elect polit­i­cal lead­ers who appoint bod­ies and indi­vid­u­als, who appoint oth­er [pub­lic ser­vants] to pub­lic office. Public ser­vice is an hon­or, not an anoint­ing to become king.
A judge does not get to sup­plant the will of the peo­ple and the dic­tates of the law with their own opin­ion, but this has become the norm in Jamaica with the full acqui­es­cence of those who run the min­istry of justice.
We [can­not] and should not allow demigods to become entrenched into our cul­ture to the point their func­tions become tiny monar­chies that sub­vert our will.
This is hap­pen­ing as we speak.

There is no exam­ple of deco­rum and respect on the bench begin­ning at the top with Chief Justice Bryan Sykes.
Bryan Sykes sets the tem­po for how the judi­cia­ry behaves, and he cer­tain­ly has a prob­lem with the rule of law and those who enforce the laws. His intem­per­ate, mis­guid­ed, and unpro­fes­sion­al utter­ance from the bench is a dis­grace to our sys­tem of jus­tice and the rule of law.
Sykes’ lack of respect for law enforce­ment is pal­pa­ble and total­ly unsus­tain­able. I call on the rel­e­vant author­i­ties to rein Sykes in or ask him to step aside. Let me remind those in pow­er again; pub­lic ser­vice is an hon­or, not a right.
Neither Bryan Sykes nor any of the oth­er crim­i­nal-lov­ing char­la­tans on the bench have a right to the posi­tion they hold.
Bryan Sykes’ open and bla­tant dis­re­spect for police offi­cers while con­duct­ing tri­als is an affront to the rule of law any­where and a slap in the face to the risks and chal­lenges offi­cers face in bring­ing cas­es before the court.
In his efforts to be the [big man], Sykes has gone out of his way to be unnec­es­sar­i­ly dis­re­spect­ful and dis­parag­ing to officers.
Whose inter­ests does Bryan Sykes serve?
The sad irony is that Bryan Sykes is some­one that I know as a young offi­cer dur­ing his time as a pros­e­cu­tor. He hid his dis­dain for offi­cers well at the time, and Sykes, in real­i­ty, was at best a below-aver­age, lazy, and unin­spir­ing pros­e­cu­tor. I almost pissed my pants when I heard Bryan Sykes was nom­i­nat­ed to be Chief Justice.
Bryan Sykes’ ele­va­tion to be chief jus­tice of Jamaica is not about any­thing admirable about him but about how low our coun­try has sunk.
The mur­der spree rag­ing across the length and breadth of Jamaica is bet­ter under­stood, with Delroy Chuck head­ing the Ministry of jus­tice and Bryan Sykes head­ing the Judiciary. Jamaica is in deep trouble!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

This is a systemic of police corruption and outright criminal conduct that should be prosecuted with vigor. However, despite years of evidence and complaints that these 15 cops were outright criminals with badges, absolutely nothing was done about it. They continued to fabricate evidence sending hundreds of citizens to prison for crimes they did not commit.
Rather than fix these criminals police chiefs two years ago banded together to declare they have no confidence in state attorney Kim Fox for being soft on crime.
The real reason they hated Ms. Fox and wanted her gone however had nothing to do with her not prosecuting criminals but her not acquiescing to their blatant abuse of the process by criminalizing people with felonies on bogus felony charges for assaulting police officers.
Undeterred, Kim Fox has been working to root out these criminals that the so-called chiefs, all-white, kept in place to terrorize and criminalize poor, innocent people living in housing projects in Chicago.
This has been a veritable cesspool of corruption resulting in hundreds of innocent people being sent to jail for crimes they did not commit.
However, despite the rampant corruption, all we see is one black criminal who desecrated his badge.

Cook County state’s attorney said dozens were involved in 134 cases.

More than 100 peo­ple have had their cas­es tied to dis­graced for­mer Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts vacat­ed, as of Tuesday morning.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is usu­al­ly pros­e­cut­ing sus­pects for crimes, but Tuesday, it was the oppo­site. Foxx vacat­ed the con­vic­tions of 19 men and women who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, accord­ing to her office.Last year, 88 peo­ple filed a peti­tion say­ing they were framed by Watts and his tac­ti­cal team. Most of them were res­i­dents of the for­mer Ida B Wells hous­ing com­plex and served time in prison.
“This is a sor­row­ful moment know­ing these indi­vid­u­als will nev­er get that time back in their lives. Their fam­i­lies will nev­er get that time back,” Foxx said.
Watts was con­vict­ed in 2012 and sen­tenced to almost two years in prison. Watts and one mem­ber of that team went to prison for cor­rup­tion, but many of the oth­er team mem­bers remain on the force.

Many of those he framed for drug and weapons crimes served time in the ear­ly 2000s.
“Watts and his crew sav­aged a com­mu­ni­ty. Brown and Black men and women, a whole gen­er­a­tion of them. And the city let it hap­pen,” said Sean Starr with the Exoneration Project. The Exoneration Project has worked with the state’s attor­ney’s office to deter­mine which con­vic­tions to vacate. Most have the sig­na­ture of Watts on the police report. “Sergeant Watts believed the peo­ple who lived there had less­er val­ue and would­n’t be believed,” Foxx said.
Foxx gave an update after the hear­ing, say­ing over 100 peo­ple involved in 134 cas­es had those vacat­ed, and more hear­ings are expect­ed next Tuesday and Feb. 16. Foxx said 30 addi­tion­al cas­es will be heard.
“The peo­ple whose names were read today are vic­tims, vic­tims of a failed sys­tem, and noth­ing will ever be able to give them back their time away from their fam­i­lies or their missed oppor­tu­ni­ties in life, but we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to act,” Foxx said. “The num­ber of claims against this one Sergeant is an exam­ple of why as pros­e­cu­tors, we approach every case with an eye toward the facts, the evi­dence, and the law for both the cas­es we’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on as well as those from the past. I’m grate­ful for the attor­neys in this office who con­tin­ue to seek jus­tice, restore trust, and address the his­toric inequities of Cook County’s crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”

“Having a con­vic­tion off your record makes a dif­fer­ence in employ­ment, hous­ing, and hav­ing an over­all feel­ing of jus­tice,” said Joel Flaxman, an attor­ney for one of the false­ly con­vict­ed. “It’s extra­or­di­nar­i­ly mean­ing­ful for them,” said Josh Tepfer with the Exoneration Project. On Tuesday, 19 had their cas­es dis­missed, and anoth­er five drug con­vic­tions tied to Watts were vacat­ed at a hear­ing in November.
“I feel like I won the lot­tery,” exoneree Darnell Harris told ABC7 by phone at the time.
The state’s attor­ney’s office plans to vacate the con­vic­tions of 60 more false­ly con­vict­ed next month. In the mean­time, the attor­neys said they’d like to see the offi­cers charged.

“Step back. I don’t care if you record me.” that’s a lie; they actu­al­ly care; that’s why they approach you record­ing their activities.
“You can record all you want; I don’t care.” Yes, they do care”; if they could stop you, they would do so in a heart­beat. In fact, there is a moun­tain of video evi­dence that shows that even though cit­i­zens have a right to pho­to­graph and video record them in the exe­cu­tion of their duties, they have a fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with it and have abused cit­i­zens engaged in that law­ful process.
Notice that regard­less of the dis­tance a per­son stands with a cell phone record­ing their activ­i­ties (and for the record, I agree they need room to work; no one should be obstruct­ing them), they find their way to that per­son to bark orders. “Move away, step back, go across the street, go down the block.” It is not about the dis­tance the per­son record­ing stands, even though the courts have agreed that a dis­tance of fif­teen feet is safe unless oth­er cir­cum­stances would ren­der that dis­tance unsafe. It is easy to under­stand why police and any­one doing any­thing wrong would oppose some­one with a cam­era or cell­phone record­ing their activities.
What appears to be the major­i­ty of police offi­cers in the United States seems to have no regard for the rights of cit­i­zens and, in par­tic­u­lar Black cit­i­zens. In fact, time and again, we see offi­cers going out­side their author­i­ty to abuse cit­i­zens they do not like.

A per­son record­ing from far away pro­duces a far less cred­i­ble video record­ing. Police offi­cers tell peo­ple record­ing them, “I don’t care if you record me,” gen­er­al­ly then walk up to the per­son record­ing and stand in front of the cam­era. This behav­ior effec­tive­ly makes it impos­si­ble for the cam­era to record what the cam­er­ap­er­son was ini­tial­ly recording.
This needs to be addressed with leg­is­la­tion. Police should not will­ful­ly attempt to stop con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty with impunity.
Rest assured, the rogue cops who engage in those ille­gal activ­i­ties do so with the bless­ings of their high­er-ups telling them to do it. Some will­ful­ly walk up to peo­ple record­ing their activ­i­ties, take out their phones and start play­ing music that gets swept up in the recording.
Because of own­er­ship rules, those video record­ings are not allowed on stream­ing plat­forms like Youtube; even though the per­son record­ing had no inten­tion of record­ing the music the rogue cop start­ed playing.
In oth­er words, police offi­cers who are sup­posed to act with deco­rum and respect for the pub­lic act like com­mon gang­sters and thugs toward the pub­lic that pays their salaries and lav­ish ben­e­fits packages.

Just imag­ine this, had 17-year-old Darnella Frazier not had the pres­ence to stead­fast­ly record their activ­i­ties in a man­ner befit­ting a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Derek Chauvin would still be polic­ing the streets of Minneapolis. His cohorts Thomas Lane, J. Kueng, and Tou Thao would not be fac­ing tri­al for assist­ing in mur­der­ing mis­ter Floyd.
Take a moment to process that, under­stand­ing that the Minneapolis Police depart­ment would not have vol­un­teered the body­cam footage so that the quar­tet could face jus­tice. In fact, they had ini­tial­ly craft­ed a lie about how mis­ter Floyd lost his life before they real­ized there was cred­i­ble video evi­dence that the four police offi­cers had com­mit­ted a day­light lynching.
This is the same police depart­ment despite the trau­ma the coun­try endured when it mur­dered George Floyd, still went ahead and released edit­ed body­cam footage of Amir Locke with a gun in his hand after they mur­dered him days ago.
As it turned out, the mur­dered 22-year-old had every right to have a gun, was not want­ed by police, was not named in their search war­rant, had no crim­i­nal record (not that it mat­ters), and the weapon was point­ed down toward the floor with his fin­ger run­ning par­al­lel to the bar­rel.
Jolted from a deep sleep and try­ing to deter­mine what was hap­pen­ing, he had every right to grab his gun. If legit­i­mate gun own­ers can­not legal­ly grab a gun in their own home with­out being gunned down by police who broke in, we are in dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry as the gov­ern­ment can choose to exe­cute us using any pretext.
If Wiliam (Roddie) Bryant had not record­ed the lynch­ing of Amhaud Arbery, he and the father-son mur­der­er-duo Gregory and Travis McMichaels, would be walk­ing around as free men today.
As soci­eties all across the globe are stitched togeth­er more and more dai­ly with CCTV cam­eras, American police would have you believe film­ing their illic­it activ­i­ties is unlaw­ful activity.

The chill­ing mes­sage the killing of Amir Locke expos­es is the dan­gers Black legal gun own­ers still face even when they have com­mit­ted no crime and are in what should be the safe and sacred sanc­tum of their own homes.
If this killing is allowed to stand, it will be prece­dent that the police can break into your home and mur­der you even though you com­mit­ted no crime and are not want­ed by them. White gun own­ers are cer­tain­ly not insu­lat­ed from this uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sec­ond & fourth amend­ment abrogation.
As a for­mer cop, I believe in giv­ing the police some lee­way in the exe­cu­tion of their duties; the police, how­ev­er, have a bur­den to be judi­cious with the pow­ers they are giv­en. They are heav­i­ly armed and sup­port­ed; they do not get to enter some­one’s home and mur­der them and then say, oops.
They do not get to kill some­one emerg­ing from deep sleep with­out order­ing the per­son to drop the weapon. This is a sit­u­a­tion in which police must be held account­able pre­cise­ly because of the cir­cum­stances of the case.
The Washington Post, on Wednesday, February 9^th, report­ed that American police shot and killed a Thousand and Fifty- Five peo­ple in 2021, the most since the WP start­ed keep­ing count. If you thought it was get­ting bet­ter, you are wrong; it is get­ting worse.
They are on pace to up the ante by killing more peo­ple this year, men­tal­ly ill, sleep­ing, unarmed, armed with a box-cut­ter, and at a dis­tance, none of it mat­ters. If they want to mur­der you, they will, and they most like­ly will not even be charged with a crime.

Police forces are armed mili­tias main­tained and retained by states and munic­i­pal­i­ties to main­tain order and pro­tect property.
Following Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shoot­ing in Parkland, Florida, some stu­dents held that local gov­ern­ment offi­cials were at fault for fail­ing to pro­tect stu­dents. The stu­dents filed suit, nam­ing six defen­dants, includ­ing the Broward school dis­trict, the Broward Sheriff’s Office, school deputy Scot Peterson and cam­pus mon­i­tor Andrew Medina. In 2018 a Federal Judge ruled the gov­ern­ment agen­cies ” had no con­sti­tu­tion­al duty to pro­tect stu­dents who were not in cus­tody.”
“Neither the Constitution nor state law impos­es a gen­er­al duty upon police offi­cers or oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials to pro­tect indi­vid­ual per­sons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a pro­fes­sor and asso­ciate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch some­one attack you, refuse to inter­vene, and not vio­late the Constitution.” The Supreme Court has repeat­ed­ly held that the gov­ern­ment has only a duty to pro­tect per­sons who are “in cus­tody,” he point­ed out.

So the mis­guid­ed notion that gets repeat­ed ad nau­se­am that police are there to serve and pro­tect is fic­tion. Police are not there for your pro­tec­tion. Worse yet, they cer­tain­ly aren’t there for the good of African-Americans.
There is no record of the idea of polic­ing ever being intend­ed for the good of Blacks in the United States of America. The cyn­ics of these facts, some melanat­ed, claim that police are in Black neigh­bor­hoods to save lives. That mis­con­cep­tion is laugh­able. Police in city after city all across the United States do not care one hoot about dead black peo­ple, regard­less of their pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign. The pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign gin up fears of vio­lent crimes intend­ed to scare gullible tax­pay­ers to pay them more and hire more of them.
What they care about is that Black peo­ple do not burn, loot, break glass, or turn a cor­ner with­out indicating.
In fair­ness to the Police, the fore­gone is not just about the police; it is a bor­der soci­etal prob­lem — a soci­ety that does not care about all of its cit­i­zens because it was not cre­at­ed to.
Since cit­i­zens decid­ed to fight back against them plant­i­ng drugs, phys­i­cal­ly and ver­bal­ly assault­ing and even mur­der­ing the inno­cent, police have devised a new tact. Listen for it when­ev­er they see some­one record­ing them.
“You are dis­tract­ing me from what I am doing, so now I have to divide my atten­tion between you and them.” That state­ment has become a reg­u­lar stan­za for them, but it has lit­tle to do with the per­son hold­ing a cellphone.
Every time it is uttered from the mouth of those liars, that state­ment is aimed at their cronies in munic­i­pal, state, and fed­er­al leg­is­la­tures who bend over back­ward to please them and their unions for blocks of votes.
They are hop­ing that new leg­is­la­tion will be advanced, mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult for the aver­age per­son to cap­ture their crimes, even with the restric­tions already on cit­i­zens not to hin­der them. This may hap­pen soon­er than lat­er, and the courts are all too hap­py to grant them more lee­way to com­mit atroc­i­ties against a cer­tain seg­ment of society.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

South Carolina author­i­ties arrest­ed a police offi­cer Wednesday and charged her with vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter in the fatal shoot­ing of a dri­ver fol­low­ing a high-speed chase through a rur­al county.

The offi­cer, Cassandra Dollard of the Hemingway Police Department, was in pur­suit of Robert Junior Langley ear­ly Sunday when the inci­dent occurred, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release.

The agency said Langley, a 46-year-old Black man, of Hemingway was trans­port­ed to a hos­pi­tal where he died from his injuries. It declined to pro­vide fur­ther details, cit­ing an ongo­ing investigation.

An arrest war­rant for Dollard said she sought to pull over Langley for run­ning a stop sign, which led to the chase reach­ing speeds of more than 100 miles per hour, accord­ing to The Associated Press.

Langley then crashed into a ditch in rur­al Georgetown County, west of Myrtle Beach, and attempt­ed to get out of the car when Dollard opened fire and struck him in the chest, accord­ing to the arrest war­rant. Dollard, a 52-year-old Black woman, told inves­ti­ga­tors she was in fear for her life.

Authorities said the offi­cer, how­ev­er, did not have author­i­ty to arrest Langley out­side of Williamsburg County, where Hemingway, a town of about 500 peo­ple, is located.

During a news con­fer­ence Wednesday, attor­neys for Langley’s fam­i­ly said the father of 10, who had just become a grand­fa­ther, was unarmed and did­n’t have any out­stand­ing arrest warrants.

The fam­i­ly was ear­li­er per­mit­ted to view dash­board cam­era footage.

“They were able to hear him being shot unjus­ti­fi­ably. They were able to see him gar­gling blood and fight­ing for air,” fam­i­ly attor­ney Bakari Sellers, a for­mer South Carolina state law­mak­er, said.

Langley’s moth­er told reporters that her son’s life was tak­en for no jus­ti­fi­able reason.

“This was a spe­cial part of my heart. When they took him, they took my heart away,” Roslyn Langley, sur­round­ed by oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, said. “I don’t want nobody else to get killed by a mis­take some­body made,” she added.

Sellers said he believes the offi­cer was “out of her depth” and did­n’t fol­low her train­ing or was­n’t trained well.

It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if Dollard has an attor­ney and Hemingway police did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. A bond hear­ing was sched­uled for Thursday morning.

If con­vict­ed of vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter, Dollard faces two to 30 years in prison.

Historically, charges against offi­cers who use lethal force remain rare, and con­vic­tions for seri­ous charges are even more unusu­al. Last year, 21 police offi­cers in the United States were charged with mur­der or manslaugh­ter result­ing from on-duty shoot­ings, accord­ing to a data­base by Philip Stinson, a crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sor at Bowling Green State University.

Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans, accord­ing to a Washington Post data­base analysis.

As I tackle the ever-changing topic of policing in this forum, I continue to be educated on some of the ways police continue to be such a volatile subject in America. Coupled with race, it creates a toxic mix that continues to be a dangerous destabilizing force unless remedied post haste.
As I go through some of the data, I form opinions that may or may not be 100% correct but cannot be ignored without data pointing in the opposite direction.
For example, when the average total cost of training and retaining a young recruit for a year is considered, around $149,362, including supervision, according to (ward43​.org), we may have a slight window outside the default thin blue line explanation, why departments continue to keep wayward, aggressive officers instead of cutting them loose. Simply put, the calculus may be, it’s cheaper to keep them.

Why are you sur­prised by these results?

The unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of those unwrit­ten con­sid­er­a­tions is that allow­ing young offi­cers to get away with issue after issue that is anti­thet­i­cal to good con­duct out of finan­cial or emo­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions devel­ops in them a sense of impunity.
Cost is increas­ing­ly pro­hib­i­tive, and it may explain why the reg­i­men is jam-packed into such a short peri­od of Academy time.
For exam­ple, a 2013 sur­vey by the Department of Justice found that the aver­age police acad­e­my in the United States is about 840 hours or 21 weeks. However, this can vary wide­ly by state and even with­in a state, depend­ing on the orga­ni­za­tion deliv­er­ing the training.
Police acad­e­my train­ing in the United States is deliv­ered by a vari­ety of insti­tu­tions that includes four-year uni­ver­si­ties, two-year col­leges, tech­ni­cal col­leges, and POST acad­e­mies. Some law enforce­ment agen­cies have their own police acad­e­mies. (police1 reports).
After Police mur­dered Breonna Taylor, the con­sen­sus was that no-knock war­rants would be a thing of the past; how­ev­er, noth­ing changed, and judges con­tin­ue to give these instru­ments of death to police to con­tin­ue to vio­late the rights of poor defense­less Black and Brown citizens.

The Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform ana­lyzed police train­ing in 80 coun­tries. Only Iraq and Afghanistan had low­er train­ing require­ments to become a police offi­cer than the United States. The num­ber of train­ing hours required to become a cer­ti­fied police offi­cer becomes shock­ing when you look at the num­ber of hours required to be cer­ti­fied or licensed for oth­er pro­fes­sions. Wait,.….….….….….….….what? Oh well, that explains a lot.
I recent­ly watched a snip­pet of an inter­view with one police chief; he was asked, “how does an offi­cer qual­i­fy for a spe­cial squad-say SWAT, for exam­ple”? He respond­ed that senior­i­ty was one of the cri­te­ria used in deter­min­ing who does.
I won­dered whether that was a good for­mu­la con­sid­er­ing that old­er cops are gen­er­al­ly set in their ways-ways that does­n’t always serve the pub­lic interest.
Georgia requires 408 hours of acad­e­my train­ing to become a police offi­cer but requires 1,500 hours of train­ing to become a licensed bar­ber. It takes 3½ times more train­ing before Georgia says you can cut and style a person’s hair than arrest the same per­son and accuse them of a crime that can result in long-term incar­cer­a­tion, or worse, make the deci­sion to take his life.
The sad real­i­ty of the lat­est case of Amir Locke mur­dered with­out even hav­ing ful­ly awak­ened from his sleep; (a) was not want­ed by police,(b) had a per­mit for his gun, © had no crim­i­nal record, even if he had no weapon on him he prob­a­bly would have been mur­dered anyway.
A young black male in a room full of heav­i­ly armed, poor­ly trained, big­ot­ed white cops would most like­ly have got­ten him mur­dered regard­less, gun or not.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Striking a bal­ance between how much pow­er to give to police offi­cers and pre­serv­ing the rights of cit­i­zens is no easy task.
For the most part, putting immense pow­ers into the hands of any­one can be a Russian roulette-type gam­ble. Placing those pow­ers into the hands of poor­ly edu­cat­ed, poor­ly-trained, big­ot­ed peo­ple is a sure­fire way to end up with what has been hap­pen­ing across America daily.
As a [free­lance writer], peo­ple often reach out to me through social media to talk about things I write about. I use the term free­lance because I am not employed by any cor­po­rate enti­ty. I am my own per­son, and I do not do it for mon­ey or fame.
These are peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races, back­grounds, and opin­ions, peo­ple who look like America.
Surprisingly, we some­times have con­ver­sa­tions that last for over an hour; even when we dis­agree, our con­ver­sa­tions are always cor­dial and respect­ful, and we always come away hav­ing learned from each other.
Over the years, I learned that some of those peo­ple with whom I have dis­course have a total­ly dif­fer­ent view of American polic­ing prac­tices than I do. The sin­gle thread that binds those peo­ple is that they are all white.
We are some­times mys­ti­fied about the aver­age white American’s seem­ing apa­thy toward the sense the rest of us feel that the police are vio­lent, untrained thugs who are killing even the inno­cent unarmed, and men­tal­ly insane.
But do they see what we see? Are they real­ly privy to what we know if they are not policed that way and polic­ing is about pro­tect­ing their inter­est at the expense of the oth­er races?

To under­stand the apa­thy on the one hand and the out­right cop-wor­ship on the oth­er, we must exam­ine the ori­gins of polic­ing and come to grips with the real­i­ty that police were not cre­at­ed to be of ser­vice to blacks but were intend­ed to be inju­ri­ous enforcers against them.
In this regard, the American Bar Association declares; How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing.
The more com­mon­ly known his­to­ry — the one most col­lege stu­dents will hear about in an Introduction to Criminal Justice course — is that American polic­ing can trace its roots back to English polic­ing. Centralized munic­i­pal police depart­ments in America began to form in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry (Potter, 2013), begin­ning in Boston and sub­se­quent­ly estab­lished in New York City; Albany, New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey; and Baltimore. As writ­ten by Professor Gary Potter (2013) of Eastern Kentucky University, by the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, all major American cities had a police force.
This is the his­to­ry that doesn’t make us feel bad.
While this nar­ra­tive is cor­rect, it only tells part of the sto­ry (Turner et al., 2006). Policing in south­ern slave-hold­ing states fol­lowed a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry — one that has roots in slave patrols of the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies and police enforce­ment of Jim Crow laws in the late nine­teenth to mid-twen­ti­eth cen­turies. As per Professor Michael Robinson (2017) of the University of Georgia, the first deaths in America of Black men at the hands of law enforce­ment “can be traced back as ear­ly as 1619 when the first slave ship, a Dutch Man-of-War ves­sel, land­ed in Point Comfort, Virginia.”(ABA)

We need to wrap our heads around these facts to under­stand police behav­ior in America. The sad real­i­ty is that American polic­ing has mor­phed into one big 18,000 plus slave-patrol instead of what­ev­er the English mod­el would have looked like today.
American cops did not sud­den­ly become bad. Using the met­ric of the slave patrols that I have allud­ed to on numer­ous occa­sions on this medi­um, and val­i­dat­ed by the American Bar Association. They are only now being exposed for what they are because of the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cell­phone cam­eras and the will­ing­ness of brave cit­i­zens jour­nal­ists to put their free­doms, safe­ty, and even their lives on the line to expose the stench of America’s rot­ten racist police culture.
I am so in awe of the cit­i­zen-jour­nal­ists of all races who risk being bru­tal­ized, arrest­ed, or even killed to bring the truth of what American police offi­cers rep­re­sent for the world to see.
God for­bid that the cor­po­rate media would do a lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion into the hor­rif­ic sto­ries that police per­pet­u­ate on cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or, daily.
Instead, they accept news releas­es pre­sent­ed to them, you guessed it, by the police. They then put those dis­tor­tions on tele­vi­sion, and that’s the end of it.
When a video sud­den­ly turns up that con­tra­dicts those accounts of how an inci­dent occurred, they cre­ate more lies to jus­ti­fy the lies they fed the gullible, lazy, and com­plic­it cor­po­rate media.
That explains why they are so hate­ful to the aver­age joe stand­ing on the cor­ner record­ing their activ­i­ties. They can­not lie with­out being found out as they have been accus­tomed to.
Even so, when they are caught abus­ing and even mur­der­ing unarmed peo­ple, the courts jus­ti­fy the atroc­i­ties by stretch­ing the bound­aries of the applic­a­ble laws into grotesque exam­ples of increduli­ty to pro­tect the murderers.

America’s polic­ing prac­tices is [not] a polic­ing fail­ure; it is Government pol­i­cy val­i­dat­ed by the high­est courts.
As police com­mit more atroc­i­ties, the courts move the goal­posts by cre­at­ing new inter­pre­ta­tions of the con­sti­tu­tion to jus­ti­fy their crimes. If you own oper­ate a busi­ness, you must acquire insur­ance, doc­tors, lawyers, con­trac­tors, store own­ers, lawn care pro­fes­sion­als- just not police offi­cers. The tax­pay­ers pick up the tab in the rare instances they are held account­able civil­ly. The egre­gious Supreme Court doc­trine of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty lit­er­al­ly gives police blan­ket cov­er to com­mit crimes against cit­i­zens they do not like with impunity.
Qualified immu­ni­ty is [not] in the con­sti­tu­tion but, as I out­lined, was cre­at­ed by The US Supreme Court.
It is a prin­ci­ple that grants gov­ern­ment offi­cials per­form­ing dis­cre­tionary func­tions immu­ni­ty from civ­il suits unless the plain­tiff shows that the offi­cial vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known.”
This is where American cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or. In the hands of the least edu­cat­ed, poor­ly trained, most big­ot­ed peo­ple are placed awe­some pow­ers, includ­ing the pow­er of life and death.
And take lives they do, more often than not Black lives. Police mur­der black peo­ple for sleep­ing in their beds,(Breonna Taylor) eat­ing ice cream,(Botham Jean) walk­ing home from the store. (Elijah McLain, alleged­ly fail­ing to use a turn sig­nal (Sandra Bland) dri­ving home with his family,(Philando Castille) Shopping in a Walmart (John Crawford), sell­ing loose cigarettes,(Eric Garner), alleged­ly ten­der­ing a fake bill, ( George Floyd), stand­ing at the front door of his apart­ment build­ing (Amadou Diallo), run­ning away (Walter Scott, Daunte Wright, being at a gas sta­tion (Alton Sterling) and hun­dreds more).…..
Unarmed Black Americans have been mur­dered by police doing every con­ceiv­able nor­mal day-to-day activ­i­ty. Usually, they get to inves­ti­gate them­selves, or a neigh­bor­ing agency inves­ti­gates and finds that every­thing was done by the book.
Corrupt Prosecutors and Judges move moun­tains to cov­er up their crimes.
In the end, they are shield­ed by qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty civil­ly and cloaked with impuni­ty against crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion by cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors who take mon­ey from their Unions, and of course, they get to inves­ti­gate themselves…

It is a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion that now goes beyond the risk American cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black and Brown peo­ple, take sim­ply for get­ting in their motor­cars. We know about the pre­tex­tu­al stops they use, fail­ure to sig­nal at least 100 feet before the turn, bro­ken tail light, tail­light bulb not work­ing, tire hit­ting the yel­low line, dri­ving too fast, dri­ving too slow, air fresh­en­er dan­gling from the rearview mir­ror, on and on .….and police are allowed to fol­low cit­i­zens around for any length of time they chose, then use any pre­tex­tu­al stop to jus­ti­fy an ille­gal stop.
So you get mad at the cop that abus­es you, but you give a pass to the leg­is­la­tors who vio­lat­ed you by mak­ing the ordi­nances. You give a pass to the pros­e­cu­tors who pros­e­cute the made-up vio­la­tions and offens­es and the Judges who do absolute­ly noth­ing even when cops are caught lying under oath.
The two sys­tems of jus­tice are so obvi­ous they don’t even both­er to try cov­er­ing it up any­more. A cit­i­zen who lies under oath is severe­ly pun­ished, usu­al­ly with prison time. A cop who is caught lying under oath to incrim­i­nate a cit­i­zen suf­fers .….zero penal­ties. These ladies and gen­tle­men are how the police devel­oped impunity.
There have always been two America’s, sor­ry Barack Obama, grow­ing up in Hawai, you had a com­plete­ly utopi­an idea of what America rep­re­sent­ed. Becoming pres­i­dent sure­ly brought that house of lies crash­ing down real fast.
American polic­ing is not bro­ken; it works exact­ly how it was cre­at­ed to work. It was always designed to keep Blacks in their place using what­ev­er means necessary.
The police are mere­ly the man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inher­ent­ly bro­ken and immoral sys­tem that was cre­at­ed in the blood of inno­cent Native and Black people.
Twenty-two (22) years old Amir Locke is mere­ly the lat­est iter­a­tion, the lat­est inno­cent vic­tim to have his inno­cent blood­shed by a rot­ten immoral, and cor­rupt system.
How do you ille­gal­ly enter a man’s cas­tle where he lays sleep­ing, then mur­der him as he is awak­en­ing and try­ing to fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing in his home? You then send images of the legal gun he has to the com­plic­it cor­po­rate media and lies that he point­ed it at you only to find out that the gun is appro­pri­ate­ly registered?
If a cit­i­zen can­not be in his home asleep with­out the gov­ern­ment enter­ing and killing him in his sleep, what kind of coun­try is that?
How You Start is How You Finish.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.