Last year was a year in which the world was engulfed in dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemic. Millions lost their lives, and still, people continue to die and be infected with the dangerous virus. However, the year 2020 was also a year in which Donald Trump was thankfully booted from the presidency, and who can forget that the entire world was also engulfed in another upheaval, speaking of the on-camera murder of George Floyd by Minnesota cops.
Some pundits declared the marches and outcry against police violence (a) ‘a watershed moment’,(b) a seminal moment; others posited © “there was no going back to the way things were.”
Me? I wasn’t so sure. The idea that there would be a significant change in American policing because (a) another black man was murdered by them or (b) that some white people had come out to demonstrate against the police because they were bored from being locked away because of the virus is to show that one does not understand the racism in the American criminal justice system.
One of the unsettling aspects of the American response to policing has been the hypocrisy with which it seeks to punish allegations of law enforcement excesses in smaller, less powerful nations yet support the same abuses from its own law enforcement officers.
In recent times, I have written a few articles in which I have spoken about how the United States used legislation like the Leahy Law and money, or more appropriately, holding back aid to punish elements of a foreign agency based on allegations of abuse.
I raise the issue of American hypocrisy against the inherent and systematic corruption that runs the gamut across the American Justice system, (a) not just the police but (b) in the complicity of many prosecutors in covering up police crimes when they should be prosecuting them © the racial biases in some judges in how they view certain communities, the disproportionality of the sentences they hand down depending on the color and zip codes of defendants, and (d) how legislators allow police to get away with crimes like turning off body-worn cameras, tampering with and destroying evidence, withholding recordings from body-worn cameras, and worse.
It is hard to imagine a system more corrupt than that in the United States in its totality.
No case is more representative of the endemic corruption than this 2019 New Orleans case… Louisiana State Police murdered Ronald Greene, falsified evidence, lied to his family about how he died, and hid crucial evidence from investigators.
To date, none of the murderous criminals in uniform has been held accountable for the series of crimes they committed. Instead, they are still employed as police officers, emboldened to commit more felonies against the black community by a system that benefits from black oppression.
In 2019 Ronald Greene, a black man, was engaged in a high-speed chase with Louisiana State Police. He was eventually caught, handcuffed, choked, beaten, tased repeatedly, and had his legs hogtied. Ronald Green cried out in pain as he was forced to lie face down on his chest, hands tied behind his back and legs tied as well. Medical experts have long argued that someone in that position finds it difficult to breathe.
But the Louisiana police on the scene under Lt. John Clary’s directive ensured that Ronald Greene remained in [exactly] that dangerous position.
In addition to the dangerous position that mister green was in, he was repeatedly sprayed in the face with pepper spray.
Even though Lt. John Clary and detectives were wearing body-worn cameras, Clary lied that there was no camera recording of the events of that day.
There is no doubt why Clary and his bunch of criminals were intent on the evidence staying hidden; they dragged the hogtied Greene by his ankles, his face on the ground.
According to the Associated Press; Clary, the highest-ranking officer among the at least six all-white state troopers at the scene of Greene’s May 10, 2019, arrest, told investigators later that day that [he had no body-camera footage of the incident] — a statement proven to be untrue when his 30-minute body camera video of the arrest emerged last month.
Clary, who arrived at the scene just seconds after troopers stunned, choked, and punched Greene to get him into handcuffs, told investigators that Greene “was still, yelling and screaming … and he was still resisting, even though he was handcuffed. He was still trying to get away and was not cooperating.”
All of the evidence of the murder and lies were swept under the rug by Louisiana State authorities until the Associated Press began investigating the incident, found video evidence of their crimes, and made the evidence public.
According to the AP reporting, Clary’s own video, published last week by the AP and later released by the state, shows Greene “lying on the ground, face down, handcuffed behind his back, leg shackles on his ankles, uttering the phrases, ‘I’m sorry, or ‘I’m scared’ or ‘Yes sir’ or ‘Okay.” Clary’s video shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old Greene to remain facedown on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing. Greene can be seen on Clary’s footage struggling to prop himself up on his side. “Don’t you turn over! Lay on your belly! Lay on your belly!” Trooper Kory York yells before briefly dragging Greene by the chain that connects his ankle shackles.
As we try to expose the corruption on this medium and seek to bring to the fore the dire straits blacks find themselves in with police abuse, we show that the corruption runs from the top down and is not confined to the police.
The Huffingtonpost reported that Louisiana State police also did not open an administrative investigation into the troopers’ use of force until 474 days after Greene’s death. And Louisiana officials from Gov. John Bel Edwards on down repeatedly refused to publicly release any body camera video of Greene’s arrest for more than two years, until last week after AP began publishing videos it obtained.
What Louisiana state did to Ronald Greene with the acquiescence of Govern Edwards and others was no different than slave catching in the 21st century.
An average person who lies to investigators goes to prison; a person who falsifies or destroys evidence goes to prison. A person who commits murder goes to prison; if they are black, their chance of leaving prison is next to zero if they are not executed.
In the United States, police murder black citizens, destroy evidence, and lie to other cops who investigate them.
Prosecutors help them to hide evidence. Governors assist in the coverups, and legislatures pass additional laws to protect the murderers.
What is the point of the citizens being asked to pay for body cameras when the police are allowed to turn them off when they commit crimes?
Police routinely turn off their body-worn cameras, commit crimes then turn them back on after they have staged scenes to support the lies they want to tell…
Police departments get to decide if the recordings are released to the public, and the greatest bullshit of all is that although the cameras are paid fr with our tax dollars and the agents of the states are employed and paid with tax dollars, legislators have decided that the recordings on body cams are [not] public records.
No, the killing of George Floyd was not a seminal moment in the police killing of black people; neither was it a watershed moment; it was simply another moment in which the state murdered a black man, and a bunch of people wanted to vent from having being told that they had to stay home.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.