Rather than adopt mea­sures to fix the dan­ger­ous­ly smol­der­ing prob­lem of police abuse in America, state Governors trot out nation­al guards to show force when the vol­cano erupt in places.
How long do they think they will be able to play whack-a-mole?

This is a sys­temic prob­lem which has per­sist­ed for a long time . Police abuse is noth­ing new in America,

if you tune out the noise of America’s self-right­eous hypocrisy about human rights you real­ize just how bad­ly America’s police forces are, when com­pared to police depart­ments in oth­er coun­tries in the west­ern world.

In truth they get away with abuse of black cit­i­zens large­ly because the black com­mu­ni­ty is a frac­tured dis­ori­ent­ed enti­ty with dif­fer­ing and self serv­ing positions.
As such state Legislators are under no pres­sure to reign in their police depart­ments. Police depart­ments for their part gen­er­al­ly oper­ate as laws onto them­selves with lit­tle or no over­sight or accountability.

There are no uni­formed account­abil­i­ty for Americans killed by the tens of thou­sands of law-enforce­ment agen­cies around the country. 
It is basi­cal­ly left up to Agencies like the American Civil Liberties Union to try to fig­ure out how many cit­i­zens are killed by agents of the government.

As America project it’s influ­ence abroad, one built on the mis­nomer of equal­i­ty on democ­ra­cy, the

spo­radic erup­tion of vio­lence on it’s streets expos­es the abuse of minori­ties at home.
This abuse is not new, it has char­ac­ter­ized the soul of America since it’s inception.
What is hap­pen­ing now is that the world is able to see for itself what America’s minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties have com­plained of all along.

Sadly the prob­lem of police abuse will not be going any­where any­time soon.
As we have main­tained in these columns before,the issue of police abuse must be addressed at the lev­el of state legislatures.
State leg­is­la­tures are respon­si­ble for enact­ing laws which gov­ern every­one includ­ing cops.
Police depart­ments are agents of the state.
They do what they do at the behest of the states.
When they kill ‚they do so on the author­i­ty grant­ed to them by the states.
When they are not held account­able , it’s the states deci­sion not to hold them accountable.

Hurling bot­tles and stones at police, burn­ing busi­ness­es will not fix the problem.
State Governors and leg­is­la­tures must be held account­able for the actions of their agents.
Incredibly for black America there will be no return on the 1.3 tril­lion dol­lars it is slat­ed to spend this

year on goods and services.
Just recent­ly com­pa­nies like Walmart and a host of oth­ers were up in arms against Indiana’s reli­gious free­dom law.

That law said peo­ple have a right to refuse per­form­ing ser­vices to homo­sex­u­als if that ser­vice con­flicts with their reli­gious belief.
Where is their sup­port for the tens of thou­sands of black men killed in America over the decades, even when the killings hap­pen in their store as hap­pened to John Crawford in Beaver Creek Ohio?

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty does not care about the mon­ey blacks spend. They know that mon­ey will not stop. They know that as a peo­ple blacks are splin­tered and with­out leadership.
They under­stand full well that even if devel­oped, no strat­e­gy of with­hold­ing sup­port to their busi­ness­es would be suc­cess­ful because of the unco­op­er­a­tive nature of blacks.

A unco­op­er­a­tive nature which is cen­tered around a rapa­cious con­sumerist desire for mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions, cou­pled with it’s desire to seek val­i­da­tion through its spending.
Conversely they are ful­ly aware that Homosexuals have

seri­ous mon­ey pow­er but most impor­tant­ly they are immense­ly capa­ble of gal­va­niz­ing sup­port to their cause.

It’s absolute­ly shock­ing to hear the black talk­ing heads on tele­vi­sion when­ev­er an American city erupts in vio­lence against police crimes.
The nar­ra­tive is cer­tain­ly nev­er cen­tered on the burn­ing issue at hand which is America’s killing of unarmed black men.
The con­ver­sa­tion is always deflect­ed to the periph­er­al issues of pover­ty, lack of jobs and oppor­tunists which though ger­mane are not cen­tral to the burn­ing issue of police violence.

Police are not killing peo­ple because they are poor, they are doing so because they do not believe they will be held accountable.
They do not believe they will be sent to prison.
That’s whats at issue.

Another American city erupts in violence.
This time it’s Baltimore Maryland over the death of Freddy Grey who died from a sev­ered spine while in Police custody.
It is the same as usu­al Grey was a crim­i­nal with an expan­sive rap-sheet.
Police effect a vio­lent arrest took him into cus­tody and now he is dead.

For some in the White com­mu­ni­ty it’s no big deal it’s just anoth­er nig­ger dead.
For the black com­mu­ni­ty it is one more exam­ple of police act­ing as judge jury and executioner.
Many in the Black com­mu­ni­ty believe racial diver­si­ty in police depart­ments is the answer to the epi­dem­ic of police bru­tal­i­ty in America.
I dis­agree it has any­thing to do with the way police behave.

Lost in the noise as always, is the nev­er end­ing litany or periph­er­al issues affect­ing the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, it makes good talk­ing points until the winds died down and it’s back to the status-quo.
The fact of the mat­ter is that police depart­ments have to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the actions of the peo­ple they put into the com­mu­ni­ties to act as police officers. 

During Martin O’Malley’s admin­is­tra­tion as may­or, the depart­ment had become 43% African American.^[25] While progress has been made to improve the depart­men­t’s rela­tion­ship with Baltimore’s now major­i­ty African American com­mu­ni­ty, improve­ments are still being made to the depart­ment which for sev­er­al years has been sub­ject to crit­i­cism for its treat­ment of African American cit­i­zens. Police com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions have remained strained with the war on drugs that has plagued sev­er­al African American neigh­bor­hoods in East and West Baltimore and coin­ci­den­tal­ly enough, many of the most despised offi­cers in sev­er­al of Baltimore’s African American neigh­bor­hoods are also African American.wikipedia.

How long do they think they will be able to sus­tain the sim­mer­ing caul­dron of anger and resent­ment that is threat­en­ing to engulf us all?
When Dr.King marched and fought over 50 years ago the num­ber one issue fac­ing black Americans was police brutality.
Today the prob­lem is the same.
States in America have demon­strat­ed a mad­den­ing tone-deaf­ness in deal­ing with the issues of police bru­tal­i­ty and murder.
Governors elect­ed by the peo­ple stand with police abuse of black citizens.
American Governors reac­tion to police abuse with­ing their states have the pre­dictable default posi­tion of mobi­liz­ing the nation­al guard.

The truth is some are afraid to tack­le police unions and oth­ers do not care to do any­thing about the problem.
The police should take no com­fort in the silence or tac­it acqui­es­cence of some with­in the white com­mu­ni­ty who sup­port them when they engage in crim­i­nal conduct.
They are the ones who will face the music when the pal­pa­ble anger becomes too much to be kept under a lid.
They can talk about loot­ing and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty all they want, rather than con­demn they bet­ter learn the per­ti­nent lessons real fast.
We shall over­come will not appease this generation .… 

There is a war going on in America.
It’s not the war on ter­ror they tell you about, it is the war on black men by their own Government.
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that over 100 Americans were killed at the hands of police in just the month of January.
Digest that just for a minute.….…

Every time there is a police killing, the police and their sup­port­ers, includ­ing elect­ed offi­cials move the goal-post on the lat­i­tude cops have under the laws o kill black people.
We have seen an unarmed Michael Brown killed and left in the streets of Ferguson like a piece of road-kill.
We are told that the cop had every right to fire those bul­lets into him because he was a thug who deserved to die.
Now we know that it’s okay for the police to exter­mi­nate those in soci­ety white peo­ple do not like, what bet­ter way to do it than under the cov­er of the law?

We watched as Eric Garner had the life squeezed out of him by Daniel Pantaleo ‚a Staten Island cop.
The sys­tem tells us there was no crime com­mit­ted , despite Garner repeat­ed­ly telling the bunch of sav­ages on top of him that he could­n’t breathe.
Garner had com­mit­ted no crime, and cer­tain­ly had a right to resist being harassed and or arrest­ed. Long Island Congressman Peter King a Republican tells us if some­one can’t breathe they can’t speak.
King is not a Doctor, nei­ther is he qual­i­fied to speak on med­ical issues.
It did not pre­vent the igno­rant jack­ass from open­ing his pie-hole and mak­ing him­self look even more stu­pid than his appearance.

What hap­pened to telling some­one “you are under arrest”?
Why do cops go out look­ing to abuse and kill people?
Don’t you dare tell me they do not go out look­ing to kill people!!
many of them do.
Let’s cut the bull..
They do not serve the inter­est of the pub­lic, well not the black segment.
Which may argue why so many whites have no prob­lem with the mass police slaugh­ter of blacks in America.
Every lit­tle jack­ass of a cop now sees himself/​herself as a Rambo super-cop.
The most incon­se­quen­tial , triv­ial sit­u­a­tions are imme­di­ate­ly esca­lat­ed in order that they may show they have the pow­er to take life and inflict pain.
Just how much longer do they believe they will get away with this.

Why does every sim­ple arrest always have to be about 6 guys pil­ing onto a sin­gle suspect?
In many cas­es con­fronta­tion could eas­i­ly be avoid­ed if offi­cers sim­ply ask sus­pect to turn around and sub­mit to being arrested.
Why does every arrest have to be esca­lat­ed into a Rambo style take-down?
The sim­ple truth is many of these guys run­ning around as cops see some sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion as the enemy.
Many have returned from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
They have been giv­en homes in Police depart­ments all across the country.
In many instances the hard­ware at their dis­pos­al are the same as that which they had on the battlefields.
Everything is in place.
They need an ene­my and a war.…..
This is not to say every sol­dier who returned and became a cop is a dan­ger to the pub­lic, but many are.
Neither does it mean that there aren’t many non-mil­i­tary psy­chopaths wear­ing police uni­forms who get to act out their aggres­sion on America’s most hat­ed race, while hid­ing behind a badge.
Since Barack Obama was elect­ed President there has been a mas­sive rise in white groups all across the country.
So too has there been more and more instances of white suprema­cists in America’s police departments.
It is no coin­ci­dence that there are more slaugh­ter of blacks by whites dressed up in police uni­forms than at any oth­er time.

Whether it’s mul­ti­ple rounds into the bod­ies of the unarmed Michael Brown , Tamir Rice, John Crawford,and the scores of face­less others.
Whether it’s the chok­ing death of Eric Garner as he pleads with them to release their death grip.
Or whether its the sev­ered spine of Freddie Gary, the list of police atroc­i­ties go unabat­ed while states do noth­ing to har­ness the wan­ton waste of life by their Agents.
This car­nage did not start yes­ter­day, it won’t end tomorrow.
It will end when black peo­ple make it end.
It did not begin with 41 bul­lets which snuffed out the life of Amado Diallio , nei­ther did it begin with the sav­age bar­bar­ic act of sodomy on Abner Louima by a NYPD mon­ster named Justin Volpe.
It con­tin­ue to hap­pen because pro police racist dem­a­gogues con­tin­ue to spread the lie that America’s police are the best in the world.
Nothing could be fur­ther from the truth.

US President Barack Obama’s breeze through Jamaica may be a savory moment for the Portia Simpson Miller led admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston, but Jamaica will see pre­cious lit­tle from his pit-stop tour though the Island Nation.

China’s grow­ing influ­ence in the region is not lost on Washington. As such tra­di­tion­al allies has large­ly been ignored since Obama took office. Jamaica’s pit-stop stop in was not much more than a farewell tour for Obama on American tax-pay­ers dime.
Chinese influ­ence is on the rise in the Caribbean and Latin America, as it is in many oth­er regions of the Globe.
As America grap­ples with main­tain­ing it’s empire , while jug­gling hot-spots some cre­at­ed from ill-advised wars, the Chinese are large­ly allowed a free hand in Africa and the America’s.
Of course the Chinese come with cash and lots of it.
The Caribbean like oth­er regions of the world has seen America’s influ­ence chal­lenged by Chinese cash.
Unlike the Soviet-era Ideological clash between east and west, this clash of influ­ence is all about who has mon­ey to dole out.
Obama under­stand loy­al­ties are influ­enced by mon­ey so a quick pit stop to an old ally Jamaica will keep the Jamaicans hap­py for a few more years.
Relaxing the embar­go on Cuba .….
That’s a dif­fer­ent mat­ter , after half a cen­tu­ry of eco­nom­ic block­ade the Cuban Revolution is still intact.
The last thing America needs is a new set of com­mu­nist lead­ers after the Castro broth­ers exit the stage who are friend­ly with a bel­liger­ent Russia and a cash-strong emerg­ing China.

For it’s part, Cuba ever anx­ious to shed the shack­les of eco­nom­ic stran­gu­la­tion will be will­ing to play ball with America.
Already the Cuban President Raul Castro has demon­strat­ed his affec­tion for Obama, say­ing Obama is a hon­est man.
Of course Obama will be look­ing to extract some valu­able con­ces­sions from the Cubans in order to start nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions between the two countries.
The America right-wing will not relent unless it sub­jects it’s ene­mies to embar­rass­ment and humil­i­a­tion. As such, Barack Obama will be forced to demand stiff con­ces­sions from Cuba before the Right wing Republicans and even some Democrats will be will­ing to con­sid­er nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with the com­mu­nist Island.

Cuba has been home to many dis­si­dents some of whom have fled from America.
The ques­tion now, is whether Cuba flush with excite­ment will offer up these polit­i­cal pris­on­ers to cur­ry favor with America.
After all they have no eco­nom­ic value.
They have already served their pur­pose as pro­pa­gan­da pawns in the 50-plus year long psy­cho­log­i­cal war between the two countries.
Only time will tell.…

It’s nev­er end­ing, a sit­u­a­tion in law enforce­ment which ought to end rather mild­ly with the arrest of a sus­pect, ends with the sus­pect dead.
Oh by the way the sus­pect is male and just hap­pen to be African-American.
Welcome to the era of the American Warrior cop.
It is sick­en­ing what is hap­pen­ing and it real­ly begs the ques­tion , “who the hell will save Black-America?
I ask this because Black-America is bliss­ful­ly uncon­cerned about it’s own survival. 

Eric Harris was shot and killed by a reserve deputy who fired his gun after alleged­ly mis­tak­ing it for his taser, accord­ing to a state­ment from the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.

It was a mis­take. That’s the blasé expla­na­tion Oklahoma offi­cials gave after the fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed black man by a white deputy who acci­den­tal­ly pulled his gun when he meant to use his Taser. The encounter was cap­tured on a dis­turb­ing video released by police on Friday — nine days after the fatal Tulsa shooting.

Harris bolt­ed from offi­cers who were try­ing to arrest him for sell­ing a 9 mm. semi­au­to­mat­ic pis­tol and ammu­ni­tion to under­cov­er cops. Harris, who was unarmed, had report­ed­ly done time for assault and bat­tery on an offi­cer. He was “absolute­ly a threat when going down,” Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark said at a news con­fer­ence. Sheriff’s Capt. Billy McKelvey claims the arrest­ing offi­cers were not aware Harris had been shot, despite the gun­shot noise and Bates’ admis­sion. They called para­medics and fire­fight­ers, and ren­dered aid when they real­ized, McKelvey said. “He made an inad­ver­tent mis­take,” McKelvey said.
Sgt. Dave Walker told the Tulsa World that police “would not inves­ti­gate the death unless the sheriff’s office asked them to, and they have not asked us to.”

“He shot me! He shot me, man. Oh, my god. I’m los­ing my breath,” Eric Harris says as he strug­gles on the ground fol­low­ing the April 2 shoot­ing, which flew under the radar until video emerged a week later.
“Fuck your breath, “Shut the fuck up!”  One of the Savages shout­ed at Harris.
“You shouldn’t have fuck­ing ran!” anoth­er of the sav­ages screamed.
Eric Harris was pro­nounced dead less than an hour later.
In actu­al­i­ty he may have died right there as the bunch of sav­ages dressed in police attire knelt on his head and kept squeez­ing as the life drained out of him.
Eric Harris died as Eric Garner did.
As tens of thou­sands, arguably mil­lions, tens of mil­lions over the decades, have died at the hands of white Americans and their enforcers.

FUCK YOUR BREATH

The nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing the mur­der of Eric Harris is that 73 year-old Robert Bates the pay-to-play wannabe cop should not have been involved in the sting oper­a­tion which brought Harris down.
The total­i­ty of the dis­cus­sion com­plete­ly excludes the fact that there was absolute­ly no need to ini­ti­ate the use of a taser under the con­di­tions in the video as there were sev­er­al cops on top of Harris who was already sub­dued, includ­ing kneel­ing on his head.
I used the term mur­der in this case despite what we see in the video of mis­ter Bates’s appar­ent shock after fir­ing his weapon.
I do not believe Robert Bates is guilty of murder.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I am inclined to give him the ben­e­fit of what we saw in the video.
He did not intend to pull and fire his weapon into Eric Harris.
The Department which allowed him to par­tic­i­pate in that sting must be held accountable.
The real mur­der­ers are the oth­er sav­ages, those who shout­ed exple­tives at a sub­dued Eric Harris, ridi­cul­ing his claim that he was los­ing his breath.
Eric Garner was choked to death on Staten Island by macho cop Daniel Pantaleo .
Garner told police sev­er­al times he could not breathe, Pantaleo kept up the pres­sure until Eric Garner was dead.
The NYPD and it’s sup­port­ers still do not get it, they claim if you can­not breath you can­not talk.
What absolute ignorance.
By that mea­sure they are allowed to apply pres­sure to a sus­pect until he can­not speak.
Only then are these demons con­vinced that some­one may actu­al­ly be hav­ing seri­ous prob­lems breathing.
When they have no breath left.
As the world saw Eric Garner is lay­ing in a cemetery.
Daniel Pantaleo did not even have to answer to a court of law for mur­der­ing him in plain view of the entire world.
There is a cal­lous dis­re­gard for the life of black peo­ple in America.
The police are just the enforcers, the real prob­lem is the white struc­ture which stands behind and allows it because it serves their interest.

The Wall Street Journal one of the Nation’s lead­ing Conservative Publication,and an enti­ty no one could accuse of being slack in it’s sup­port of cops,stated in a Aug. 7^th.2013 Article Titled, Rise of the war­rior cop.
Quote: “Since the 1960s, in response to a range of per­ceived threats, law-enforce­ment agen­cies across the U.S., at every lev­el of gov­ern­ment, have been blur­ring the line between police offi­cer and sol­dier. Driven by mar­tial rhetoric and the avail­abil­i­ty of mil­i­tary-style equip­ment — from bay­o­nets and M‑16 rifles to armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers — American police forces have often adopt­ed a mind-set pre­vi­ous­ly reserved for the bat­tle­field. The war on drugs and, more recent­ly, post‑9/​11 anti-ter­ror­ism efforts have cre­at­ed a new fig­ure on the U.S. scene: the war­rior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harsh­ly with tar­get­ed wrong­do­ers, and a grow­ing threat to famil­iar American liberties”.

The per­ceived wrong­do­ers are America’s black male.
Every arrest is esca­lat­ed into a mil­i­tary style event.
Events which under nor­mal cir­cum­stances would not raise an eye­brow were they done in the nor­mal ways of policing.
The idea that a sus­pect would run seem to be some­thing incon­ceiv­able these days.
One of the rea­son for this are laws which make it a crime to run from police.
This gives the new war­rior cop the idea that he now has the right to mur­der a flee­ing suspect.
The war­rior cop is now cop, pros­e­cu­tor, judge and executioner.
To hell with the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, to hell with due process.
Welcome to the world of the Patriot Act and the new police state.

At the begin­ning of this Article I asked who “who will save Black-America?
I asked that ques­tion in the con­text of the way in which the black talk­ing-heads who hap­pen to make it onto tele­vi­sion allow the dis­cus­sion to go.
They all seem some­how stuck in the throes of slav­ery , unable to extri­cate them­selves from the nar­ra­tive designed by the slave-master.
The killing of Eric Harris was avoid­able. Yes Harris was engaged in a crime but if America is to be believed, cops do not get to apply the death penal­ty at their leisure and discretion.

A flee­ing sus­pect is not an anom­aly, faced with prison peo­ple run , it is a nor­mal human reaction.
It is not a licence for sadis­tic sav­ages to kill someone.
More and more the world is get­ting a view into the sor­did bel­ly which is America’s mytho­log­i­cal Justice system.
A sys­tem which sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly allows it’s agents to unlaw­ful­ly kill it’s own cit­i­zens with­out con­se­quence, while berat­ing oth­er nations about civ­il and human rights.
The hypocrisy is stun­ning yet under­stand­able by those who always main­tained that America’s crim­i­nal Justice sys­tem was actu­al­ly two sep­a­rate sys­tems, one for whites and one for every­one else.
The poor pathet­ic black talk­ing heads are unable to see that the real tragedy of Eric Harris’ killing is not that he was shot by an old man, but that after he was shot a group of sav­ages act­ing under the aus­pices of the law, knelt on his head until he was dead, all while hurl­ing exple­tive-laced insults at him.

The new default posi­tion is that a black man who was tick­et­ed as a col­lege stu­dent for jay-walk­ing may be jus­ti­fi­ably killed forty years lat­er, because he received that ticket.
Now any­one famil­iar with America’s sys­tem of jus­tice under­stands how young black men are tar­get­ed by law-enforcement.
For a young black male to avoid police con­tact he must almost make him­self invisible.
This makes every black male killed by police, deserv­ing of death.
Until the almost 40 mil­lion black peo­ple in America decide enough is enough there will be no change.

Nothing gets my blood boil­ing than to hear peo­ple on National tele­vi­sion pars­ing and ratio­nal­iz­ing away murder.
Murder is mur­der, to the white peo­ple who seek to blow smoke up peo­ples prover­bial ass stop already.
Not all black peo­ple are stu­pid. You defend mur­der because it’s not your unarmed loved ones who are being gunned down in cold blood.
Lets cut to the chase, when you go on tele­vi­sion to talk about law enforce­ment as if you are the sole author­i­ty on how the laws are to be enforced you make your­selves look stupid.
We are well aware a lot of you are quite con­tent with police mur­der­ing peo­ple of color.
It’s with the same cal­lous dis­patch with which many of you speak about bomb­ing oth­er coun­tries, so we do under­stand that as long as you are not affect­ed by the killings it, quite kosher.

• Now that I have said my piece lets look at some sim­ple rules that police are sup­posed to abide by .
  You do not use lethal force[fire at a flee­ing per­son] unless the per­son pos­es a threat to your life as an offi­cer or that of anoth­er person.
• This means if the flee­ing sus­pect has a gun and is fir­ing at the offi­cer while run­ning away the offi­cer is jus­ti­fied in using lethal force to neu­tral­ize the threat.[take the sus­pect out.
• An offi­cer may also use lethal force if a flee­ing sus­pect pos­es immi­nent threat to the life of another.even though the sus­pect may not be armed, if the sus­pect is run­ning away with a child and has expressed an intent to harm the child , an offi­cer is jus­ti­fied in using lethal force.
• I Believe by now most peo­ple have seen the bru­tal and cal­lous slay­ing of 50-year-old Walter Scott by 33-year-old South Carolina cop Michael Slager.

• 

There is no way to jus­ti­fy what we saw in that video, yet there are peo­ple try­ing their darnedest to make you believe that some­thing may have tran­spired in the gap between the dash-cam video and mis­ter Santana’s cell-phone video.
I am here to tell you that whether some­thing occurred or not , what­ev­er it is, at the time when Michael Slager dis­charged his weapon 8 times hit­ting Walter Scott 5 times, Walter Scott was run­ning away.
Walter Scott posed absolute­ly no threat to the armed police offi­cer or any­one else.
That is the rea­son his depart­ment quick­ly fired him and he is sit­ting in a jail cell on mur­der charges.

Slager’s Department knows when offi­cers may jus­ti­fi­ably shoot some­one and they know when they can­not legal­ly do so.
This was a bad shoot­ing. Not only is it bad it came at a time when there is increased scruti­ny of police use of dead­ly force across the coun­try, in the wake of the killing of sev­er­al unarmed men large­ly African-American.
I don’t know whether Michael Slager is a racist, that is not my argument.
There are African-Americans who say the stop was for a friv­o­lous infrac­tion I disagree .
The stop was sup­pos­ed­ly about a bro­ken tail light on a Mercedes auto­mo­bile that Walter Scott was driving.
Police have a right and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to police our streets.
They use minor traf­fic infrac­tions such as bro­ken tail lights to tamp down on more seri­ous offences.
Of course Mister Scott sup­pos­ed­ly did not have the papers for the car.
An offi­cer nev­er knows whats going to hap­pen when he/​she ini­ti­ates a traf­fic stop.
Traffic stops for what appear to be minor infrac­tions some­times yield great law-enforce­ment rewards.
What upsets peo­ple of col­or is when police abuse the pow­er to make those traf­fic stops. Using that pow­er to intim­i­date and harass, or tar­get them for tax revenue.
During the stop Officer Slager was pret­ty cour­te­ous, so was mis­ter Scott. Of course none of that mat­ter anymore.
There was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the mas­sive esca­la­tion which end­ed in the death of Walter Scott.

Nothing to the con­trary they tell you is any­thing but blow­ing smoke up your behind. It was mur­der plain and simple.
Slager may be a racist, he may not be a racist, the prob­lem with police is the cul­tur­al dis­re­spect they have for black people.
Walter Scott is a vic­tim and Michael Slager may very well be a vic­tim of that cul­tur­al dis­re­spect as well.
Michael Slager would nev­er pull the trig­ger at a 50 year ‑old white male run­ning away , in which case he would not be sit­ting in a jail cell today.
The entire sys­tem is on tri­al, police offi­cers are not held account­able in America. There is a cult-like wor­ship of cops which cre­ates the impres­sion that they can do no wrong.
I too believe in the rule of law.
I spent a good part of my life enforc­ing laws. I have spent my entire life observ­ing and obey­ing laws.
With that said, when the laws are applied uneven­ly or used as a tool of oppres­sion of any of our cit­i­zens then the entire rule of law becomes a lie, and a fraud.
The unde­ni­able truth of it all is that police kill because they get away with it more often than not.
This lack of account­abil­i­ty cre­ates more killings by those we hire to pro­tect us.
Unfortunately for us, the peo­ple we hire to pro­tect us are becom­ing the peo­ple who pose the great­est exis­ten­tial threat to us.

No I will not offer a sub-text about the great work offi­cers do and the risk they take !
I will leave that to the uncon­scionable police apol­o­gists whose inter­ests are served by the elim­i­na­tion of the feared black man.
Every police offi­cer takes the oath of his/​her free will.
That includ­ed me when I signed up as a young recruit in 1982.
I removed a lot of guns from the streets I was also instru­men­tal in help­ing to secure the incar­cer­a­tion of seri­ous felons dur­ing my stint.
I have been shot at on many occa­sions. I did the job in one of the world’s tough­est cities, Kingston Jamaica.
Oh by the way I was also shot in the line of duty.
None of my life expe­ri­ences taught me that the wan­ton waste of life we are wit­ness­ing by police today in America is justified.
Don’t buy it for one minute.
The ACLU in a recent report , details that for the month of January 2015 Cops across the United States killed over 100 people.
That’s aver­age of 1’200 peo­ple annu­al­ly. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​o​v​e​r​-​1​0​0​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​w​e​r​e​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​i​n​-​m​a​r​c​h​-​h​o​w​-​m​a​n​y​-​m​o​r​e​-​w​i​l​l​-​i​t​-​t​a​ke/

The advent of video and cell­phone cam­eras have opened a win­dow to what peo­ple have com­plained about all along.

States are large­ly com­fort­able with the police as fear­some enforcers, after all they are pre­cious lit­tle more than tax-col­lec­tors. They keep the peas­ants in check and fill cof­fers with enforce­ment rev­enue, large­ly on the backs of the poor­est and those least able to afford it.
What’s not to like ?
When was the last time you heard a Governor vig­or­ous­ly speak out in defense of cit­i­zens who are vic­tims of police abuse?
Even when they are forced to respond to the atroc­i­ties hap­pen­ing in their states their reac­tion is more def­er­ence to police than empa­thy to the vic­tims of their brutish aggression.
Cruise down any high­way on a sun­ny day police cruis­ers every­where in bush­es or have motorists pulled over, some­times at great dan­ger to the pub­lic because of where they chose to pull motorists over.
Some still actu­al­ly believe they are there for their pro​tec​tion​.By the way In have a bridge for sale. 
Cruise down the same high­way on a rainy day and you are hard pressed to see a sin­gle squad car.
If you have a fend­er-ben­der you are like­ly to be told that there are not enough offi­cers and those who on duty are already attend­ing to accidents.
The truth is they put them out there to col­lect rev­enue when it’s sun­ny, you are on your own when it rains.
These police killings occur because white peo­ple want it to . They have no prob­lem with white cops killing black men, they nev­er did.
Until the guns are trained on their sons they do not see a problem.
You know how it is “those peo­ple must be contained”?
They were pret­ty cool with the Klan-lynch­ings , they are cool with the cop-lynchings.
The only thing changed are the uniforms.

See also: https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​b​r​u​t​a​l​i​t​y​-​i​s​-​t​y​r​a​n​ny/