A cou­ple from California has been charged with a hate crime after they were caught on video on July 4^th defac­ing a Black Lives Matter mur­al in the city of Martinez. 42-year old Nicole Anderson and 53-year old David Nelson were seen paint­ing over the word “Black,” which had been paint­ed in yel­low, with black paint.

Both of them were wear­ing red shirts, but David’s shirt had Trump’s name on it with the expres­sion “Four More Years”.
“We’re sick of this nar­ra­tive, that’s what’s wrong,” David said in the video, accord­ing to ABC News. “The nar­ra­tive of police bru­tal­i­ty, the nar­ra­tive of oppres­sion, the nar­ra­tive of racism, it’s a lie.”
Some bystanders can be heard in the back­ground of the video telling them to stop, say­ing that what they’re doing is racist. At one point, Nicole even paused what she was doing and said murals like that should only be done in New York, adding, “This is not hap­pen­ing in my town.”

For about five min­utes, David yelled “All lives mat­ter,” to which one of the bystanders respond­ed, “Until Black lives mat­ter, no lives mat­ter.” The two were gone when the police arrived at the scene. They only found a wit­ness who took a pic­ture of the sus­pects’ car, which was described as a Nissan pick­up truck with the word “NICOLE” paint­ed in sil­ver. An inves­ti­ga­tion led to their arrest and the charges.
“The com­mu­ni­ty spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time putting the mur­al togeth­er only to have it paint­ed over in a hate­ful and sense­less man­ner,” Chief Manjit Sappal of the Martinez Police Department said in a state­ment. “The City of Martinez val­ues tol­er­ance and the dam­age to the mur­al was divi­sive and hurtful.”

Three white cops from Aurora Colorado have been fired for report­ed­ly tak­ing pho­tos of them­selves as they mocked the death of 23-year old Elijah McClain, a Black man, who died after police used a choke­hold on him in August 2019.

According to reports, the three mon­sters attend­ed his memo­r­i­al, took pho­tos reen­act­ing the choke­hold that caused his death, and then cir­cu­lat­ed them to oth­ers with­in their police depart­ment.
The department’s inter­im police chief, Vanessa Wilson, said all the involved offi­cers were “imme­di­ate­ly placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave with pay in non-enforce­ment capac­i­ties” after she was informed of the incident.

Wilson added that an inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing the inci­dent is ongo­ing and the results, includ­ing the pho­to evi­dence and offi­cers’ names, will be pub­licly released once com­plet­ed.
McClain’s fam­i­ly expressed their dis­ap­point­ment with the recent inci­dent, say­ing it was a “new low” fol­low­ing what the police did that caused his death, they said in a statement.

The family’s state­ment con­tin­ues: “This is a depart­ment where offi­cers tack­led an inno­cent young black man for no rea­son, inflict­ed out­ra­geous force – includ­ing two carotid choke­holds – for fif­teen min­utes as he pled for his life, joked when he vom­it­ed, and threat­ened to sic a dog on him for not lying still enough as he was dying. They tampered with their body cam­eras to hide the evi­dence. They exon­er­at­ed the killers. They deployed riot police and spewed pep­per gas on peace­ful pro­tes­tors [sic] at a vig­il of mourn­ers play­ing the vio­lin. And now this.”

It is easy for white peo­ple to say, “We got it made over here”, while detail­ing some per­ceived hor­rif­ic con­di­tion in some oth­er coun­try. When you are sit­ting atop the pile, that is in and of itself, and the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of what peo­ple are in the streets about, the very man­i­fes­ta­tion of ‘white priv­i­lege”.

“WE”?
Define “we”.
Sure, some peo­ple of all races are doing okay, but for a lot of peo­ple, things are not so rosy. The prob­lem is that so many white peo­ple do not know or under­stand their own his­to­ry.
They have no clue that the planters divid­ed the black enslaved and the white enslaved bonds-peo­ple along racial lines, in order to main­tain con­trol over them all.

It was crit­i­cal that they find a way to do so because of what was a bur­geon­ing under­class that they were afraid they would not be able to con­trol.
So they con­vinced the white crim­i­nals thrown out of Europe that they were supe­ri­or based on the sim­i­lar­i­ty of their skin col­or with that of the planters and wealthy estate hold­ers.
They went fur­ther, by mak­ing them over­seers on the plan­ta­tions and slave catch­ers after they had worked off their peri­od of bond­ed servi­tude.
Out of the slave ‑catch­ing in the Southern States came [the thing we now call polic­ing].
White [refuse]being dumped on America from Europe did not end until after the civ­il war ended. 

Still today, the one per­cent have con­vinced poor whites that they are some­how supe­ri­or to oth­er races in America. While all of us fight over the crumbs from their tables.
The mid­dle class is being evis­cer­at­ed, and more than forty per­cent of American fam­i­lies can­not find an extra $500 cash in case of an emer­gency.
All fo this, while we are at each oth­er’s throats and they pile up tril­lions in their sav­ings accounts.
Ninety-sev­en per­cent of the poor­est coun­ties in the nation are in Republican-run states. 

These are coun­ties that are heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed by poor whites, who, despite white priv­i­leges, are unable to pull them­selves up by their boot­straps.
What they do well, is claim vic­tim­hood, and are heav­i­ly invest­ed in hatred.
Stupid is as stu­pid does. As long as they have you fooled that your pale skin is some­how some­thing which places you above oth­er races in America they will con­tin­ue to rape all of us, and all you have is your white fan­ta­sy of superiority.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

By STEFANO BLOCH and DANIEL E. MARTÍNEZ

As the con­ver­sa­tion around exces­sive police force has pushed the coun­try to con­sid­er nov­el and dras­tic reforms in the wake of the mur­der of George Floyd and the wide­spread protests that fol­lowed, there is one area that has yet to gain wide­spread atten­tion. Given the hor­rif­ic bru­tal­i­ty wit­nessed in Floyd’s mur­der and oth­er cas­es of black, brown, and poor peo­ple being killed by police offi­cers, it’s under­stand­able that law enforce­ment killings of pets has yet to become a major issue. Still, it is worth con­sid­er­ing what these killings can teach us and what we might do about them. Ultimately police killings of pet dogs only fur­ther demon­strate the racial dis­par­i­ties in police vio­lence and the need for reform.

The real­i­ty of dog deaths at the hand of police says far more about how humans are over-policed than about dogs per se. The real­i­ties of shoot­ings asso­ci­at­ed with and at dogs reveal one of the insid­i­ous and rarely acknowl­edged man­i­fes­ta­tions of state vio­lence enact­ed in and on vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties of color.

Moving beyond the sen­sa­tion­al media sto­ries and activist accounts of “pup­py­cide” that put the num­ber of dog killings by cops at more than 10,000 annu­al­ly, we recent­ly looked at the data on offi­cer-involved shoot­ings obtained from the third and fourth largest police agen­cies in the coun­try. While we found the per­cent­age of dog-relat­ed offi­cer-involved shoot­ings to be extra­or­di­nary, the over­all num­ber of dog shoot­ings were low­er than what has been cit­ed in pub­li­ca­tions rang­ing from the Atlantic to Police Magazine, num­bers based on a gross esti­mate pro­vid­ed by Laura Mathews, a spe­cial assis­tant with the Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. To be sure, dog deaths at the hands of police do reg­u­lar­ly occur, with the online post­ing of count­less graph­ic videos — many of which include scenes of vio­lence also being direct­ed at humans—offer­ing fur­ther evi­dence of the problem.

But as our analy­sis of the data on offi­cer-involved shoot­ings reveals, between 2010 and 2016, Los Angeles Police Department offi­cers were involved in 417 shoot­ings, with dogs being shot in more than a quar­ter of cas­es. For the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, whose offi­cers were involved in 406 inci­dents between 2010 and 2017, dogs were shot 45.6 per­cent of the time. More alarm­ing than the num­ber of dogs being shot by police is where dogs are killed by police, as we dis­cuss in a recent study. 
Read more here; https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​7​/​c​o​p​s​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​d​o​g​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​.​h​tml‘

Many peo­ple were shocked when Itasha Brunson, a moth­er of five from Mississippi, doc­u­ment­ed her attempt to take the lives of her­self and her five chil­dren on Facebook Live. She says that she want­ed to com­mit sui­cide after find­ing out that her boyfriend was already mar­ried. Moments lat­er, she was involved in a very seri­ous car accident.

In the almost-20-minute video, Brunson said that she want­ed to com­mit sui­cide and decid­ed to also include her daugh­ters as she want­ed some­one to “come with her.”

After post­ing her live video, Itasha report­ed­ly was involved in a mul­ti-car acci­dent on I‑240 in Memphis, Tennessee, accord­ing to The Courier Daily. Brunson was report­ed­ly tak­en to the hos­pi­tal with two of her chil­dren for treat­ment on their non-crit­i­cal injury.

After receiv­ing back­lash online, Brunson claimed that she didn’t real­ly want to com­mit sui­cide and was just bad­ly hurt upon know­ing that her boyfriend was actu­al­ly a mar­ried man.

Many peo­ple were con­cerned about her men­tal health fol­low­ing the inci­dent. Others said she just want­ed atten­tion, for which she said she felt they were judg­ing her too harsh­ly. A GoFundMepage has been set up under her name.(adapted)

As the sum­mer of 2020 begins to take shape, more. and more peo­ple are walk­ing around wear­ing masks. And as the COVID-19 virus con­tin­ues to demon­strate why it should be tak­en seri­ous­ly in many so-called red states, *states that are run by Republicans,* as in Texas, Florida, Arizona et al, author­i­ties are report­ing a rapid spike in CODID-19 cas­es. Some pun­dits have argued that dog­mat­ic polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing has result­ed in some peo­ple refus­ing to wear a sim­ple mask, and that ‑that may be respon­si­ble for the spikes being record­ed in those Republican-run states.
At the risk of los­ing steam in all of the COVID upticks, is the urgent­ly need­ed issue of polic­ing revamp­ing and overall.

As more pri­vate com­pa­nies, NGO’s and oth­er enti­ties begin to add their names to the Black Lives Matter cause, or rather begin to dis­en­tan­gle from the moor­ings of the sink­ing white suprema­cy titan­ic, and even as some of the veneers of sys­temic racism are peeled away, it is becom­ing clear­er by the day, just how entrenched and insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism is, to the American con­struct.
Across the globe as well, peo­ple who have nev­er set foot in America, but who now ben­e­fit from the bridg­ing of the dig­i­tal divide, are able to get a glimpse of what African-Americans have com­plained about for over four hun­dred years.
As such, they too are shin­ing a light on America and demand­ing change.
The loud­er the calls and the more com­pa­nies take action to cor­rect this sys­temic prob­lem, the loud­er the howls of push­back becomes from the *white-wing* media, as it tries to counter the truth of what peo­ple are see­ing with their own eyes.
Not exact­ly the peo­ple the right-wing cares about.

The next time you hear them talk about polic­ing as if it can­not be done with­out bru­tal­i­ty and mur­der, under­stand that they don’t care about those being abused.
Years ago I knew lit­er­al­ly all of the offi­cers on the force in my city. As a small busi­ness own­er and a for­mer cop, I made it my duty to fos­ter good rela­tions with the offi­cers in my city.
For their part, the major­i­ty of the offi­cers at the time were good peo­ple just doing a job.
There were foot ‑patrol offi­cers, bicy­cle patrols, and of course offi­cers in their cruis­ers as well as the detec­tives.
Officers could be count­ed on to stop and say hel­lo while they walked up and down or rode by on their bicy­cles or drove by in their cruis­ers.
And then it all start­ed to dry up.….…. so I asked one cop, a real­ly good friend of mine. “Hey what hap­pened to all of the bicy­cle and foot patrols”?
He told me blunt­ly, “Mike, the chief stopped all of that, he wants us to come out and write tick­ets and lock up peo­ple”.

Let that sink in for a minute, for the next time you hear that there are no quo­tas, or that the police are there to serve the com­mu­ni­ty.
They are not. They are there to crack skulls, bring in rev­enue, and to make arrests.
The for-prof­it pris­ons demand that cops make arrests.
Regardless of what police exec­u­tives say in pub­lic, even if they do not out­right tell cops to crack skulls and drag peo­ple to jail, the response by their supe­ri­ors when it comes to their eval­u­a­tions makes it clear what is expect­ed of them.
District Attorneys and judges at all lev­els are an inte­gral part of the cul­ture of oppres­sion of peo­ple of col­or.
The cas­es pros­e­cut­ed by pros­e­cu­tors and the dis­par­i­ty in the sen­tences hand­ed down for the very same offens­es between black and white offend­ers, tell the entire story.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Women who are strug­gling to nav­i­gate the busy thor­ough­fares of life, while in the midst of a pan­dem­ic, and deal­ing with the enor­mous stress of fight­ing for racial jus­tice, now have a new resource to fos­ter self-care and cre­ate an abun­dant life. Jamaican-born author and pub­lish­er, Janet Autherine, has launched her third book, Island Mindfulness: How to Use the Transformational Power of Mindfulness to Create an Abundant Life.

Inspired by her island roots, Janet’s “Everything is Irie” approach to Mindfulness, takes read­ers on a dynam­ic jour­ney to self-empow­er­ment. The book is filled with heart­felt sto­ries of nav­i­gat­ing love, mar­riage and divorce, racial prej­u­dices, and learn­ing to adjust one’s sail in the face of finan­cial and career chal­lenges. Readers are encour­aged to slow their pace, and in the spir­it of the islands, mind­ful­ly and inten­tion­al­ly embark on a jour­ney to nour­ish their minds, bod­ies, and souls, in order to claim an abun­dant life.

Mindfulness is an inte­gra­tive, mind-body approach that is instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing bal­ance amidst the incred­i­ble stress that life can bring. With Island Mindfulness, Autherine offers a refresh­ing per­spec­tive on the mind­ful­ness jour­ney that brings calm to any strug­gle. Born in St. Thomas, Jamaica, the Orlando-based author migrat­ed to the United States at the age of twelve and nav­i­gat­ed many chal­lenges on her jour­ney to become a respect­ed writer, speak­er, and admin­is­tra­tive law judge. In Island Mindfulness, she shares how her hum­ble upbring­ing, steeped in the prin­ci­ples of hard work, resilience, and grat­i­tude, influ­enced her journey.

When asked about the moti­va­tion for writ­ing the book, Autherine explained: “I want­ed to empow­er women of col­or to speak their truth, prac­tice self-care, and claim an abun­dant life. We weren’t meant to just strug­gle, to be strong for every­one else while sac­ri­fic­ing self-care. I want us to believe that we deserve to have mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships, finan­cial abun­dance, spir­i­tu­al abun­dance, and a pur­pose­ful life.”

In the wake of the hor­rors of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and the stress of the inter­na­tion­al protests for racial jus­tice, Island Mindfulness is a time­ly resource for those look­ing for the peace and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty need­ed to cre­ate an abun­dant life, even in tur­bu­lent times. Through the lens of Janet’s jour­ney, read­ers will find a trea­sure box of life lessons and a gift of peace.

sland Mindfulness is cur­rent­ly avail­able on Amazon​.com. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the author vis­it: JanetAutherine​.com

About the Author
Janet Autherine has a heart for youth and women’s empow­er­ment. She is the author of three books: Growing into Greatness with God, Wild Heart, Peaceful Soul and Island Mindfulness: How to Use the Transformational Power of Mindfulness to Create an Abundant Life. She is a grad­u­ate of Pennsylvania State University, Boston College Law School, and Georgetown University School of Law. Her mis­sion is to empow­er oth­ers through the art of sto­ry­telling and the trans­for­ma­tion­al pow­er of mindfulness.

When they tell you just how great American cops are and that there are only a few bad apples.…..
Well, as I said in an arti­cle days ago if 50 cops are on scene and 10 are engaged in abus­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic and the oth­ers do noth­ing, please explain to me how the oth­er 40 can lay claim to being good cops? Unless of course, beat­ing up and killing mem­bers of the pub­lic is depart­ment pol­i­cy?
Well, you be the judge .……

»»»»»»»»

Three police offi­cers in Wilmington, North Carolina were fired on Wednesday after a rou­tine audit of dash­cam footage caught them hav­ing vio­lent­ly racist con­ver­sa­tions, includ­ing one where an offi­cer said he “can’t wait” to “go out and start slaugh­ter­ing them fuck­ing [n — words]” in a poten­tial civ­il war. 
During an audit on June 4, a Wilmington PD Sgt. Heflin dis­cov­ered that the dash­cam on Officer Michael “Kevin” Piner’s car had been acci­den­tal­ly acti­vat­ed, and had cap­tured con­ver­sa­tions Piner had with Cpl. Jesse Moore and Officer James “Brian” Gilmore. In those two con­ver­sa­tions, the offi­cers antic­i­pat­ed and even glo­ri­fied the prospect of racial civ­il war and looked for­ward to indis­crim­i­nate­ly mur­der­ing Black peo­ple, among oth­er racist comments.

“Piner tells Moore lat­er in the con­ver­sa­tion that he feels a civ­il war is com­ing and he is ‘ready,’” Piner said, accord­ing to doc­u­ments released by police Wednesday. “Piner advised he is going to buy a new assault rifle in the next cou­ple of weeks. A short time lat­er Officer Piner began to dis­cuss soci­ety being close to ‘mar­tial law’ and soon ‘we are just gonna go out and start slaugh­ter­ing them fuck­ing [n‑words]. I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.’ Moore respond­ed that he would not do that. Piner stat­ed, ‘I am ready.’” 
Piner then told Moore that a civ­il war was need­ed to “wipe ’emoff the fuck­ing map. That’ll put them back four or five gen­er­a­tions.” Moore respond­ed, “You’re crazy.” Wilmington police chief Donny Williams, a Black vet­er­an of the depart­ment who had been named its per­ma­nent chief on the pre­vi­ous day, said at a press con­fer­ence that he would have no tol­er­ance for the behav­ior record­ed by the dash­cams, accord­ing to Wilmington’s Port City Daily. “This is the most excep­tion­al and dif­fi­cult case I have encoun­tered in my career,” Williams said. “We must estab­lish new reforms for polic­ing here at home and through­out this country.”

In addi­tion to fir­ing the three offi­cers, Williams said he would noti­fy the North Carolina Education and Training Standards Commission because “these indi­vid­u­als should not be allowed to prac­tice law enforce­ment again,” accord­ing to the report. Williams also said that the Wilmington police depart­ment would con­sult with the dis­trict attor­ney to review cas­es where the offi­cers had been called to tes­ti­fy as wit­ness­es, to deter­mine if they had been biased towards the defen­dants, as well as “if any crimes had been com­mit­ted by the offi­cers” them­selves.
The con­ver­sa­tions all show Piner, Gilmore, and Moore turn­ing their ire towards protests against the ongo­ing nation­al protests against police bru­tal­i­ty and racism, as well as Black peo­ple they’ve arrest­ed, Black judges, and Black fel­low officers.

During a con­ver­sa­tion about the protests, Gilmore and Piner voiced their dis­gust about videos of police offi­cers kneel­ing with pro­test­ers, what Gilmore refers to as “wor­ship­ping blacks.” Gilmore also told Piner that it’s “almost like [Black peo­ple] think they’re their own god.” The audio also caught Piner and Gilmore talk­ing about Black offi­cers in their depart­ment. “Let’s see how his boys take care of him when shit gets rough, see if they don’t put a bul­let in his head,” Piner said, refer­ring to one Black offi­cer, who Piner also called a “piece of shit.” 
Later, dash­cam video caught Piner and Moore’s phone call, which includ­ed Moore refer­ring to a Black woman he arrest­ed as an “[n‑word],” and a Black local judge as a “fuck­ing Negro mag­is­trate” and referred to her by a homo­pho­bic slur. 
“God has a spe­cial place in hell for peo­ple like that, man. Hate ‘em,” Moore told Piner. “It’s bad because not all Black peo­ple are like that.” After Piner respond­ed, “Most of ‘em,” Moore said: “90 per­cent of them, Kevin, 90 fuck­ing per­cent of them.” 

All three cops had been with the police depart­ment for more than twen­ty years, accord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the Wilmington Police Department, and all three had spent sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time on the department’s Special Operations team through­out their careers.
When inter­viewed, “each offi­cer point­ed to the stress of today’s law enforce­ment envi­ron­ment” as the rea­son for the con­tent of the con­ver­sa­tions, accord­ing to the report. All three also denied being racist.
This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on VICE US.

No mat­ter how bad­ly police behave there will always be a sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion that sides with them. They will tell you “if only the per­son fol­lowed instruc­tions”. “If only the per­son fol­lowed com­mands”. “if only the per­son did not speak”. “If only the per­son did not reach”. “if only the per­son did not stand” “If only the per­son did not sit.” “if only the per­son did not kneel.” “if only the per­son did not breathe”. “If only the per­son did not say he can­not breathe”.
How about the police stop abus­ing & killing inno­cent unarmed peo­ple they swore to pro­tect?
Of course, fol­low­ing instruc­tions has nev­er stopped a pow­er-crazed mani­ac with a badge, gun & and whole heap of immu­ni­ty from account­abil­i­ty before.
Police vio­lence has been a sta­ple in the black com­mu­ni­ty for as long as blacks have been off the cot­ton plan­ta­tions and have been herd­ed into plan­ta­tions of oth­er designs.
Redlined com­mu­ni­ties, hous­ing projects, and so on.
Nobody cared that blacks were being mali­cious­ly arrest­ed and inno­cent­ly con­vict­ed and incar­cer­at­ed for crimes they did not com­mit.
Why should they? It was the law after recon­struc­tion, it has­n’t changed.
Nobody cared that blacks were being vio­lent­ly assault­ed and mur­dered by police. again, it was the gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy of con­tain­ment of black peo­ple and in par­tic­u­lar black men.

When [cop-apoligists] come up with con­vo­lut­ed rea­sons as to why peo­ple are being killed and vicious­ly assault­ed by the police, and when they tell you that it is only a small minor­i­ty, con­sid­er this.
Ten cops at a scene where two or three are ille­gal­ly assault­ing and bru­tal­iz­ing a cit­i­zen, not one inter­venes to stop it.
How many are good?
Four cops direct­ly involved in George Floyd’s mur­der, how many of them did any­thing to stop it?
Not one. So it seems to me, that [aside from a seg­ment] of the detec­tives who do actu­al inves­ti­ga­tions, and many are even worse than the street cops, cops in the streets are almost a hun­dred per­cent bad.
We can talk about num­bers all day, cops plant­i­ng drugs, their col­leagues know that it is hap­pen­ing and nobody says “this is wrong”.
Cops lying in reports. Cops fal­si­fy­ing & plant­i­ng evi­dence. Cops com­mit­ting per­jury on the wit­ness stand. (judges do not hold them account­able when they are found to have lied under oath, nei­ther have pros­e­cu­tors). Cops leav­ing out excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence which would aid in the exclu­sion of defen­dants from crim­i­nal entan­gle­ments. Cops sweep­ing up inno­cent peo­ple into fraud­u­lent drug raids and lying on affi­davits as to their involve­ment.
Cops beat­ing up cer­tain drug deal­ers, steal­ing their drugs and cash, then turn­ing right around and giv­ing the drugs right back to anoth­er group of deal­ers to sell on their behalf.
Please, some­one, point me to the good cops.

The con­tin­ued abhor­rent treat­ment of black peo­ple in America and the bru­tal­i­ty still met­ed out to peo­ple of col­or at the hands of police is as cul­tur­al as apple pie.
Not only has racist ten­den­cies been cod­i­fied into laws, the entrench­ment of white supe­ri­or­i­ty, and by default black infe­ri­or­i­ty, was encap­su­lat­ed and memo­ri­al­ized across all sec­tors of American soci­ety.
In his 1915 film (Birth of a nation) Southern film­mak­er D W Griffiths depict­ed the KKK as heroes while den­i­grat­ing blacks in the most egre­gious and despi­ca­ble ways pos­si­ble.
The far from lib­er­al [LAtimes] wrote: With sweep­ing shots and inti­mate close-ups, the 1915 silent film her­ald­ed the future of cin­e­ma, but its abhor­rent depic­tion of African Americans and cel­e­bra­tion of the Ku Klux Klan reawak­ened vir­u­lent strains in the nation’s vio­lent racial his­to­ry.“
The film was shown in President [Woodrow Wilson’s] White House. 
Government pol­i­cy!

Power tends to cor­rupt; absolute pow­er cor­rupts absolute­ly. Cliché maybe, nev­er­the­less true. When the police are giv­en the absolute pow­er they now pos­sess to keep the most vul­ner­a­ble and down­trod­den in place, giv­en time, race becomes less of an issue, the abuse now tran­scends race.
Given enough time and pow­er, the immu­ni­ty bestowed on police was bound to lead to impuni­ty.
As the gap between the haves and have nots widen, more and more peo­ple are forced into pover­ty, more and more peo­ple are forced into home­less­ness.
In gen­er­al, blacks are always the most affect­ed, but more and more whites are find­ing them­selves strug­gling to make ends meet, as lit­er­al­ly every dol­lar is sucked up to the one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.
The nev­er before seen dis­tinct mix of salt with the tra­di­tion­al pep­per, after the police lynch­ing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, may very well be attrib­ut­able to white recog­ni­tion that their way of life is also threatened.

There are sev­er­al lay­ers of excuse by those who would deny the crimes being com­mit­ted by police. Not the least of which are (a) deny­ing it is occur­ring, (b) make excus­es for police, © demo­niz­ing the vic­tims, (d) mak­ing the argu­ments that whites are being killed as well.
Of the four I find the lat­ter inter­est­ing, because it seeks to ratio­nal­ize mur­der as nor­mal behav­ior.
As long as police believe that they have the pow­er to do as they please with­out con­se­quence, they will do as they please.
As long as the nation wor­ships and idol­izes police, attribut­ing to them hero sta­tus, for mere­ly doing a job they will­ing­ly signed up for, mem­bers of the KKK and oth­er Neo-nazis will always find sanc­tu­ary in police depart­ments, many of which are ver­i­ta­ble cesspools of anti-black sen­ti­ments & activities.

Oh, in case you are won­der­ing, it was bound to hap­pen, as stat­ed in the open­ing para­graph, giv­en the unchecked pow­er and immu­ni­ty giv­en to police, the vio­lence would inevitably find its way to poor­er, less pow­er­ful, and voice­less whites.
It has.….….Nothing tan­gi­ble will come of this moment in our his­to­ry, there are far too many pow­er­ful peo­ple who are ded­i­cat­ed to keep­ing a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion on the plan­ta­tion.
There is an entire polit­i­cal par­ty ded­i­cat­ed to ensur­ing it.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

“WHEN YOU REFUSE TO STAND UP TO THE AGGRESSOR HE WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED.” ” HE WILL FORCE YOU TO YOUR KNEES, THEN TO YOUR STOMACH AND THEN HE WILL PILE ON TOP OF YOU, AND HE WILL SQUEEZE THE LIFE OUT OF YOU BY PLACING HIS KNEE ON YOUR NECK UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD”.

The biggest stum­bling block to black lib­er­a­tion in America, is the [white wing’s] refusal to acknowl­edge black human­i­ty.
Days ago I wrote an arti­cle which was a kick-off to what I hope will be a series on this sub­ject of race in America and the issues that I believe are the accel­er­ants fuelling that infer­no.
The aggres­sion we see com­ing from police toward black peo­ple is a small micro­cosm of the larg­er issue of hatred that a seg­ment of the white com­mu­ni­ty har­bors towards blacks.
They rev­el in every­thing neg­a­tive that hap­pens to black peo­ple. They have weaponized police to be their mil­i­tary wing. Not that the police were ever right­eous, but with mil­i­ta­riza­tion, KKK & skin­head infil­tra­tion, the pow­ers vest­ed in police must now be cur­tailed.
In a shame­ful twist of irony, the laws that are sup­posed to guar­an­tee equal pro­tec­tion to all cit­i­zens, the very foun­da­tion of what democ­ra­cy ought to be, is the very thing that has been used as a stick over the backs of black peo­ple.
They must no longer be allowed to weaponize police as a tool of white supremacy.

If you ever tuned in to AM talk radio as I do from time to time, you will hear the likes of Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Rudolph Guiliani, Glen Beck, and a whole bunch of oth­ers spew racist bile all day.
If you ever won­der at the sense of antipa­thy towards black peo­ple in a cer­tain sub­sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, and if you won­der where the poi­son is com­ing from, look no fur­ther than [white-wing talk radio].
It is a con­stant drum­beat of mind-numb­ing racist invec­tives that lit­er­al­ly leaves you with your mouth wide open.
You may won­der whether you have tak­en a time machine back to 1950 or whether you are in fact liv­ing in the year 2020?
They cel­e­brate the police, regard­less of the egre­gious nature of the crimes they are accused of.
Police offi­cers shak­ing hands with heav­i­ly armed white mili­tia mem­bers, while beat­ing to a pulp, those who dare stand up against the injus­tice of police vio­lence.
We have seen police fail to arrest vio­lent white suprema­cist riot­ers but vicious­ly assault and arrest those protest­ing racism. We have seen police offi­cers wear­ing the patch­es of white suprema­cists on their uniforms.

The seg­ment of the white pop­u­la­tion refus­ing to let go of white suprema­cy did not get to where they are today sole­ly by being dumb on their own. they were dumb­ed down fur­ther by a media ded­i­cat­ed to the cause of dumb­ing it down. The end result of homog­e­niz­ing and con­cen­trat­ing that block is geared toward the con­tin­u­ance and fur­ther­ance of white suprema­cy.
My great aunt was a lit­er­al library of old Jamaican proverbs. I found that every one of them was applic­a­ble to the sit­u­a­tion to which they were applied con­tex­tu­al­ly.
One such proverb was, (If you tek time search yu wi find ants gut).[Translation] If you search dili­gent­ly you will find the intestines of an ant.
If you let peo­ple speak long enough they will reveal who they are.
What I find to be evi­dent in most of the con­ver­sa­tions com­ing from the [white-wing] is a refusal to acknowl­edge the issues that affect African-Americans.
Refusing to acknowl­edge the pain of the com­mu­ni­ty is a con­tin­u­ance of the 3/​5’s of a human con­cept, once enshrined and cod­i­fied into their laws.
It is a per­pet­u­a­tion of a sick and con­vo­lut­ed belief, albeit igno­rant and inane that deval­ues the lives of black peo­ple.
It is for that rea­son that I wrote, “when you try to change the sub­ject when I tell you what offends me you are deny­ing my human­i­ty.“
When you fail to acknowl­edge my human­i­ty you, there­fore, believe that I am disposable.

Sure, I under­stand that like every­one else black peo­ple are far from per­fect. I know that many of us do dumb things. Sometimes I find it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to stand with the cause, because I know just how dumb some of us can be. Just yes­ter­day I wit­nessed an inci­dent includ­ing a bunch of black folks that caused me to say, “Lord I some­times under­stand why we are not respect­ed”. Nevertheless, I just don’t believe that these are things that peo­ple should lose their lives over. Stupidity has no col­or.
When the Vice President of the United States Mike Pence was giv­en sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to acknowl­edge that black lives mat­ter in an inter­view and he default­ed to the white non­sense of, “all lives mat­ter”, then you know that they do not believe that black lives mat­ter.
They know damn well that when we say “black lives mat­ter” [we are say­ing black lives mat­ter too].
When they default to “all lives mat­ter,” every damn one of you black peo­ple must rec­og­nize that they are say­ing [‘your life damn sure does­n’t mat­ter to me”.]
Because they do not believe that your life mat­ter, and because they do not believe that my life mat­ter, they do not have a prob­lem when we are dis­posed of, by what­ev­er means.

Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart in a recent inter­view said, “Police are “enforc­ing seg­re­ga­tion.” “The police are, in some respects, a bor­der patrol, and they patrol the bor­der between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that sit­u­a­tion erupts, and we express our shock and indig­na­tion.“
I don’t believe I have ever seen it artic­u­lat­ed any bet­ter than that.
The African-American com­mu­ni­ty has always been forced to sub­ju­gate itself to white com­fort­a­bil­i­ty, enforced by white police.
That has been an open secret. The most pris­tine, most edu­cat­ed, and high­ly placed blacks, have hor­ror sto­ries to tell of hav­ing to sub­ju­gate them­selves to the most unin­tel­li­gent, unlearned, uncouth, une­d­u­cat­ed moron with a badge and gun, mak­ing him­self fit into what­ev­er small space that white peo­ple allow him to exist in.

Black Americans, all of us, must know that when you give your lunch mon­ey to the school-yard bul­ly he won’t just take it and for­get about you. He now knows that you are scared of him, you are now on his suck­ers list. He will nev­er leave you alone until you make him.
He will not just take your mon­ey, he wants to humil­i­ate you as well…
As long as you allow some­one to invade your space and claim it as his own, and as long as you step back to accom­mo­date his aggres­sion, he will nev­er stop until he forces you off a cliff or up against a wall.
As long as your ene­my knows that you are more con­cerned with liv­ing regard­less of the con­di­tions he forces upon you, he will force the worst con­di­tions upon you.
If your ene­my knows that you would rather live on your knees than die on your feet, he will con­tin­ue to force you to your knees and then onto your face.
When he forces you onto your stom­ach, face in the dirt, with no place else to go, he still will not be sat­is­fied, he will pile onto your body and he will kneel on your neck and he will force the life from you.

Neville Chamberlain the pre-world war two British Prime Minister, will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the man who tried to appease the ani­mal­is­tic Adolph Hitler.
Hitler, we are told, saw Chamberlain’s appease­ment as a weak­ness. Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, relin­quish­ing a region of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. In 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. Chamberlain, who had lost polit­i­cal sup­port, resigned in 1940 and died a few months lat­er.
Giving in to a bul­ly has nev­er stopped a bul­ly, step­ping back with the hope that your tor­men­tor will leave you to live in peace has nev­er worked.
It did not work for the Native-Americans, it di not work for Neville Chamberlain, nei­ther has it worked for Blacks who have spent hun­dreds of years being abused and work­ing with­out com­pen­sa­tion.
Why would any­one believe it will work now?

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

I just feel like some of the sys­tem could, you know, look at us as indi­vid­u­als,” Brooks said, “We do have lives, you know, was just a mis­take we made, you know, and, you know, not, not just do us, as if we are ani­mals. You know lock us away.”