Where Are The Human Rights Agencies In America

There is a seri­ous and ever increas­ing threat to cit­i­zens rights as a result of Police aggres­siv­ness and dis­re­spect of the very cit­i­zen­ry they sup­pos­ed­ly serve. It is shock­ing that after serv­ing 10 years myself as a Police Officer I am now loathe to encour­age a young per­son to serve as a law enforce­ment officer.

Law Enforcement is no longer pub­lic safe­ty, it is now Government con­tain­ment of the mass­es through bru­tal and mur­der­ous police depart­ments. We are unable to divest our­selves of the Police as an enti­ty, after all the police are nec­es­sary in a civ­i­lized soci­ety. there is a huge prob­lem when the police can­not be trust­ed to act with civil­i­ty and are seen as an equal offend­er to peace and good order.

As the father of black sons, my great­est fear when my sons get in their cars to enter the streets, is not for reg­u­lar crim­i­nals but for some of the crim­i­nals now wear­ing badges and parad­ing as police offi­cers. There is a grow­ing trend by police in the United States to charge peo­ple they do not like with resist­ing arrest. Unwitting law mak­ers attach seri­ous penal­ties to the charge to encour­age cit­i­zens to sub­mit peace­ably to being arrested.

What police have done is use it to send cit­i­zens to prison unjust­ly, as well as to jus­ti­fy using exces­sive force on those they want to admin­is­ter a beat­ing to. In New City alone the New York city Police Department filed over 55,000 resist­ing arrest charges against New Yorkers over a 10 year peri­od. Even though the first charge was for a minor offense. Thankfully some Judges are not blind­ed by police sup­port, most of these cas­es have been tossed out along with the under­ly­ing charge.

The NYPD obvi­ous­ly sees itself as Lord of the peo­ple, if the PBA pres­i­dent Patrick Lynch and the Sergeant’s PBA’s pres­i­den­t’s utter­ances are any­thing to go by. They haven’t got­ten the mes­sage that the leg­is­la­tion was not intend­ed for them to lie in order to incar­cer­ate cit­i­zens, or to give police the excuse to phys­i­cal­ly assault or kill mem­bers of the pub­lic they swore to protect.

OR WAS IT ?

We are forced to ask whether the Legislation mak­ing resist­ing arrest a seri­ous crime was to encour­age com­pli­ance , or was it intend­ed to give more pow­er to police to squash cer­tain sec­tors of the soci­ety deemed dis­pos­able? It bears men­tion­ing that politi­cians rush to say nice things about the police, even when the police clear­ly act in con­tra­ven­tion to their sworn duties. This wink, wink, nod, nod has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly encour­aged the law­less with­in police depart­ments to act with impuni­ty toward citizens.

The notion that resist­ing arrest is wor­thy of death, even for the most minor offense has been echoed by many Police brass across America. Clearly they know they have cov­er to kill because of the sweep­ing immu­ni­ty they have been giv­en by leg­is­la­tors in the pock­ets or afraid of police Unions. The aver­age cop who abus­es a mem­ber of the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly a non-white mem­ber, knows he/​she will not have to account. Even in cas­es where cit­i­zens are killed, they are giv­en desk assign­ments with full pay.

Forty three year old Eric Garner was killed while cops attempt­ed to arrest him for sell­ing un-taxed cig­a­rettes. The Police failed to men­tion that mis­ter Garner had just stepped in and defused a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion between two oth­er men. They also failed to men­tion that accord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, Garner had no cig­a­rettes on his per­son at the time he was alleged to have been sell­ing cig­a­rettes. Notwithstanding Garner was placed in a bru­tal choke-hold which snuffed out his life. With his dying breath ‚Garner could be heard say­ing , “I can’t breathe I can’t breathe, I cant breathe”.

Despite Garner’s pleas, the cop main­tained his death-hold until the last breath of life drained from Eric Garner’s body. The Medical Examiner ruled Eric Garner’s death a homi­cide. That means some­one killed Eric Garner, he did not die of nat­ur­al caus­es. Staten Island District Attorney Daniel M Donavan Jr, still haven’t filed crim­i­nal charges against any of the cops involved in the killing of Eric Garner.

Donavan insists he will have to find evi­dence the cops act­ed unlaw­ful­ly. This would be laugh­able if it was­n’t cyn­i­cal and insult­ing. The choke-hold used to kill Eric Garner was banned some 20 years ago. If the method used to kill Eric Garner was ille­gal, the act is crim­i­nal. What Donavan is doing is foot-drag­ging . The District Attorney is hop­ing that this will even­tu­al­ly die down. This is why it is impor­tant that the fam­i­ly of Eric Garner does not relent in their quest to get jus­tice for their loved one, who was essen­tial­ly mur­dered by mem­bers of the New York City Police Department.

Had Eric Garner assault­ed a cop and lived, he would have been beat­en to a pulp and fac­ing a raft of felonies from Donavan’s office. He would be cool­ing his heels in jail pos­si­bly with­out bail. This is the kind of hypocrisy being prac­ticed sim­i­lar to the mock inves­ti­ga­tion and tri­al which took place in the Trayvon Martin killing. The most recent exam­ple being the refusal of the Ferguson Missouri Police Department to name the cop who shot  18-year-old Michael Brown mul­ti­ple times killing him on the spot.

When you see police abus­ing cit­i­zens , look at these cas­es and you get an under­stand­ing why.