Citizens Should Not Fear Police They Pay To Protect Them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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