Many white peo­ple are desen­si­tized to police vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or. Others say just do as they say in a cold, cal­cu­lat­ed way that is devoid of under­stand­ing that police are not oper­at­ing with­in the laws but, from what we say dai­ly, are oper­at­ing as occu­pa­tion­al forces in our communities.
Ant to be fair, some con­sci­en­tious white peo­ple under­stand that what is hap­pen­ing is not polic­ing but mur­der under the col­or of law.
On the oth­er hand, when it comes to defund­ing police depart­ments and using the mon­ey for oth­er com­mu­ni­ty uses, and hold­ing police account­able the white pop­u­la­tion, Republicans and Democrats once again coa­lesce around the con­struct of policing.
This writer is a strict law and order per­son who spent a decade in law enforce­ment. Nevertheless, I can­not remain silent and pre­tend that what police are doing under the col­or of the law is not murder.
It pains my heart to see police offi­cers snuff­ing out the life of peo­ple, using pre­tex­tu­al stops as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to abuse and mur­der citizens.
As I have said, white dis­in­ter­est in police vio­lence and mur­der of black peo­ple and oth­er peo­ple of col­or is a dan­ger­ous strategy.
If we are not vig­i­lant in con­trol­ling the peo­ple we give pow­er to, they will use it against us, who gave it to them in the first place.
No one is safe if police can sim­ply shout ‘gun’, and sum­mar­i­ly exe­cute a per­son in the safe place of their car, home, or any oth­er place.
Whether black or white, we are all one race of people.….the human race. The illic­it tak­ing of inno­cent life in the United States by police is a can­cer that threat­ens us all. (mb)

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.
—Martin Niemöller

Police in Farmington, Utah, released body cam­era footage Wednesday that cap­tured the bar­rage of gun­fire which killed a 25-year-old man dur­ing a traf­fic stop last week. Chase Allan was pulled over by Farmington police on March 1 at around 3:20 p.m. near a post office after an offi­cer spot­ted an ille­gal license plate — a plac­ard with a flag — on Allan’s blue BMW, Farmington police Chief Eric Johnsen said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence Wednesday. During the press con­fer­ence, Johnsen told reporters that offi­cers start­ed to shoot after they saw Allan reach down, but also said that it is unclear exact­ly what hap­pened in those brief sec­onds because the body cam­er­a’s view is unclear.

The footage — a com­pi­la­tion video of five body-worn police cam­eras and a sin­gle dash­board cam­era — shows a police car fol­low­ing Allan’s BMW into a park­ing lot. The offi­cer parks behind Allan’s car walks over to it, and taps on the dri­ver’s win­dow. Allan cracks open the win­dow while hold­ing a cell­phone. “The rea­son you were stopped today is there is no reg­is­tra­tion on your vehi­cle,” the offi­cer tells Allan in the video. “I don’t need reg­is­tra­tion and I don’t answer ques­tions,” Allan replies. “Alrighty,” the offi­cer says, and then pro­ceeds to call back­up. The offi­cer and Allan go back and forth about why he was pulled over, before the offi­cer tells Allan he is “detained and not free to leave.” He then con­tin­ues to ask for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Allan can be heard cit­ing what he claims are legal argu­ments for his refusal to pro­vide one. “I under­stand what you are say­ing,” the offi­cer replies. “But you are law­ful­ly required to iden­ti­fy yourself.”

Testifying before the Parliament Internal and External Affairs Committee Deputy Indecom Commissioner Hamish Campbell, In response to the PNP’s Lisa Hanna’s ques­tion, why most offi­cers involved in fatal shoot­ings were not charged, respond­ed, “.A great major­i­ty of the [police] shoot­ings, to use an American term, are ‘law­ful but awful.’
Not sure where Hamish Campbell saw that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, but first, I would like to address Lisa Hanna’s ques­tion of why most cops are not charged when they are engaged in police-relat­ed shootings.
Was her ques­tion a real ques­tion? Did she ask the ques­tion for the edi­fi­ca­tion of the pub­lic? It is dif­fi­cult to tell when one under­stands the igno­rance and pom­pos­i­ty of these so-called leg­is­la­tors, but I will let this one slide.
Before I go any fur­ther, I would like to high­light what the Bucky mas­sa said. 

The vast major­i­ty of offi­cers are not charged because the shoot­ings are legitimate.
Before we move for­ward, how­ev­er, let us dis­sect this issue to gain some clar­i­ty. As a writer who opines on the issue of police vio­lence dai­ly, it is impor­tant to appre­ci­ate the dynam­ic dif­fer­ences between Jamaican polic­ing and what pass­es for polic­ing across the United States.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​5​1​727 – 2/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​e​f​u​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​o​u​n​d​-​p​r​i​n​c​i​p​le/

Literally every issue in the United States is col­ored by race, polic­ing chief among those issues. Jamaican polic­ing is free from racial bag­gage. Some would argue that there is clas­sism in Jamaican polic­ing. However, the lack of sup­port Jamaican cops receive from the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship makes it less like­ly that offi­cers would engage in clas­sism in per­form­ing their duties in Jamaica. In the United States, the police are backed up by the courts, the leg­is­la­tures, and the exec­u­tive, not to men­tion the vast major­i­ty of the white population.
Jamaican police vio­lence must also be con­tex­tu­al­ized, ie that the nation has a high rate of vio­lence, is a world leader in homi­cides and is a coun­try with an inor­di­nate amount of ille­gal weapons in the hands of vio­lent criminals.
It is impos­si­ble to rule out that there are strains of extra­ju­di­cial killings due to the judi­cia­ry’s refusal to fol­low the laws relat­ed to vio­lent criminals.
Hamish Campbell then went on: “So the use of force has been nec­es­sary, and the indi­vid­ual offi­cer is con­cerned for his own life or safe­ty of him­self or anoth­er.” “But what is hap­pen­ing for a lot of these cas­es, the tac­tics and approach could be dif­fer­ent in some of the cir­cum­stances because, once a police offi­cer draws the gun, there is almost an inevitabil­i­ty about what will hap­pen; he will cer­tain­ly use it and result­ing in death and injury.”

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​u​n​i​o​n​-​c​o​n​f​i​r​m​-​w​h​y​-​d​e​f​u​n​d​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​i​s​-​s​o​u​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​cy/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​c​a​n​n​o​t​-​r​i​d​-​t​h​e​m​s​e​l​v​e​s​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​e​m​b​e​d​d​e​d​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​p​s​y​c​h​es/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​a​j​e​e​-​s​e​a​b​r​o​o​k​s​-​d​e​d​i​c​a​t​e​d​-​h​i​s​-​l​i​f​e​-​t​o​-​r​e​d​u​c​i​n​g​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​-​c​o​m​m​u​n​i​t​y​-​t​h​e​n​-​h​e​-​w​a​s​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

Most of the research and writ­ings I have done have cen­tered on American police, one of the obser­va­tions I have made is that the defund the police call is legit­i­mate because cops should not be han­dling men­tal health calls. Simply put, we ask police offi­cers to do too much. In the United States, cops are asked to do far less than in Jamaica, yet they are giv­en far more to get the job done. Still, across the United States, police offi­cers resort to lethal vio­lence in many sit­u­a­tions where a dif­fer­ent approach would have suf­ficed with less trau­mat­ic results.
And so, I have argued that a police offi­cer should not strive to be only law­ful but should also be moral­ly jus­ti­fied in their use of force, par­tic­u­lar­ly in uti­liz­ing lethal force.
An offi­cer should not use lethal force because the law will exon­er­ate him; his con­science should also exon­er­ate him.
There are non-lethal tools that will reduce police shoot­ings, Tasers and even nets to cor­ral a per­son expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal episode. Under no cir­cum­stances should a per­son expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal episode become a vic­tim of police bullets.
In the same breath, it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to rec­on­cile in Jamaica that the police do not have enough tools to avoid using lethal force in such cir­cum­stances as with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal episodes or who are con­sid­ered mad.
Many police offi­cers have been seri­ous­ly injured and killed try­ing to avoid using lethal force on vio­lent street peo­ple, some of whom had already seri­ous­ly wound­ed civilians.
Politicians liv­ing in lit­tle bub­bles in Jamaica who would ask sil­ly ques­tions would be bet­ter-served read­ing instead of pon­tif­i­cat­ing on sub­jects they do not know about.
INDECOM has come a long way since the days of dem­a­goguery under Terrence Williams; thank God he crawled under a rock, hope­ful­ly nev­er to be heard from again.
Police do need over­sight. I am hap­py to see that the agency is evolv­ing by pub­lish­ing facts and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on how it feels the pub­lic may be bet­ter served. In the same breath, those who make pol­i­cy must rec­og­nize that there is a big dif­fer­ence between those who sit and ana­lyze after the fact and those who actu­al­ly face the dangers.
We know that com­mon sense and the abil­i­ty to crit­i­cal-think are in short sup­ply in many who pass for legislators.

.

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

AT THIS POINT WORDS JUST CANNOT SUFFICE. IF WE ARE NOT AT CRITICAL MASS, I DON’T KNOW WHEN WE WILL GET TO THE TIPPING POINT WHERE AS A PEOPLE, WE SAY NO MORE. NO PERSON GOING THROUGH MENTAL DISTRESS DESERVES TO BE KILLED BY POLICE. 

Marquise Francis National Reporter

More than four days after Najee Seabrooks was shot and killed by Paterson police dur­ing a men­tal health cri­sis, his loved ones expressed out­rage at a vig­il Tuesday evening in Seabrooks’s home­town of Paterson, N.J. In a trag­ic twist of irony, the 31-year-old father of a lit­tle girl worked as a vio­lence inter­ven­tion activist to keep the most at-risk youth in his com­mu­ni­ty safe, but became a vic­tim of vio­lence him­self. “He did every­thing he could to serve his peo­ple,” Seabrooks’s best friend, Terrance Drakeford, said at the event, held out­side the offices of the Paterson Healing Collective (PHC), a group ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing sup­port for sur­vivors of vio­lence, where the two worked togeth­er. Upwards of 300 mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty and con­stituents from anti-vio­lence groups statewide gath­ered as tem­per­a­tures dropped to bone-chill­ing lev­els. Following the prayer vig­il, the group marched two blocks down the street to City Hall to hold a sec­ond demon­stra­tion on the steps out­side where city lead­ers were meet­ing to dis­cuss how the city would move forward.

There was anger, frus­tra­tion and pas­sion ema­nat­ing from atten­dees as speech­es inter­twined with chants of “Justice for Najee,” “No jus­tice, no peace,” and “Stop police bru­tal­i­ty in the Black com­mu­ni­ty.” “We want jus­tice,” Drakeford said. “We want what­ev­er that comes with this.”

But those who knew Seabrooks best are skep­ti­cal of the police account of what hap­pened and are urg­ing the imme­di­ate release of body cam­era record­ings of the inci­dent so the pub­lic can see for them­selves what took place. “We want full trans­paren­cy, the names of all the offi­cers released and body cam­era footage released,” Seabrooks’s broth­er Eli Carter said Tuesday. Seabrooks had con­tact­ed mem­bers of the PHC dur­ing his cri­sis, but police refused to let them inter­vene. Law enforce­ment said they could not allow civil­ians to involve them­selves in cri­sis pre­ven­tion and shot Seabrooks only after he wield­ed a knife and moved toward the offi­cers. Officials told Paterson Press that one of Seabrooks’s rel­a­tives who works as a police offi­cer in anoth­er city was brought to the scene to try to deesca­late the sit­u­a­tion. “I keep play­ing Friday over and over in my head,” Liza Chowdhury, project direc­tor of the PHC, said Tuesday, fight­ing back tears. “Police refused to let us inter­vene despite help­ing more than 250 res­i­dents through­out this city. I plead­ed with them, and I know if they let us inter­vene he would still be alive. … He called us to help.” Teddie Martinez, vio­lence inter­ven­tions coör­di­na­tor for the PHC, said he also plead­ed with police to allow him to help on Friday, but to no avail. “We train the offi­cers [on deesca­la­tion tac­tics], and how iron­ic they didn’t let us help,” Martinez said. “All I said was, ‘Let me see his face and I’ll go.’ They want­ed to make it their show.”

.…

The state attor­ney general’s office is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and we express our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, loved ones and friends, and col­leagues of the dece­dent,” Dan Prochilo, a spokesper­son for the attor­ney general’s office, told Yahoo News. “Our office is com­mit­ted to thor­ough­ly, fair­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing fatal police encoun­ters.” Prochilo added that the office will make all infor­ma­tion avail­able, includ­ing video, when the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete. Paterson Mayor André Sayegh has been qui­et since Friday’s shoot­ing, accord­ing to local res­i­dents. On Saturday he issued his only state­ment on the inci­dent, wel­com­ing the attor­ney general’s review and say­ing that “prayers and con­do­lences are with Mr. Seabrook’s [sic] fam­i­ly, friends and our impact­ed com­mu­ni­ty.” When con­tact­ed by Yahoo News, his office shared the same state­ment, adding that it had “no fur­ther com­ment at this time.” During one of the speech­es Tuesday night, an attendee shout­ed, “Where is the may­or? He knocked on my door to vote for him dur­ing elec­tion time, but I don’t see him here!

Community distrust in Paterson leadership

For many crit­ics in the com­mu­ni­ty already on edge fol­low­ing Seabrooks’s killing, each pass­ing day with no addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion only adds to the angst and frus­tra­tion. “In Memphis, they fired the cops with­in two weeks,” Larry Hamm, chair­man of the People’s Organization for Progress, a social jus­tice advo­ca­cy group, said, ref­er­enc­ing Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man fatal­ly beat­en by Memphis police fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop in January. “If they had let the Paterson Healing Collective inter­vene, he would be alive today.” “How many Black men need to be killed before they take us seri­ous­ly?” Councilman Michael Jackson said before enter­ing a City Council meet­ing where only 20 res­i­dents were allowed inside.

The Black Lives Matter chap­ter in Paterson has pre­sent­ed a list of demands for the city, which include the imme­di­ate release of police body cam­era footage of the inci­dent and plac­ing the offi­cers involved in the shoot­ing on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The group, spear­head­ed by leader Zellie Thomas, also demands a restruc­tur­ing of the city’s police depart­ment that would include cre­at­ing a civil­ian com­plaint review board to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of police wrong­do­ing in addi­tion to invest­ing more mon­ey in com­mu­ni­ty groups that give Paterson res­i­dents pos­i­tive out­lets. “We have to open up people’s eyes that police offi­cers are not the only solu­tion to crises,” Thomas told Yahoo News, not­ing that conver­sa­tions about actu­al change come to a halt once the con­ver­sa­tion about the real­lo­ca­tion of police fund­ing comes up. The Paterson Police Department rep­re­sents more than 16% of the city’s bud­get, receiv­ing more than $43 mil­lion last year, which is more than dou­ble the per­cent­age that New York City allo­cates to its police depart­ment.

History of Paterson police violence

Seabrooks’s death isn’t the first case in which Paterson police have come under scruti­ny for their han­dling of peo­ple hav­ing a men­tal health cri­sis. In January 2019, 27-year-old Jameek Lowery died after con­sum­ing ille­gal drugs and express­ing feel­ings of “para­noia” before being repeat­ed­ly struck by police offi­cers try­ing to restrain him on an ambu­lance gur­ney. A law­suit filed by Lowery’s fam­i­ly cites at least three oth­er instances — two of them fatal — since 2012 in which Paterson police shot indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health episodes. There was also the death of 25‑year-old Thelonious McKnight, who was killed in late 2021 while flee­ing police. Hamm believes that the issue of race can­not be ignored. Paterson has just over 157,000 res­i­dents, made up of 87% Black and Hispanic res­i­dents and 8% white res­i­dents, accord­ing to the lat­est cen­sus data. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 Paterson offi­cers are white, while about 62% are Black or Hispanic. “There is a dif­fer­ent way that they treat Black peo­ple in dis­tress from white peo­ple in dis­tress,” Hamm said. Michael Mitchell, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of African American stud­ies and crim­i­nol­o­gy at the College of New Jersey, told Yahoo News that the need for trans­paren­cy is urgent. “It is no secret that the Paterson Police Department is inun­dat­ed in a legit­i­ma­cy cri­sis due to the city’s tox­ic cop cul­ture,” he said in an email, point­ing to a recent Paterson police cor­rup­tion case. “Therefore, the urgency in releas­ing pub­licly the body-worn cam­era footage from the police emer­gency respon­ders involved can­not be over­stat­ed. A time lag in trans­paren­cy only exac­er­bates com­mu­ni­ty dis­trust in the insti­tu­tion pub­licly fund­ed to pro­tect and serve them.”

Police intervention with mental health crises under scrutiny

While many men­tal health advo­cates believe that offi­cers need addi­tion­al train­ing to deal with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health crises, oth­er advo­cates say police should not be involved at all unless the per­son is armed and an imme­di­ate threat to oth­ers. They say police are sim­ply unqual­i­fied to han­dle the nuances of such sit­u­a­tions. In New Jersey, Mitchell notes, the pilot pro­gram ARRIVE Together, which pairs police with men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als dur­ing cri­sis calls, is show­ing promise, and Gov. Phil Murphy recent­ly announced a $10 mil­lion invest­ment in expand­ing the pro­gram statewide. “It is crit­i­cal that police agen­cies and offi­cers under­stand and oper­ate under the recog­ni­tion that you can­not respond to every per­son the same,” Mitchell said. “There can be no ‘one size fits all’ approach to polic­ing, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis.” Last year a three-dig­it National Suicide Prevention Lifeline num­ber, 988, offi­cial­ly launched, allow­ing any­one wit­ness­ing or expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis to call, text or chat to talk to some­one. But a Yahoo News report found that many states did not have the resources to staff and sup­port the line adequately.

Over the last few years, sev­er­al cities, includ­ing New York, Chicago and Denver, have launched pro­grams that replace police response with men­tal health emer­gency respon­ders and have seen suc­cess. But crit­ics argue that the move­ment exists in far too few places and is expand­ing far too slow­ly. In Paterson, progress on the imple­men­ta­tion of a task force has been incon­sis­tent at best. Mayor Sayegh intro­duced a cit­i­zens’ de-esca­la­tion task force in December 2021, but, accord­ing to Thomas, the group has nev­er met and has not rolled out a sin­gle new reg­u­la­tion. “This task force was sup­posed to be able to research best prac­tices and best poli­cies for offi­cers to be equipped with de-esca­la­tion prac­tices and poli­cies, and over a year lat­er, that de-esca­la­tion task force still has not met,” Thomas said. “What if that task force had met and was already research­ing some of the things we are propos­ing now and imple­ment­ed it? It could have saved his life.”

Seabrooks’s legacy

According to those who knew him best, Seabrooks will be remem­bered by the com­mu­ni­ty as some­one who would do any­thing for those in need. His fam­i­ly start­ed a GoFundMe to cov­er funer­al expens­es and cre­ate a trust fund for his daugh­ter. His moth­er, Melissa Carter, told the CBS News local affil­i­ate in New York that her son loved his city so much that he gave of him­self in spite of his own per­son­al cir­cum­stances. “He planned toy give­aways, he donat­ed, he had home­less dri­ves,” Carter said. “All he want­ed to do was help the community.”

_​_​_​_​_​

mmm

A Tulare County police offi­cer was sen­tenced Tuesday for a series of rapes he did while on duty, includ­ing one in uni­form, pros­e­cu­tors said. Oscar Robles, 30, raped two dif­fer­ent vic­tims between April 2017 and January 2018, threat­en­ing to use his offi­cial pow­ers as a Woodlake offi­cer to arrest them if they did not sub­mit to the sex­u­al assault, the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office said.

A teacher in Louisiana and Mississippi makes around forty to fifty thou­sand dol­lars( $40.000 to $50.000) annu­al­ly. Usually, that per­son must com­plete four years of under­grad­u­ate stud­ies, then anoth­er two years of post-grad­u­ate work, depend­ing on the per­son­’s sched­ule to earn a mas­ter’s degree…
Some Masters’s pro­grams can be com­plet­ed in less than two years if the stu­dent goes to school full-time, but it can also take more time. So on aver­age, it takes about six years to get to the lev­el of becom­ing a Teacher.
During the course of those stud­ies, a young per­son can rack up stu­dent loan debts of nine­ty to a hun­dred thou­sand dollars.
A police recruit spends an aver­age of 13 to 19 weeks in an acad­e­my. During train­ing, a police cadet is paid a salary; the salary will depend on the city, town, or munic­i­pal­i­ty where the cadet is being trained.
Teachers are some­times forced to use their own mon­ey to pur­chase crit­i­cal sup­plies to help their stu­dents. This is despite the low salaries they are paid. No one becomes any­thing with­out teach­ers, yet teach­ers are not giv­en the com­pen­sa­tion and respect they deserve.
Young peo­ple are [not] lin­ing up to be teach­ers and for good rea­sons. Factors impact­ing teacher reten­tion include heavy work­load, low pay, and esca­lat­ing liv­ing costs, with some 80% of sur­vey respon­dents say­ing it was dif­fi­cult to find afford­able hous­ing close to where they teach. Many also cit­ed a lack of sup­port from dis­trict administrators.

Some police salaries are so out­ra­geous that some peo­ple are begin­ning to speak out in dis­gust. On one social media site, one such dis­gust­ed per­son wrote.
MS of Science from Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (Graduated 2020). Police & Firefighters in California are the high­est com­pen­sat­ed in the entire world. Whoever tells you that is not true they are prob­a­bly talk­ing about the low­er cost of liv­ing cities of California. Here’s an exam­ple of a police offi­cer in San Mateo, California. He joined the force in May 2019, and his total com­pen­sa­tion for 2020 was 221K. Google engi­neers in the first three years don’t bring this kind of mon­ey. I work a salary job, have an advanced degree, and live in San Mateo; I don’t bring this kind of mon­ey home. This is INSANE. The high­est-paid cop in Oakland made 640K a year, more than the President of the US. Of course, cops will be cocky and dis­re­spect­ful when you pay them like CA does, walk­ing with a gun and a bul­let­proof vest and mak­ing 3 – 4 times the nation­al aver­age. Police are so out of real­i­ty that $250 (min­i­mum tick­et in Bay Area) might seem like not a lot of mon­ey, espe­cial­ly since they live on 200K+ income. People sym­pa­thize with cops (like I used to) as they believe their “hard job” is not appre­ci­at­ed and they don’t get paid enough. No way should a police offi­cer should get more than a sol­dier on the bat­tle­field thou­sands of miles away from home.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would find com­mon cause with any­thing an American police union says, does, or pro­pos­es; until I do.….Wonders of won­ders, even a bro­ken clock, is right twice daily.
On February 28^th, just days ago, I wrote that despite bloat­ed police bud­gets, there are increas­es in shoot­ings and murders.
The sim­ple fact is that more police and arma­ments do not result in few­er shoot­ings or murders.
In my February 28^th arti­cle, I dis­cussed the vio­lence in Chicago and why Mayor Lori Lightfoot did not deserve a sec­ond term in office.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​l​o​a​t​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​b​u​d​g​e​t​s​-​i​n​c​r​e​a​s​e​s​-​i​n​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​gs/

My main argu­ment for remov­ing Lightfoot was cen­tered around her posi­tion in 2020. Despite sup­port­ing mea­sures to defund the police, a pro­posed $80 mil­lion cut to her city’s police bud­get, Lori Lightfoot, see­ing the writ­ing on the wall in inter­nal polling, decid­ed to crit­i­cize Brandon Johnson, a Cook County com­mis­sion­er who was gain­ing momen­tum, assail­ing him as a “rad­i­cal” who’d “wreck Chicago with dan­ger­ous defund­ing of police.”
You can all see what she did there; as soon as she saw that peo­ple had got­ten fed up with her, she decid­ed to snug­gle up to the police and their union.
But my arti­cle was not about the failed Chicago Mayor who blamed gen­der and race for her deserved loss at the polls, nev­er mind that she nev­er com­plained about those bias­es against her when she won; it is about remov­ing police as much as pos­si­ble from the lives of peo­ple. I con­tend that defund­ing the police is a sound pol­i­cy that has noth­ing to do with get­ting rid of the police. It means tak­ing some of the mon­ey out of police bud­gets and putting it into social pro­grams that bet­ter serve our communities.
I argued that defund­ing the police has been ren­dered so radioac­tive Democrats are afraid even to debate it on its mer­its out of fear that Republicans will gaslight them as anti-police and soft on crime.
Because, of course, although it was Republicans that stormed the Capitol and attempt­ed to over­throw the gov­ern­ment, they have man­aged to gaslight Democrats as pro-crim­i­nal and got­ten away large­ly because Democrats are weak and feckless.
Black peo­ple who both­er pay­ing atten­tion know that the more their tax dol­lars go to fund the police, the less safe they become.
Many calls police 911 switch­boards receive do not require police to show up armed with guns to deal with per­sons hav­ing men­tal issues or oth­er med­ical emergencies.
Minor traf­fic acci­dents, health issues, men­tal health, and oth­er issues can be tack­led with­out armed police, with god com­plex show­ing up and wors­en­ing bad sit­u­a­tions.
People do not need their loved ones killed because they call 911 for help deal­ing with the afore­men­tioned issues. It is not that police should not earn their keep. Police have become far too tox­ic and untrust­wor­thy that the least amount of con­tact they have with the pub­lic, the safer the pub­lic will be.

NOW HERE IS THE SHOCKER

(Reported by Yahoo news)

An Oak Lawn police offi­cer plead­ed not guilty Wednesday to charges of aggra­vat­ed bat­tery and offi­cial mis­con­duct for his alleged­ly strik­ing a then 17-year-old Bridgeview teen more than 10 times in the face and head as he was lay­ing face down in the street dur­ing an arrest cap­tured on video last July. Officer Patrick O’Donnell was released on an indi­vid­ual recog­ni­zance bond, accord­ing to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. He has been with the depart­ment since December 2014. He was indict­ed by a grand jury Feb. 14. O’Donnell is one of three offi­cers involved in the July 27 arrest of the teen, caught on video, which start­ed as a traf­fic stop and end­ed with the teen run­ning from offi­cers and being chased. O’Donnell, 32, is sched­uled to appear April 6 before Cook County Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson.

On July 27, O’Donnell was on-duty work­ing in a marked squad car when he pulled over a sedan with three juve­niles that he said had a smell of burnt cannabis, accord­ing to a bond prof­fer filed Wednesday by coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors. O’Donnell searched the vehi­cle and asked a pas­sen­ger who was sit­ting in the rear seat behind the dri­ver to step out. The pas­sen­ger ran off as he was being searched by the offi­cer, accord­ing to the prof­fer. O’Donnell chased him, order­ing him to stop, while a sec­ond offi­cer, Brandon Collins, arrived and took the juve­nile to the ground, accord­ing to the fil­ing. Prosecutors say O’Donnell began hit­ting the juve­nile in the 9500 block of South McVicker Avenue in Oak Lawn, while Collins pulled at his arms. At one point, O’Donnell used his left hand to hold the juve­nile by his head and hair as he “repeat­ed­ly” used his left hand to punch the youth in the face and head, accord­ing to the prof­fer. A third offi­cer, Mark Hollingsworth arrived and “applied a pres­sure point” behind the juvenile’s ear while O’Donnell con­tin­ued to punch him, the prof­fer said. O’Donnell punched the juve­nile more than 10 times, pros­e­cu­tors alleged.

Collins then applied a Taser to the juvenile’s back, and he was placed into hand­cuffs. A pis­tol was recov­ered from the juvenile’s bag, the prof­fer said. The juve­nile was tak­en to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and treat­ed for a bro­ken nose, cuts and bruis­es and sub­dur­al bleed­ing. Zaid Abdallah, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the teen’s fam­i­ly, said at a news con­fer­ence last month his client has one more surgery left as a result of injuries he received, and that he’s under­go­ing men­tal health treat­ment. An attor­ney for O’Donnell did not return mes­sages Wednesday seek­ing com­ment, nor did Oak Lawn offi­cials. O’Donnell, Collins and Hollingsworth are named in a fed­er­al law­suit filed Aug. 1, alleg­ing they “engaged in extreme and out­ra­geous con­duct” in the teen’s arrest. Video pro­vid­ed by police as well as video tak­en by wit­ness­es show offi­cers repeat­ed­ly punch­ing the youth as he was pinned down. The arrest and video footage sparked protests and the law­suit alleges the three offi­cers involved in the arrest con­spired among one anoth­er in a “racial­ly moti­vat­ed con­spir­a­cy” to deprive of the teen of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights because he is Arab American.

Ahmed Rehab, CAIR-Chicago exec­u­tive direc­tor, said the video showed “three big, adult males pound­ing up on a frail minor” hit­ting his head into the con­crete and caus­ing major injuries. “It’s not the way to do. In no civ­i­liza­tion, no time, no place on Earth is this kind of behav­ior accept­ed,” Rehab said. He said the pos­si­ble indict­ment is a first step. “We hope that as this goes into the court sys­tem that these charges are not down grad­ed, that jus­tice is served,” Rehab said. State police have been review­ing the arrest and those find­ings were expect­ed to be turned over to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Rehab said police bru­tal­i­ty occurs “over­whelm­ing­ly” when the arrestee is a per­son of col­or. Beyond race, Rehab said ego and pow­er trips also lead to some offi­cers using force against an arrestee. “Someone had to run more than they thought they should have. Someone was not lis­tened to the way that they thought they should have been. Someone was not obeyed the way that they would’ve liked to be obeyed,” Rehab said. “Those sort of things are very sub­tle but they mat­ter and they are the split sec­ond dif­fer­ence between pro­fes­sion­al­ism and police brutality.”

Police offi­cers are sup­posed to arrest indi­vid­u­als and then let the legal sys­tem deter­mine guilt or inno­cence, Rehab said. “It is not the role of the police to adju­di­cate crim­i­nal­i­ty. They appre­hend indi­vid­u­als who are sus­pect­ed of crimes, then these indi­vid­u­als go through some­thing we call the jus­tice sys­tem that involves courts,” Rehab said. “It’s not the role of police to do all of those things that belong to the jus­tice sys­tem.” The teen faces charges of aggra­vat­ed unlaw­ful use of a weapon and unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a firearm. At a July 28 news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing a protest over the arrest, Oak Lawn police Chief Daniel Vittorio said the arrest­ing offi­cers feared for their safe­ty and sug­gest­ed they would have been in their right to use dead­ly force. Vittorio said respond­ing offi­cers feared the teen had a firearm in an “acces­so­ry bag” draped over his right shoul­der, although the firearm was not recov­ered until the teen had been handcuffed.(This sto­ry first appeared @yahoonew)

As the world enters the age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, bet­ter known as AI, one of the risks being dis­cussed is what hap­pens when the com­put­er decides to go rogue. So too, they cre­at­ed the mon­ster called polic­ing, and it has got­ten so big and pow­er­ful that they are afraid to even talk about down­siz­ing it. It rears its ugly head to any talk of defund­ing or down­siz­ing it. Amazingly, instead of down­siz­ing by defund­ing, they fight to find ways to fun­nel tax­pay­er mon­ey into more polic­ing, more of the same>
Police can­not stop mur­ders, so the idea of more police to stop mur­ders is beyond stu­pid. Hiring more police sends our tax­es through the roof but does pre­cious lit­tle to stem vio­lent crimes over the long run.
It is the equiv­a­lent of let­ting the Genie out of the bot­tle or squeez­ing the tooth­paste out of the tube; you don’t get to put it back.
And so it is with Tuesday’s Mayoral elec­tions in the windy city of Chicago as Democrat Lori Lightfoot, the incum­bent, faces eight (8) oppo­nents to lead the nation’s third-largest city. If no can­di­date wins more than 50 per­cent of bal­lots cast Tuesday, the top two advance to a runoff elec­tion on April 4.
Despite sup­port­ing mea­sures to defund the police, a pro­posed $80 mil­lion cut to her city’s police bud­get, Lori Lightfoot is now accus­ing Brandon Johnson, a Cook County com­mis­sion­er who’s gain­ing momen­tum, assail­ing him as a “rad­i­cal” who’d “wreck our city with dan­ger­ous defund­ing of police.”

What’s remark­able about Lightfoot’s attack on Johnson is that she ran as a per­son who saw the need to defund the bloat­ed police bud­get, but once she got into office, she drank the biased pro-police cool-aid.
The call to defund police is legit­i­mate, and it remains so. The prob­lem for peo­ple liv­ing in large urban areas is the pow­er­ful police unions. Their prox­ies have tremen­dous clout that dri­ves the fear of the dev­il into Democrats who know cut­ting those bloat­ed bud­gets is the right thing to do but are too piss-scared to do it.
Defunding the police has been ren­dered so radioac­tive Democrats are afraid even to debate it on its merits.
The polit­i­cal right which espous­es a police state that pro­tects white suprema­cy is extreme­ly com­fort­able throw­ing out­ra­geous sums of mon­ey at police, pro­vid­ing them with arma­ments and over­time pay, con­fi­dent in the knowl­edge that cops will not come to their com­mu­ni­ties to mur­der their sons and daugh­ters. Many large city police depart­ments are larg­er and bet­ter armed than some nations’ mil­i­taries; Chicago is one such city. New York City’s police depart­ment boasts a 36,000-strong army.
On the oth­er hand, black peo­ple know the more their tax dol­lars go to fund the police, the less safe they and their chil­dren become.

Overall, more police offi­cers may pre­vent some street-lev­el crimes, but they do noth­ing to cur­tail the scourge of mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes. If more police equaled less crime in large cities with their huge police armies and bloat­ed police bud­gets, cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago would be vir­tu­al­ly crime free.
Many of the calls police 911 switch­boards receive do not require police to show up armed with guns to deal with per­sons hav­ing men­tal issues, or oth­er med­ical emer­gen­cies. Minor traf­fic acci­dents, and a host of oth­er issues can be tack­led with­out armed police with god com­plex to sort through.
Experts in social work and oth­er fields have long argued that a more humane way is need­ed to deal with peo­ple going through emo­tion­al dis­tress out­side of armed police yelling dif­fer­ent and con­fus­ing orders at them lead­ing to police killing them.
How is that even an accept­able solu­tion? Minor traf­fic offens­es do not war­rant hyped-up mil­i­ta­rized police itch­ing to shoot some­one. The streets can­not be a bat­tle­field with over­hyped mil­i­ta­rized police look­ing to kill mem­bers of the pub­lic they deem to be the enemy.

Listen to the aver­age cop on the street talk­ing to a per­son who tells them they are a vet­er­an and the first thing you hear is that the cop is also a vet­er­an as well. Imagine the dan­ger inher­ent in hav­ing for­mer sol­diers who were on the bat­tle­field killing peo­ple now police offi­cers, replete with all of the issues sol­diers return­ing from wars have.
No, not all police offi­cers are bad but the idea of polic­ing as it is present­ly con­fig­ured is dan­ger­ous and should not be supported.
Making the point about a cop who is a good friend who is a sol­id guy miss­es the point. It is not about whether ornot there are good police offi­cers. The rea;it is that the entire con­cept of what con­sti­tutes polic­ing in the United States is beyond repair and should be dis­card­ed. You do not extract a clean buck­et of water from a tox­ic dirty pool.
No one should be afraid to say defund the police. Every tax­pay­er has the absolute right to demand that their tax dol­lars are spent in ways that are ben­e­fi­cial to them.
Only Racists Fascists and fool are unable to see that defund­ing the police is exact­ly he right thing to do.
Lets hope that vot­ers in the Windy City shows Lori Lightfoot the door and elect a Mayor who is tru­ly reform mind­ed, some­one unbe­hold­en to police unions and their cor­rupt and cor­ro­sive influence.

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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.

On the mur­der Index, Jamaica stands atop the heap beat­ing out South Africa, Mexico, St Lucia, Belize, Colombia, and Brazil in homi­cides each year. Last year alone, the tiny nation of under three mil­lion peo­ple record­ed 1498 homi­cides, an increase over the pre­vi­ous year, which saw 1463 cas­es of homi­cide report­ed to authorities…

The Andrew Holness Government has tabled a new pro­pos­al that would repeal and replace the 1976 firearms Act.
The Bill, among oth­er things, would make it a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years for indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a firearm or stock­pil­ing three or more firearms or 50 or more rounds of ammu­ni­tion.
As a decades-long advo­cate for much stiffer penal­ties for vio­lent offend­ers, I believe that 15 years is not a strong enough penal­ty for some­one caught with an ille­gal firearm.
Let me be clear; no one is forc­ing any­one to pick up an ille­gal firearm. Every per­son who does so makes that deci­sion on their own. A gun is seen as a sym­bol of pow­er, the pow­er to take the prop­er­ty and life of those with­out guns.
Because it is a free-will deci­sion and not some­thing forced on young men like explo­sive belts in war-torn mid­dle east­ern coun­tries, every indi­vid­ual decid­ing to pick up a weapon by default takes on all the atten­dant risks of being caught with that weapon.

The 1976 Firearm Act has long need­ed over­haul and repeal. Clearly, the penal­ties asso­ci­at­ed with pos­ses­sion are com­plete­ly out of wack with the sever­i­ty of hav­ing an ille­gal weapon. There is absolute­ly no good rea­son that any law-abid­ing cit­i­zen of Jamaica would be opposed to the most seri­ous penal­ties for gun pos­ses­sion, giv­en the nation’s high homi­cide rate and propen­si­ty for violence.
In the 47 years since the pas­sage of the exist­ing firearms act, tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Jamaicans have been seri­ous­ly injured and killed, includ­ing brave police offi­cers and our mil­i­tary members.
That alone is rea­son enough to pass a bill with even more teeth than the one pro­posed, mak­ing it a manda­to­ry 15 years for pos­sess­ing an ille­gal weapon.
Furthermore, despite the protes­ta­tions of many, the nation’s lib­er­al crim­i­nal cod­dling judges con­tin­ue to turn vio­lent offend­ers caught with ille­gal weapons back onto the streets imme­di­ate­ly after the police arrest them.
It is past time for manda­to­ry penal­ties for vio­lent offend­ers. More impor­tant­ly, it is past time that a bill is passed that sends a clear mes­sage to the almighty-appoint­ed judges that the peo­ple are the boss­es, not them.

The pro­posed bill does not go near­ly far enough in send­ing the strongest of mes­sages that, as a nation, law-abid­ing Jamaicans will not stand for the vio­lent law­less­ness that has been allowed to con­tin­ue for far too long.
Despite the short­com­ings of the new­ly pro­posed bill, the defeat­ed People’s National Party Member from Manchester, who now sits in the upper cham­ber, and who once held the title of Minister Of National Security, in exas­per­a­tion as the min­is­ter said Jamaica’s crime prob­lem needs divine inter­ven­tion is now flap­ping his gums in oppo­si­tion to the bill.
Last September, as the bill came up for debate in the upper cham­ber, Peter Bunting dared to open his mouth in oppo­si­tion to a bill he should have spon­sored and pushed as Minister of National Security years prior.
Said Bunting, “focus should instead be placed on ensur­ing crim­i­nals are caught, argu­ing that crim­i­nals know very lit­tle about the sanc­tions for these offens­es and there­fore would not be phased. “We must under­stand that this [Bill] is no sil­ver bullet…we’re not in all cas­es say­ing some of the penal­ties may not be more appro­pri­ate, but let us not fool our­selves into think­ing that just by increas­ing the sever­i­ty is going to have a mean­ing­ful impact on reduc­ing our vio­lent crime rate”.
What a fuck­ing Jackass!!!!
So let us dis­sect this nonsense.
(1) Focus should be placed on ensur­ing crim­i­nals are caught.
Police catch crim­i­nals and lock them up dai­ly; they are back on the streets imme­di­ate­ly through lax and archa­ic laws and crim­i­nal-lov­ing judges abus­ing the loopholes.
(2)Criminals know very lit­tle about the sanc­tions for these offenses.
This guy head­ed the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus with no bri­an. Imagine say­ing crim­i­nals do not know the penal­ties. That is shock­ing­ly reveal­ing to me. Every per­son who picks up a gun or com­mits a crime knows before­hand the penal­ties they are like­ly to face, and they’re all smarter than Peter Dumb-ting.
So even if they do not know when they face a judge and the manda­to­ry min­i­mum, they will get the mes­sage, and guess what? That is how they learn.
(3) They won’t be phased.
They will be phased; the prob­lem is that Peter Dumb-ting and the PNP will be mad.
(4) we must under­stand the bill is no sil­ver bullet.
No one said it was; the fact that the bill is not a panacea does not mean noth­ing should be done about vio­lent crime. The PNP hates to sup­port any leg­is­la­tion that deals with Jamaica’s crime pan­dem­ic. The par­ty con­tin­ues to blow smoke up the peo­ple’s ass­es that they care, just not about whether they live or die.
(5) Let us not fool our­selves into think­ing that increas­ing the sever­i­ty will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact reduc­ing our vio­lent crime rate.
It will do exact­ly that, and that’s what the People’s National Party is afraid of.

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I bet you haven’t seen this in the cor­po­rate-owned so-called main­stream media.
This is how they act when caught, and some­one has the balls to take appro­pri­ate action against them.
They have devel­oped a sense of enti­tle­ment, bol­stered by qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors and judges who do their bid­ding, and unions who sup­port them regard­less of the egre­gious crimes they com­mit against citizens.
This is what pass­es for police offi­cers today.

At the heels of an inves­ti­ga­tion, sev­er­al mem­bers of a police depart­ment are turn­ing in their badges after their police chief was arrest­ed and replaced. According to the Clinch County Sheriff’s Office, a spe­cial city coun­cil meet­ing was held on Saturday to appoint the inter­im Homerville police chief, James Herndon. This is after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrest­ed the for­mer Chief of Police at the Homerville Police department. 
Dearin “Mack” Drury, 40, was arrest­ed for a Feb. 19 inci­dent where he alleged­ly improp­er­ly han­dled evi­dence at the depart­ment. The Clinch County Sheriff’s Office report­ed the inci­dent to the GBI and then began inves­ti­gat­ing Drury’s alleged mis­con­duct. On Saturday, Homerville com­mand staff and oth­er police offi­cers turned in their resignations.

After the meet­ing was over, Clinch County Sheriff Stephen Tinsley took to Facebook to address the res­ig­na­tion of sev­er­al mem­bers of the police force. In the lengthy post, Tinsley states the new­ly appoint­ed chief Herndon didn’t have the staff or equip­ment avail­able able to answer ser­vice calls for Homerville. “He had nei­ther the staff nor the equip­ment avail­able to han­dle any calls for ser­vice with­in the City of Homerville. I assured Chief Herndon that the Clinch County Sheriff’s Office will answer calls for ser­vice until a res­o­lu­tion can be reached by the city admin­is­tra­tors,” Tinsley said. The sheriff’s office said it will con­tin­ue to serve all of Clinch County and will not affect how they con­duct busi­ness. “We will con­tin­ue to answer calls and enforce the laws through­out the coun­ty, includ­ing the City of Homerville,” the sher­iff said. As for Drury, he is fac­ing charges of theft by tak­ing pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, false state­ments and writ­ing, and vio­la­tion of oath.

This is a case of cops want­i­ng to have their own way out­side of the con­trol of the elect­ed lead­ers; the peo­ple chose to over­see their affairs.

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POLICE IN ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, are work­ing to wrest con­trol of their depart­ment from the city’s pro­gres­sive may­or and put it in the hands of the Republican governor.
Law enforce­ment unions argue that local con­trol has “put pol­i­tics in polic­ing” and that state over­sight would help address an increase in homi­cides and a drop in police morale and staffing lev­els. They have ral­lied around Senate Bill 78, which would rein­state a Civil War-era sys­tem of state con­trol over­turned by Missouri vot­ers in 2012 — and make St. Louis one of the only major cities in the coun­try with­out author­i­ty over its own police force. The attempt by the Missouri Legislature to strip pow­er away from city offi­cials is a “slap in the face” to con­stituents in St. Louis, Mayor Tishaura Jones said.
The move comes just two years after St. Louis first elect­ed Jones and pro­gres­sives won a major­i­ty on the city’s Board of Aldermen. While police depart­ment oper­a­tions “are def­i­nite­ly not per­fect,” Jones told The Intercept, the peo­ple clos­est to the prob­lem are clos­est to the solu­tion. Local offi­cials should have con­trol over how law enforce­ment resources are deployed, she said.

Another recent Missouri House bill would allow the gov­er­nor to strip elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors of juris­dic­tion over cer­tain vio­lent crimes. A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the bill sin­gled out the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, where pros­e­cu­tor Kim Gardner has drawn the ire of Republican offi­cials for her pledges to hold police account­able, stop detain­ing non­vi­o­lent offend­ers, and end cash bail. Concerns over the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of tar­get­ing a spe­cif­ic office even­tu­al­ly led state offi­cials to expand the scope of the bill. Jones char­ac­ter­ized the fight over con­trol of the St. Louis Police Department as per­for­ma­tive pol­i­tics. “Either we’re going to learn to get along and make sure that we’re pro­tect­ing the peo­ple that we are all duly elect­ed to serve, or we’re going to keep hav­ing these pet­ty fights,” she said. Critics of the pro­posed change in St. Louis say it’s not a gen­uine effort to stop vio­lent crime but a pow­er play against offi­cials who haven’t shown the same alle­giance to police as their pre­de­ces­sors. Black law­mak­ers in the state Legislature have crit­i­cized the bill as an effort to strip author­i­ty from demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Black offi­cials “under the guise of ‘pub­lic safe­ty.’” The Missouri Legislative Black Caucus did not respond to a request for comment.

Under the cur­rent struc­ture, Jones has the pow­er to hire and fire police chiefs. Should the bill pass, that pow­er would be giv­en to a board appoint­ed by Republican Gov. Mike Parson. The bill would also require the board to staff the police depart­ment with at least 1,142 mem­bers and increase police salaries by $4,000 start­ing next sum­mer. (The depart­ment cur­rent­ly has around 1,000 sworn offi­cers and 400 civil­ian employ­ees.) Jones said she was hope­ful that Parson would see the city’s case and stop the bill should it pass. “Our gov­er­nor is a for­mer sher­iff,” she said. “I know that he appre­ci­ates local con­trol of law enforce­ment.” State Sen. Nick Schroer, who spon­sored the bill, did not respond to a request for com­ment. The St. Louis Police Department was pre­vi­ous­ly over­seen by the state in an arrange­ment dat­ing back to the Civil War when Missouri’s then-gov­er­nor enact­ed state con­trol of local police as he pre­pared to secede and join the Confederacy. It wasn’t until 2012 that Missouri vot­ers secured local con­trol of the St. Louis Police Department in a statewide ref­er­en­dum. Kansas City’s police depart­ment, mean­while, has remained under state author­i­ty. That hasn’t insu­lat­ed Kansas City from expe­ri­enc­ing the same spike in homi­cides as many oth­er cities across the coun­try in recent years. Nevertheless, St. Louis police and their allies in office have cit­ed a sim­i­lar spike in St. Louis in call­ing for a return to state oversight.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association has been vocal in sup­port of the bill, as has the Ethical Society of Police, a union that rep­re­sents Black cops in St. Louis. The two unions have long dis­agreed on some polit­i­cal issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly relat­ed to police reform. The Ethical Society of Police opposeda move by St. Louis pros­e­cu­tors to join the offi­cers asso­ci­a­tion in a rebuke of St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, who ran on a reform plat­form and oust­ed long­time offi­cers asso­ci­a­tion ally Bob McCulloch in 2018. The Missouri state Legislature first brought the bill tar­get­ing St. Louis up for con­sid­er­a­tion in January. The bill passed out of a state Senate com­mit­tee ear­li­er this month and is expect­ed to pass out of a House com­mit­tee in the com­ing weeks before receiv­ing a full floor vote in both cham­bers. (This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the Intercept)

In this medi­um, we try to doc­u­ment as many of the police killings as we pos­si­bly can. Realistically, we can only doc­u­ment a small amount of the illic­it killings, and the bla­tant acts of abuse car­ried out under the name of law enforce­ment. Most of the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed here is sourced from inde­pen­dent cit­i­zens, jour­nal­ists, and oth­er non-cor­po­rate media enti­ties, as we do not have the finan­cial resources or the staff to research and doc­u­ment this dilem­ma of police violence.
The fam­i­ly of this vic­tim speaks in sim­ple, com­mon-sense terms that the offi­cer did not need to shoot; they could have opt­ed not to kick in the door…
Officers do not have to place them­self close to a per­son wield­ing a knife so that they may claim jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for using lethal force. Suppose there are ways for the officer/​s to gain space between them­selves and the assailant wield­ing a knife, machete, sword, or oth­er objects. In that case, the offi­cer should use that option as long as the assailant does not pose an exis­ten­tial threat to any­one else.
Unless the objec­tive is to kill all offend­ers wield­ing a weapon, regard­less of the cir­cum­stances and rea­sons sur­round­ing the per­son­’s actions.
We see instances of police offi­cers shoot­ing a per­son wield­ing a fan rake. Others threat­en some­one with lethal force with a pail buck­et, cell phone, screw­driv­er, or hammer.
This leaves us with the only con­clu­sion we can arrive at, which is that the objec­tive is not to help but to dom­i­nate, and if they can­not gain com­pli­ance through threats and intim­i­da­tion, then the per­son­’s fam­i­ly must bury him or her.
Far too many Americans have come to accept this kind of dan­ger­ous­ly dom­i­neer­ing thug­gery as polic­ing. It is not good polic­ing. A good offi­cer can­not seek to take some­one’s life because he knows the sys­tem will legal­ly exon­er­ate him.
A good offi­cer is con­sci­en­tious and does not only rely on legal exon­er­a­tion but is guid­ed by a strict moral compass.
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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.

Family mem­bers and com­mu­ni­ty pro­test­ers are demand­ing crim­i­nal charges against the St. Paul police offi­cer who shot and killed Yia Xiong, a 65-year-old Hmong war hero. On Feb. 11, Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD) offi­cers respond­ed to a call regard­ing a man threat­en­ing res­i­dents with a knife at an apart­ment com­plex in the 100 block of Western Avenue in the West Seventh neigh­bor­hood. In footage record­ed by body cam­eras worn by offi­cers Noushue Cha and Abdirahman Dahir, police can be seen enter­ing the St. Paul apart­ment build­ing. When offi­cers find Xiong wield­ing a 16-inch knife, the offi­cers can be heard yelling at the man to “drop the knife” and “get on the ground.” However, Xiong, whose daugh­ter said he spoke lim­it­ed English and was hard of hear­ing, dis­re­gards the offi­cers’ com­mands and enters an apartment

Officer Cha can then be seen kick­ing the apart­ment door open before Xiong steps out. He comes for­ward with the knife in-hand as Officer Dahir fires his rifle and Officer Cha deploys his taser.

According to Xiong’s fam­i­ly, he lost his hear­ing five decades ago while fight­ing for the U.S. in the U.S. Secret War in Laos.
Xiong report­ed­ly fought for the CIA and climbed the ranks of the Royal Lao Army before being left in a refugee camp for years after exile in May 1975. Xiong’s younger broth­er, Wallor, said that the 65-year-old could not hear any­thing unless some­one was close by and yelling at him. He added that Xiong was in the process of get­ting hear­ing aids. “He can­not hear any­one, he doesn’t speak English and they opened the door and just shot him,” Wallor Xiong told St. Paul Pioneer Press. “They just shot him like an ani­mal, and it just broke my heart.”

Read the full sto­ry here; https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​f​a​m​i​l​y​-​h​m​o​n​g​-​w​a​r​-​h​e​r​o​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​2​1​1​4​2​0​3​6​9​.​h​tml

Having the bur­den of poten­tial­ly end­ing some­one’s life as part of your job is not some­thing any­one should take light­ly. Having car­ried that bur­den for almost a decade, I was not par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of it. These days it seems that many peo­ple entrust­ed with that pow­er rel­ish it and use it in ways con­trary to why they were giv­en those powers.
The cries and com­plaints about police bru­tal­i­ty are not con­fined to any one coun­try. All over the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly in nations where cit­i­zens are allowed to speak freely, the sub­ject of police vio­lence is always front and center.
In fair­ness to police offi­cers, they are asked to deal with some of the worst actors in our soci­eties, and the optics of the job are not always great to look at.
For the most part, some peo­ple tend to be rea­son­able when­ev­er they view the law­ful actions of police who car­ry out their duties in a law­ful man­ner. In oth­er places where there are oth­er dynam­ics at play, the most rea­son­able actions are crit­i­cized, and else­where, the most egre­gious trans­gres­sions are down­played, depend­ing on peo­ple’s motivations.

For exam­ple, if you are a cop law­ful­ly enforc­ing the law in most inner-city Jamaican com­mu­ni­ties, you are bound to be demo­nized regard­less of the law­ful­ness of your actions.
On the oth­er hand, a cop who sum­mar­i­ly mur­ders a black per­son in the United States is lion­ized by a cer­tain seg­ment of the white com­mu­ni­ty and their pro­pa­gan­da media out­lets. The need to sup­port crim­i­nal­i­ty in the for­mer sense and racist pro­cliv­i­ties in the lat­ter influ­ences how police oper­ate in the two geographies.
Having served in law enforce­ment in Jamaica, I saw first­hand how inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the judi­cia­ry, media, and what pass­es for acad­e­mia respond­ed to the work of the police in ways that made it impos­si­ble for the police to achieve its mandate.
You do not get the con­sen­sus you need when there are peo­ple on tele­vi­sion telling cit­i­zens to attack police sta­tions. Contrary to what many in Jamaica say on the sub­ject of crime, they actu­al­ly loathe the rule of law.
In the United States, on the oth­er hand, black cit­i­zens oper­ate in fear of the over 18,000 police depart­ments and the just under a mil­lion sworn offi­cers who pop­u­late those departments.
The sim­ple act of dri­ving down the streets places a black motorist in dead­ly per­il. All it takes is for a racist cop to con­jure up a pre­tex­tu­al rea­son to ini­ti­ate a traf­fic stop and then shoot the dri­ver under the pre­text that they reached for some­thing, usu­al­ly the papers they demand after ini­ti­at­ing the stop.

So mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty are forced to con­stant­ly adjust to stay­ing alive when pulled over by a cop rather than the cops adjust­ing to treat­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic with respect and ensur­ing that they respect their rights and dignity.
Cops have a par­tic­u­lar hard-on for traf­fic stops. Traffic stops are the sin­gu­lar most effec­tive means of acquir­ing a motorist’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion so they may run names through their sys­tem for warrants.
Not that there is any­thing wrong with get­ting peo­ple who should­n’t be on the streets in jail, but when the moti­va­tion is not about safe­ty but is about feed­ing the beast of the ‘for-prof­it prison indus­tri­al com­plex, this is where it becomes dangerous.
Social media has done a ter­rif­ic job of get­ting video imagery of police vio­lence into the pub­lic domain. Previously the main­stream media rarely report­ed on police killings and when they both­ered to do so, they pre­sent­ed fab­ri­cat­ed police ver­sions of events as true rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the facts as they occurred.
Seeing these events unfold, Americans con­tin­ue to ask why they are so intent on traf­fic stops and demand­ing pedes­tri­ans iden­ti­fi­ca­tions even in sit­u­a­tions in which they have no law­ful author­i­ty to demand and receive them.
They are told to use intim­i­da­tion where they have no author­i­ty to demand ID from pedes­tri­ans and to con­coct rea­sons to stop motorists to get their ideas- all toward ramp­ing up arrests and incarcerations.
This prac­tice is upheld by the supreme court and encour­aged all the way down to coun­ty attor­neys. Follow motorists and cre­ate a pre­tex­tu­al rea­son to jus­ti­fy a traf­fic stop.
A motorist dri­ving down the street is at the mer­cy of the ‘for prof­it’ mer­ce­nar­ies who lie on affi­davits and vio­late their fourth (4) amend­ment right to be secure in their per­sons, hous­es, papers, and effects against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures. The idea that they shall not be vio­lat­ed, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon prob­a­ble cause, sup­port­ed by Oath or affir­ma­tion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly describ­ing the place to be searched, and the per­sons or things to be seized are will­ful­ly discarded…

None of this mat­ter any­more as the Supreme Court con­tin­ues to erode the rights of Americans in its uncon­sti­tu­tion­al rul­ings giv­ing police more and more ille­gal pow­er to sub­vert the constitution.
So to set the stage, a rogue cop, wait, let me rephrase that; the rogue cop ini­ti­ates a pre­tex­tu­al stop;(dubi­ous, spu­ri­ous), demands papers; motorists are clean has all of their papers. But the cop isn’t sat­is­fied because the motorist had the temer­i­ty and gall to ask what was the rea­son he was pulled over, safe in the knowl­edge he had not com­mit­ted an infraction.
That is, con­tempt of cops is a crime so seri­ous that it is advis­able not to ever com­mit that offense because it usu­al­ly ends in death to the black per­son. The motorist is then ordered out of the vehi­cle, and any hes­i­ta­tion on his part will like­ly end in him get­ting killed right at that point. If the motorist does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly com­ply, he is dragged from the car, thrown to the ground, bru­tal­ized, and cuffed, or killed as Tyre Nichols was, as Sandra Bland was, as Philando Castile was, as Patrick Lyoya was, as Daunte Wright was, you get the picture.
If the motorist sus­pends all of his rights and dig­ni­ty and pious­ly com­plies in an attempt to ward off death for anoth­er hour he is searched, hand­cuffed, and ordered to either sit of lie on the ground as one would a Dog.

It is at this point the oth­er aspects of the lies begin. Remember, the Supreme Court has ruled that police can lie to cit­i­zens; in fact, they are allowed to lie even to chil­dren. Now we all know if cops are giv­en the green light to lie, they will not only lie to gath­er the evi­dence they will also lie to secure convictions.
So the cop tells the motorists they smell .…… wait for it… drum roll, please, mar­i­jua­na. ‘The dread­ed and dan­ger­ous drug that has killed bil­lions of peo­ple’.
At this point, they then ille­gal­ly search the motorist’s vehi­cle or call for a canine and han­dler. The dog is manip­u­lat­ed around the vehi­cle sev­er­al times and, more often than not, indi­cates to the han­dler that there is some­thing con­tra­band in the vehicle.
Checkmate, a com­pre­hen­sive end run around the fourth amend­ment right of the motorists, and all legal accord­ing to the high­est court.
However, here are some facts accord­ing to brown​whitelaw​.com, so take your aver­age, run-of-the-mill traf­fic stop or an aver­age, run-of-the-mill traf­fic vio­la­tion. If the police get the dog to the scene rea­son­ably quick­ly, they can run the dog over the vehi­cle with­out any basis what­so­ev­er for believ­ing there are drugs inside. Then if the dog alerts, that alert, by itself, con­sti­tutes prob­a­ble cause. And once you have prob­a­ble cause, you can make an arrest, or if the alert is to a vehi­cle, you can search the entire vehi­cle with­out a warrant.
Now why, you might be ask­ing, does the dog alert in itself con­sti­tute prob­a­ble cause? The answer is clear: courts accept the government’s asser­tion that drug dogs are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accu­rate. No one doubts that drug dogs have the phys­i­o­log­i­cal abil­i­ty to sniff out con­cealed loads.
* Hold that thought!!!!
According to a January 2011 NPR report, the Chicago Tribune sift­ed through three years worth of cas­es in which law enforce­ment used dogs to sniff out drugs in cars in sub­ur­ban Chicago. According to the analy­sis, offi­cers found drugs or para­pher­na­lia in only 44 per­cent of cas­es in which the dogs had alert­ed them.
When the dri­ver was Latino, the dogs were right just 27 per­cent of the time.
We will nev­er know the data on white motorists, because they are hard­ly sub­ject­ed to the indig­ni­ties of canine search­es as blacks and lati­nos are. At least not near­ly to the degree that blacks are degraded.
* So much for the asser­tion that dogs are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accurate.
Here is the fun­ny part; well, not fun­ny in the real sense, just fun­ni­ly ridicu­lous. “Dog-han­dling cops and train­ers argue the canine teams’ accu­ra­cy should­n’t be mea­sured in the num­ber of alerts that turn up drugs. They said the scent of drugs or para­pher­na­lia can linger in a car after drugs are used or sold, and the dogs’ noses are so sen­si­tive they can pick up residue from drugs that can no longer be found in a car.

I am a Dog-lover, so I will give my Canine friends all the love and def­er­ence they deserve. They are not at fault; the issue is the faulty log­ic used by the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al injus­tice sys­tem on cer­tain seg­ments of the population.
Using the log­ic giv­en by cops and dog train­ers, it is okay to vio­late peo­ple’s fourth amend­ment rights sim­ply because some­one who entered a vehi­cle may have used illic­it drugs or even had on their per­son pre­scrip­tion drugs? How about the motorist who recent­ly pur­chased the vehi­cle? What about the motorists who gave some­one a ride? What about the Canine is just plain wrong because it knows it will receive a treat for a pos­i­tive hit?
In case you are won­der­ing, how did we lose our rights in a coun­try that says it is the land of the free home of the brave?
I just told you!!!

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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.

Some of you will remem­ber this image of a Mulberry, Arkansas, police offi­cer and two Sheriff’s deputy bru­tal­iz­ing a man before arrest­ing him. You may also recall their response when they real­ized they were being filmed.

The two Crawford coun­ty deputies were fired, but the cop was not, and as you may have expect­ed, he is back on the job.
The inci­dent began dur­ing the August 2021 arrest of Randal Worcester in the small town of Mulberry, about 140 miles (220 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Little Rock, near the bor­der with Oklahoma.
A local Mulberry Police Officer, Thell Riddle, and two Sheriff’s deputies, Zack King, and Levi White were record­ed beat­ing and bru­tal­iz­ing Randal Worcester dur­ing an attempt­ed arrest. Then Sheriff Damante said Worcester was being ques­tioned for threat­en­ing a clerk at a near­by con­ve­nience store and that he attacked one of the deputies.
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In the video, Thell Ridedle is seen hold­ing Worchester down while the two deputies beat the day­lights out of him. All three were sus­pend­ed after the video came to light, and nation­wide out­cry ensued.
The Sheriff’s depart­ment cor­rect­ly fired the deputies who have since been charged Federally and are await­ing tri­al in April.
On the oth­er hand, local author­i­ties have failed to charge Thell Riddel and have since allowed him back on duty.
Randal Worcester is a white male; imag­ine what these cops would have done to a black person.
Here is the real­ly fun­ny part, spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Emily White said in a let­ter dat­ed Feb. 15 that she would [not] pur­sue any charges against Riddle. White said the inves­ti­ga­tion against for­mer deputies Zack King and Levi White remained open.
So they are charged fed­er­al­ly, but local author­i­ties are still inves­ti­gat­ing. This is why Republicans want every­thing to be decid­ed at the state lev­el and do away with the fed­er­al government.

What could they be inves­ti­gat­ing? The Feds inves­ti­gat­ed and charged the two deputies, but the case is still open at the state level.
The video shows one of the deputies repeat­ed­ly punch­ing and knee­ing Worcester in the head before grab­bing his hair and slam­ming him against the pave­ment. The oth­er kneed him repeat­ed­ly. The grand jury did not charge Riddle, who has been with the Mulberry Police Department since 2017.

The spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor’s log­ic is anchored in the fact that he was­n’t seen hit­ting mis­ter Worcester. Using that log­ic, a get­away dri­ver in a bank rob­bery could not be pros­e­cut­ed for the robbery.
Never mind that an offi­cer see­ing a crime being com­mit­ted by col­leagues has a duty to inter­vene. It is also one more reminder that unre­strained police vio­lence is no longer reserved for inno­cent unarmed black peo­ple. It has come full cir­cle and is engulf­ing us all.
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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 18-year-old sus­pect accused of fatal­ly shoot­ing a Temple University police offi­cer in the head over the week­end stood over the offi­cer and shot him three more times as the cop lay on the ground near the Philadelphia cam­pus before try­ing to steal the fall­en officer’s gun, offi­cials said on Tuesday. Philadelphia police released the new details dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on the death of Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, who had respond­ed Saturday night to a rob­bery call in an area that offi­cials say has seen a spike in car­jack­ings and rob­beries. While respond­ing to the call, police said Fitzgerald spot­ted three teenagers dressed in all black and wear­ing masks to cov­er their faces. The offi­cer approached the trio but they tried to flee. Fitzgerald called in a foot pur­suit over his radio and chased after the teens. He caught up to the 18-year-old alleged gun­man, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Miles Pfeffer, and ordered him to get on the ground, police said.

Pfeffer ignored the officer’s orders and pulled out a gun, accord­ing to author­i­ties. The sus­pect fired at Fitzgerald, strik­ing the offi­cer in the head and tor­so. When Fitzgerald fell to the ground, Pfeffer shot the offi­cer three more times, offi­cials said.

Pfeffer ini­tial­ly fled the scene, accord­ing to police, but returned to search through the fall­en officer’s pock­ets. Officials said he tried to steal Fitzgerald’s gun. After shoot­ing the offi­cer, police said the sus­pect car­jacked a dri­ver at gun­point, threat­en­ing to shoot and kill them. Fitzgerald, a mar­ried father, was rushed to a Temple University Hospital, where he lat­er died. He served on the Temple University police force since October 2021 and was the son of a for­mer police chief of Fort Worth, Texas.
Officials said Pfeffer was iden­ti­fied as a sus­pect after the two oth­er teens he was with were detained and told police his name.
Less than 12 hours after the shoot­ing, U.S. Marshals cap­tured Pfeffer in Buckingham Township, Pennsylvania. Officers used Fitzgerald’s hand­cuffs dur­ing the arrest.
Pfeffer is fac­ing mul­ti­ple charges, includ­ing mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer, rob­bery and car­jack­ing, offi­cials said. He is not eli­gi­ble for release on bail. Temple police said the depart­ment is work­ing to hire more police to help keep its cam­pus safe, adding that it has become dif­fi­cult to find qual­i­ty peo­ple who want to be a police offi­cer. Meanwhile, city and school offi­cials said Philadelphia has a major crime prob­lem, with Mayor Jim Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner repeat­ed­ly blam­ing the lack of gun control.(From Yahoo​.com)

Are you stunned or shocked yet? Or did you believe this kind of thing only hap­pened to black peo­ple, so you white folks are shield­ed, cocooned, and insu­lat­ed from this bar­bar­ic violence?
The thing is that once you give that pow­er to peo­ple and allow them to taste the unvar­nished pow­er of dom­i­nat­ing oth­ers, bru­tal­iz­ing them, and ulti­mate­ly mur­der­ing them with­out con­se­quence, you will not eas­i­ly take that pow­er back.
It is for those rea­sons that I con­tin­ue to quote (Martin Niemoller);
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.

That is what most whites in the United States har­bored in their heads. Police, or as I call them, slave catch­ers, would not catch them because their pale skins made them immune from the slave catchers.
Well, I cer­tain­ly hope poor 29-year-old Tyler Canaris who hap­pens to be white, did not har­bor any such ideas of insu­lar­i­ty or immu­ni­ty as police unmit­i­gat­ed vio­lence came crash­ing down on him as he peace­ful­ly walked along a road­way wait­ing for a ride to pick him up and take him to work.
Walking to work, Canaris was approached by Sheriff’s deputy, who stopped him with­out explain­ing the rea­sons for intrud­ing on the man’s free­dom. Deputy Michael McMaster imme­di­ate­ly grabbed Canaris and demand­ed that he remove his backpack.
Without show­ing any vio­lence or anger, Canaris was forced onto the hood of the deputy’s cruis­er and the back­pack removed from his back. Canaris calm­ly asked what was going on. Rather than give the cit­i­zen an answer, McMaster picked him up and body-slammed him onto the pave­ment in WWF fashion.

The shock on Tyler Canaris’s face was obvi­ous as the cop approached him and start­ed issu­ing unlaw­ful orders. Tyler removed his ear­phones, and McMaster imme­di­ate­ly grabbed his hand with­out any expla­na­tion to the inno­cent man going about his law­ful business.
Canaris was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal, suf­fer­ing seri­ous injuries to his right clav­i­cle, a skull frac­ture, a rup­tured ear drum, and a con­cus­sion. He was diag­nosed with trau­mat­ic brain injury. “Tyler had to be admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal for injuries. He had to have surgery and see numer­ous spe­cial­ists,” his legal said. The inci­dent left him with $75,000 worth of med­ical bills.
Even after assault­ing Canaris, the deputy con­tin­ued to goad him as he writhed and groaned in pain, all while he rum­maged through his back­pack. Canaris asked that he call his dad, but McMaster refused and also refused to call an ambulance.
Yup, back the blue, right?
It is impor­tant to note that Tyler Canaris was [not] the per­son the vio­lent thugs sought.
The lying Paulding coun­ty Sheriff’s depart­ment released the fol­low­ing state­ment after the incident.

Deputy Michael McMaster encoun­tered a man, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Tyler Canaris, who he described as “match­ing the descrip­tion of a sus­pect break­ing into cars.” Police said the deputy approached Canaris and tried to hand­cuff him after he alleged­ly refused to com­ply with commands.

Is that what you wit­nessed in the video?

This inci­dent occurred almost a year ago, and the Sheriff’s depart­ment did noth­ing about it. Instead of fir­ing McMaster, he was allowed to con­tin­ue to work as if noth­ing had hap­pened until the video was made public.
Worse yet, when they learned that Tyler Canaris had hired the Cochran firm to sue, they charged mis­ter Canaris with a fraud­u­lent obstruc­tion charge.

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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.