How Did You Lose Your Rights In The Land Of The Free?

Having the bur­den of poten­tial­ly end­ing some­one’s life as part of your job is not some­thing any­one should take light­ly. Having car­ried that bur­den for almost a decade, I was not par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of it. These days it seems that many peo­ple entrust­ed with that pow­er rel­ish it and use it in ways con­trary to why they were giv­en those powers.
The cries and com­plaints about police bru­tal­i­ty are not con­fined to any one coun­try. All over the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly in nations where cit­i­zens are allowed to speak freely, the sub­ject of police vio­lence is always front and center.
In fair­ness to police offi­cers, they are asked to deal with some of the worst actors in our soci­eties, and the optics of the job are not always great to look at.
For the most part, some peo­ple tend to be rea­son­able when­ev­er they view the law­ful actions of police who car­ry out their duties in a law­ful man­ner. In oth­er places where there are oth­er dynam­ics at play, the most rea­son­able actions are crit­i­cized, and else­where, the most egre­gious trans­gres­sions are down­played, depend­ing on peo­ple’s motivations.

For exam­ple, if you are a cop law­ful­ly enforc­ing the law in most inner-city Jamaican com­mu­ni­ties, you are bound to be demo­nized regard­less of the law­ful­ness of your actions.
On the oth­er hand, a cop who sum­mar­i­ly mur­ders a black per­son in the United States is lion­ized by a cer­tain seg­ment of the white com­mu­ni­ty and their pro­pa­gan­da media out­lets. The need to sup­port crim­i­nal­i­ty in the for­mer sense and racist pro­cliv­i­ties in the lat­ter influ­ences how police oper­ate in the two geographies.
Having served in law enforce­ment in Jamaica, I saw first­hand how inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the judi­cia­ry, media, and what pass­es for acad­e­mia respond­ed to the work of the police in ways that made it impos­si­ble for the police to achieve its mandate.
You do not get the con­sen­sus you need when there are peo­ple on tele­vi­sion telling cit­i­zens to attack police sta­tions. Contrary to what many in Jamaica say on the sub­ject of crime, they actu­al­ly loathe the rule of law.
In the United States, on the oth­er hand, black cit­i­zens oper­ate in fear of the over 18,000 police depart­ments and the just under a mil­lion sworn offi­cers who pop­u­late those departments.
The sim­ple act of dri­ving down the streets places a black motorist in dead­ly per­il. All it takes is for a racist cop to con­jure up a pre­tex­tu­al rea­son to ini­ti­ate a traf­fic stop and then shoot the dri­ver under the pre­text that they reached for some­thing, usu­al­ly the papers they demand after ini­ti­at­ing the stop.

So mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty are forced to con­stant­ly adjust to stay­ing alive when pulled over by a cop rather than the cops adjust­ing to treat­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic with respect and ensur­ing that they respect their rights and dignity.
Cops have a par­tic­u­lar hard-on for traf­fic stops. Traffic stops are the sin­gu­lar most effec­tive means of acquir­ing a motorist’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion so they may run names through their sys­tem for warrants.
Not that there is any­thing wrong with get­ting peo­ple who should­n’t be on the streets in jail, but when the moti­va­tion is not about safe­ty but is about feed­ing the beast of the ‘for-prof­it prison indus­tri­al com­plex, this is where it becomes dangerous.
Social media has done a ter­rif­ic job of get­ting video imagery of police vio­lence into the pub­lic domain. Previously the main­stream media rarely report­ed on police killings and when they both­ered to do so, they pre­sent­ed fab­ri­cat­ed police ver­sions of events as true rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the facts as they occurred.
Seeing these events unfold, Americans con­tin­ue to ask why they are so intent on traf­fic stops and demand­ing pedes­tri­ans iden­ti­fi­ca­tions even in sit­u­a­tions in which they have no law­ful author­i­ty to demand and receive them.
They are told to use intim­i­da­tion where they have no author­i­ty to demand ID from pedes­tri­ans and to con­coct rea­sons to stop motorists to get their ideas- all toward ramp­ing up arrests and incarcerations.
This prac­tice is upheld by the supreme court and encour­aged all the way down to coun­ty attor­neys. Follow motorists and cre­ate a pre­tex­tu­al rea­son to jus­ti­fy a traf­fic stop.
A motorist dri­ving down the street is at the mer­cy of the ‘for prof­it’ mer­ce­nar­ies who lie on affi­davits and vio­late their fourth (4) amend­ment right to be secure in their per­sons, hous­es, papers, and effects against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures. The idea that they shall not be vio­lat­ed, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon prob­a­ble cause, sup­port­ed by Oath or affir­ma­tion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly describ­ing the place to be searched, and the per­sons or things to be seized are will­ful­ly discarded…

None of this mat­ter any­more as the Supreme Court con­tin­ues to erode the rights of Americans in its uncon­sti­tu­tion­al rul­ings giv­ing police more and more ille­gal pow­er to sub­vert the constitution.
So to set the stage, a rogue cop, wait, let me rephrase that; the rogue cop ini­ti­ates a pre­tex­tu­al stop;(dubi­ous, spu­ri­ous), demands papers; motorists are clean has all of their papers. But the cop isn’t sat­is­fied because the motorist had the temer­i­ty and gall to ask what was the rea­son he was pulled over, safe in the knowl­edge he had not com­mit­ted an infraction.
That is, con­tempt of cops is a crime so seri­ous that it is advis­able not to ever com­mit that offense because it usu­al­ly ends in death to the black per­son. The motorist is then ordered out of the vehi­cle, and any hes­i­ta­tion on his part will like­ly end in him get­ting killed right at that point. If the motorist does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly com­ply, he is dragged from the car, thrown to the ground, bru­tal­ized, and cuffed, or killed as Tyre Nichols was, as Sandra Bland was, as Philando Castile was, as Patrick Lyoya was, as Daunte Wright was, you get the picture.
If the motorist sus­pends all of his rights and dig­ni­ty and pious­ly com­plies in an attempt to ward off death for anoth­er hour he is searched, hand­cuffed, and ordered to either sit of lie on the ground as one would a Dog.

It is at this point the oth­er aspects of the lies begin. Remember, the Supreme Court has ruled that police can lie to cit­i­zens; in fact, they are allowed to lie even to chil­dren. Now we all know if cops are giv­en the green light to lie, they will not only lie to gath­er the evi­dence they will also lie to secure convictions.
So the cop tells the motorists they smell .…… wait for it… drum roll, please, mar­i­jua­na. ‘The dread­ed and dan­ger­ous drug that has killed bil­lions of peo­ple’.
At this point, they then ille­gal­ly search the motorist’s vehi­cle or call for a canine and han­dler. The dog is manip­u­lat­ed around the vehi­cle sev­er­al times and, more often than not, indi­cates to the han­dler that there is some­thing con­tra­band in the vehicle.
Checkmate, a com­pre­hen­sive end run around the fourth amend­ment right of the motorists, and all legal accord­ing to the high­est court.
However, here are some facts accord­ing to brown​whitelaw​.com, so take your aver­age, run-of-the-mill traf­fic stop or an aver­age, run-of-the-mill traf­fic vio­la­tion. If the police get the dog to the scene rea­son­ably quick­ly, they can run the dog over the vehi­cle with­out any basis what­so­ev­er for believ­ing there are drugs inside. Then if the dog alerts, that alert, by itself, con­sti­tutes prob­a­ble cause. And once you have prob­a­ble cause, you can make an arrest, or if the alert is to a vehi­cle, you can search the entire vehi­cle with­out a warrant.
Now why, you might be ask­ing, does the dog alert in itself con­sti­tute prob­a­ble cause? The answer is clear: courts accept the government’s asser­tion that drug dogs are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accu­rate. No one doubts that drug dogs have the phys­i­o­log­i­cal abil­i­ty to sniff out con­cealed loads.
* Hold that thought!!!!
According to a January 2011 NPR report, the Chicago Tribune sift­ed through three years worth of cas­es in which law enforce­ment used dogs to sniff out drugs in cars in sub­ur­ban Chicago. According to the analy­sis, offi­cers found drugs or para­pher­na­lia in only 44 per­cent of cas­es in which the dogs had alert­ed them.
When the dri­ver was Latino, the dogs were right just 27 per­cent of the time.
We will nev­er know the data on white motorists, because they are hard­ly sub­ject­ed to the indig­ni­ties of canine search­es as blacks and lati­nos are. At least not near­ly to the degree that blacks are degraded.
* So much for the asser­tion that dogs are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accurate.
Here is the fun­ny part; well, not fun­ny in the real sense, just fun­ni­ly ridicu­lous. “Dog-han­dling cops and train­ers argue the canine teams’ accu­ra­cy should­n’t be mea­sured in the num­ber of alerts that turn up drugs. They said the scent of drugs or para­pher­na­lia can linger in a car after drugs are used or sold, and the dogs’ noses are so sen­si­tive they can pick up residue from drugs that can no longer be found in a car.

I am a Dog-lover, so I will give my Canine friends all the love and def­er­ence they deserve. They are not at fault; the issue is the faulty log­ic used by the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al injus­tice sys­tem on cer­tain seg­ments of the population.
Using the log­ic giv­en by cops and dog train­ers, it is okay to vio­late peo­ple’s fourth amend­ment rights sim­ply because some­one who entered a vehi­cle may have used illic­it drugs or even had on their per­son pre­scrip­tion drugs? How about the motorist who recent­ly pur­chased the vehi­cle? What about the motorists who gave some­one a ride? What about the Canine is just plain wrong because it knows it will receive a treat for a pos­i­tive hit?
In case you are won­der­ing, how did we lose our rights in a coun­try that says it is the land of the free home of the brave?
I just told you!!!

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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.