Prince George’s County says it has reached a Twenty mil­lion dol­lar ($20M) set­tle­ment agree­ment with the fam­i­ly of a man who police says was killed while he was hand­cuffed and in cus­tody in the back­seat of a police cruis­er in January 2020.
The announce­ment by County Executive Angela Alsobrooks on the coun­ty’s agree­ment comes eight months after the shoot­ing death of William Green.
Alsobrooks released a state­ment that she will announce the details of the agree­ment on Monday at 11:30 a.m. She says she will be joined by Green fam­i­ly attor­ney Billy Murphy and mem­bers of the Green family.

911 calls came in for reports of a dri­ver hit­ting mul­ti­ple vehi­cles on St. Barnabas Road, and William Green was pulled over on Winston Street in Temple Hills. The respond­ing offi­cer said he smelled PCP in Green’s car, accord­ing to Prince George’s County Police. The offi­cer hand­cuffed Green and placed him in the police cruis­er’s front pas­sen­ger seat as oth­er offi­cers inves­ti­gat­ed the scene for drugs with a K9, which is the stan­dard oper­at­ing procedure.

Shortly after, a strug­gle ensued inside the police cruis­er between the offi­cer and Green.
The offi­cer who shot Green, Ofc. Michael Owen Jr., was arrest­ed at his home and tak­en into cus­tody, then charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der and manslaughter.

The lack of what any­one could call a real inves­ti­ga­tion into the Breonna Taylor killing is just one more exam­ple of the tox­ic col­lu­sion between police, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges in the American jus­tice system.
It is not just that the jus­tice sys­tem does not work for African-Americans, it is a sys­tem that works decid­ed­ly against them.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT work­er was killed in her home by Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) offi­cers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, on March 13, 2020.
The tragedy inher­ent in her killing, is that Ms. Taylor had com­mit­ted no crime. If she ever did, the Police would have led with Her record as the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for her killing. they could not lead with a crim­i­nal record because she had none, but it did not stop the District Attorney from offer­ing a plea deal to her for­mer boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, con­tin­gent on his crim­i­nal­iz­ing the mur­dered Ms. Taylor.
Jamarcus Glover was the intend­ed tar­get of the raid that fate­ful night, accord­ing to pub­lished reports Taylor was already in cus­tody on a sep­a­rate charge on the night the hap­less (LMPD) bust­ed down the door and killed Breonna Taylor.
Her Killing only came to the atten­tion of the broad­er pub­lic after the grue­some killing of George Floyd, by three cops in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

She was killed when the police bust­ed her door down on the author­i­ty of a no-knock war­rant that has been signed by a judge. The war­rant was the prod­uct of bad intel that drugs were being deliv­ered to her apart­ment for a for­mer boyfriend of Ms. Taylor. No drugs were ever found, but Ms. Taylor’s Boyfriend Kenneth Walker, fired a sin­gle shot at the peo­ple break­ing his door down.
Mister Walker who was arrest­ed that night and con­ve­nient­ly charged, with try­ing to mur­der police offi­cers, insist­ed he had no idea the peo­ple break­ing his door down were police offi­cers. Neighbors also told the media they did not hear the police announce that themselves.
Of course, the police claimed that even though they were in pos­ses­sion of a no-knock war­rant, they had repeat­ed­ly announced them­selves. This makes no sense what­so­ev­er, announc­ing them­selves would have defeat­ed the whole pur­pose of get­ting a no-knock war­rant in the first place.
On the oth­er hand, by claim­ing that they had announced them­selves, they were cer­tain to get the attempt­ed mur­der of police offi­cers charges they dredged, up to stick to Kenneth Walker.

Kenneth Walker filed a law­suit over his arrest the Night Breonna was killed, his suit asked the court to declare him immune from pros­e­cu­tion based on the state’s stand your ground law. Mister Walker said he fired only because he had no idea who was break­ing down his door that night.
The charges were lat­er dropped, but his attor­neys asked the court to ensure that the charges will not be filed again.
It is incred­i­bly telling, that a Black cit­i­zen would have to go to such lengths to ensure that the vin­dic­tive crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does not retal­i­ate against him, even though he act­ed with­in the bound­aries of the law.
Isn’t it remark­able how the lives of their agents are worth more to them, than the lives of cit­i­zens? The speed with which they arrest cit­i­zens, (even more so black cit­i­zens), and file charges, even with­out evi­dence, is astounding.
There are no year/​s‑long inves­ti­ga­tions, no grand jury involve­ment, no dot­ting of I’s and cross­ing of T’s. No allow­ing cops to get their lies straight before they give account for their actions.
The cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of mon­ey in the cam­paigns of District Attorneys, Attorney’s Generals, Public Defenders, & Judges, make it impos­si­ble to have an equi­table and fair dis­pen­sa­tion of justice.
These egre­gious instances of cor­rup­tion were not as obvi­ous before the advent of cam­eras and social media. The default option was sim­ply to believe what the police said, even though there were entire com­mu­ni­ties that were com­plain­ing that police offi­cers were beat­ing them. The abused par­ties are accused of lying.

When they com­plained that police offi­cers were plant­i­ng drugs on their per­son, in their cars, and in their homes, the aggriev­ed par­ties were accused of lying, “sure every­one is inno­cent”, they say.
When the same com­mu­ni­ties com­plained that the police mur­dered their loved ones in cold blood, no one believed them, because the police were deemed vir­tu­ous and beyond killing any­one in cold blood.
The word of the police is always believed over that of the cit­i­zen, and that embold­ens them to act with impuni­ty, they brag about it.
“Who do you think the judge will believe, you or me”?
Additionally, the qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty doc­trine imposed on the coun­try by the Supreme Court, all but insu­lat­ed police offi­cers from account­abil­i­ty for their crimes. — –But that is only the beginning.
The abil­i­ty of police Unions to cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials through huge mon­e­tary dona­tions to their respec­tive cam­paigns, and their col­lec­tive strength through their abil­i­ties to bul­ly and intim­i­date, cre­at­ed the war­rior cop, not just in their aggres­sive­ness, but in the inabil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to hold them account­able for their crimes.

It took me a minute to fig­ure out the inher­ent cor­rup­tion and hypocrisy in the American Justice that seeks to crit­i­cize oth­er nations, par­tic­u­lar­ly small­er depen­dent nations strug­gling to get it right.
America is [not] strug­gling to get it right. American now has the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, the sys­tem is work­ing exact­ly how the design­ers want it to work. And that means against peo­ple of color.
Yes, the hypocrisy is absolute­ly galling.

If you ever won­dered how come there are so many cops, even as they keep hir­ing more and more, don’t. They serve two basic functions,(a) to keep the pop­u­la­tion in check & (b) to be back­door tax collectors.
The Government fig­ured out to actu­ar­i­al­ly the cost of pay­ing a cop, all expens­es con­sid­ered. They train them to abuse and kill then turn them loose large­ly where?
In big cities and towns. Big cities and towns are heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed with black and brown peo­ple, they bear the brunt of over-polic­ing. They are usu­al­ly the poor­est and least able to pay for traf­fic tick­ets, but they are the most tick­et­ed for minor infrac­tions and minor dis­re­pair to the automobiles.
The sys­tem is designed to be so puni­tive, that even when a per­son has a tick­et dis­missed they are more often than not required to pay court cost.
So the inno­cent is penal­ized for hav­ing being penal­ized. There are those who will quick­ly argue, that it puts every­one at risk, not just some. The sad real­i­ty is that it’s all in the enforce­ment, who gets pulled over the most, who do you think that is?
Those who can­not pay for the aggres­sive minor infrac­tions have war­rants issued for their arrests, and if they could­n’t pay for the tick­et, there is no way they can pay for the rapid­ly accu­mu­lat­ed penal­ties and fees.
So it’s off to the [for-prof­it] prison you go. See the link below.
https://​www​.prop​ub​li​ca​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​-​j​e​r​s​e​y​-​l​a​w​-​s​a​y​s​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​c​o​p​s​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​g​o​-​t​o​-​j​a​i​l​-​r​e​c​o​r​d​s​-​r​e​v​e​a​l​-​t​h​e​y​-​o​f​t​e​n​-​d​ont

In the Breonna Taylor case, the police got a war­rant, most like­ly from a com­pli­ant judge that sim­ply rub­ber-stamp what the police bring to them for a sig­na­ture. The intel was faulty, and so every­thing that occurred from that faulty intel ought to be ille­git­i­mate under the law. Nevertheless, though Breonna Taylor and her Boyfriend Kenneth Walker had every right to stand their ground in their own home, the state’s posi­tion is that it’s right to bust down their door and enter to look for illic­it drugs, super­sedes their right to be safe and secure in their per­sons & property.
At least, that is the nar­ra­tive pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic by the Attorney General, in out­lin­ing that the offi­cers had a right to return fire after being fired on, regard­less of the. fact that they had no busi­ness being there and mis­ter Walker had every right to shoot to kill any­one bust­ing down his door.
Again, ask your­selves the ques­tion, why would police secure a no-knock war­rant then knock and announce their presence?
It only makes sense to the most ardent cop-apol­o­gists, because the high prob­a­bil­i­ty is that it nev­er happened.
For any­one with a law-enforce­ment back­ground, it is absolute­ly shock­ing to see just how far the pow­ers will go to shield police crim­i­nal­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they trans­gress against Black people.

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Thanks to the advent of the inter­net, voic­es that were pre­vi­ous­ly silenced are now the loud­est. People who hith­er­to had no way of get­ting their views heard, are now read all over the world. Credible research infor­ma­tion is just a click away.
The ben­e­fit that those pos­si­bil­i­ties present are incal­cu­la­ble, all in all, no one can claim with any degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty, that before they made cru­cial deci­sions, they were unable to access good and cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion or data on a giv­en subject.
Today’s JCF seems to be about pos­tur­ing, form over sub­stance, a nev­er-end­ing crab in a bar­rel fight to be promoted.
I under­stand the need to fight to be pro­mot­ed with­in the exist­ing JCF con­struct. After all, when a slight pay increase is tied to a high­er rank it is incon­ceiv­able that this race to the top would not result.
Unfortunately, in this mad rush to the top, the focus is not on polic­ing where it ought to be. For years I have sug­gest­ed a senior­i­ty sys­tem that guar­an­tees senior­i­ty pay that is not tied to promotions.
Additionally, pay­ing police offi­cers for over­time work is also anoth­er way in which offi­cers could begin to improve their earn­ings. That process would ease the stress on the pro­mo­tion process, more impor­tant­ly, it would reduce, if not elim­i­nate, some aspects of police corruption.

Over the years I have writ­ten hun­dreds of arti­cles in sup­port of the rule of law in Jamaica. Among those arti­cles are some that sim­ply sup­port the rule of law, and by exten­sion our police officers.
In oth­ers, I have been crit­i­cal of the tac­tics, poli­cies, and fail­ures of the force. During my ten-year stint in the force, those who knew me will recall that I had zero tol­er­ance for medi­oc­rity. As such I have felt oblig­at­ed to call out indi­vid­ual offi­cers for what I per­ceived to be incom­pe­tence and or cor­rup­tion. That too in my hum­ble opin­ion, is a con­tri­bu­tion to the JCF and by exten­sion the coun­try at large. An incom­pe­tent police force is no good for anyone.
A police force that can­not ful­fill its man­date can­not be a dump­ing ground for peo­ple who can­not find jobs or cut it in the pri­vate sec­tor or oth­er areas of the pub­lic sector.
By objec­tive­ly hold­ing every­one’s feet to the fire I sub­mit, we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a bet­ter country.
From the start, I under­stood the very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that much of what I wrote would only be rel­e­vant as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence point, as opposed to being a tem­plate that the JCF would find use­ful in help­ing itself become a more pro­fes­sion­al and effec­tive agency.

I want to address today, the con­tin­ued inep­ti­tude of the JCF, and it’s per­sis­tent inabil­i­ty to present itself as a cred­i­ble intel­li­gence-dri­ven law-enforce­ment agency.
An intel­li­gence-led JCF would pos­sess the capa­bil­i­ty to ensure that those pre­dis­posed to using mur­der­ous scare tac­tics to usurp the crim­i­nal jus­tice process would fear, and have sec­ond thoughts about using vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, on those who would step for­ward to tes­ti­fy against them.
There is no greater threat to the safe­ty, sta­bil­i­ty, and secu­ri­ty of a nation, than the abil­i­ty of crim­i­nal net­works to use vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, to keep oth­ers from tes­ti­fy­ing in a court of law.
Allowing this to hap­pen is bow­ing to terrorism.
Make no mis­take about it, those who kill their fel­low coun­try­men, then use mur­der as a scare tac­tic to pre­vent wit­ness­es from tes­ti­fy­ing against them are indeed domes­tic terrorists.
They must be treat­ed as such. And so the nation needs a strong, com­pe­tent law enforce­ment agency that is up to the task.

I believe that even among my great­est detrac­tors, there is hard­ly a cred­i­ble argu­ment to be made that the JCF has pro­gressed to the point where it is equal to the task of effec­tive­ly deal­ing with the rag-tag- crim­i­nals oper­at­ing on the Island. Are they suf­fi­cient­ly being mon­i­tored, or remote­ly con­cerned about the con­se­quences the JCF could exact on their oper­a­tions? I think not.
I under­stand the real­i­ties fac­ing the agency. There are crim­i­nals among the elect­ed offi­cials, I get that. There is crim­i­nal sup­port in gov­ern­ment agen­cies, I get that. There is sup­port for crim­i­nals cul­tur­al­ly, I get that.
There is sup­port for crim­i­nals in the judi­cia­ry, I get that. And yes, there is sup­port for crim­i­nals across the broad­er soci­ety, I get that too.
But by God, none of that pre­vents the JCF from being a capa­ble agency that is com­pe­tent respect­ed, and feared, not for its bru­tal­i­ty but for its effectiveness.

No police agency can total­ly pro­tect all of its mem­bers form being attacked, injured, and even killed. But when a police agency is unable to find the shoot­er who just shot and killed an offi­cer sim­ply because he ran around a cor­ner, that agency has problems.
Recent, and pre­vi­ous attacks on mem­bers of the JCF with­out a sin­gle arrest has demon­strat­ed that the JCF is fly­ing blind.
An Agency that can­not pro­tect its own mem­bers can­not make the claim that it can pro­tect a nation.
Those are the hard truths.
There are ways that each and every vio­lent crim­i­nal that pass­es through the sys­tem can be mon­i­tored and kept in check. That is not to say that they will not be able to com­mit more crimes, what it means is that when they do, the agency will know what it is that they did, and will find them quick­ly and hold them accountable.

An Agency that is tasked with the secu­ri­ty of a nation, sim­ply can­not oper­ate as a stop-clock. Even with the best strate­gies in mind, mon­i­tor­ing, and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, data pro­cess­ing, and dis­sem­i­na­tion are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing an edge in secur­ing the country.
Police agen­cies can no longer oper­ate in the dark, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and data col­lec­tion, are fun­da­men­tal­ly crit­i­cal to mod­ern polic­ing, not large guns and show of force, even though those too have a place.
Simply react­ing to a piece of intel­li­gence is not intel­li­gence-dri­ven policing.
The intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing must be con­tin­u­ous, it must be dri­ven towards a pur­pose and the data derived must be col­lat­ed towards the strate­gic exe­cu­tion of well thought out strategies.
If the JCF is doing this we can­not see it. Members still con­tin­ue to be shot and at best the JCF can only guess as to who is behind the attacks, if they even both­er to think about those attacks.
The JCF still con­tin­ues to be an out­dat­ed reac­tive force, and that is the bot­tom line. The fail­ings of the force are not with the rank and file, they rest sole­ly on the inabil­i­ty of its lead­er­ship to step up and do the job they were appoint­ed to do.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Over the decades, Ginsburg was con­stant­ly broad­en­ing her under­stand­ing of “unjus­ti­fied inequal­i­ty” beyond her own expe­ri­ence. The justice’s expla­na­tion of “unjus­ti­fied inequal­i­ty” in Sessions drew from the Supreme Court’s 2015 deci­sion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which rec­og­nized same-sex cou­ples’ fun­da­men­tal right to mar­ry. Her con­nec­tion between sex dis­crim­i­na­tion and anti-gay dis­crim­i­na­tion was pre­scient. A few months after Obergefell came down, Ginsburg not­ed that fem­i­nism and mar­riage equal­i­ty are deeply inter­twined. “It’s a facet of the gay rights move­ment that peo­ple don’t think about enough,” the jus­tice said. “Why sud­den­ly mar­riage equal­i­ty? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s ‘head and mas­ter rule,’ ” which gave hus­bands total con­trol over mar­i­tal prop­er­ty. “Marriage was a rela­tion­ship between the dom­i­nant, bread­win­ning hus­band and the sub­or­di­nate, child-rear­ing wife,” Ginsburg con­tin­ued. States locked both part­ners into gen­der roles based on a stereo­typed vision of what mar­riage means. “What les­bian or gay man,” the jus­tice asked, “would want that?”https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​9​/​r​u​t​h​-​b​a​d​e​r​-​g​i​n​s​b​u​r​g​-​c​h​a​n​g​e​d​-​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​.​h​tml

Here is the state­ment from the Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky

People say American polic­ing is bro­ken and that it needs fix­ing. I dis­agree, American polic­ing is work­ing exact­ly the way it was designed to work, and it has worked since reconstruction.
Law enforce­ment in all of its forms was designed to be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and puni­tive to Black people.
Whether it be fire codes, health codes, build­ing codes, even the length of some­one’s lawn grass, the poor­est peo­ple, (blacks), were intend­ed to be pun­ished the most.
When a cop pulls over a Black per­son under the pre­text of a tail-light out, it is not ran­dom. The dri­ver in many instances can scarce­ly afford the gas in the tank much less repair a bro­ken tail-light and the pow­ers that cre­ate those laws knows that.
It is just anoth­er strat­e­gy to fur­ther impov­er­ish the already poor Black com­mu­ni­ty and con­tin­ue the mass incar­cer­a­tion of the Black population.
Or as a Wisconsin Sheriff David Beth said, “They just need to dis­ap­pear.” speak­ing of Black offend­ers. “They need to be ware­housed for the remain­der of their lives and not be let out”, Beth went on.
Sheriff David Beth was ref­er­enc­ing a group of four black teens who had com­mit­ted the unfor­giv­able sin of shoplifting.
I won­der how many crimes David Beth com­mit­ted over the span of his mis­er­able life for which he should be ware­housed and nev­er see the light of day?

Does it seem that the worst kinds of humans are run­ning to fill those sher­iff jobs, remem­ber the looney toon self ‑hat­ing David Clarke from Milwaukee County? This self ‑hat­ing crud blamed Black peo­ple for what police are doing to them and insists there is no racism in America.
This detached from real­i­ty men­tal­i­ty, is what I call the Clarence Thomas syn­drome. Overcompensating, the ugly Black man who gets to mar­ry the white woman that the white men will not marry.(but I digress).

This brings me to anoth­er cop, this time the real­ly bril­liant Hispanic Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva who all but demand­ed that bas­ket­ball great Lebron Donate a large chunk of mon­ey to aid in find­ing the per­son who shot two of his deputies days ago.
In a radio call-in pro­gram in his state, the idi­ot­ic and tone-deaf Villanueva said the following.

“This chal­lenge is to LeBron James,” Villanueva said on 790 KABC Radio in Los Angeles. “I want you to match that and dou­ble that reward. Because I know you care about law enforce­ment. “You expressed a very, very inter­est­ing state­ment about your per­spec­tive on race rela­tions and on offi­cer-involved shoot­ings and the impact it has on the African American com­mu­ni­ty, and I appre­ci­ate that. But like­wise, we need to appre­ci­ate the respect for life goes across pro­fes­sions, across races, creeds. And I’d like to see LeBron James step up to the plate and dou­ble that.”
If this guy was­n’t such an idiot I would sep­a­rate his name and drop the last few let­ters. Villan_​(ueva_.However, he is clear­ly not smart enough to be a villain.
Villanueva has been crit­i­cized for rehir­ing fired deputy Caren Carl Mandoyan. Mandoyan, who had worked for Villanueva’s elec­tion cam­paign, had been dis­charged by McDonnell the for­mer Sheriff, after alle­ga­tions of domes­tic abuse and stalk­ing a woman he had met while work­ing at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. The Los Angeles Times report­ed that Mandoyan was a mem­ber of a secret soci­ety of deputies known as the Reapers and had on his left ankle the group’s tat­too — an image of the “Grim Reaper” hold­ing a scythe and the name of his Sheriff’s sta­tion. A judge ordered that Mandoyan be stripped of his badge and his gun, [yet] he remains an employ­ee of the Sheriff’s Department. Villanueva also has been crit­i­cized for rehir­ing a homi­cide detec­tive who had been banned from coun­ty jails after imper­son­at­ing a deputy and deliv­er­ing con­tra­band to an inmate.
He is also been scru­ti­nized for the hir­ing of his son, Johannes Jared Villanueva, sev­en months after he took office. The L.A. Times has report­ed that Johannes Jared Villanueva “was the sub­ject of two bench war­rants for fail­ing to com­ply with a court-ordered treat­ment pro­gram tied to his 2009 con­vic­tion of a mis­de­meanor DUI .” He also has been accused of mak­ing an Instagram post that made light of the Holocaust.

Here is a guy whose offi­cers mur­dered a man whom they could eas­i­ly have tak­en into cus­tody just days before. He runs a depart­ment that has faced a moun­tain of accu­sa­tions that deputies are actu­al gang­land mem­bers who sport nazi sym­bol tat­toos, they are accused of com­mit­ting all kinds of crimes against the peo­ple they are sworn protect.
This is not tone-deaf­ness, its idio­cy in high places, but idio­cy in high places is now the norm…
Rather than use this inci­dent as a wake­up call to attend to the crit­i­cal issues as it relates to the claims lev­eled at his depart­ment he seeks to go right-wing polit­i­cal by attack­ing Lebron James who cor­rect­ly calls out filthy mur­der­ing cops who com­mit atroc­i­ties against cit­i­zens whom they are sworn to protect.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I was always mind­ful that the actions of bad cops endan­ger the lives of all cops.
But we were real police offi­cers, not some moron who wins an elec­tion and slaps on a tin badge and believes he knows something.
When peo­ple can­not trust the laws to work for them they take the laws into their own hands. What’s worse is that this stu­pid Hispanic (white-in ‑wait­ing) believes that attack­ing a Black icon will serve his cause, so he decides to spew right-wing talk­ing points.
By doing so he revealed exact­ly where their heads are, fur­ther cement­ing the notion that many peo­ple hold that there are no good cops.
This is a Sheriff who ran his mouth on a radio pro­gram in July of this year, arguably slan­der­ing the Los Angeles County’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer, his boss, and is get­ting sued for slan­der and defamation.

And, as was to be expect­ed the back­lash was swift, even though Lebron James has cor­rect­ly, not ele­vat­ed him by respond­ing to his igno­rant arro­gance, Vanessa Bryant, the wid­ow of Kobi Bryant was swift to respond.
“How can he talk about trust­ing the sys­tem?” one of the tweets Bryant repost­ed read. “His sheriff’s depart­ment couldn’t be trust­ed to secure Kobe Bryant’s heli­copter crash scene, his deputies took and shared graph­ic pho­tos of crash vic­tims”. Vanessa Bryant is also suing the very same department.
Albeit for me to give advice to Lebron James as to what his response should be, [if any], nev­er­the­less it does seem that Villanueva is seek­ing media atten­tion on behalf of the racist right, or at the very least seek­ing to heap ridicule on those who speak out against sys­temic racism and police violence.
As such a response from Lebron James will inex­orably raise the pro­file of this cop with no dis­cern­able ben­e­fit to James, or the caus­es he supports.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE PLEASE

Police say Ricardo Munoz threat­ened an offi­cer with a knife after a call about a domes­tic dis­pute in Lancaster.
Police deployed tear gas on a crowd of peo­ple protest­ing ear­ly Monday after an offi­cer shot and killed a man in Pennsylvania while respond­ing to a domes­tic dis­tur­bance call.
Hundreds of pro­test­ers took to the streets of Lancaster fol­low­ing the shoot­ing death of Ricardo Munoz, 27, on Sunday after­noon. The crowd formed out­side the police sta­tion. Police said mul­ti­ple build­ings and gov­ern­ment vehi­cles were dam­aged by demonstrators.
Munoz was fatal­ly shot after com­ing out of a home and chas­ing an offi­cer with a knife, police said. Body cam­era video showed the offi­cer fire sev­er­al shots at Munoz, who then falls to the ground.

The offi­cer was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave, accord­ing to local news outlets.
The Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office was lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. District Attorney Heather Adams acknowl­edged the protests in a news release late Sunday and called for calm.
“We ask that acts of protest remain peace­ful as vio­lence and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty will become head­lines and serve no pur­pose for the safe­ty and well­be­ing of our cit­i­zens and neigh­bor­hoods,” Adams stated.
As for the use of “chem­i­cal muni­tions” against pro­test­ers ear­ly Monday, the police depart­ment said in a state­ment that the crowd was giv­en sev­er­al warn­ings to dis­perse before the gas was deployed.

The crowd “failed to fol­low the instruc­tions,” police stat­ed, adding that items includ­ing glass bot­tles, gal­lon jugs filled with liq­uid, parts of plas­tic road bar­ri­cades, and more had been thrown at officers.

The Houston Police Department has fired four of its offi­cers for killing an emo­tion­al­ly dis­tressed man who they shot a total of 24 times dur­ing a response to a 911 call in April. The major­i­ty of the shots were fired after the man was on the ground and incapacitated.
Police Chief Art Acevedo announced the con­clu­sion of the five-month-long inves­ti­ga­tion Thursday, show­ing body­cam footage of the inci­dent and call­ing the offi­cers’ actions “not objec­tive­ly reasonable.”

“The chain of com­mand does not con­sid­er them objec­tive­ly rea­son­able, and I believe any­one that watch­es this would see they had a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties and a lot of oth­er options read­i­ly avail­able to them,” Acevedo said in Thursday’s press conference.
“You don’t get to shoot some­body 21 times, because at that time, when we dis­charged those 21 rounds, Mr. Chavez was at his great­est lev­el of incapacitation.”

On April 21, offi­cers Luis Alvarado, Omar Tapiam and Patrick Rubio and Sgt. Benjamin LeBlanc respond­ed to a 911 call about a dis­tressed man who was run­ning through traf­fic, enter­ing people’s prop­er­ty, and pos­si­bly ready to hurt himself.

When police arrived, they found 27-year-old Nicolas Chavez walk­ing around a park­ing lot hold­ing what they first believed to be a knife and was lat­er iden­ti­fied as a piece of rebar. Bodycam footage shows that the offi­cers spent about 15 min­utes try­ing to deesca­late the sit­u­a­tion through non­lethal means and ver­bal com­mands. Eventually, after fir­ing bean­bags and stun guns at Chavez to no avail, LeBlanc is seen fir­ing two shots at Chavez.

Chavez, who was now sit­ting on the ground, con­tin­ued to advance toward the offi­cers against the ver­bal orders of the police. A sec­ond offi­cer fired anoth­er shot, hop­ing to stop Chavez from mov­ing any clos­er, but failed to deter him.

Finally, Chavez began to pull a stun gun that was still attached to his body toward him. Despite repeat­ed warn­ings from offi­cers to stop mov­ing, the dis­tressed man con­tin­ued to pull on the stun gun spring and grabbed a hold of the weapon, which prompt­ed the four offi­cers to fire a total of 21 shots. Chavez was killed in the hail of gunfire.

Acevedo said that the sit­u­a­tion should have been han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly once Chavez was on the ground.

“It’s inex­plic­a­ble to me, when they had plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to back up to con­tin­ue doing what they were doing,” the chief said. “For them to stay the line and shoot a man 21 times, I can­not defend that.”

Before the release of the police body­cam footage, a 47-sec­ond cell­phone video of the shoot­ing, filmed by a bystander, went viral on social media. Chavez’s death, like many oth­ers killed by police this year, sparked months of protests in Houston, as both the pub­lic and Chavez’s fam­i­ly demand­ed the release of police body­cam footage of the dead­ly police encounter.

Chavez’s fam­i­ly lat­er told local news out­let KHOU-11 that their rel­a­tive had a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. Toxicology reports also revealed that Chavez had metham­phet­a­mine, amphet­a­mine, and ethanol in his sys­tem the night of the shooting.

The local Houston Police Officers’ Union pushed back against the fir­ings. Union President Joe Gamaldi reaf­firmed that the four offi­cers did every­thing they could to help Chavez before tak­ing lethal action.

“This unjust and deplorable deci­sion by Chief Acevedo has sent a shock wave through HPD. Even if you deesca­late, retreat, fol­low pol­i­cy, train­ing, and the law…you will still lose your job as a Houston Police Officer,” Gamaldi tweet­ed ThursdayThough the offi­cers involved have been fired, the shoot­ing is still being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. District Attorney Kim Ogg has said pub­licly that she plans to present the case before a grand jury to deter­mine whether the offi­cers involved com­mit­ted a pun­ish­able crime.

There is a cer­tain mind­set in the United States on the part of wealthy and pow­er­ful white peo­ple, that what­ev­er pow­er the police need to keep enforc­ing the sys­tem of white suprema­cy is jus­ti­fied, regard­less of the con­se­quences to inno­cent lives. (As far as they are con­cerned, those who fall, vic­tim to police vio­lence are col­lat­er­al dam­age, a nec­es­sary loss toward achiev­ing the larg­er goal).
The sys­tem pro­tects pow­er­ful whites, it was designed exact­ly to do so, it has indoc­tri­nat­ed poor whites to live in a per­pet­u­al­ly sus­pend­ed state of await­ing their turn.
They are indoc­tri­nat­ed into believ­ing in a mirage, that just over the hori­zon is an oasis of wealth and prosperity.
That they will become the next suc­cess sto­ry, the big man who owns the plan­ta­tion. Make no mis­take about it, this has been hap­pen­ing since slav­ery when the rich told whites they were bet­ter than blacks based on their white skin.
To this day poor whites still refuse to see the error of sup­port­ing a sys­tem that keeps them down, almost as it does minorities.

From the days of slav­ery, to the present, poor whites believed the lies they were told by the wealthy. The lies were designed to dri­ve a wedge between poor whites & Blacks, so that white planters and oth­er wealthy whites could con­tin­ue to stack up wealth and main­tain control.
Still today, poor whites wait expec­tant­ly that they will be next in line to move up to the gaudy, gild­ed pent­house, fifty floors into the Manhattan sky.
Today, even though the United States has acquired more wealth and pow­er than any oth­er nation in his­to­ry ever had, pover­ty con­tin­ues to rise, not just in the black com­mu­ni­ty but across all racial groups. According to the Census Bureau 29.9% of the pop­u­la­tion — or 93.6 mil­lion — live close to pover­ty, with incomes less than two times that of their pover­ty thresh­olds. The USDA esti­mat­ed that 11.1% of US house­holds were food inse­cure in 2018. This means that approx­i­mate­ly 14.3 mil­lion house­holds had dif­fi­cul­ty pro­vid­ing enough food for all their mem­bers due to a lack of resources. Rates of food inse­cu­ri­ty were sub­stan­tial­ly high­er than the nation­al aver­age for house­holds with incomes near or below the Federal pover­ty line. (Source: US Department of Agriculture)

Despite those glar­ing trend­lines, poor whites tend not to see inequities in the sys­tem much the same way that blacks do. Despite being poor, and in many cas­es more des­ti­tute than a large seg­ment of the black pop­u­la­tion, they cling to the sys­tem that has kept them in per­pet­u­al pover­ty, gen­er­a­tion after generation.
But it is hard­ly my point to show the pover­ty rate among white Americans. My intent is to demon­strate just how poor whites are also vic­tims of a sys­tem that is held up by their sheer numer­ic strength of white peo­ple. But under which they too suf­fer in pover­ty, and are seen as valu­able, only to the extent they con­tin­ue to mil­i­tate against their own self-interest.
As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic rages, and peo­ple are forced to stop. Take stock of their lives, and observe the things that are hap­pen­ing around them, the year 2020 has result­ed in some firsts.
For the very first time in the nation’s his­to­ry, the police killing of a black man, George Floyd took cen­ter stage across the coun­try, and cities and town across the coun­try were filled with pro­test­ers against police bru­tal­i­ty, most of the pro­test­ers have been white, that’s a first.

In the same way that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem treats two men, one who walks into a bank and com­mits an armed rob­bery, then runs out­side to a get­away car dri­ven by anoth­er, so must dis­senters view the sys­tem when it comes to pros­e­cu­tors and judges who enable and cheer­lead police mur­der, and cre­ates space (pros­e­cu­to­ri­al­ly, through non-action) and judi­cial­ly, through rul­ings and dis­sent, allow­ing it to con­tin­ue and to grow.
What has been clear as a result of (a) Trump’s ascen­den­cy to the exec­u­tive Mansion, (b) the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and © the unrest on the nation’s streets, is that Americans of all stripes have begun to see police bru­tal­i­ty for what it is.
Also evi­dent, is the bud­dy-bud­dy sys­tem that exists between police and pros­e­cu­tors offices, which makes it impos­si­ble for pros­e­cu­tors to appro­pri­ate­ly hold police account­able for their crimes.
What has not got­ten much atten­tion, is the com­plic­i­ty of unelect­ed judges who con­tin­ue to be shield­ed by their dark robes and ivory tow­ers, away from the blood and gore, many of whom help to cre­ate doc­trines that places the lives of peo­ple in inher­ent danger.
One such doc­trine is the qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty doc­trine cre­at­ed by the Supreme Court, which is not in the con­sti­tu­tion, is not law, but a stan­dard set by the Supreme Court to shield pub­lic employ­ees from civ­il lia­bil­i­ty when they are law­ful­ly car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al duties and may make mistakes.

The prob­lem with Qualified immu­ni­ty is that when it comes to police offi­cers who are giv­en pow­ers unequaled in any oth­er field, the courts have bent over back­ward to allow police to oper­ate in enforc­ing the nation’s laws..
Unfortunately, many police offi­cers use qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty as a shield, behind which they abuse, maim, and kill cit­i­zens with wan­ton dis­re­gard and abject impunity.
According to the Supreme Court’s estab­lished doc­trine, in order for a cop to be out­side the shield of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, he must com­mit an act so egre­gious, that any oth­er offi­cer would have known that the act was crim­i­nal. However, that is not all, in order for an errant cop to lose his immu­ni­ty, there must have already been one such case against anoth­er cop that has been pros­e­cut­ed and decid­ed in a court of law.
It is a high bar for pros­e­cu­tors who are doing their job prop­er­ly to meet. It is a bar behind which pros­e­cu­tors who side with police rather than do their jobs, find shelter.

Buzzfeed report­ed on a case in 2010 in which In police offi­cers respond­ed to a report that a teenag­er was walk­ing through a neigh­bor­hood in Garland, Texas, with a hand­gun. When offi­cers found the 17-year-old, he was hold­ing the gun to his own head. The cops imme­di­ate­ly shot the poor teen twice, hav­ing been shot, he invol­un­tar­i­ly pulled the trig­ger. The teen sur­vived but has per­ma­nent injuries that include paral­y­sis and brain damage.
(Way to save a per­son from harm­ing himself).
The fam­i­ly of the teen sued the police, they accused the cops of using exces­sive force and fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence. They argued that even though the young man was armed, the cir­cum­stances didn’t jus­ti­fy dead­ly force, and they accused one offi­cer of lying about the teen aim­ing a gun at the police.

In August 2019, the US Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit denied immu­ni­ty to the offi­cers, mean­ing the case would go to a jury. That’s great, but what is star­tling, is that the four Trump’s appointees dis­sent­ed, argu­ing, “No mem­ber of this court has stared down a flee­ing felon on the inter­state or con­front­ed a men­tal­ly dis­turbed teenag­er who is bran­dish­ing a loaded gun near his school.” Judges Andy Oldham and James Ho, both Trump nom­i­nees, wrote in a dis­sent­ing opinion.
The dis­sent gives a bird’s eye view of what is hap­pen­ing behind the scenes, whose actions are embold­en­ing the police vio­lence dai­ly, result­ing in the push­back from peo­ple tired of the abuse.
The word­ing itself caus­es one to rethink the whole notion of “learned judge”. It pre­sup­pos­es that a flee­ing felon or a men­tal­ly dis­turbed teenag­er, is fair game to be sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed by police.
God help those of you who have your won­der­ful kids, teenagers, or oth­er­wise, with men­tal health issues, who think it’s a good idea to call the police to your home to help.

The Buzzfeed report­ing went on to state that In cas­es where police have argued for immu­ni­ty, Trump’s nom­i­nees haven’t just split with their fel­low Republican appointees on how to apply the law — they’ve expressed full-throat­ed sup­port for law enforce­ment and made clear they believe courts should do more to shield offi­cers from lawsuits“If we want to stop mass shoot­ings, we should stop pun­ish­ing police offi­cers who put their lives on the line to pre­vent them’.
The unde­ni­able real­i­ty is that there is not a sin­gle case of a mass shoot­ing that was stopped by police officers.
Judge Ho wrote in anoth­er case in October 2019. He dis­sent­ed from his col­leagues — a mix of Republican and Democratic appointees — who denied immu­ni­ty to offi­cers accused of using exces­sive force when they respond­ed to reports of an armed man walk­ing through a neigh­bor­hood and shot and killed the sus­pect. (Buzzfeed)

In the case of a 17-year old boy shot by Garland Texas Police, the very same Ho & Oldham joined byJerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, blast­ed their col­leagues in the major­i­ty who ruled that it should be up to a jury to decide the case. Clearly this new cadre of earth­ly Gods do not feel that juries should make the call but it should be up to them the unelect­ed elites to decide to say police are above the laws.
“Supreme Court prece­dent “gives us no basis for sneer­ing at cops on the beat from the safe­ty of our cham­bers,” they wrote.
Judge Kyle Duncan, also a Trump nom­i­nee, pub­lished his own dis­sent, writ­ing that “by mak­ing the offi­cers run the gaunt­let of tri­al,” the court under­mined their abil­i­ty to make split-sec­ond deci­sions about using lethal force”.
In oth­er words, police offi­cers who are entrust­ed to make deci­sions of life and death, police offi­cers who are trained for only a few months, police offi­cers who har­bor deep racial bias­es, police offi­cers who use drugs and are some­times hopped up on mind-alter­ing sub­stances, should be held to zero stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty when they use dead­ly force result­ing in the death of citizens.
The nation is in for a rather rough ride, in some quar­ters there have been com­plaints about the lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tion of some of the over 200 appointees Donald Trump has man­aged to load up onto the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry, includ­ing two on the supreme court, the con­se­quences are going to be dire going for­ward. Andrew Oldham is only 42 years old.

The cold, cal­cu­lat­ed impuni­ty with which American police bru­tal­ize, and kill cit­i­zens, can­not be processed with­in a frame­work sole­ly of good cop Vs bad cop. It has to be addressed in a ful­some way, tak­ing into account the vast infra­struc­ture that oper­ates behind the scenes to pro­tect police from accountability.
This is not a sys­tem that will crum­ble and allow for jus­tice to pre­vail, it is a sys­tem that will take all hands on deck to dis­man­tle, and it will not be easy.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE

By JEREMY STAHL SEPT 08, 20206:49 PM

On Friday, a Salt Lake City police offi­cer shot a 13-year-old autis­tic child sev­er­al times after his moth­er called 911 to ask for a cri­sis inter­ven­tion team to take him to the hos­pi­tal dur­ing a men­tal health episode.

Linden Cameron, who is white, is cur­rent­ly hos­pi­tal­ized with injuries to his shoul­der, ankles, intestines, and blad­der, accord­ing to a GoFundMe page his moth­er set up.

Cameron’s moth­er, Golda Barton, told local CBS affil­i­ate KUTV that she called the police to report that she need­ed a cri­sis inter­ven­tion after her son, who has Asperger’s, strug­gled with “sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety” at her need to return to work.

According to Barton, two police offi­cers came to her home, told her to wait inside, and then one of them shot Cameron repeat­ed­ly with­in five min­utes of arriv­ing after he fled

As KUTV reported:

[Barton] thought her son was dead and the offi­cers didn’t imme­di­ate­ly say if he was or was not dead. They hand­cuffed him, accord­ing to Barton. Additionally, she said she heard from some­one that the oth­er offi­cer could be seen grab­bing his own head in dis­be­lief for what had hap­pened. He said out loud, accord­ing to what the moth­er was told, “He’s just a child, what are you doing?”

The police have not released the name of the offi­cer involved in the shoot­ing, or made pub­lic the police report, or explained gen­er­al­ly why the offi­cer shot the child, or said if he or she would be charged or face any dis­ci­pli­nary action. The depart­ment said it would release addi­tion­al details with­in 10 busi­ness days, which is when local ordi­nances require body­cam footage be released. During a press con­fer­ence after the inci­dent, Salt Lake City police Sgt. Keith Horrocks seemed to blame the child for the shooting.

Horrocks said that police were respond­ing to a call regard­ing “a vio­lent psych issue involv­ing a juve­nile male who had made threats.” He would not clar­i­fy who made the call or who was threat­ened by the 13-year-old, but he did allege that the threat was made with a weapon.

“Given the threats of the weapon, they arrived in the area and made con­tact with this male,” he said. “That male fled on foot away from the address, and dur­ing a short foot pur­suit, an offi­cer dis­charged his firearm, strik­ing that subject.”

But the 13-year-old was not found with a weapon, and his moth­er said she told offi­cers on the phone that her son did not have a weapon.

“I said, he’s unarmed, he doesn’t have any­thing, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and scream­ing. He’s a kid, he’s try­ing to get atten­tion, he doesn’t know how to reg­u­late,” she told KUTV.

The shoot­ing occurred as protests raged across the coun­try over the police killing of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York.* Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, was also in the mid­dle of a men­tal health cri­sis when police killed him. Like Cameron’s moth­er, Prude’s broth­er was the one who ini­tial­ly called 911 to get him help. It is not unusu­al for police to kill peo­ple with men­tal dis­abil­i­ties or ill­ness; the Washington Post esti­mat­ed that a quar­ter of peo­ple killed by police in the U.S. were in the throes of a men­tal or emo­tion­al crisis.

In her inter­view with the net­work, Barton repeat­ed­ly broke down cry­ing and said she did not under­stand why police had shot the boy.

“He’s a small child. Why didn’t you just tack­le him? He’s a baby. He has men­tal issues,” she said.

Editor’s Note; When we allow police to sim­ply shoot peo­ple tey deem dis­pos­able, this is the end result. For decades those dis­pos­ables were black and brown people.
Far too many white peo­ple remained silent because they fun­da­men­tal­ly believed their white skin is insu­la­tion against that savagery.
Unfortunately, white peo­ple are find­ing out that as Black peo­ple have tak­en to the streets to con­tin­ue to ham­mer home the point that far too many police offi­cers are killers, some of their white coun­ter­parts are awak­en­ing to the real­i­ty that they are not immune from that clear and present danger.
It may already be too late to put the Genie back in the bot­tle, many argue, we are in the clutch­es of a police state.

Rochester, N.Y. Police Chief La’Ron Singletary has resigned after a week of sus­tained protests over the March extra­ju­di­cial killing of Daniel Prude.

Singletary, who is Black, had received calls for his res­ig­na­tion after Prude’s fam­i­ly released body cam­era footage of his death last week. Prude was detained by police on March 22 after his broth­er called for a well­ness check for his sib­ling, who had men­tal health issues. Responding to the call, Rochester police placed a spit hood over the dis­tressed and unarmed man, pin­ning him to the ground in a chain of events that caused Prude to lose con­scious­ness. He died in a hos­pi­tal a week after the encounter.

But Singletary doesn’t appear to be bow­ing to the will of pro­test­ers, who have accused the police depart­ment and city gov­ern­ment of cov­er­ing up Prude’s death (there have also been calls for Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren to step down). According to a res­ig­na­tion let­ter obtained by WHAM-TV, Singletary’s quit­ting the job appears to be a protest in and of its own:
As a man of integri­ty, I will not sit idly by while out­side enti­ties attempt to destroy my char­ac­ter. The events over the past week are an attempt to destroy my char­ac­ter and integri­ty. The mem­bers of the Rochester Police Department and the Greater Rochester Community know my rep­u­ta­tion and know what I stand for. The mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and the politi­ciza­tion of the actions that I took after being informed of Mr. Prude’s death is not based on facts, and is not what I stand for.

According to reporters who were watch­ing the press con­fer­ence, includ­ing BuzzFeed’s Paul McLeod, Rochester’s entire com­mand staff has also stepped down.
The res­ig­na­tions also come just three days after New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced a grand jury would review Prude’s case, reports the New York Times. There has also been dis­agree­ment about how much was com­mu­ni­cat­ed between Singletary and Mayor Warren in the imme­di­ate after­math of Prude’s killing.

According to WHAM, Warren said she didn’t know the full details of Prude’s death, and that she had been told he died of a drug over­dose. During a news con­fer­ence last week, Warren said it wasn’t until August 4 that she saw footage of police arrest­ing Prude. Singletary said he called Warren on March 23 to alert her of the inci­dent, and that a crim­i­nal and inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion was underway.

Since Prude’s death has come to light, Warren has ordered that video of any in-cus­tody death be released with­in 24 hours. On Tuesday, Mayor Warren said the search has begun to find an inter­im police chief. It is unclear who will be in charge dur­ing tonight’s sched­uled protests.[from the root]

It should come as no sur­prise to any­one, that Prosecutors would do all in their pow­er to smear a Black per­son mur­dered by police, that is par for the course.
And as a con­se­quence, no per­son of any moral cer­ti­tude is sur­prised by the rev­e­la­tion of Jamarcus Glover’s attor­ney that pros­e­cu­tors offered a plea deal to Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend mis­ter Glover which required him to impli­cate the deceased Ms. Taylor as a part of his drug-deal­ing even after police had mur­dered her in her own home.
When we talk about the lev­el of lies and deceit, the com­plex web of col­lu­sion with­in the American so-called crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, no mat­ter how much we reveal, it does not begin to scratch the sur­face of the insid­i­ous racism of these people.

Jamarcus Glover turned the plea-deal down.
Nevertheless, Glover was arrest­ed the same night Taylor was killed, in a sep­a­rate raid on an alleged drug house about 10 miles away. Police say they “recov­ered approx­i­mate­ly 119.032 grams (4.2 ounces) of cocaine and over 10 dosage units of opi­ates,” accord­ing to court records. Glover’s attor­ney, Scott Barton, told NPR that as part of a lengthy plea nego­ti­a­tion, the Jefferson Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office offered Glover a deal that includ­ed nam­ing Taylor as a mem­ber of his “orga­nized crime syn­di­cate.” Barton said that he no longer has a copy of the ini­tial plea offer but that his client “imme­di­ate­ly reject­ed any­thing with her name in it.”
“He felt ter­ri­ble about the whole thing. That’s not a secret. And, you know, any type of plea that had her involved in any way was not going to be accept­able to him,” Barton said (NPR reported).

WDRB-TV in Louisville report­ed that the July 13 plea offer list­ed Taylor as a “co-defen­dant” of Glover’s, even though she had been dead four months. The deal required Glover to acknowl­edge that he, Taylor, and oth­ers engaged in orga­nized crime by traf­fick­ing large amounts of drugs “into the Louisville com­mu­ni­ty.”
Had Glover accept­ed the deal, the sta­tion report­ed, Glover could have seen his 10-year prison sen­tence drop to only probation.
Such is the lev­el of duplic­i­ty & lies that pros­e­cu­tors are pre­pared to engage in to cov­er the ass­es of police who mur­der Black people.
Even with the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments today that allows the eyes of the world to be trained on these most­ly white coun­ties across America, and despite all that is hap­pen­ing in major cities as well, Prosecutors con­tin­ue to engage in crim­i­nal­i­ty and uneth­i­cal lying and oth­er crimes to cov­er for police, despite draw­ing a salary from the public.

This is the kind of rep­re­hen­si­ble cor­rup­tion that African-Americans have suf­fered under from pub­lic offi­cials who have a duty to be fair and just. Instead, these irre­deemably cor­rupt white offi­cials con­tin­ue on, despite the cries against inher­ent racism and police violence.
The sad irony in this lat­est despi­ca­ble iter­a­tion of America’s racist jus­tice sys­tem, is that even if Breonna Taylor was involved in drug deal­ing, would the mon­sters who broke her door down be jus­ti­fied in putting eight bul­lets (8) in her body, and dozens more into her apartment?
The answer is no!
The calls to defund the police seem rather rad­i­cal to white peo­ple, even among those who are sup­pos­ed­ly less racist, (As if there is such a thing). Unfortunately, the calls to defund the police do not go near­ly far enough. The entire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is a farce that preys on Black cit­i­zens and pro­tects whites.
I am ashamed to admit that in utter igno­rance, I once admired this mon­strous ignobility.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

If you ever won­dered why a police offi­cer Rusten Sheskey, would feel at lib­er­ty to put sev­en bul­lets into the back of Jacob Blake in Kenosha County Wisconsin at point-blank range, please watch this video of the County Sheriff [David Beth] less than two years ago, in response to an inci­dent includ­ing 5 African-Americans teens who were charged with steal­ing from the Pleasant Prairie Premium Outlets and lead­ing deputies on a chase that end­ed with a crash.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile as you view the video, that no one was killed, in fact, no one was phys­i­cal­ly hurt from the teen’s escapade, though there should be no excuse for what they did. (As we know white teens do not com­mit crimes).
“They just need to dis­ap­pear.” Said[David Beth]. Beth want­ed the teens to sim­ply dis­ap­pear, what­ev­er that means, I guess it is up to offi­cers in Kenosha coun­ty to decide if errant teens dis­ap­pear in each indi­vid­ual case.(I sup­pose if they are black we all know what hap­pens to them).So when they encounter black teens who have com­mit­ted the unfor­giv­able sin of theft and flee­ing they should all disappear.
He then tried to clean up his piehole-full of racist gib­ber­ish, by sug­gest­ing that they should be ware­housed for the remain­der of their lives.
David Beth lat­er apol­o­gized for his state­ments, but there is noth­ing more reveal­ing of a per­son­’s char­ac­ter, or lack there­of, and their true feel­ings that their spo­ken words.

https://​youtu​.be/​8​i​O​B​a​j​_​a​H​Y​E​?​t=5

What makes this imbe­cile David Beth, even more rep­re­hen­si­ble, if that is at all pos­si­ble, is that after Kyle Rittenhouse the 17-year-old white vig­i­lante, mur­dered two peo­ple and shot anoth­er in the arm almost rip­ping it clear off. The very same piece of garbage Sheriff David Beth, blamed the vic­tims: “If they did not break the cur­few none of this would have hap­pened”.
David Beth also made excus­es for the cops who allowed the 17-year-old white ter­ror­ist to sim­ply walk right past them after he strolled up to their vehi­cles arms raised with the rifle he had just mur­dered two peo­ple with slung across his chest.
The mur­der­ous punk was all chum­my with police. This is a trend across America, heav­i­ly armed white suprema­cists and police are almost indis­tin­guish­able. Not just in the way they are dressed, but in the way they are chum­my together.

The domes­tic ter­ror­ists are allowed to attack inno­cent demon­stra­tors, while their col­leagues in blue do nothing.
Even when they assault demon­stra­tors their col­leagues in blue arrest and fur­ther bru­tal­ize the vic­tims of their assault.
Kyle Rittenhouse was giv­en bot­tled water by his col­leagues in what looked some­what like an MRAP vehi­cle, a cop on the vehi­cle thanked the would-be mur­der­er pro­fuse­ly for being there, moments before he snuffed out two lives, and per­ma­nent­ly altered sev­er­al others.

He was allowed to pass and go home to the state of Illinois from which he had trav­eled to com­mit mur­der, even though peo­ple at the scene repeat­ed­ly told police he had just killed two people.
Kyle Rittenhouse walked towards police vehi­cles, arms raised after killing two peo­ple. Police did not tack­le him to the ground, they dd not fire a sin­gle bul­let at the mur­der­er, he sim­ply was allowed to walk past them and leave the state. Not a sin­gle shot was fired, even though pro­test­ers on the scene yelled at police, telling them that Rittenhouse had just mur­dered two peo­ple and seri­ous­ly wound­ed another.

Just in case you ever won­dered where the bla­tant impuni­ty to use force includ­ing dead­ly force on African-Americans comes from, might I remind you it comes from the very top. The moron in chief sup­ports white suprema­cy, the right-wing supreme court sup­port white suprema­cy, low­er court judges and pros­e­cu­tors as well. It is a deeply entrenched culture.
Immediately after the cop pumped sev­en bul­lets into the back of Jacob Blake the Wisconsin attor­ney gen­er­al took to the micro­phones to say that Jacob Blake was near a knife when the shoot­ing took place, but would not say if Blake was car­ry­ing the knife when he was shot.

He would nev­er have made that state­ment about an inci­dent involv­ing some­one white. But what the (State Attorney)Josh Kaul, did was to remove him­self as the peo­ple’s lawyer and make him­self the spokesper­son for Rusten Sheskey, the cop who put sev­en holes into the back of Jacob Blake.
Without skip­ping a beat, Josh Kaul did two things,(a) he made him­self the spokesper­son for Rusten Sheskey by his words, and (b) he gave the defense a talk­ing point in the event that Rusten Shenskey is to be held account­able for his crimes.

https://​youtu​.be/​M​4​v​V​3​Y​s​5​A​J​Y​?​t=2

The state­ments com­ing from the mouths of Josh Kaul are in line with the nar­ra­tive com­ing from law enforce­ment, pros­e­cu­tors, and even mem­bers of the judiciary.
We men­tion these par­tic­u­lar groups out­side of the gen­er­al racism that exists on the polit­i­cal right. These groups have the abil­i­ty to seri­ous­ly impact and even take life.
Prosecutors in Georgia around the area that Ahmaud Arbery was slaugh­tered did all they could to bury the crimes of the father and son team who took it upon them­selves to mur­der him. One Prosecutor George Barnhill wrote to a Police Captain Tom Jump, with poten­tial arrest juris­dic­tion detail­ing why Travis and Greg McMichael should not face crim­i­nal charges“.
Breonna Taylor was mur­dered in her own home by cops who had no right to ever have entered her home. She was shot eight times and still, not a sin­gle cop has been held account­able for her murder.
Investigators and pros­e­cu­tors are sim­ply wait­ing for the protest to die down and every­one for­gets to announce that they inves­ti­gat­ed them­selves and found no wrongdoing.
Welcome to America, where a police depart­ment is inves­ti­gat­ed by anoth­er police depart­ment in the same coun­ty or state and we are told that the results are fair and impartial.

It appears Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and William Bryan were fol­low­ing in “hot pur­suit of a bur­glary sus­pect with sol­id first-hand prob­a­ble cause,” Barnhill wrote. “Arbery ini­ti­at­ed the fight. … At that point, Arbery grabbed the shot­gun (that Travis McMichael was hold­ing). Under Georgia law, McMichael was allowed to use dead­ly force to pro­tect himself.”
Another instance of a white pros­e­cu­tor paid by the peo­ple, includ­ing the black com­mu­ni­ty’s tax dol­lars, insert­ing him­self into an inves­ti­ga­tion and assert­ing a defense to the crim­i­nal assailants ben­e­fit against a Black victim.
The whole sys­tem is rot­ten to the core, at all lev­els of the American Criminal Justice sys­tem Racism is a can­cer­ous cyst that dai­ly eats away at the nation’s Black community.
Well after a decade after the FBI warned that white suprema­cists and oth­er neo-nazi groups were infil­trat­ing police depart­ments, (as if they weren’t already near­ly all full-fledged neo-nazi orga­ni­za­tions, we are now bet­ter able to under­stand why noth­ing has been done about it.
Why no one does any­thing about the heav­i­ly armed neo-nazi mili­tias across the coun­try. The police are now ful­ly-fledged a part of these mili­tias, even in blue states.
The entire jus­tice sys­tem is a white suprema­cist defense firm.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Police say two gun­men trav­el­ing on a motor­cy­cle attempt­ed to rob a motorist dri­ving along the West End main road in Negril on Wednesday.
According to the report, one of the men bran­dished a firearm and demand­ed that the dri­ver pull over, after pulling along­side his vehicle.

The dri­ver report­ed­ly ini­tial­ly com­plied, they then grabbed prop­er­ty from his vehi­cle and attempt­ed to get back on the motor­cy­cle, where­on the alert motorist rammed the motor­cy­cle send­ing them crash­ing into a build­ing. A ful­ly loaded 9mm pis­tol was seized at the scene.

One of the rob­bers was bad­ly injured accord­ing to reports and he was held at the scene, res­i­dents assist­ed the police who were quick on the scene with cap­tur­ing the oth­er man.

The scourge of rob­beries involv­ing two men on motor­cy­cles is all too real across the Island.
These two ver­min weren’t so lucky. These par­a­sites on motor­cy­cles rob and kill inno­cent cit­i­zens, and there seem to be no end insight to their reign of ter­ror.
This time lets cheer for the good guy who had the pres­ence not to cow­er in fear, but to fight back and send a strong mes­sage to these lowlives, that they can­not sim­ply take what they want, when­ev­er they feel like it.

The con­ver­sa­tion on race in America is being con­duct­ed as if the prob­lem is insur­mount­able as if there is no fix to it.
The fact is that there are peo­ple who do not believe that every oth­er human being should enjoy the rights and priv­i­leges that they enjoy so casu­al­ly and as a mat­ter of course…
I write this arti­cle as the Seattle City Council vot­ed to cut near­ly four mil­lion dol­lars from the police bud­get, and the City’s Black female police chief, Carmen Best, resigned in protest.

Best announced her retire­ment Monday night, short­ly after Seattle’s City Council vot­ed to cut near­ly $4 mil­lion from the police depart­men­t’s bud­get.
Best’s announce­ment came the same day the coun­cil approved the mid-year bud­get cut from the police depart­men­t’s 2019 – 2020 bud­get of $400 mil­lion. (accord­ing to CNN).
The Mayor of the city of Seattle, Jenny Durkan, heaped praise on Best, pic­tured above, after the City Council on Monday vot­ed 8 – 1 to defund its police force and kill 100 jobs.
To the Seattle Council, I say “bra­vo” thank you for stand­ing up to the tyran­ny that polic­ing has become.
The chief ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion there­after, and the Council had also vot­ed to slash her $285,000 a year salary.
The lone no vote came from Councilmember Kshama Sawant because she did not think the cuts went far enough, which makes lit­tle sense.

Alarmists who gin up fear about crim­i­nals tak­ing over cities and towns because of cuts to over-bloat­ed police depart­ments are the usu­al fear mon­gers, (hel­lo Marco Rubio, look at you). They are usu­al­ly white, enti­tled, and don’t give a damn about police mur­der­ing black peo­ple. They have lit­tle to no wor­ry about police abuse; police serve as pro­tec­tors of their white priv­i­lege.
In most com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, the police have been a force of ter­ror against res­i­dents for decades. The res­i­dents of those com­mu­ni­ties are forced to pay with their hard-earned tax dol­lars to have police over­lords abuse and kill their chil­dren.
The cit­i­zens of Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, New York, and places in between have every right to elect lead­ers who will car­ry out their will.
They have every right to demand from those lead­ers who are already in office to hear them on how they want their tax dol­lars spent.

Privileged white peo­ple with no fear of police abuse and frankly do not care whether black peo­ple live or die have no right or say ‑in what black res­i­dents demand in their com­mu­ni­ties.
Monies saved from cuts to police over-bloat­ed bud­gets and the lack of hir­ing of more aggres­sive, racist, une­d­u­cat­ed thugs as police offi­cers must now be divert­ed to pro­grams that begin to heal the hun­dreds of years of trau­ma on the black com­mu­ni­ty.
Housing, Health care, Education, Social Services, pre­vent­ing recidi­vism for inmates who want to assim­i­late into soci­ety, pro­vid­ing loans to sup­port black start-ups, etc.
All these things will expo­nen­tial­ly low­er crime and reduce the need for mas­sive mil­i­ta­rized police forces across the coun­try.
The mas­sive police build-up has become an out-of-con­trol behe­moth that many Mayors have lit­tle con­trol over.
They are gangs that ter­ror­ize cit­i­zens, make their own rules, and live by their own codes.
In city after city, we see lead­ers elect­ed by the city scared shit­less of these mas­sive police depart­ments and their cor­rupt unions.

In October of 2019, Axios wrote: In California, crit­ics of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department have been faced with a unique ver­sion of the issue: the exis­tence of what has been called “deputy gangs” — cliques of offi­cers who alleged­ly engage in vio­lent and poten­tial­ly crim­i­nal behav­ior while pro­tect­ing their mem­bers and clash­ing with oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cers.
These groups have report­ed­ly been around in some form or anoth­er in Los Angeles County since the 1970s and have been a fre­quent top­ic of local media report­ing. Outlets like the Los Angeles Times have high­light­ed how oth­er offi­cers have filed for­mal com­plaints about the “secre­tive groups,” describ­ing them as pow­er­ful forces with­in the sheriff’s depart­ment who beat and harass res­i­dents and, at times, active­ly work to intim­i­date oth­er non­af­fil­i­at­ed offi­cers. In 2018, the out­let not­ed that near­ly three dozen fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suits against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department point­ed to a deputy’s “gang cul­ture that encour­ages exces­sive force, par­tic­u­lar­ly against minori­ties.”In that time, near­ly three dozen fed­er­al law­suits have been filed against the depart­ment.
Despite the crim­i­nal acts those thugs com­mit, Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva argues that the groups are lit­tle more than “inter­gen­er­a­tional haz­ing.”

Arguably, one of the most impor­tant aspects of this defund­ing debate is the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars paid to vic­tims of police crimes.
For that pur­pose, I believe and encour­age pro­gres­sives not to engage with pro-police pro­po­nents who refuse to acknowl­edge the crimes being com­mit­ted by police.
Every Doctor has to have mal­prac­tice insur­ance to prac­tice their craft, Lawyers, and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als. A small busi­ness own­er has to pur­chase expen­sive insur­ance that guar­an­tees the pub­lic some lev­el of pro­tec­tion to the cus­tomer who graces their estab­lish­ments in case of a sim­ple fall.
Yet Police offi­cers, many of whom make well over a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars annu­al­ly, in some cas­es more than two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars each year, com­mit all kinds of crimes for which they are not pros­e­cut­ed. Yet, when their depart­ments get sued and are held to account finan­cial­ly, tax­pay­ers are forced to pay the tab.
Even under the rarest cir­cum­stances in which a vic­tim sues and is award­ed dam­ages, they do not pay; the tax­pay­ers pick up the tab for their crim­i­nal­i­ty because city lead­ers have set aside slush funds of your tax dol­lars as throw­away mon­ey to pay for their crimes.
That is a huge part of why they act with such bla­tant dis­re­gard and impuni­ty.
Qualified Immunity.

The Black police chief resigned because her salary was cut, and the depart­men­t’s bud­get was cut by a measly 4 mil­lion dol­lars, in addi­tion to the cut­ting of 100 offi­cers.
The Mayor bemoans that it is most like­ly that the offi­cers cut will be the last joined cops, arguably of a more diverse per­sua­sion.
Simply speak­ing, she wants us to believe that black cops will be the ones cut.
The fact is that (a) the Seattle Police depart­ment has been oper­at­ing under a con­sent decree from the Obama Administration; this is not a saint­ly police depart­ment; it has had issues of abus­ing cit­i­zens. The Mayor’s protes­ta­tions and praise amount to noth­ing more than a heap of horse manure.
(b) More Black or Hispanic cops do not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean bet­ter cops.
The NYPD is a per­fect exam­ple of that.
A total­ly out-of-con­trol mob that the city’s res­i­dents have been con­di­tioned to believe they can­not do with­out.
Regardless of col­or, cops will abuse cit­i­zens if they are allowed to get away with it.

Defunding the police is not an alien con­cept; it is what the pow­er struc­ture wants you to believe and what the idiots on the polit­i­cal right would have you believe because the police do their bid­ding.
Defunding the police does not mean get­ting rid of the police; it means invest­ing in our youth, in skills train­ing, in end­ing the school-to-prison pipeline that fat­tens already fat­cats that make up the one per­cent.
It means that America will final­ly begin to live up to its creed, that all men are cre­at­ed equal, not just emp­ty words, but in the way that each per­son is treat­ed equal­ly under the law.
When they refuse to lis­ten to your demands, you have no oblig­a­tion to give an ear to theirs.

We still need well-trained, respect­ful police offi­cers who enforce the laws with com­pas­sion, skill, and fair­ness. We need com­pe­tent detec­tives to inves­ti­gate crimes. We need well-trained swat units to save lives. We need com­mu­ni­ty-based offi­cers who live in the com­mu­ni­ties they police to respond to and pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ties.
What is cer­tain­ly not need­ed and must end are the heav­i­ly mil­i­ta­rized police depart­ments that have emerged, like stand­ing armies of sol­diers mak­ing ene­mies out of American cit­i­zens.
They do not oper­ate in white com­mu­ni­ties and have turned com­mu­ni­ties of col­or into ver­i­ta­ble battlefields.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a gen­tle­man who shall remain anony­mous recent­ly. He reached out to me on social media, as many often do when they read my Articles.
Sometimes I con­sid­er not respond­ing; at oth­er times, when I am led to, I do respond.
Sometimes they call, some­times mes­sage me, and we have pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tions on race.
In all of it, I feel vin­di­cat­ed in my long-held beliefs that a lack of expo­sure to oth­er cul­tures is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the per­sis­tent cul­ture of white racism that per­vades American soci­ety.
This con­ver­sa­tion was prompt­ed by my response to a vio­lent and uncalled-for police response that result­ed in offi­cers point­ing rifles at three young black teens who were the vic­tims of assault; despite being told they were the vic­tims, the cops con­tin­ued in the way they were oper­at­ing.
Here is the con­ver­sa­tion he had with me; full dis­clo­sure, I am a for­mer police offi­cer who served in one of the most vio­lent coun­tries in the world for a decade.

He:
Have you ever watched police shows like Live PD or Cops? Almost always, the first thing they do is make sure there is no weapons present. From my under­stand­ing, the call placed a knife on the scene. Because of that, the police had guns drawn. While they were try­ing to detain the teenagers, there was a lot of con­fu­sion, aside from the wit­ness­es. Multiple calls were made to alert the police. And two calls were dif­fer­ent. The only thing in com­mon in all calls was the knife. The police had to ensure the scene was safe for all par­ties. The time to tell the police what hap­pened is after the sub­jects are detained.

Me:

As a for­mer police offi­cer who did police work in one of the tough­est coun­tries in the world and was shot in the line of duty, I can state unequiv­o­cal­ly that there is nev­er a need to point a rifle at a sub­ject even if he is armed with a knife. These cops are doing far too much, and they con­tin­ue to push the bounds of creduli­ty so that they may con­tin­ue to use unjus­ti­fi­able lev­els of lethal force, where sim­ply talk­ing would suffice.

He:
Thank you for reply­ing on mes­sen­ger to my com­ments. It is exces­sive on the rifle being drawn. Thank good­ness no one was killed.

Me:

The police are act­ing as over­lords and as if they do not give a damn about per­cep­tions. The chil­dren they are trau­ma­tiz­ing today, please explain how they will cope with the results of what they have done. There are approx­i­mate­ly 40 mil­lion black peo­ple in the United States of America, and grow­ing, they are cre­at­ing a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for every­one with their dumb arro­gance. They serve the peo­ple, but they act like the peo­ple serve them.

He:
Honestly, I have no idea. You learn from any mis­take and try not to repeat it. People should not be defined by one mis­take, and yet they are. Today, you have peo­ple call­ing for social jus­tice but don’t believe in forgiveness.

Me:
Forgiveness is a the­o­ry root­ed in pen­i­tence and acknowl­edg­ing wrong­do­ing. Forgiveness is not an enti­tle­ment; it is some­thing that one is giv­en when one admits to wrong­do­ing and asks for it with con­tri­tion. When wrong­do­ing is not addressed, it foments anger and resentment.

He:
That is true. I find most peo­ple who are social jus­tice war­riors show no empa­thy towards any ideas that don’t align with theirs. Usually, name call­ing comes next with you’re a racist because of that belief. Or homo­pho­bic, and they are alien­at­ing peo­ple that do believe in some of their causes.

Me:
The cause of social jus­tice should be the cause of all decent human beings. The idio­cy of racial supe­ri­or­i­ty allows some peo­ple to ignore that salient fact. To me, racial supe­ri­or­i­ty is deeply root­ed in inse­cu­ri­ty cou­pled with extreme ignorance.

He:
I am a firm believ­er in the gold­en rule.

Me:
What is that?

He
Do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you. In short, treat peo­ple the way you want to be treated.

Me:
Well, I dare­say that is an impor­tant les­son that needs to be learned about the black expe­ri­ence in America. With that les­son should come a sin­cere apol­o­gy and heal­ing, but pride and arro­gance stand in the way of that hap­pen­ing. In the mean­time, the caul­dron of anger and resent­ment boils, and those forces will not be quelled with mil­i­ta­rized police or the mil­i­tary itself.

He:
I am just ready to go back to work.

Me:
I wish you well.

He:
Thank you. I am a teacher’s assis­tant at an ele­men­tary school. I did enjoy talk­ing with you, and it has opened my eyes.

Me:
The lines are always open. I believe that if we put our­selves in the shoes of oth­ers, life would be much eas­i­er. I enjoyed my talk with you as well, be safe.

He:
I will be safe.

Me:
I leave this with you. Humans are the only species that make an issue of col­or. Fish, mam­mals, and plant life are all hues, and flow­ers would be just bush with­out the dif­fer­ent col­ors. That is what makes racism so sil­ly. Have a good night.

He:
Have a great night.

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

If you are strug­gling to under­stand why peo­ple are call­ing for police depart­ments to be defund­ed and have those funds real­lo­cat­ed to human ser­vices such as men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, then please allow an inci­dent that occurred with the Los Angeles Police Department on Wednesday to serve as one glar­ing example. 

The Los Angeles Times reports that offi­cers with the LAPD respond­ed to a call of a sui­ci­dal man in Hollywood on Wednesday after­noon, and when they arrived on the scene, they encoun­tered the man — who was hold­ing a pair of scis­sors — as well as a Rottweiler. 

Josh Rubenstein, a police spokesman, told the Times that what hap­pened next is unclear, but some­how at the end of every­thing, both the dog as well as an offi­cer had been shot by so-called “friend­ly fire” from anoth­er officer. 

We have questions:

We have questions:

1. How many offi­cers responded?
2. Who was the tar­get of the gunfire?
3. Are scis­sors con­sid­ered a dead­ly weapon when matched against police offi­cers with guns?
4. Is pulling out a gun stan­dard pro­to­col when a per­son is hold­ing scis­sors and threat­en­ing to harm themselves?
5. Do y’all get it yet, or nah?

Rubenstein said that the inci­dent is still under inves­ti­ga­tion, and con­firmed that, while both an offi­cer and the dog had been shot, the dog was tak­en to a veterinarian’s office for treatment. 

Meanwhile, the report­ed sui­ci­dal man was tak­en into police cus­tody for…??? We don’t even know yet actu­al­ly, but we are con­fi­dent that the LAPD will come up with some kind of trumped-up charge as a way to place the blame for them shoot­ing them­selves while on a dis­tress call. 

Defund the police. Defund them now.

From the moment that Terrence Williams was installed as the head of the neo­phyte agency INDECOM, he made it clear by his words and deeds, that among his oth­er neg­a­tives, he had an extreme­ly nar­cis­sis­tic trait.
Now, I do believe that we all have a cer­tain degree of nar­cis­sism in us, not sure where ambi­tion ends and nar­cis­sism begins.
However, as far as Terrence Williams is con­cerned, I am no psy­chol­o­gist, but I thought the nar­cis­sis­tic traits in the man were so obvi­ous, the cus­to­di­an in his office could fig­ure it out.
[Phychology Today] had this to say about [nar­cis­sism]: Narcissism does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent a sur­plus of self-esteem or of inse­cu­ri­ty; more accu­rate­ly, it encom­pass­es a hunger for appre­ci­a­tion or admi­ra­tion, a desire to be the cen­ter of atten­tion, and an expec­ta­tion of spe­cial treat­ment reflect­ing per­ceived high­er status. 

Terrence Williams was appoint­ed the very first head of the fledg­ling INDECOM that was first autho­rized in 2010. His man­date was to pro­vide inde­pen­dent over­sight of the JCF, JDF, & Corrections Departments.
This over­sight was bad­ly need­ed, not just because of the numer­ous charges of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty lev­eled at the police in par­tic­u­lar, but because it was nec­es­sary to have an inde­pen­dent inves­tiga­tive ser­vice that would give cred­i­bil­i­ty to the good offi­cers.
Terrence Williams mis­un­der­stood his man­date and instead embarked on a rene­gade vendet­ta-laden mis­sion against the nation’s pre­em­i­nent law enforce­ment agency.
He showed up wher­ev­er there were press con­fer­ences giv­en by vir­u­lent­ly anti-police lob­by groups, and demon­strat­ed that there was no dif­fer­ence between their stance and his.

But as if asso­ci­at­ing with vir­u­lent anti-police groups and jostling for micro­phone time with them to demo­nize the secu­ri­ty forces was not enough, Terrence Williams picked fights with the Nation’s Director Of Public Prosecution, mak­ing scur­rilous claims that the [DPP] was not harsh enough on errant cops.
Not just that, Williams insin­u­at­ed that the DPP was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly drag­ging her feet in pros­e­cut­ing cops.
The fact that (a) the DPP’s office strug­gles might­i­ly with staff short­ages and is del­uged with a sheer vol­ume of cas­es, & (b) the three ses­sions at the cir­cuit lev­el makes it impos­si­ble to clear enough cas­es from the court dock­ets as any­one would like, © cas­es get held up by both the defense and pros­e­cu­tion side, none of that mat­tered in Terrence Williams’ nar­ra­tive.
Terrence Williams went ahead and arrest­ed cops he said had run afoul of the laws, (good), only that he did not have the pow­er to do so, even though he demon­stra­bly knew he had no such pow­er giv­en to him under the Law.
When Terence Williams was rebuffed by the local Appeals court he peti­tioned the UK Privy Council for the pow­er to pros­e­cute cas­es against the police, even though he knew that the law gave him no such pow­er, he said as much when he declared that the Parliament promised it would bestow the pow­er on his agency at the next review.
Since Terrence Williams knew unequiv­o­cal­ly that he had no pow­er to arrest police offi­cers why would he pur­sue the mat­ter to the privy coun­cil to prove some­thing he and the world already knew?
Narcissism!

Terrence Williams fought with the Police, need­less­ly, he fought for pow­ers to search the JDF facil­i­ties at Up Park Camp, he fought to empow­er crim­i­nals in the pris­ons when they were appro­pri­ate­ly dealt with by staff.
He took the DPP to court. His actions were chal­lenged by police offi­cers who fought back and they won in the courts.
I could go on and on about the tenure of Terrence Williams but I do believe I have made my point.
Like his patron Carolyn Gomes was even­tu­al­ly exposed as a fraud, so too has Terrence Williams been exposed even­tu­al­ly for the Jamaican peo­ple to see.
Unfortunately for the nation, the social exper­i­ment that was Terrence Williams was a fatal one. It has thank­ful­ly come to an end, but not with­out an incal­cu­la­ble cost.
In a des­per­ate attempt to divert atten­tion from his long list of fail­ures, Terrence Williams points to few­er police shoot­ings as a met­ric of his suc­cess.
That tells us who Terrence Williams has been work­ing for.

The sad real­i­ty is that many cops laid down arms, many stopped car­ing, they were not about to engage the killers, they weren’t about to risk get­ting per­se­cut­ed for doing their jobs in one of the world’s most vio­lent places.
The flip side of that is that thou­sands of peo­ple died at the hands of mur­der­ous killers, who ought to have been in prison, or tak­en out.
That is the lega­cy of Terrence Williams.
Tragically, Terrence Williams barefaced­ly, or unashamed­ly, you decide, told local media that giv­en a chance he would change noth­ing.
Those are the clas­sic signs of a [nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty].
He lacks the most basic humil­i­ty to see where he went wrong, to say I am human, I made mis­takes.
It is for those rea­sons that I am glad to see the back of this incor­ri­gi­ble creature.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Bernell Trammell, a 60-year old Black man who was known in his com­mu­ni­ty for his sup­port of Donald Trump, was report­ed­ly shot and killed in front of his store. The police are still search­ing for the shoot­er.
According to author­i­ties, the inci­dent hap­pened while Trammell was sit­ting on the side­walk of his pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny.
An unknown shoot­er then gunned him down execution-style.

Trammell, who owned a pub­li­ca­tion called eXpressions Journal, was a known polit­i­cal activist and Trump sup­port­er. He also advo­cat­ed for the Black Lives Matter move­ment.
“Because of Trammell’s well-known polit­i­cal activism and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his mur­der could be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed, I respect­ful­ly request that United States Attorney Matthew Krueger open an inves­ti­ga­tion,” Andrew Hitt, chair­man of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Meanwhile, no sus­pect has been in police cus­tody since the shoot­ing incident.

We are cred­i­bly informed that Hugh Faulkner has been sworn in to replace Terrence Williams as the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM.
As most of you know, Terrence Williams was the first com­mis­sion­er to be appoint­ed to head the new agency after the Act was autho­rized in the Island’s par­lia­ment in 2010.
Williams served the first term and was appoint­ed to a sec­ond, but opt­ed to leave ear­ly, sub­se­quent­ly cre­at­ing space for a new com­mis­sion­er to replace him.
[Faulkner was the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Legal Aid Council and has served on sev­er­al boards and tri­bunals includ­ing the Board of the Mico University College, the Toll Authority, Jamaica Mortgage Bank, Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, and the Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica]. (source, Jamaica Gleaner)

Terrence Williams’ tenure has been fraught with ten­sions between INDECOM and the JCF, and the JDF, two of three arms of gov­ern­ment, his agency is man­dat­ed to give over­sight to. The oth­er is the Corrections depart­ment.
Willimas’ tenure may only be summed up as a mis­placed belief that over­sight is syn­ony­mous with adver­sar­i­al.
There has been no mixed bag about Terrence Williams’ tenure as the head of INDECOM, there is no fac­tu­al basis on which to arrive at any oth­er con­clu­sion than to con­clude that his tenure has been a colos­sal fail­ure.
Williams and his sup­port­ers point to few­er police shoot­ings as a mea­sure of what they per­ceive to be a [suc­cess].
The harsh real­i­ty, is that many police offi­cers walked away from doing their jobs because of the con­fronta­tion­al and antag­o­nis­tic nature of Williams’ and INDECOM, the per­se­cu­tion he embarked on, accus­ing offi­cers of wrong­do­ing in cas­es where they were only doing their jobs.
As a result, Terrence Williams’ record as head of INDECOM has pro­duced far less pos­i­tive results than the CCRB was before the INDECOM act was autho­rized. Crime has increased expo­nen­tial­ly, includ­ing vio­lent crimes and thou­sands of Jamaicans have lost their lives need­less­ly as a con­se­quence of his tenure.
Though crime can­not rea­son­ably be laid sole­ly at the feet of INDECOM or Williams for that mat­ter, Williams’ acrony­mous rela­tion­ship, and his will­ing­ness to per­se­cute police offi­cers has lent itself to a mas­sive embold­en­ing of crim­i­nals in the coun­try, some­thing the Island will pay dear­ly for, long after Terrence Williams’ name is for­got­ten.
If the idea was to have thou­sands more inno­cent Jamaicans slaugh­tered need­less­ly, the coun­try over­run with more crim­i­nal­i­ty, and few­er mur­der­ers held account­able, then Terrence Williams and INDECOM have been a success.

Terrence Williams start­ed by enter­ing into an unholy alliance with Carolyn Gomes of JFJ, a rabid­ly anti-police group large­ly fund­ed by for­eign-inter­est, that start­ed oper­at­ing in Jamaica around the mid to late ’90s.
Gomez, a pedi­atric doc­tor seemed to have a vendet­ta against the police and she waged a relent­less cam­paign against the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency, with the silent acqui­es­cence of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
In the end, kar­ma had its way and Gomes was revealed to the Jamaican peo­ple and like a puff of smoke, Gomes dis­ap­peared with the wind.
At the time that the INDECOM act was cob­bled togeth­er under the infa­mous and abbre­vi­at­ed admin­is­tra­tion of Bruce Golding, they knew full well that Terrence Williams was an ego-mani­a­cal nar­cis­sis­tic Don Quixote with an agen­da against the police, but that was the per­son Golding, his par­ty and their PNP co-sign­ers wanted.

Terrence Williams’s tenure as the head of INDECOM must be remem­bered truth­ful­ly as a dis­mal fail­ure, that should nev­er be repli­cat­ed. It was one fraught with fights with oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies at a time when he ought to have been build­ing bridges in order to achieve suc­cess for the Jamaican peo­ple.
Continued media pos­tur­ing, court fights, cat­fight­ing, and shame­ful demand for more pow­er instead of doing the job he was paid to do was all that Terrence Williams gave Jamaica.
In the end, thou­sands of Jamaicans died who should nev­er have died.
Finally, the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple began to wake up to the harm INDECOM has been doing and their inter­est in the agency began to wane.
The JCF, JDF, & Corrections should have inde­pen­dent over­sight of their oper­a­tion. No agency that is giv­en such awe­some pow­ers, includ­ing the pow­er of life and death should be allowed to inves­ti­gate itself any­more.
Nevertheless, the inves­ti­gat­ing agency should be fair, impar­tial, and sin­gu­lar­ly sole­ly focused on get­ting to the truth.
Terrence Williams shred­ded INDECOM’s mis­sion from the start, it is any­one’s guess whether this [new fel­low] will be able to resus­ci­tate that bad­ly dam­aged image.

Is he anoth­er polit­i­cal flunky with an agen­da, is he focused on the task at hand, or is he there to pon­tif­i­cate on the tax­pay­er’s dime?
We will with­hold judg­ment, but as we warned about Williams, and kept his feet to the fire while the nation slept, so too will [this fel­low] be under the micro­scope, good or bad.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.