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In some munic­i­pal­i­ties across the United States shoot­ing inci­dents have gone up, accord­ing to [police] reports. In New York City, for exam­ple, there has been a 35.4% increase in mur­ders in the last two years, accord­ing to NYPD data, though mur­ders are down 2.4% in 2021 year-to-date com­pared to last year. Shooting inci­dents have sky­rock­et­ed data shows. There’s been a 15.8% increase from 2020 to 2021, year-to-date, data shows, and a 100% increase over the past two years.
My point is not to tar­get New York nor malign the NYPD, but they have been known to use all kinds of under­hand­ed tac­tics to get what they want or to make a point.
It is for those rea­sons as there are cries to defund the police after the George Floyd mur­der in 2020, and res­i­dents in large cities like New York City and oth­ers are seek­ing to reimag­ine what polic­ing looks like going for­ward, that we are wit­ness­ing these spikes in shoot­ings and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
We all remem­ber that this same police depart­ment car­ried out the first insur­rec­tion in New York City against Mayor Dinkins led by Rudolph Guiliani. We can­not for­get also that they turned their backs en masse on their boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, as he deliv­ered an address. not exact­ly a mod­el to emulate.
In fact, this depart­ment has been noth­ing but a group of thugs, its mem­bers have rammed pro­test­ers with their tax­pay­er-fund­ed vehi­cles and bragged about run­ning peo­ple over, who were mere­ly law­ful­ly demon­strat­ing against injustice.

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

When polic­ing is looked at in terms of what it ought to rep­re­sent, (a) to the cit­i­zens it is sup­posed to pro­tect, (b) the cit­i­zens who pay for that ser­vice; the NYPD has been a shame­ful self-serv­ing fas­cist tool that serves its own interest.
On the 25^th of June of this year, I posed the ques­tion to you my read­ers; who exact­ly are the peo­ple doing the shooting”?
The ques­tion in no way negates the fact that there are many crim­i­nals out there tak­ing advan­tage of COVID-19 and the sense of uncer­tain­ty with polic­ing to com­mit crimes of opportunity.
However, it seems that some­thing is hap­pen­ing just under the sur­face, con­sid­er­ing that the FBI report­ed a large num­ber of Law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary mem­bers, past and present, were actu­al­ly a part of the January 20^th insur­rec­tion at the US Capitol.|
Conspiracy?
No!!!
I pre­sent­ed you with data and a pat­tern of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that tends to lead toward a cer­tain conclusion.

I would not put it past police across the coun­try to have a heavy hand in this uptick in vio­lence to show that they are need­ed. I do not put it past a gullible pub­lic to lap it up and hire more of these uni­formed terrorists.

And then there is this story.
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Georgia Deputy Who Bragged About Beating Black Man, Claimed He’d Charge People with Crimes to Keep Them from Voting Is Sentenced on Weapons Charges.

A for­mer Georgia deputy and U.S. Marine who bragged in mes­sages with mem­bers of an extrem­ist group that he had bru­tal­ized a Black man in cus­tody and that he intend­ed to charge Black peo­ple with felonies to keep them from vot­ing were sen­tenced to three years and eight months in prison, plus one year of super­vised release on Aug. 3 in con­nec­tion with a weapons charge. Cody Richard Griggers, 28, plead­ed guilty in fed­er­al court on April 26 to one count of pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered firearm and faced up to 10 years in prison. Federal author­i­ties revealed in court in April that while Griggers was still work­ing as a Wilkinson County deputy, he told mem­bers of the “Shadow Moses” group via text, “I’m going to charge them with what­ev­er felonies I can; to take away their abil­i­ty to vote.”In the mes­sages, Griggers used extrem­ist lan­guage, claim­ing he’d beat­en a Black theft sus­pect and talk­ing about killing lib­er­al politi­cians. He also dis­cussed acquir­ing ille­gal firearms, explo­sives, and sup­pres­sors and made pos­i­tive ref­er­ences to the Holocaust.

Griggers was fired from the depart­ment in November after the FBI con­tact­ed the sher­iff about an inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing ille­gal guns and a man who had made vio­lent polit­i­cal state­ments on social media.
“This for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer vio­lat­ed his oath of office in many ways, the most egre­gious was by threat­en­ing the very cit­i­zens he was sworn to pro­tect with his words of racial­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lence,” Chris Hacker, FBI spe­cial agent in charge of the Atlanta field office, said in a statement.
“Now he is being held account­able by serv­ing time in prison and nev­er being able to wear the blue again.”
FBI agents dis­cov­ered the group text with Griggers as part of a California inves­ti­ga­tion into a man mak­ing vio­lent polit­i­cal state­ments on social media. Authorities were search­ing the San Diego home of Grey Zamudio when they dis­cov­ered the Shadow Moses group text and saw the messages.
On November 19, 2020, a search of Griggers’ res­i­dence and his ser­vice vehi­cle yield­ed mul­ti­ple firearms, includ­ing an unreg­is­tered short bar­rel shot­gun in his home and a machine gun with an oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber in the vehi­cle. The machine gun was not issued to Griggers, and he was not allowed to have the weapon in his law enforce­ment car. Officers found 11 ille­gal firearms in total between Griggers’ home and car.
In August 2019, Griggers texted the group about hav­ing beat­en a Black man.
“Oh, got wrapped up in my AR and for­got to tell y’all that I beat the sh‑t out of a n‑gger Saturday. (Expletive) tried to steal (a gun mag­a­zine) from the local gun store. … Sheriff’s dept. Said it looked like he fell,” Griggers said, accord­ing to an affidavit.
He described the beat­ing as “sweet stress relief.”
He also explained how he’d use polit­i­cal vio­lence to keep Black peo­ple from vot­ing. “Castrate, kill, remove vot­ing rights,” he wrote in an October mes­sage. “The only prob­lem is you can’t expect to get them all that way.”
“Law enforce­ment offi­cers should be above reproach, and the vast major­i­ty of them are. Cody Griggers dis­graced that trust by espous­ing vio­lent extrem­ism and pos­sess­ing a cache of unreg­is­tered weapons while on duty, includ­ing a machine gun with a silencer and oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber,” said act­ing U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary. “Officers are nev­er above the laws they swear to uphold, and I thank our law enforce­ment part­ners for help­ing us hold this dis­graced for­mer deputy account­able. On Tuesday, Griggers claimed he was only jok­ing when he made the offen­sive com­ments in the group text.
“They were jokes, but it’s noth­ing to joke about. It has a real impact,” he said tear­ful­ly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report­ed

On Tuesday, Griggers claimed he was only jok­ing when he made the offen­sive com­ments in the group text. “They were jokes, but it’s noth­ing to joke about. It has a real impact,” he said tear­ful­ly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report­ed.
Wilkinson County Sheriff Richard Chatman said there’s no evi­dence Griggers act­ed on his beliefs while work­ing as a deputy for under a year. He said the claim about the beat­en Black sus­pect did not happen.

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Even after this igno­rant racist piece of shit was bust­ed with ille­gal weapons, con­fessed that he had beat­en a black man, that he had con­coct­ed felonies and charged Black peo­ple with those felonies to pre­vent them from vot­ing, and after he com­mit­ted numer­ous felonies, not to men­tion vio­lat­ing his oath as a police offi­cer, a piece of shit judge gave him three years.
That is white privilege.
And to make mat­ters even worse, if that is pos­si­ble, the piece of shit sher­iff said he nev­er beat any Black person.
And so I ask again,” who are the peo­ple real­ly fir­ing the shots”?

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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.