Read Trevor Aaronson’s insight­ful and reveal­ing Article on what the FBI con­tin­ues to do to the Black com­mu­ni­ty as black peo­ple fight against racial injus­tice in the United States.
Christopher Wray still heads the FBI, even as these star­tling rev­e­la­tions come to light and the Republicans on the House weaponiza­tion pan­el attempt to paint a pic­ture that makes it appear that there was a plot against right-wing activists.
While Donald Trump and the FBI were busy attempt­ing to frame ordi­nary black pro­tes­tors as ter­ror­ists, it is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that white provo­ca­teurs were actu­al­ly engaged in vio­lence and arson.
White provo­ca­teurs were try­ing to get peace­ful demon­stra­tors to com­mit crimes through entrap­ment to pro­vide evi­dence to bol­ster Donald Trump’s lies.
It is impor­tant to process Aaronson’s work with the knowl­edge that the great­est threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty is white supremacy/​white nationalism.
The FBI, which has nev­er had a Democrat head­ing the agency and has been report­ed to be a hotbed of con­ser­vatism, is now accused of being par­tial to the left.
Republicans pro­ject­ing !!! (mb)

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Agents sus­pect­ed these demon­stra­tors could fit into a domes­tic ter­ror­ism ide­ol­o­gy the bureau had defined dur­ing the first year of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion as “Black Identity Extremism”: a con­tro­ver­sial, wide­ly crit­i­cized catchall label for any domes­tic extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy that drew a Black fol­low­ing. (The FBI has since aban­doned the term in favor of a new cat­e­go­ry called “Racially Motivated Violent Extremism,” which com­bines white suprema­cist vio­lence with so-called Black Identity Extremism.)
What’s been pub­licly known about the fed­er­al government’s activ­i­ty dur­ing the sum­mer of 2020 is aston­ish­ing: The Justice Department charged hun­dreds of peo­ple for their roles in First Amendment-pro­tect­ed demon­stra­tions; the Department of Homeland Security deployed more than 750 agents, dressed in mil­i­tary-style uni­forms, to Portland and abduct­ed demon­stra­tors in unmarked vans; and the Drug Enforcement Administration, using sur­veil­lance pow­ers intend­ed to stop drug run­ners, spied on more than 50 racial jus­tice groups nation­wide, among them a peace­ful group that held a vig­il on a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus in Florida.
Read the arti­cle here.…..https://​thein​ter​cept​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​2​/​0​7​/​f​b​i​-​d​e​n​v​e​r​-​r​a​c​i​a​l​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​s​-​i​n​f​o​r​m​a​nt/

Alonzo Harmon, a Black man who works as an HVAC tech­ni­cian in Golden Valley, Minnesota, is out­raged after his client called the police on him, sobbed hys­ter­i­cal­ly while speak­ing with the oper­a­tor and claimed that he’s threat­en­ing her. Harmon record­ed the woman as she was cry­ing on the phone, then post­ed the video on TikTok.

The post-Minnesota Woman Calls Police On Black AC Technician While He’s Working, Sobs Uncontrollably And Claims To Be Threatened appeared first on Blavity.

Standing out­side the garage as the woman was call­ing 911, Harmon lis­tened to her claims and strug­gled to believe what was hap­pen­ing to him.

“He says I’m rude, and he just threat­ened me right now,” the woman said on her call. ”

While he con­tin­ues to record the video, Harmon asks the woman to tell him what threat he made. But she ignores his ques­tion and pro­ceeds to talk on the phone.

“Please, please, please! I’m so scared right now!” the woman yells on the call. “I’m shak­ing right now! Please, please! …I’m so scared!”

Let’s be clear about polic­ing in the United as it relates to polic­ing; it is not bro­ken. It works exact­ly as it was designed, i.e., police offi­cers are giv­en over­whelm­ing pow­ers over cit­i­zens large­ly with­out consequences.
With an under­stand­ing that on the exe­cu­tion end, those pow­ers would be uti­lized against Blacks and Native people.
The only snag in that con­struct is that cell­phone cam­eras have brought the grue­some­ness of what police have been doing to black peo­ple for cen­turies front and center.
Though nau­se­at­ed by the behav­ior of the police after decades of watch­ing their actions, see­ing vivid video evi­dence of their actions, and doing the nec­es­sary read­ing and research, I refuse to give all of the blame to them.
Police are the low­est on the totem pole. Police are the last in line, those who exe­cute the devi­ous poli­cies enshrined into laws designed to con­tin­ue the prac­tice of white suprema­cy and sub­se­quent sub­ju­ga­tion of blacks in America.
It is a [sys­tem] that oper­ates like a well-oiled machine begin­ning with state and fed­er­al leg­is­la­tors, judges, pros­e­cu­tors, police, and oth­er cogs in the wheel of injustice.
One of the more frus­trat­ing aspects of the social jus­tice fight has been the intran­si­gence of the courts to cor­rect the behav­ior of police by rul­ing in a straight­for­ward way that leaves no doubt about what police offi­cers can get away with.
From the high­est fed­er­al court to the low­est town court, jus­tices and judges have cast aside the con­sti­tu­tion of the United States to cre­ate judi­cial immu­ni­ty for cops.

The most infu­ri­at­ing aspect of this mur­der­ous sys­tem in the United States that pass­es for law enforce­ment is the total bull­shit they feed the pop­u­la­tion when police mur­der inno­cent unarmed civilians.
With every case that stretch­es the bound­aries of creduli­ty, they stretch the ratio­nale for what is jus­ti­fied for police use of force.
But that is only the begin­ning of it; with what we are wit­ness­ing today, it is laugh­able that uncor­rob­o­rat­ed police tes­ti­mo­ny would be accept­ed by a court to con­vict an individual.
Regardless of the num­ber of cops that tes­ti­fy to an event, their tes­ti­mo­ny should [not] be used to con­vict with­out sub­stan­tial inde­pen­dent cor­rob­o­ra­tion. It is unfor­tu­nate, but that is where we are as a soci­ety. They are a bunch of liars, plain and simple.
The sad real­i­ty is that far too many Americans are mis­in­formed, con­sumed by racial hatred, or both. As such, the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic forces that require a police state for its legit­i­ma­cy and sur­vival con­vince them that the bar­bar­ic mur­der of some cit­i­zens is nec­es­sary for their well-being and survival.
It is the domes­tic equiv­a­lent of the Islamic ter­ror­ist boogey­man and what they fed the nation to jus­ti­fy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “if we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them over here.”
There is no out­right war against Islamic Terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, so the black com­mu­ni­ty is pub­lic ene­my num­ber one.
They have con­vinced them­selves and the nation that mur­der is jus­ti­fied even when there is no crime, and no vic­tim, as long as the police deem it warranted.(mb)
How is this dif­fer­ent than what was done to George Floyd or Tyree Nichols?
Let us wait to see if these white killers will face imme­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion and crim­i­nal indict­ment as the black­ones in Memphis.

police release body camera video in arrest of man who died after tasing

The city of Raleigh released body cam­era, dash cam­era and sur­veil­lance video Friday show­ing the January arrest of a man who died after police offi­cers tased him three times. Darryl “Tyree” Williams died after being tased with stun guns three times by two Raleigh police offi­cers on Jan. 17. He was 32 years old. Officers J.T. Thomas and C.D. Robinson were patrolling on Rock Quarry Road when they saw Williams in a car out­side a sweep­stakes par­lor, accord­ing to a report police issued after the fatal encounter. In the videos Thomas calls for back­up, and Officer D. L. Aquino lat­er arrives. Thomas approach­es Williams’ car and finds two peo­ple, one in the driver’s seat and one in the passenger’s.
The videos show Williams get­ting out of the car as an offi­cer asks him mul­ti­ple times to sit on a curb. He repeat­ed­ly asks offi­cers why he is being stopped and why he is being asked to sit on the curb.
While offi­cers search the vehi­cle, the videos show Robinson find­ing and remov­ing a fold­ed, dol­lar bill from Williams’ pants pock­et con­tain­ing what police have pre­vi­ous­ly described as “a white pow­dery sub­stance con­sis­tent with the appear­ance of cocaine.”
Police offi­cer J.R. Scott arrives soon after.

Four offi­cers attempt to take Williams into cus­tody, but he “con­tin­ued to resist their efforts and was able to over­pow­er and pull away from them,” the police report states. Officers warn Williams to “stop or you are going to get tased,” the videos show. “Mr. Williams con­tin­ued to active­ly resist the offi­cers by push­ing them and refus­ing to place his hands behind his back,” the report con­tin­ues. “At this point, Officer Robinson deployed his Taser, tem­porar­i­ly stop­ping Mr. Williams and caus­ing him to fall to the ground in front of one of the busi­ness­es in the area.” During the exchange, Williams was pushed into garbage. The report says Williams man­aged to break away and run. When offi­cers caught up with him, both Thomas and Robinson deployed their stun guns on Williams’ body. Two offi­cers on the video are seen on top of Williams, all with tasers drawn. After the sec­ond time he was tased, Williams told the offi­cers he had a heart condition.

“I have heart prob­lems. Please … please,” Williams cries to the offi­cers. Williams was tased twice while he was on the ground with mul­ti­ple offi­cers on top of him. “Relax man, relax,” one of the offi­cers is heard say­ing on the videos. EMS was called to the scene after Williams seems to have lost con­scious­ness. “Is he breath­ing?” one of the offi­cers asks. “I don’t feel a pulse.” Several more offi­cers arrive while the offi­cers debat­ed Williams’ phys­i­cal con­di­tion. For sev­er­al min­utes they ques­tioned if Williams had a pulse and if he was breath­ing. Eventually, offi­cers deter­mined he was not breath­ing and did not have a pulse and began CPR while EMS was en route. Around 2 a.m., Williams was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal for his injuries. He was pro­nounced dead at 3:00 a.m.

February is des­ig­nat­ed Black History month in the United States. As we com­mem­o­rate Africa’s rich his­to­ry through­out the Americas, let us not for­get that many of the things we use today and take for grant­ed were cre­at­ed by black inventors.
As we doc­u­ment some of those inven­tions, let us remind our­selves that many more were cre­at­ed by our ances­tors but were mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed and plain old stolen and cred­it­ed to others.

We can­not claim the future unless we recon­nect with the past, with who we are, not what some would tell us we are.
There are those occu­py­ing high polit­i­cal office who would soon­er erase African-American con­tri­bu­tions from our minds, from American his­to­ry books. They have banned and burned books, removed African stud­ies cours­es, and maligned the teach­ing of African-American stud­ies in col­leges and high schools.
One such degen­er­ate even said African-American his­to­ry has no edu­ca­tion­al value.

Unfortunately for that dunce, the United States has no his­to­ry of its own except, of course, Native-American his­to­ry. All oth­er aspects of American his­to­ry have been bor­rowed from oth­er parts of the world, with a tremen­dous amount of it bor­rowed and stolen from Africa.
Currently, far too many black folks in the United States writ large are still lack­ing in self-aware­ness, choos­ing instead to be invest­ed in enter­tain­ment and lasciviousness.
Your ene­my will define you if you do not know who you are.

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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.

At a time when rela­tions are strained to break­ing between peo­ple of col­or and police, polit­i­cal lead­ers, includ­ing black elect­ed offi­cials, are march­ing for­ward as if all is kosher with mas­sive police state expan­sions. They are obliv­i­ous to the calls from the cit­i­zens to stop throw­ing more and more of their hard-earned tax dol­lars on peo­ple who are wil­ful­ly mur­der­ing their loved ones…
Massive infu­sions of cash into the cof­fers of polit­i­cal cam­paigns and good old fash­ion scared shit­less to oppose the blue gang have caused even black Mayors to back spend­ing more mon­ey on the police instead of opt­ing for trained coun­selors and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als, not car­ry­ing a gun or Rambo-type folks who con­sid­er them­selves ham­mers and every­one else nails.
The Atlanta City Council in September 2021 approved a plan to build a facil­i­ty dubbed police city in a 10 – 4 vote. Then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sup­port­ed the plan, call­ing the coun­cil vote “coura­geous” and reject­ing the idea that we must “defund the police” as Black Lives Matter pro­test­ers have advocated.
“What I’ve said repeat­ed­ly over the last year is that hold­ing the men and women who serve us in a pub­lic safe­ty capac­i­ty account­able is not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive from sup­port­ing them,” Bottoms said, sug­gest­ing the only way to abol­ish police is to abol­ish crime.

Lance Bottoms, who now works in the Biden Administration, takes the same tack from Joe Biden and oth­er Democrats regard­ing defund­ing police, large­ly out of fear of Republican smear and the inabil­i­ty to critical-think.
The idea that in 2023 we lack the imag­i­na­tion to envis­age not send­ing poor­ly trained white racists with guns and the pow­er to kill to deal with issues affect­ing black cit­i­zens is alarming.
That we still con­sid­er the old slave patrol idea of polic­ing and con­tin­ue to build mas­sive edi­fices to train and enhance that igno­ble ide­al­o­gy is astounding.
There are bet­ter ways to deal with bro­ken tail­lights and fail­ure to use turn sig­nals than armed robots with guns abus­ing and killing peo­ple just liv­ing their lives. Unless harass­ing, beat­ing, and killing them is the point.
Bottoms claimed the train­ing facil­i­ty would “help boost morale, reten­tion and recruit­ment” of police offi­cers and pro­vide “21^st-cen­tu­ry train­ing, root­ed in respect and regard for the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.” The cen­ter would be among the largest in the coun­try, more mas­sive than LAPD or NYPD facilities.
In oth­er words, if tax­pay­ers do not give police what they want and allow them to con­tin­ue to oper­ate as they have been, they will throw a hiss fit and refuse to do their jobs, and would-be appli­cants will look else­where for employment.
If this is true, this is a mar­velous idea and a spec­tac­u­lar way of get­ting the kinds of police offi­cers the coun­try needs.
Maybe .…just maybe, what the coun­try needs is to let the depart­ments bleed out those pow­er-crazed androids. In the end, few­er good cops are expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter than a ton of shit­ty cops.

The naïveté‘ of that state­ment would be laugh­able if it weren’t so utter­ly stu­pid. Does the American police need their morale boosted?
Keisha Lance Bottoms’ state­ments remind­ed me of the trees who thought the Axe was their friend because the han­dle is made of wood. Or the Frog who fer­ried a scor­pi­on on it’s back across the riv­er with the assur­ac­nce the scor­pi­on would­n’t sting him.
Ultimately, an Axe may have a wood­en han­dle, but only to chop down trees. A scor­pi­on will assure a frog it won’t sting, but even­tu­al­ly it will, because that’s what scor­pi­ons do, … they sting.
It is intel­lec­tu­al­ly indo­lence to con­tin­ue to heap more and more mon­ey on polic­ing through the raz­ing of much-need­ed forests as is being done to cre­ate a cop city in Atlanta instead of reimag­in­ing how we can secure our com­mu­ni­ties with­out the trau­ma that police con­tin­ue to create.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond cleared the way for the 85-acre, $90 mil­lion com­plex on city-owned for­est land near a pre­dom­i­nate­ly Black com­mu­ni­ty. Huge sur­prise there.
According to the Atlanta Police Foundation — the orga­ni­za­tion leas­ing the land and fund­ing two-thirds of the facil­i­ty with Atlanta tax­pay­ers pick­ing up the rest of the tab — the train­ing cen­ter promis­es to “reimag­ine law enforce­ment train­ing and Police/​Fire Rescue com­mu­ni­ty engagement.”
Of course, yes, reimag­ing polic­ing as the Frog imag­ined the scor­pi­on would­n’t stink, killing him mid­stream. We get it.
Well, the peo­ple in Dekald coun­ty and its envi­rons can­not blame ‘whitey’ for this one, at least on the face of it. This is the work of black co*&s; I mean, black leaders.
Some also thought more black cops and black police chiefs would solve police vio­lence so there is that as well. Naievely and unimigi­na­tive­ly fail­ing to under­stand that it’s not just about col­or but a cul­ture of impuni­ty fos­tered by immunity.
The naivety and intel­lec­tu­al lazi­ness per­me­at­ing the con­ver­sa­tion on this sub­ject are astound­ing. The idea that polic­ing, a con­struct, can­not be reimag­ined because it is absolute and there is no replace­ment is beyond laugh­able. But then again, some peo­ple believe they must destroy what’s left of our frag­ile eco­log­i­cal sys­tem for coal min­ing to heat homes and busi­ness­es, even as oth­er nations are mak­ing leaps and bounds in green energy.
And to be fair, there is a mas­sive police facil­i­ty going up right here in my coun­ty of Dutchess New York, to the tune of.….… wait for it.…. As of June 30, 2021, $159.4 mil­lion has been spent or encum­bered on all phas­es of the project, with a remain­ing $32.8 mil­lion approved and avail­able to spend of the full $192.2 mil­lion appropriated.
[The Justice and Transition Center’s (Jail) design has been down­sized from its orig­i­nal 569-bed design to 328 beds in 2020. Funds approved and avail­able in 2016 for this phase of the con­struc­tion project are $154.8 mil­lion. The esti­mat­ed cost to com­plete the revised jail plan is $131.4 mil­lion, with a pro­ject­ed cost sav­ings of approx­i­mate­ly $22.8 mil­lion. The cur­rent time­line for con­struc­tion com­ple­tion of the jail is May 2024.] As report­ed by MidHudsonNews​.com)
The mas­sive, ever-increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous police state is here to stay. 

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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.

Many peo­ple who know Kevin McCarthy have long argued that the new­ly mint­ed speak­er of the US house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives is a cheap emp­ty suit. Harsh? I have no way of know­ing; I do not know the guy. But it darn sure seems like McCarthy will do any­thing to get what­ev­er it is that he wants. Some see his embrace of Marjorie Green and Paul Gosar, two racist clowns in his con­fer­ence, as a sign McCarthy will sell his soul as long as he can attain his polit­i­cal ambitions.
It is hard to argue with after what we wit­nessed in the US House in an almost unprece­dent­ed fash­ion, as it took fif­teen bal­lots for the Californian to be elect­ed speak­er and only after much horse trad­ing and the use of loopholes.
Audio Article below.

Raw polit­i­cal ambi­tions may be com­pa­ra­ble to a drug-addict­ed pros­ti­tute who will do any­thing for the fix they need. And so it should come as no sur­prise that Kevin McCarthy would sched­ule a vote as he did to deny Minnesota rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ilhan Omar a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, using the fraud­u­lent argu­ment that she has made anti-Semitic com­ments against Jews.
It was a base­less tit-for-tat against the Democrats because the vile cretins Marjorie Green and Paul Gosar were removed from their com­mit­tee assign­ments by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi for mak­ing Violent threats against their Democratic colleagues.
But it was worse; though con­gress­woman Omar apol­o­gized for com­ments deemed anti-Semitic (which she should not have done), it was not enough for the weak and feck­less Kevin McCarthy; he need­ed a scape­goat, and Ms. Omar a for­mer refugee, a black woman, and an immi­grant made a rich tar­get for McCarthy to use as appease­ment fod­der to his racist right-wing cabal in the insur­rec­tion­ist con­fer­ence. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries moved imme­di­ate­ly to seat her on the House Budget Committee.

McCarthy also tar­get­ed two of his California Democratic col­leagues, Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, whom he gra­tu­itous­ly removed from their Intelligence com­mit­tee assignments.
Kevin McCarthy’s move to oust the three Democrats is the lat­est exam­ple of a man will­ing to appease the racist gut­ter-rats in his conference.
We all remem­bered Kevin Mccarthy stand­ing in the well of the US House of Representatives, denounc­ing Donald Trump for weaponiz­ing the racist white horde and unleash­ing them on Congress with the express to kill speak­er Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, his own vice pres­i­dent, failed to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly stop the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Joe Biden’s vic­to­ry in 2021.
Days lat­er, the same McCarthy was at Mara Lago lick­ing Donald Trump’s shoes with his tongue and singing a dif­fer­ent tune.
The sad real­i­ty is that America will have to trudge along with the equiv­a­lent of a crack-addict­ed pros­ti­tute who will do any­thing to remain speak­er of the house.
Made pos­si­ble because of ger­ry­man­der­ing in Places like California and New York that allowed Republicans to do as they pleased in redraw­ing Congressional districts.
Oh, by the way… It is not anti-Semitic to crit­i­cize peo­ple who claim to be Jews. No one is above crit­i­cism; I do not care who you are, and no one is untouchable.
No one should allow them­selves to be cowed into silence by any group, that includes those who would ratio­nal­ly and rea­son­ably crit­i­cize black people.
No one is above crit­i­cism. It is not racist or anti- Semetic to pos­i­tive­ly crit­i­cize any group or individual.

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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.

That the LAPD is con­fi­dent­ly deploy­ing this pub­lic rela­tions tac­tic near­ly three years after George Floyd’s death is a grim reflec­tion of how lit­tle has changed.

THE LOS ANGELES Police Department is push­ing the nar­ra­tive that Keenan Anderson — a 31-year-old Black teacher, who LAPD cops held down and repeat­ed­ly tased as he begged for his life — is respon­si­ble for his own death.

Preliminary tox­i­col­o­gy tests, per­formed on Anderson’s body by the police depart­ment itself, found traces of cannabi­noids and cocaine metabo­lite in his sys­tem – results that in no way mit­i­gate the extreme vio­lence inflict­ed on Anderson by the police ahead of his January 3 death.

The drug tests were not released as part of an offi­cial autop­sy; the Los Angeles County coroner’s office is still inves­ti­gat­ing Anderson’s death and has not yet ruled on its exact med­ical cause. Instead, the LAPD con­duct­ed its own drug tests and announced the results in an unam­bigu­ous effort to den­i­grate and blame its vic­tim, the third man of col­or killed by the depart­ment in the few short weeks of 2023 alone

The real­i­ty of U.S. polic­ing per­sists as a con­tin­u­ous, unre­pen­tant, and reform-resis­tant threat to Black lives.

If you thought that these killers will stop because of the outcry against their actions, you need to guess again. Obviously, no one is safe from their murderous onslaught. This legless man was murdered after the five killers beat and killed Tyre Nichols in Memphis Tennessee.

The fam­i­ly of Anthony Lowe Jr is call­ing for jus­tice after the 36-year-old dou­ble amputee was shot and killed by police offi­cers in Huntington Park, California, last Thursday after­noon. In a con­fronta­tion cap­tured on video by a bystander and post­ed to social media, Mr. Lowe, who uses a wheel­chair, is seen hold­ing a knife and scram­bling away from mul­ti­ple police offi­cers who appear to be point­ing weapons at him. Shortly there­after, police shot Mr. Lowe mul­ti­ple times and killed him. “You guys knew your lives weren’t in dan­ger,” Mr. Lowe’s cousin Ellakenyada Gorum told KCAL in Los Angeles. “He’s run­ning on his limbs. How cold-heart­ed could they be?”

The Huntington Park Police Department told the tele­vi­sion sta­tion that its offi­cers respond­ed to a call around 3:45 on Thursday after­noon from a man who report­ed that he had been stabbed by a man in a wheel­chair. After police arrived at the scene, they found and con­front­ed Mr Lowe. Police said the offi­cers first attempt­ed to taser Mr Lowe, but were unable to stop him from threat­en­ing them with the knife. Next, they shot him. The video below may be upset­ting, but does not include footage of the shoot­ing itself. To Mr Lowe’s fam­i­ly, the notion that police had to fatal­ly shoot Mr Lowe to pro­tect them­selves strains creduli­ty. “Be real­is­tic about this, what could he have pos­si­bly done in a wheel­chair?” Mr Lowe’s aunt, who did not pro­vide her name, told the tele­vi­sion sta­tion. “We want jus­tice.” The shoot­ing of Mr Lowe, a Black man, comes as police vio­lence per­pe­trat­ed against Black Americans is once again at the fore­front of the nation­al con­scious­ness due to the killing of Trye Nichols by police in Memphis and the killing of Keenan Anderson by police in Los Angeles. Body cam­era footage of Mr Nichols’ death released last week sparked fresh out­rage over the killing in Memphis and around the coun­try, with Americans respond­ing by par­tic­i­pat­ing in protests in mul­ti­ple cities. Now, Mr Lowe’s fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are also call­ing for jus­tice to be done in his case.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​f​i​r​e​d​-​9​-​t​i​m​e​s​-​i​n​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​b​a​c​k​-​o​f​-​a​-​w​h​e​e​l​c​h​a​i​r​-​b​o​u​n​d​-​m​a​n​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​h​im/

The injus­tice plagu­ing America is a byprod­uct of hatred taught in mil­lions of homes nation­wide. From those homes come young peo­ple who are going to col­leges of all kinds from those col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing mil­i­tary col­leges. They are grad­u­at­ing and enter­ing pol­i­tics with the hatred taught them in their homes.
And so we get mil­i­tary offi­cers and politi­cians, lawyers and judges, and peo­ple who pop­u­late the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. They rise to posi­tions of tremen­dous pow­er, includ­ing the pres­ti­gious posi­tions of pres­i­dent, Supreme Court jus­tices, and US senators.
Then there are those at the bot­tom, cops, those who essen­tial­ly did not do so well in school but want in on the pow­er of white­ness, so they clam­or to be a part of law enforce­ment. Through law enforce­ment, they get to wield immense pow­er, includ­ing the pow­er to take life. And so they opt for the crash course taught in the police acad­e­mies, light in laws and human rights, heavy on sub­ju­gat­ing, shoot­ing to kill, and indoc­tri­na­tion on mak­ing peo­ple bow to their demands.
After a few weeks of that crash course, they are ful­ly empow­ered to do as they please to whomev­er they please.
That is the mil­i­tary arm of white suprema­cy (the police) sup­port­ed by those who nev­er both­ered attend­ing col­lege or could not cut it academically.
Audio ver­sion of Article.

LET US BACKTRACK A LITTLE
During the ear­ly enslave­ment of African peo­ple in the United States, the planters were con­cerned about the num­ber of enslaved peo­ple being brought in. Not that they did not like the free labor and the abil­i­ty to own oth­er peo­ple, but their con­cerns were cen­tered around main­tain­ing control.
As it is today, where real wealth is cen­tered in the hands of a tiny few at the top, the planters also had con­cerns with the white pop­u­la­tion that did not have access to the life of lux­u­ry and opu­lence they enjoyed.
So the prob­lem was two-fold, the increas­ing num­ber of black enslaved peo­ple and the impov­er­ished white pop­u­la­tion that looked at their wealth suspiciously.
A way had to be found to ensure a com­mon cause was not estab­lished between the two groups. American racism was born.
The strat­e­gy employed includ­ed hir­ing white over­seers on the plan­ta­tions and giv­ing them carte blanch to do as they pleased with the enslaved blacks with­out con­se­quence. They were allowed to beat, tor­ture, rape, and abuse the slaves.
Additionally, poor white trash was hired as slave patrols, indi­vid­u­al­ly and as col­lec­tives, to hunt down and cap­ture run­aways and return them to their masters.
Although the white under­class resent­ed the wealth and opu­lence of the super-rich plan­ta­tion own­ers, they were hap­py to be giv­en the pow­er to super­vise and hunt down run­aways and to inflict pun­ish­ment on them.
They were hap­py to have some­one to feel supe­ri­or to. Their hatred for the cap­tive black peo­ple far exceed­ed their envy of the wealth and opu­lence of their white counterparts.

THE DANGEROUS CLASS

Dr. Philip L. Reichel, Professor Emeritus of Sociology University of Northern Colorado in 2022, wrote, ‘the con­tin­u­al and obvi­ous force devel­oped by the South to con­trol its ver­sion of the “dan­ger­ous class­es” was the slave patrol. The demo­niza­tion of enslaved black peo­ple as dan­ger­ous has roots dat­ing back to the gen­e­sis of American slavery.
The disin­gen­u­ous thing about those who owned slaves was a dis­con­nect in their reac­tion when their cap­tives fled bondage.
Reichel wrote. The por­tray­al of slaves as docile, hap­py, and gen­er­al­ly con­tent with their bondage has been successfully
chal­lenged in recent decades. We can today express amaze­ment that slave­own­ers could have been unaware of their slaves’ unhap­pi­ness, yet some whites were con­tin­u­al­ly sur­prised that slaves resist­ed their sta­tus. Such an atti­tude was not found only among Southern slave­own­ers. In a 1731 adver­tise­ment for a fugi­tive slave, a New England mas­ter was dis­mayed that this slave had run away “with­out the least provo­ca­tion” (quot­ed in Foner, 1975: 264). Whether pro­voked in the eyes of slave­hold­ers or not, slaves did resist their bondage. That resis­tance gen­er­al­ly took three forms: run­ning away, crim­i­nal acts, and con­spir­a­cies or revolts. Any of those actions con­sti­tut­ed a dan­ger to whites.
The black enslaved pop­u­la­tion was not all docile; enslaved peo­ple found inge­nious ways to fight back. Slave revolts and oth­er means of resis­tance ensued though most of America’s his­to­ry as a slave-hold­ing nation has been scrubbed of these events. Poisoning became a trea­sured tool of the enslaved.
According to Dr. Reichel, con­sis­tent with the ear­li­est enforce­ment tech­niques iden­ti­fied in English and American his­to­ry, the first means of con­trol­ling enslaved peo­ples was infor­mal in nature. In 1686 a South Carolina statute said any­one could appre­hend, chas­tise and send home any enslaved per­son found off their plan­ta­tion with­out autho­riza­tion. In 1690 such action was made everyone’s duty or be fined forty shillings (Henry, 1968: 31). Enforcement of slav­ery by the aver­age cit­i­zen was not to be tak­en light­ly. A 1705 act in Virginia made it legal “for any per­son or per­sons what­so­ev­er, to kill or destroy such slaves (i.e., runaways)…without accu­sa­tion or impeach­ment of any crime for the same.” 

UNDERSTANDING THE FOUNDATION OF THE INHERENT VIOLENCE IN MODERN POLICING

The move­ment of enslaved peo­ple was strict­ly reg­u­lat­ed and enforced. Enslaved peo­ple found off the plan­ta­tions on which they were cap­tives with­out per­mis­sion papers faced a grue­some death at the hands of any­one who desired to end their lives.
After slav­ery, jim crow laws were cre­at­ed to keep the new­ly released black pop­u­la­tion in check. Sundown Towns became a thing all across the coun­try. Sundown Towns still exist in the United States today, where black peo­ple know that if they are caught after sun­down, death poten­tial­ly awaits. Yes, in 2023.
What makes it so shock­ing today, as it has been since slav­ery and direct­ly after eman­ci­pa­tion, is that assault on African-Americans in the United States is gen­er­al­ly led by the police or what­ev­er exists as law enforcement.
Police are still autho­rized to use uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means to stop black peo­ple and demand their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for no legit­i­mate rea­son, and it’s all legal, accord­ing to the supreme court.

WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO ROOT OUT THIS VICIOUSLY WICKED SYSTEM
At present, the Republican par­ty is the par­ty most­ly in defense of white suprema­cy and is opposed to expand­ing vot­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to all Americans who qual­i­fy. It is the par­ty that stands in the way of police reform. The Republican Governor in Florida has tak­en extreme steps to lim­it the teach­ing of African-American his­to­ry in high schools and col­leges, label­ing it ‘woke.’
The Republican major­i­ty on the supreme court in 2013 dis­man­tled the 1965 vot­ing rights act under the guise that there is no fur­ther need for the law because the con­di­tions that exist­ed that neces­si­tat­ed its pas­sage are no longer here. It goes with­out say­ing that the rea­son­ing was an out­right lie by the John Roberts court. But dis­man­tling the land­mark vot­ing rights law was a long­stand­ing goal of Roberts, a for­mer Reagan admin­is­tra­tion aide.
Immediately after the deci­sion of the court in Shelby County, Alabama V Holder, Republican-run States set about pass­ing laws mak­ing it extreme­ly more dif­fi­cult to vote. They removed drop box­es, reduced ear­ly vot­ing days, closed the major­i­ty of the polling sta­tions in pre­dom­i­nant­ly black neigh­bor­hoods, and Georgia even made it a crime to offer a per­son stand­ing on a vot­ing line a bot­tle of water.
But that was not all; black vot­ers were forced to stand in lines snaking around city blocks to vote. The process result­ed in those vot­ers hav­ing to spend up to ten hours in order to vote.
To that vot­er, it means los­ing a day’s pay to cast their bal­lot. Losing a day’s pay is a humungous poll tax that African-Americans have been forced to pay since they were allowed to vote, some­thing white vot­ers in sub­ur­ban and rur­al areas nev­er have to wor­ry about.

THE EXISTING BUILDING BLOCKS AGAINST ENDING WHITE SUPREMACY AND POLICE VIOLENCE

Several struc­tur­al built-ins have worked effi­cient­ly to ensure the con­tin­u­a­tion of white suprema­cy, despite the coun­try’s racial make­up changes.
(1) The sen­ate fil­i­buster: In the Senate, a fil­i­buster is an attempt to delay or block a vote on a piece of leg­is­la­tion or a con­fir­ma­tion. To under­stand the fil­i­buster, it’s nec­es­sary first to con­sid­er how the Senate pass­es a bill. When a sen­a­tor or a group of sen­a­tors intro­duces a new bill, it goes to the appro­pri­ate com­mit­tee for dis­cus­sion, hear­ings, and amend­ments. If a major­i­ty of that com­mit­tee votes in favor, the bill moves to the Senate floor for debate. Once a bill gets to a vote on the Senate floor, it requires a sim­ple major­i­ty of 51 votes to pass after debate has end­ed. But there’s a catch: before it can get to a vote, it actu­al­ly takes 60 votes to cut off debate, which is why a 60-vote super­ma­jor­i­ty is now con­sid­ered the de fac­to min­i­mum for pass­ing leg­is­la­tion in the Senate. (Brennancenter​.org)
(1) Two US sen­a­tors per state. Each state gets two US sen­a­tors regard­less of size or pop­u­la­tion. So Wyoming, with just over half a mil­lion res­i­dents statewide (578,803), has the same clout in the sen­ate as California, with forty mil­lion (40, 000,000 )res­i­dents, or New York, with twen­ty mil­lion (20,000,000) residents.
The math is sim­ple, Wyoming, with a pop­u­la­tion of just over half a mil­lion res­i­dents, 92.4% of them white Caucasians, gets to can­cel out the voic­es of California’s peo­ple of col­or, who make up a whop­ping 65.3% of that state’s population.
(3) White minor­i­ty rule: Intelligencer reports Republican sen­a­tors haven’t rep­re­sent­ed a major­i­ty of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion since 1996 and haven’t togeth­er won a major­i­ty of Senate votes since 1998. Yet the GOP con­trolled the Senate from 1995 through 2007 (with a brief inter­reg­num in 2001-02 after a par­ty switch by Jim Jeffords) and again from 2015 until 2021Five Supreme Court jus­tices (and many low­er court judges) were con­firmed by sen­ates where the GOP major­i­ty was elect­ed with less pop­u­lar sup­port than Democrats. Those right-wing hard­lin­ers are now poised to use their con­trol over the court to attack vot­ing rights and pre­serve Republican ger­ry­man­ders while strik­ing down pro­gres­sive poli­cies. This same minor­i­ty rule has also paved the way for mas­sive tax cuts for the rich under George W. Bush and Donald Trump, facil­i­tat­ing eco­nom­ic inequality.
Even though the US sen­ate is almost even­ly split between Republicans, who rep­re­sent white suprema­cy, and the Democratic par­ty, which rep­re­sents every­one else, Democratic sen­a­tors rep­re­sent tens of mil­lions more peo­ple than their Republican counterparts.
Vox​.com report­ed The impli­ca­tions of this malap­por­tion­ment are breath­tak­ing. Among oth­er things, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were all nom­i­nat­ed by a pres­i­dent who lost the pop­u­lar vote and con­firmed by a bloc of sen­a­tors rep­re­sent­ing less than half the coun­try. If the United States chose its lead­ers in free and fair elec­tions, none of these indi­vid­u­als would serve on the Supreme Court — and Democratic appointees would like­ly have a major­i­ty on the Court.
It goes fur­ther than Vox imag­ined; John Roberts the chief jus­tice, and Samuel Alito were elect­ed by pres­i­dent George W Bush who also lost the pop­u­lar vote.
Five of the six Republicans on the court tak­ing away rights that Americans enjoyed for decades have been appoint­ed by two pres­i­dents put in place against the wish­es of the major­i­ty of the American peo­ple through the mon­stros­i­ty called the Electoral col­lege. No oth­er so-called demo­c­ra­t­ic nation has a sys­tem that ignores the major­i­ty of its vot­ers and replaces their will with a con­vo­lut­ed sys­tem in which the los­er becomes the winner.

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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.

While Florida’s El Duce is busy trying to stifle black studies in that state that would inform all races about what really happened to blacks in America there is real trouble in Ohio where they are actively indoctrinating small children into becoming Nazis.

The Department of Education in Ohio is inves­ti­gat­ing the open­ly anti­se­mit­ic and racist Nazi home­school­ing group with thou­sands of mem­bers being oper­at­ed by a cou­ple from Upper Sandusky, Ohio, an offi­cial at the depart­ment told VICE News. On Sunday, VICE News and the Huffington Post report­ed that Logan and Katja Lawrence were the oper­a­tors of the neo-Nazi Dissident Homeschool group which now boasts over 2,500 mem­bers on its Telegram chan­nel, based on the research from anti-fas­cist researchers at the Anonymous Comrades Collective. The group open­ly advo­cates white suprema­cist ide­olo­gies with the aim to make sure the chil­dren they teach 
“become won­der­ful Nazis.”

The Lawrences share their class­room sched­ules, home­work assign­ments, and les­son plans with oth­er par­ents in the group, the vast major­i­ty of which are infused with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy or open praise for Adolf Hitler.

Katja Lawrence, 37, also shares exam­ples of how her fam­i­ly embraces Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, includ­ing bak­ing a Führer cake for Hitler’s birth­day and shar­ing a record­ing of her chil­dren shout­ing “sieg heil.”

“I am out­raged and sad­dened,” Stephanie Siddens, the inter­im super­in­ten­dent of pub­lic instruc­tion at the Department of Education told VICE News. “There is absolute­ly no place for hate-filled, divi­sive and hurt­ful instruc­tion in Ohio’s schools, includ­ing our state’s home-school­ing com­mu­ni­ty. I emphat­i­cal­ly and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly denounce the racist, anti­se­mit­ic and fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy and mate­ri­als being circulated.”

Under Ohio state laws, the Lawrences sim­ply have to inform the local super­in­ten­dent that they want to home­school their chil­dren and agree to abide by cer­tain broad con­di­tions in order to legal­ly keep their chil­dren out of pub­lic schools.

The Ohio Department of Education is now active­ly review­ing com­pli­ance with statu­to­ry and reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments as a result of the media reports, a spokesper­son for the depart­ment told VICE News.

“If require­ments are met, the dis­trict super­in­ten­dent releas­es the stu­dent from required com­pul­so­ry school atten­dance,” The Ohio Department of Education states on its web­site. “This excus­es the stu­dent and fam­i­ly from school atten­dance require­ments in state law.”
Read the full sto­ry here https://​www​.vice​.com/​e​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​x​g​y​b​4​k​/​o​h​i​o​-​n​a​z​i​-​d​i​s​s​i​d​e​n​t​-​h​o​m​e​s​c​h​ool

Audio ver­sion of article.

One age-old ques­tion asked when peo­ple try to run from the police, and things go wrong is, ‘why do they run’? The ques­tion ‘pre­tends’ not to under­stand the most basic instinct of all liv­ing species to be free.
If we set aside that pre­tense, in many cas­es, when some­one runs from the police, even if they are guilty of a crime, they stand a chance of get­ting away with it.….…at least in their mind at the time.
Years ago, I wrote an arti­cle about some of the per­ils law enforce­ment face in Jamaica, where I was engaged in law enforce­ment for a decade, not the least of which was the moun­tain­ous ter­rain. Even in cas­es of mur­der, if there are no eye­wit­ness­es to the crime, once the offend­er jumps into a gul­ly, he stands an almost 100% chance of get­ting away with that murder.
Why do they run? To under­stand why peo­ple run from law enforce­ment in the United States, we must first under­stand what law enforce­ment has been from its incep­tion to black Americans.
Let’s begin!!!
On the web­site of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the fol­low­ing paragraph.
The ori­gins of mod­ern-day polic­ing can be traced back to the “Slave Patrol.” The ear­li­est for­mal slave patrol was cre­at­ed in the Carolinas in the ear­ly 1700s with one mis­sion: to estab­lish a sys­tem of ter­ror and squash slave upris­ings with the capac­i­ty to pur­sue, appre­hend, and return run­away slaves to their own­ers. Tactics includ­ed using exces­sive force to con­trol and pro­duce desired slave behav­ior.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​t​-​i​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​t​h​e​-​w​a​r​r​i​o​r​-​c​o​p​-​i​t​-​c​a​n​n​o​t​-​b​e​-​f​i​x​ed/

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

PATROLLER’S OATH

“I [patroller’s name], do swear, that I will as searcher for guns, swords, and oth­er weapons among the slaves in my dis­trict, faith­ful­ly, and as pri­vate­ly as I can, dis­charge the trust reposed in me as the law directs, to the best of my pow­er. So help me, God.”
North Carolina Slave Patrol Oath.
https://mikebeckles.com/5‑fired-memphis-officers-charged-with-murder-in-death-of-tyre-nichols/

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

The NAACP argues: By the 1900s, local munic­i­pal­i­ties began estab­lish­ing police depart­ments to enforce local laws in the East and Midwest, includ­ing Jim Crow laws. Local munic­i­pal­i­ties leaned on police to enforce and exert exces­sive bru­tal­i­ty on African Americans who vio­lat­ed any Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow Laws con­tin­ued through the end of the 1960s. End quote.

I’m afraid I have to dis­agree with the NAACP that Jim Crow Laws end­ed toward the end of the 1960s. Jim Crow laws and the method of enforce­ment remain to this day.
So for one to get an appre­ci­a­tion for why black peo­ple run from the police, one has to under­stand at least what polic­ing has been to black Americans as opposed to their white counterparts.
Black peo­ple run­ning from the police is an act of free­dom, just as the enslaved black peo­ple ran from the oppres­sive mon­stros­i­ty of slav­ery and the geno­ci­dal sys­tem that kept them enslaved.
To argue, ‘all they have to do is to com­ply with the police,’ is the most unique­ly white priv­i­leged thing to say. It cre­ates the false impres­sion that the sys­tem looks at blacks the same way as it does whites.
To assert that com­pli­ance with the police guar­an­tees equal and fair treat­ment is by itself steeped in either igno­rance or delusion.
To a young black male being stopped by the police, com­ply­ing could eas­i­ly mean being arrest­ed on trumped-up felony charges result­ing in years in prison for crimes they nev­er com­mit­ted. For them, flee­ing is the best recourse. As it was for their ances­tors flee­ing the slave patrols, it is equal­ly the same today; being caught has sim­i­lar con­se­quences, yes, even death.
For those of you who would come out the side of your faces to ques­tion the verac­i­ty of the lat­ter state­ment, tell it to Tyre Nichols.
The 13^th Amendment, which abol­ished slav­ery in the United States, pur­pose­ly retained a clause rein­forc­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of slavery.
Section 1: Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion. See, e.g., Clyatt v. United States, 197 U.S. 207, 215 (1905).
One does­n’t need a law degree from Harvard to rec­og­nize that slav­ery has not end­ed con­cep­tu­al­ly, based on sec­tion (1). To any young black male, whether he com­mit­ted a crime or not, being stopped by the police is a clear and present dan­ger of going into slavery.
It is not called slav­ery today; it is the prison indus­tri­al com­plex. Those who coined the lan­guage in sec­tion (1) of the 13^th Amendment were ful­ly aware of what they were doing in the lan­guage. ‘Except as a pun­ish­ment for crime,’ under­stand­ing that the mass incar­cer­a­tion of blacks would be the next iter­a­tion and con­tin­u­a­tion of the enslave­ment of black Americans.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​u​r​t​-​s​a​n​c​t​i​o​n​e​d​-​p​r​e​-​t​e​x​t​u​a​l​-​t​r​a​f​f​i​c​-​s​t​o​p​s​-​a​-​t​o​o​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​u​s​e​-​t​o​-​e​s​c​a​l​a​t​e​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​ce/

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/

Many well-inten­tioned com­men­ta­tors on police vio­lence, includ­ing yours, tru­ly have, from time to time, argued that American polic­ing is bro­ken. Yes, in terms of how police offi­cers are sup­posed to oper­ate, it can rea­son­ably be argued it is broken.
In terms of the intent behind the way polic­ing was designed to work in the United States, it is work­ing exact­ly as modeled.
What makes it so offen­sive to the sen­si­bil­i­ties of con­sci­en­tious peo­ple is the grue­some bar­barism of it when it is held up to the light of scrutiny.
No one should be delu­sion­al about how police vio­lence is viewed among a large sub­set of the white com­mu­ni­ty, however.
Operating from the anonymi­ty of their key­boards, in group chats, and on mes­sage boards, a truer pic­ture of who they are emerges. From this ran­cid pool comes cops, pros­e­cu­tors, judges, politi­cians, and their sup­port­ers that stand in the way of reform.
When the laws are writ­ten to impact a par­tic­u­lar group direct­ly and enforced with the same mind­set, the results are what we have with the incar­cer­a­tion rate of blacks in the United States.
Scratching the sur­face of the defin­i­tive intent to lock up black Americans puts to rest the lie that blacks are more like­ly to com­mit crimes than whites who are not policed the same way.
Why do they run? For the major­i­ty of the key­board war­riors who pon­tif­i­cate about, ‘why do they run’? They dod not want and answer, their ques­tion is the point.
The next time you ask that ques­tion, remem­ber what you just read.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​w​o​m​e​n​-​c​o​n​t​i​n​u​e​-​t​o​-​g​l​o​r​i​f​y​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​d​e​s​t​r​u​c​t​i​o​n​-​o​f​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​b​o​d​i​es/

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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.

A woman was arrest­ed in Westminster, Colorado, on Jan. 24 fol­low­ing an argu­ment with a man out­side of a Party City store. Charleene Gibson was arrest­ed fol­low­ing an alter­ca­tion with the man near 92^nd Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard. 
Gibson was arrest­ed after the inci­dent took place in front of the par­ty sup­plies store in sub­ur­ban Denver with a man who tried to take a pic­ture of her car parked near the entrance. However, Gibson said she was there to stock up on sup­plies for her birth­day and had parked close to the front door after receiv­ing per­mis­sion from the store clerk. “The Party City employ­ee said it was OK to park there for a few min­utes while we load bal­loons in the car. I stayed in the car and turned my haz­ards on,” said Gibson. Gibson said she stepped in front of his lens when the man tried to take a pic­ture of her car after com­plain­ing she’d blocked the curb ramp. Gibson said that’s when the man attacked her and hit her sev­er­al times before she struck him back. “Then he grabbed me,” she said. “And punched me in my jaw, and then he yanked me again and then punched me two times right here, and that’s when I start­ed to punch him back.”A video of the arrest went viral, which cap­tured the police arrest­ing Gibson as a friend who wit­nessed the argu­ment, NiaShay Burns, record­ed the arrest on her cell­phone. Burns is heard on the video repeat­ed­ly say­ing, “He hit her first!”

Burns can be heard on the video telling the offi­cers that three women plus anoth­er wit­ness were telling them that the man hit her first as a male offi­cer hand­cuffed Gibson. A female offi­cer moved to arrest Gibson’s sis­ter Amber after she seem­ing­ly began to try to walk away from the scene after see­ing Gibson being put in hand­cuffs. As the offi­cer shoved Amber against a vehi­cle, Burns cried out, “She didn’t do any­thing!” The female offi­cer lat­er grabbed Gibson’s arm forcibly and escort­ed her to one of sev­er­al police vehi­cles as Burns again told the offi­cers, “You guys! He hit her first!” After ask­ing the police offi­cers if the man was going to jail, one of the police offi­cers told Burns that the man would be receiv­ing a cita­tion and was not being arrest­ed. “So, he’s not going to jail, but he hit her first, and he’s a man and she’s a woman,” Burns replied. “Wait, wait, I’m con­fused.” “I under­stand that,” replied one police offi­cer. “We can go over this at f— court, OK?” Burns lat­er cap­tured the man stand­ing in the door­way of the store and said, “This man punched my cousin in the face, and he’s not going to jail but she is.” Gibson was arrest­ed for 3^rd-degree felony assault of an at-risk adult because of the man’s age. He is 74 years old. Burns shared the video on TikTok with the cap­tion, “Went to jail for defend­ing her­self while the guy a white man at that who punched her got a sum­mons share this help us fight this.”

According to local reports, the man received a tick­et for mis­de­meanor third-degree assault as well as dis­or­der­ly con­duct. The man told the police that Gibson knocked his phone out of his hand. One wit­ness claimed that the women assault­ed the man after cor­ner­ing him, but anoth­er said that the man punched Gibson in the face and that the oth­er two women came and tried to help her. “When we were tus­sling and mov­ing around, my sis­ter Amber was try­ing to get him off of me,” said Gibson. “He was antag­o­niz­ing us, say­ing stuff like ‘bring it on.’” Local news out­let 9News report­ed that after they began ask­ing ques­tions regard­ing the arrest video, the Westminster Police Department called Gibson to advise her they were no longer charg­ing her with felony assault and had down­grad­ed her charge to mis­de­meanor dis­or­der­ly con­duct. The WPD claimed the wit­ness­es gave con­flict­ing state­ments and they dropped the felony charge after talk­ing with the District Attorney. Additionally, an inves­ti­ga­tion has been launched into how the offi­cers han­dled the arrest. Burns is cer­tain that with­out that video evi­dence, Gibson would still be fac­ing a felony charge. “If I didn’t have my phone and I didn’t take it out in this sit­u­a­tion, she would have got­ten a felony charge.” Burns said. “I don’t want to sug­ar­coat it, but I do — like, that’s what it is. It’s because of the col­or of our skin,” added Gibson. “It’s the fact that we were upset and express­ing our­selves —that I went to jail.” (Atlantablackstar​.com)

As Police con­tin­ue to mur­der more and more peo­ple of col­or each year, politi­cians across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, repub­li­cans in par­tic­u­lar, remain tone-deaf to the calls of the black and brown com­mu­ni­ty that these killings [must] stop.
In a gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple by the peo­ple and of the peo­ple, the peo­ple are the main sub­ject, it fol­lows; there­fore, if those elect­ed to make it stop refuse to act, the peo­ple must take the nec­es­sary steps to stop the killings.
Everyone that chose not to bury their head in the dirt has seen count­less police cit­i­zen video inter­ac­tions on vary­ing social media plat­forms of police offi­cers act­ing way out­side the bounds of the laws in their deal­ings with mem­bers of the pub­lic, usu­al­ly black and brown people.
It is also obvi­ous that white sup­port for police vio­lence and the Supreme Court, the head of the judi­cial branch of gov­ern­ment, step­ping out­side its remit and leg­is­lat­ing a pol­i­cy, not in the con­sti­tu­tion, ‘qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, has cre­at­ed blan­ket impuni­ty in American policing.
Consequently, police depart­ments and their unions have become ver­i­ta­ble sep­a­rate gov­ern­ments onto them­selves as they oper­ate accord­ing to their own laws and prac­tices. Accountability is not a part of that par­a­digm, even as they oper­ate year­ly with increased bud­gets financed by the tax-pay­ing public.
As an arm of state gov­ern­ments, police depart­ments have become unac­count­able organs of state oppres­sion and, sad­ly, state-sanc­tioned mur­der.https://mikebeckles.com/5‑fired-memphis-officers-charged-with-murder-in-death-of-tyre-nichols/

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

PRETEXTUAL TRAFFIC STOPS

Pretextual stops are traf­fic stops con­duct­ed by the police not because a mem­ber of the dri­ving pub­lic has com­mit­ted a minor traf­fic infrac­tion per se’, but may have a bro­ken tail­light or failed to sig­nal in time before a turn. It is impos­si­ble to avoid a pre­tex­tu­al traf­fic stop because what­ev­er the rea­son the cop gives for the stop is made up and sub­ject­ed to their stan­dard after they had already decid­ed to effec­tu­ate a stop on a motorist in the first place.
This uncon­sti­tu­tion­al polic­ing mir­rors the 2002 Tom Cruise movie ‘minor­i­ty report’. The film, an action-detec­tive thriller set in Washington, D.C. in 2054, depict­ed police uti­liz­ing psy­chic tech­nol­o­gy to arrest and con­vict mur­der­ers before they com­mit a crime.
Only pre­tex­tu­al stops and stop-and-frisk polic­ing in the United States are not sav­ing lives. It is a dan­ger­ous tool for crim­i­nal cops who are a grave dan­ger to the public.
I say this with the heav­i­est of hearts, but as what obtained for nor­mal­cy unrav­els in the coun­try, the courts, the enti­ty entrust­ed to inter­pret the laws, have become a major rea­son for the unraveling.
From a wom­an’s right to choose, vot­ing rights, dark mon­ey in pol­i­tics, police vio­lence, and on and on, the courts have been wrong on every issue.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​d​r​i​v​i​n​g​-​u​n​r​e​g​i​s​t​e​r​e​d​-​t​r​u​c​k​-​d​r​i​n​k​i​n​g​-​b​e​e​r​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​t​e​e​n​-​t​a​k​e​s​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​a​nd/

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

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

The court has decreed that police can fol­low a motorist for as long as they want to find a rea­son to make a pre­tex­tu­al stop. (U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Whren v. United States (1996).
Police insist the stops are use­ful for inves­ti­gat­ing drugs and weapons pos­ses­sion, human traf­fick­ing, and drunk­en dri­ving, among oth­er crimes.
It is a lie!
Black motorists, espe­cial­ly young men, have long not­ed how often they get stopped for pet­ty traf­fic or equip­ment vio­la­tions — fail­ure to sig­nal, bro­ken license plate light, tint­ed win­dows, etc. Studies have shown pre­tex­tu­al stops to be racial­ly biased. Police stop and search Black motorists more often than dri­vers of oth­er races, with lit­tle to no effect on crime.
Pretextual traf­fic stops are the equiv­a­lent of pedes­tri­an stop and frisk. Technically they are tools that can help good police offi­cers to do their jobs more effec­tive­ly. However, when these tools are placed into the hands of racist, une­d­u­cat­ed ego­ma­ni­acs, they become ter­ri­fy­ing weapons against minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide. Studies have shown PRETEXUAL STOPS to be racial­ly biased.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​e​t​r​o​i​t​-​a​r​e​a​-​t​e​e​n​-​f​i​l​e​s​-​f​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​l​a​w​s​u​i​t​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​b​e​a​t​e​n​-​k​i​c​k​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

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

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

POLICE LIE UNDER OATH IN COURT AND TO CITIZENS WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE/​ALL LEGAL …

The Supreme Court has decreed that police are allowed to lie to cit­i­zens, yet cit­i­zens are impris­oned if they lie to the police. Frazier V Cupp (1969).
Time​.com had this to say about the deci­sion by the high­est court. “Many Americans do not know that U.S. police are per­mit­ted to lie about evi­dence to some­one they bring into the sta­tion for ques­tion­ing. This is not law­ful in most west­ern coun­tries. Incomprehensibly, they are even per­mit­ted to lie to chil­dren.
This decep­tion has tricked count­less inno­cent peo­ple into con­fess­ing to crimes they did not com­mit. Examples of their lies include, “We have sur­veil­lance footage of you that night,” “Your shoe prints were at the crime scene,” “Cell phone records prove you were there,” “You failed the poly­graph,” “Your DNA was on the vic­tim,” and “Your friend said she wasn’t with you like you said” are some all-too-com­mon but real exam­ples of police lying to cit­i­zens and gain­ing false con­fes­sions that land them in prison some­times for decades.…

https://mikebeckles.com/3‑indianapolis-cops-shoot-man-apparently-asleep-in-his-car/

In 1993, 41-year-old Gary Gauger woke up on the fam­i­ly farm in Ill. and found his par­ents stabbed to death. Detectives said they found blood-soaked clothes in his bed­room and a bloody knife in his pock­et — both lies. They also false­ly claimed that he failed a poly­graph. Gauger broke down and con­clud­ed that he must have killed his par­ents dur­ing an alco­hol-induced black­out. After five years in prison, includ­ing time spent on death row, he was released; two motor­cy­cle gang mem­bers were lat­er con­vict­ed of the mur­ders.
In 1973, a Conn. police sergeant accused 18-year-old Peter Reilly of killing his moth­er. No wit­ness­es or phys­i­cal evi­dence impli­cat­ed Reilly, who had no his­to­ry of vio­lence. Yet after hours of inter­ro­ga­tion and denials, the sergeant told Reilly he failed a poly­graph exam. Eventually, this dis­ori­ent­ing result led Reilly to ques­tion his own inno­cence. “This test is giv­ing me doubts right now,” he con­ced­ed. Led to believe that he blocked the event from con­scious­ness, Reilly lat­er said, “Well, it real­ly looks like I did it.” Later, he con­fessed to slash­ing his mother’s throat with a razor. After Reilly was con­vict­ed and impris­oned, the pros­e­cu­tor dis­cov­ered excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in his case file, and all charges were dismissed.

No sane per­son wel­comes gov­ern­ment intru­sion into their lives. Police traf­fic stops are inci­dents of gov­ern­ment intru­sion. No sane cit­i­zen would be opposed to the police being able to stop motorists for legit­i­mate rea­sons when there is a clear and bla­tant abuse of road traf­fic laws. However, the con­tin­ued court-sanc­tioned assault on our fourth amend­ment rights against gov­ern­ment intru­sion into our sacred spaces con­tin­ues unabat­ed with increas­ing­ly dead­ly con­se­quences as immune police offi­cers act with increas­ing impuni­ty. America’s traf­fic laws give police way too much pow­er to vio­late the rights of American citizens.
We are dan­ger­ous­ly close to a police state cre­at­ed by the Supreme Court; the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty for black and brown peo­ple is that we are the col­lat­er­al dam­age to bring­ing the coun­try to a com­plete police state con­trolled by the filthy rich and pow­er­ful and their polit­i­cal underlings.
It is a three-tiered oli­garchy sys­tem of the mighty rich at the top, the politi­cians, and the courts leg­is­lat­ing and val­i­dat­ing unjust laws. The police are on the bot­tom, exe­cut­ing unjust laws.

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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.

Throughout the dark, despi­ca­ble peri­od of slav­ery, Jim Crowe, to the present, an often over­looked group, has been instru­men­tal in its grue­some­ness; white women. The stink of their sins will for­ev­er leave a stench and a scar­let let­ter on them and their descen­dants into perpetuity.
They can try all they want to ‘white­wash’ his­to­ry to relieve their guilt, but both are sure to fail. They can try to sup­press America’s mur­der­ous his­to­ry against black peo­ple, but word will get out. And they cer­tain­ly will not ease their con­science from the tor­ment of those crimes.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​e​h​i​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​t​o​x​i​c​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​h​i​d​e​s​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​w​o​m​e​n​-​i​n​-​p​l​a​i​n​-​s​i​g​ht/
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to inci­dent after inci­dent where white women steeped in the knowl­edge that their weak mon­strous, sub-human male coun­ter­parts would com­mit any crime, includ­ing mur­der, to pro­tect their faux fragili­ty have lever­aged that weak mon­stros­i­ty to the per­il of count­less black peo­ple from the begin­ning of this exper­i­ment called America.
Many enslaved men and women have been tor­tured beyond imag­i­na­tion and even­tu­al­ly mur­dered because a despi­ca­ble lying white woman decid­ed to lever­age that weapon with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.
Entire towns have been burned to the ground, and their inhab­i­tants slaugh­tered like dis­eased cat­tle on the lies of lying white women. The white liar who had Emmit Till slaugh­tered by the equal­ly sub­hu­man horde remains alive and unpros­e­cut­ed for her crimes. This alone should give one a good per­spec­tive of jus­tice in the United States.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​w​o​m​e​n​-​c​o​m​p​l​i​c​i​t​-​i​n​-​o​p​p​r​e​s​s​i​n​g​-​o​t​h​e​r​s​w​i​l​l​f​u​l​l​y​-​f​o​r​g​e​t​t​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​o​w​n​-​p​e​r​i​o​d​-​o​f​-​o​p​p​r​e​s​s​ion/​

Beyond act­ing as agi­ta­tors and fus­es to the flames of vio­lence and hatred indued in their male con­tem­po­raries, they act as ter­mites, con­sis­tent­ly eat­ing away at the wood­work of racial harmony.
So it was no sur­prise that a group of those hate­mon­gers, Republicans as you may have already guessed, gath­ered at a Greek restau­rant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to hear Jonathan Mattingly, a for­mer cop with the Louisville Metro Police Department who was among the team who per­formed a botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor while she was in her apart­ment in 2020.
Patrons of the Restaurant could hear the sounds of gun­shots and unset­tling police footage from an upstairs event held by the local Republican group of white women .…..
Restaurant patron Cayce Johnson told The Courier-Journal that audio from the event could be heard through­out the restau­rant and that Mattingly, now a con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit (big sur­prise there), was intro­duced to “rau­cous applause.” It is impor­tant to remem­ber Mattingly was the first cop to enter Ms. Taylor’s apart­ment on 13 March 2020, as police exe­cut­ed a search war­rant and used a bat­ter­ing ram to break down her door.
The search war­rant was obtained from a judge on lies and fab­ri­cat­ed state­ments by mem­bers of the Louisville Metro Police Department.
Though Mattingly has not been charged with a crime, detec­tive Brett Hankison was charged with civ­il rights vio­la­tions, alleg­ing that the now-for­mer cop “will­ful­ly used uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly exces­sive force, while act­ing in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as an offi­cer, when he fired his ser­vice weapon into Taylor’s apart­ment through a cov­ered win­dow and cov­ered glass door.”
Last year, the US Department of Justice indict­ed three oth­er cops involved in the scheme– Kelly Goodlett, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany – on charges of con­spir­a­cy, obstruc­tion of jus­tice and civ­il rights vio­la­tions for alleged­ly con­spir­ing to mis­lead the judge who approved the search war­rant on Ms. Taylor’s home.
Another restau­rant patron, Katelyn Jones, told CNN that she could not see what was hap­pen­ing upstairs but heard the sounds of sirens and gun­shots that drowned out their din­ner con­ver­sa­tion. “Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off, and we heard police radio chat­ter and sirens on a record­ing. We heard the gun­shots, too, and it was so loud and chaot­ic. It was real­ly loud.

Creative direc­tor at the Grio​.com Toure’ in ref­er­ence to the inci­dent, yes­ter­day wrote, ‘Mattingly has told his sto­ry many times — in the book and in var­i­ous inter­views — but for some rea­son, this Republican group need­ed him to come to its event and tell his sto­ry again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lion­iz­ing peo­ple who kill Black peo­ple.’ You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed peo­ple at a BLM rally.
Toure’ went on…It also reminds me of the way white peo­ple in this coun­try would take pho­tographs of lynch­ing and turn them into post­cards as a way of cel­e­brat­ing the destruc­tion of a Black body and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white power.
Can some­one shout “Amen”?
This is not just pre­pos­ter­ous or shock­ing any­more; at some point in time, we must rec­og­nize them for what they are, not who they are. A vile sub­hu­man species that flour­ish and rev­els in the car­nal­i­ty and gore of black slaughter…

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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.

It isn’t enough that cops can kill Black peo­ple with lit­tle to no con­se­quences, but now Republicans are using our trau­ma to lux­u­ri­ate in their pro-cop narrative.

Bowling Green, Kentucky is less than two hours from Louisville, the city where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police offi­cers while in her home in 2020. Her death was one of the more shock­ing deaths by police in recent years, and so her name rings out in the Black com­mu­ni­ty with a spe­cial pow­er. The Justice Department has charged four offi­cers with fal­si­fy­ing the affi­davit used to obtain the search war­rant in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al civ­il rights laws; one offi­cer plead­ed guilty. Breonna’s fam­i­ly received a $12 mil­lion set­tle­ment, but her death con­tin­ues to be trau­ma­tiz­ing for Black peo­ple, and the trau­ma­tiz­ing hap­pened again last week in Bowling Green.

There’s a restau­rant there that host­ed a Republican group — I’m not going to name them — which came togeth­er to lis­ten to Jonathan Mattingly speak. Mattingly was one of the three offi­cers who fired shots at Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker dur­ing the raid of her home. During the raid, Mattingly was shot by Walker, who thought the cops were intrud­ers. Mattingly, now a retired offi­cer, is the author of a book about the shoot­ing, which I will not name, but in it, he whines about “the woke mob,” so, you know who he is. He also thinks he and Breonna are some­how equal. In his book, he says, “I want my sto­ry to make a dif­fer­ence. I want soci­ety to stop insist­ing on some­one to blame for every cri­sis and tragedy. I don’t want anoth­er Breonna Taylor or anoth­er John Mattingly.” Gross. I don’t know how he became one of the vic­tims here, but white vic­tim­hood is so pow­er­ful it can leap a loco­mo­tive in a sin­gle bound.

Mattingly has told his sto­ry many times — in the book and in var­i­ous inter­views — but for some rea­son, this Republican group need­ed him to come to its event and tell his sto­ry again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lion­iz­ing peo­ple who kill Black peo­ple and their allies. You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed peo­ple at a BLM ral­ly — right-wing star slash lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said Rittenhouse is a hero who deserves a Congressional Gold Medal. Wow.

The Republican group who host­ed Mattingly said he “has the right to share his expe­ri­ence” and I mean, yeah, sure, Mattingly does have the right to share his expe­ri­ence, but of all the peo­ple in the world, why are they so inter­est­ed in hear­ing his wide­ly avail­able sto­ry again? They also said “Other indi­vid­u­als with first­hand expe­ri­ence relat­ing to this case are wel­come to request an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to our orga­ni­za­tion as well,” but there’s one liv­ing indi­vid­ual who was there who tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry — Kenneth Walker. I am sure they are not inter­est­ed in hear­ing his first­hand expe­ri­ence. If we’re being real, we know this was not a gen­uine “let’s just hear what he has to say” sit­u­a­tion. We know they weren’t there to get down to the truth. They want­ed anoth­er chance to lux­u­ri­ate in their pro-cop narrative.

But there’s more. The night that Mattingly spoke, most of the restau­rant was still open to guests and, at some point, they all were forced to be part of the show. According to some of the guests, the lights in the restau­rant dimmed, and both audio and police body­cam footage were broad­cast in the restau­rant. Can you imag­ine sit­ting in some mid-lev­el restau­rant try­ing to get through a meal when some­one starts blast­ing footage of a Black per­son get­ting killed by police? That’s traumatizing.

It’s already trau­ma­tiz­ing that we are bom­bard­ed by these images via tra­di­tion­al media and social media, con­stant­ly com­ing up against these lit­tle snuff films where Black lives are end­ed. We are shown these images so often, and they are so sear­ing and painful that I know that most Black peo­ple have about 20 or 25 Black killings in their mem­o­ry that they can call up at any time. We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings. If I just call out the names of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice … we see the footage in our minds. We car­ry that around with us all the time, and it’s some heavy emo­tion­al bag­gage. I don’t know what impact that’s hav­ing on all of us, but it’s sure­ly corrosive.

Those poor din­ers had the images and the sound of Breonna’s death played while they ate. It’s cru­el and unusu­al, but it also reminds me of the way white peo­ple in this coun­try would take pho­tographs of lynch­ing and turn them into post­cards as a way of cel­e­brat­ing the destruc­tion of a Black body and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white power.

The pres­i­dent of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chap­ter, Ryan Dearbone, said, “It is beyond rep­re­hen­si­ble to sub­ject any­one, let alone chil­dren and cus­tomers of African-American descent, to such inde­cent expo­sure, graph­ic and upset­ting images while they were attempt­ing to enjoy their meal. Such dis­turb­ing occur­rences must not be tol­er­at­ed espe­cial­ly in places of pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion. At a min­i­mum, these acts are devoid of human­i­ty and vio­late the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human decency.”

Amen.

The lev­el of com­fort white peo­ple have is shock­ing when young black kids are abused, shot, or mur­dered by police. Flip the script, and the vic­tim of the vio­lence is a white kid, and the response is so very pre­dictably different.
When black kids are abused and killed, the nar­ra­tive is they should have fol­lowed instruc­tions if only they learned to over author­i­ty; they come from bro­ken homes, and on and on it goes.
On the rare occa­sion the vic­tim, through mis­ad­ven­ture, is white and the nar­ra­tive changes, ‘cops can­not be trust­ed,’ ‘they are liars’, they should all go to jail for life.…..It makes me laugh.…not at the vic­tim; I laugh at the bla­tant hypocrisy.
No case stands out more than this one.
If this wannabe Rambo knew the car’s dri­ver was white, he would nev­er have pulled his weapon, much less fired into the vehi­cle. They all want to be heroes, and why not shoot some black kid, and get them paid vaca­tion and promotions?
If they are charged, they are like­ly to be exon­er­at­ed, whether it is a jury or bench tri­al. All they have to do is lie.
We did our own dig­ging and found that the offi­cer in the case below has a his­to­ry of vio­lent behav­ior, yet he was allowed to con­tin­ue as a police offi­cer, keep a gun, and work among chil­dren in their school. See the video.

Off-duty Pawtucket Connecticut police offi­cer Daniel Dolan was dri­ving an unreg­is­tered truck with an open beer beside him on the June evening in 2021 when he pur­sued a speed­ing car with inten­tions, he tes­ti­fied at tri­al Tuesday, of hav­ing a “father­ly chat” with the motorists about the dan­gers of errat­ic dri­ving. As a mid­dle-school resource offi­cer, “that’s what I do all day long,” he said. “I call them father­ly chats.” Instead, Dolan end­ed up shoot­ing and wound­ing Dominic Vincent out of fear for his life, he tes­ti­fied, as the then-18-year-old sat behind the wheel of his car out­side a West Greenwich piz­za shop. “At that moment I believed I was going to fall in front of the vehi­cle … and get dragged down the road,” Dolan told a Superior Court jury.

Dolan takes the stand in his own defense

Dolan, fac­ing four felony charges of unjust­ly shoot­ing Vincent, took the wit­ness stand in his own defense Tuesday, insist­ing he shot Vincent after aim­ing through the wind­shield to stop the car he said was bear­ing down on him. Dolan actu­al­ly shot through the driver’s side pas­sen­ger win­dow, wit­ness­es and bal­lis­tic experts tes­ti­fied — an undis­put­ed fact that pros­e­cu­tors say proves he was not in harm’s way when he fired.

Under direct ques­tion­ing by his defense lawyer Michael Colucci, Dolan, 40, explained his years as a Marine and his three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan before join­ing the Pawtucket Police Department in 2015. Most recent­ly he had been a resource offi­cer at Slater Middle School. He said he encoun­tered Vincent’s black Audi on the way home to Coventry on Interstate 95 on the evening of June 23, 2021, when it sped past him so fast he could feel the wind shift over the road. Dolan said he sus­pect­ed the car was “flee­ing from the police,” and that its pass­ing oth­er vehi­cles in the break­down lane at more than 100 mph “showed a dis­re­gard for human life.” Still, Dolan said he didn’t decide to pur­sue the car until he took his nor­mal exit off the high­way, Exit 6 at the time, and saw it about 500 feet down Nooseneck Hill Road. He sped after it to get a license-plate num­ber to pass on to local police, he said, but then noticed it pulling into Wicked Good Pizza and fol­lowed it into the park­ing lot. Even then, Dolan said his inten­tion was only to “observe” the vehi­cle. But then Dolan said the car made an “aggres­sive” move toward his Ford-350 truck as he attempt­ed to pull in beside it. Vincent tes­ti­fied ear­li­er he had pulled in and start­ed to swing around in the small lot to head back out once they had picked up a pre-ordered pizza.

AMERICA’S HISTORY OF RACISM

It starts as the first drop of rain or snowflake; in short order, the ground is cov­ered with snow or sat­u­rat­ed with water. America has always had a seri­ous hatred for its black cit­i­zens. The ani­mus nev­er went any­where; it was always under the sur­face as the storm clouds hov­ered just over­head until they became too heavy, and down came the downpour.
All it requires in the United States is that Black Americans demand equal treat­ment under the law, and imme­di­ate­ly the hatred comes rush­ing to the sur­face in a tor­ren­tial gush of putrid anger.
People con­tin­ue to expect and even argue that America is get­ting bet­ter racial­ly, and I beg to dif­fer; things are not improv­ing. The hatred that char­ac­ter­ized America since its incep­tion is just as ran­cid and tox­ic today.
The can­cer of racism is being taught and hand­ed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion of white peo­ple. Unfortunately for Blacks who want to be accepted.….…..just to get along, their quest for a just and equi­table soci­ety remains a mirage in a desert of dead­ly racial hatred.
You can leg­is­late con­se­quences, but you can­not change peo­ple’s hearts. You can make it so that crimes com­mit­ted against peo­ple with race as a motive are met with swift and deci­sive jus­tice but in the hearts of peo­ple remain hatred and animosity.
It was the law that Blacks were ³⁄₅ of a human being. It was the law that Blacks had no right that a white per­son was oblig­at­ed to respect. It was the law that inter­ra­cial mar­riage was a felony.
Since the gov­ern­ment and the courts were heav­i­ly invest­ed in writ­ing, pass­ing, and val­i­dat­ing unjust laws against its own cit­i­zens, why are we sur­prised that the aver­age per­son would be steeped in racial hatred?

PANDERING TO RACIST WHITE IGNORANCE

Donald Trump under­stood that if he stoked the seem­ing­ly dying embers of racism that lay smol­der­ing under the ash­es, he would get a mas­sive realign­ing of the American polit­i­cal order along racial lines.
Experts argue Trump has approx­i­mate­ly 48% of the elec­torate on his side. Pew Research report­ed that in 2016 48% report­ed vot­ing for Hillary Clinton and 45% for Donald Trump; by com­par­i­son, the offi­cial nation­al vote tal­ly was 48% for Clinton and 46% for Trump. This is not sci­en­tif­ic; how­ev­er, if we were to build out that vote and extend it to the entire US pop­u­la­tion of 330 mil­lion and assume that if every­one could vote, the num­bers would remain the same, Trump would have 151, 800,000 on his side.
Donald Trump strate­gized that he did not need to appeal to non-white vot­ers; he did not need them. It would make no sense to run a white pow­er cam­paign and appeal to non-white vot­ers simultaneously.
The more out­ra­geous his rhetoric, the more hard­ened his white sup­port became. His strat­e­gy won him the pres­i­den­cy in 2016, and even though he lost the pop­u­lar vote by two per­cent­age points, he was elect­ed pres­i­dent in the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­toral college.

ASSAULT ON BLACK HISTORY

The assault in Florida by Ron DeSantis on African/​American his­to­ry should be a wake-up call for the forty-some­thing mil­lion blacks in the United States.
Ron Desantis, who has pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, is not unaware of Trump’s dis­re­spect to blacks dur­ing his cam­paign and through­out his dis­as­trous four years in the white house.
Desantis has made it clear that he will be tak­ing the same path but more so to the right of Donald Trump. Consequently, Desantis has set him­self up as the mod­ern iter­a­tion of George Wallace.
Still, it will con­tin­ue with a few com­plaints and protests here and there but no con­cert­ed sus­tained black pow­er actions that make it clear those actions will not be tol­er­at­ed. Brian Kemp signed anti-vot­ing laws in Georgia under a pic­ture of an old slave plan­ta­tion flanked by six oth­er white men, and blacks did nothing.
Desantis’ barefaced attack on Black History, or what he char­ac­ter­ized as the “woke mob” is the equiv­a­lent of what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the Civil Rights fights of the 1960s.
In the 1960s, the black com­mu­ni­ty had iden­ti­fi­able lead­ers they could dis­par­age and even­tu­al­ly assas­si­nate; today, there is no stand­out leader in the black com­mu­ni­ty, even among the elect­ed US Senators.
The FBI’s J Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro pro­gram ensured that Black lead­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed. So Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Dr. King, and many more were terminated.
Today poten­tial black lead­ers are gun-shy to step for­ward in lead­er­ship part­ly because of the threat that their own gov­ern­ment pos­es to their phys­i­cal exis­tence and part­ly from fire com­ing from their own ranks.
Black Americans are the most vicious against their own kind; not only do they ques­tion the edu­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions of poten­tial lead­ers, they bad mouth their very right to speak on the issues.

THE SO-CALLED WOKE MOB

Without an iden­ti­fi­able head of black America, it becomes dif­fi­cult to decap­i­tate black lead­er­ship through tar­get­ed assas​si​na​tions​.No lead­er­ship head, who do you tar­get to kill?
So the next best thing is to attack the entire race, which Ron Desantis is doing in Florida to out-Trump Donald Trump as the next pres­i­den­tial con­test begins to take shape.
The vilest, most rep­re­hen­si­ble can­di­date who can show nean­derthal whites that they will be bet­ter at keep­ing blacks in their place will be the next Republican stand­out for 2024.
The prob­lem with attack­ing edu­ca­tion and whether black his­to­ry is taught in Florida’s schools, uni­ver­si­ties, and col­leges will most assured­ly back­fire on Desantis and oth­ers try­ing to sup­press black history.
Obviously, Ron Desantis is not a stu­dent of his­to­ry, or he would have known that the more you try to sup­press knowl­edge, the more curi­ous peo­ple become to learn. He would have known that despite the many and var­ied attempts to remove the bible from the earth, it is the book with the largest num­ber in print by far.
I am not con­cerned about a small-time igno­ra­mus posi­tion­ing him­self as a lit­tle god; what con­cerns me are the issues that some with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty have tak­en onto them­selves as they take the lib­er­ty to speak for the entire black community.
The idea that the black com­mu­ni­ty is a com­mu­ni­ty that ful­ly embraces homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, Lesbianism, and trans­sex­u­al­i­ty is a damn lie.
A bunch of unmar­ried col­lege-edu­cat­ed women who hate men, who are engaged in les­bian and left­ist fem­i­nist ide­ol­o­gy speak for them­selves and those they rep­re­sent; they do not speak for the major­i­ty of black fam­i­lies in the United States.
Therefore, con­sci­en­tious black Americans must unshack­le them­selves from this most vocal part of the black com­mu­ni­ty that ties black­ness to hard-left fem­i­nism, hatred of men, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, Lesbianism, and trans­sex­u­al­ism. I am con­fi­dent I speak for the major­i­ty when I say that most black peo­ple and fam­i­lies do [not] align with the foregone.
We see it dai­ly when­ev­er the ques­tion of race comes up; this vocal ele­ment in the media, which is black and homo­sex­u­al, black issues are tied to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, Lesbianism, and transsexualism.
It is not who we are. This must be con­demned like we con­demn the likes of Donald Trump, Brian Kemp, and Ron Desantis.

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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.

No, this is not a joke. There is an unex­plained, irra­tional affin­i­ty between cops and a cer­tain seg­ment of America that caus­es things like these to occur.
Maybe the mem­bers of that jury still believe a Black man has no right that any­one is oblig­ed to respect.
I mean, black sol­diers return­ing from Korea and Vietnam were treat­ed like garbage after fight­ing America’s wars, so it should come as no sur­prise that despite the fact that this mil­i­tary offi­cer in uni­form had bro­ken no law, a jury of Karens and Kens have no regard for his right to dig­ni­ty. (mb)

A Black sol­dier in uni­form who was pep­per-sprayed in his car by Virginia police offi­cers dur­ing a traf­fic stop has been award­ed less than $4,000 in a mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit against the two offi­cers. The jury award­ed 2^nd Lt. Caron Nazario a total of $3,685 in the law­suit against Windsor, Virginia, police offi­cers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker. The offi­cers faced four counts: assault, bat­tery, false impris­on­ment and ille­gal search. Gutierrez was ordered to pay $2,685 in dam­ages, no mal­ice, under lia­bil­i­ty for assault. He was cleared of all oth­er charges. Crocker was liable for an ille­gal search, no mal­ice. He was ordered to pay $1,000 in dam­ages. He was cleared of all oth­er charges. Nazario’s lawyer, Tom Roberts, said it was a “sad day” and that the ver­dicts fail to send the mes­sage to oth­er police offi­cers that “this con­duct is unacceptable.”

“It is open sea­son on cit­i­zens in Virginia and across the coun­ty,” Roberts said in a state­ment. “Citizens will not rest assured that scenes like this are not repeat­ed with impuni­ty. MORE: Black sol­dier suing police over vio­lent stop caught on cam­era The offi­cers pulled over Nazario on the evening of Dec. 5, 2020. Body cam­era footage showed Gutierrez pep­per spray Nazario when he would not get out of the car. One of the offi­cers wrote in the police report that Nazario elud­ed police because he did­n’t stop right away. Nazario stat­ed that he want­ed to pull over in a well-lit area. “I’m hon­est­ly afraid to get out,” Nazario said dur­ing the traf­fic stop. “Yeah, you should be,” Gutierrez replied. Police said they pulled him over for not hav­ing a vis­i­ble rear license plate, but in the footage, a tem­po­rary license plate can be seen in the rear win­dow of Nazario’s then-new SUV. Nazario was not charged in the incident.
Gutierrez was fired by the Windsor Police Department in 2021 for not fol­low­ing depart­ment pol­i­cy dur­ing the incident.