If A Citizen Cannot Be In His Home Asleep Without The Government Entering And Killing Him In His Sleep What Kind Of Country Is That?

Striking a bal­ance between how much pow­er to give to police offi­cers and pre­serv­ing the rights of cit­i­zens is no easy task.
For the most part, putting immense pow­ers into the hands of any­one can be a Russian roulette-type gam­ble. Placing those pow­ers into the hands of poor­ly edu­cat­ed, poor­ly-trained, big­ot­ed peo­ple is a sure­fire way to end up with what has been hap­pen­ing across America daily.
As a [free­lance writer], peo­ple often reach out to me through social media to talk about things I write about. I use the term free­lance because I am not employed by any cor­po­rate enti­ty. I am my own per­son, and I do not do it for mon­ey or fame.
These are peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races, back­grounds, and opin­ions, peo­ple who look like America.
Surprisingly, we some­times have con­ver­sa­tions that last for over an hour; even when we dis­agree, our con­ver­sa­tions are always cor­dial and respect­ful, and we always come away hav­ing learned from each other.
Over the years, I learned that some of those peo­ple with whom I have dis­course have a total­ly dif­fer­ent view of American polic­ing prac­tices than I do. The sin­gle thread that binds those peo­ple is that they are all white.
We are some­times mys­ti­fied about the aver­age white American’s seem­ing apa­thy toward the sense the rest of us feel that the police are vio­lent, untrained thugs who are killing even the inno­cent unarmed, and men­tal­ly insane.
But do they see what we see? Are they real­ly privy to what we know if they are not policed that way and polic­ing is about pro­tect­ing their inter­est at the expense of the oth­er races?

To under­stand the apa­thy on the one hand and the out­right cop-wor­ship on the oth­er, we must exam­ine the ori­gins of polic­ing and come to grips with the real­i­ty that police were not cre­at­ed to be of ser­vice to blacks but were intend­ed to be inju­ri­ous enforcers against them.
In this regard, the American Bar Association declares; How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing.
The more com­mon­ly known his­to­ry — the one most col­lege stu­dents will hear about in an Introduction to Criminal Justice course — is that American polic­ing can trace its roots back to English polic­ing. Centralized munic­i­pal police depart­ments in America began to form in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry (Potter, 2013), begin­ning in Boston and sub­se­quent­ly estab­lished in New York City; Albany, New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey; and Baltimore. As writ­ten by Professor Gary Potter (2013) of Eastern Kentucky University, by the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, all major American cities had a police force.
This is the his­to­ry that doesn’t make us feel bad.
While this nar­ra­tive is cor­rect, it only tells part of the sto­ry (Turner et al., 2006). Policing in south­ern slave-hold­ing states fol­lowed a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry — one that has roots in slave patrols of the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies and police enforce­ment of Jim Crow laws in the late nine­teenth to mid-twen­ti­eth cen­turies. As per Professor Michael Robinson (2017) of the University of Georgia, the first deaths in America of Black men at the hands of law enforce­ment “can be traced back as ear­ly as 1619 when the first slave ship, a Dutch Man-of-War ves­sel, land­ed in Point Comfort, Virginia.”(ABA)

We need to wrap our heads around these facts to under­stand police behav­ior in America. The sad real­i­ty is that American polic­ing has mor­phed into one big 18,000 plus slave-patrol instead of what­ev­er the English mod­el would have looked like today.
American cops did not sud­den­ly become bad. Using the met­ric of the slave patrols that I have allud­ed to on numer­ous occa­sions on this medi­um, and val­i­dat­ed by the American Bar Association. They are only now being exposed for what they are because of the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cell­phone cam­eras and the will­ing­ness of brave cit­i­zens jour­nal­ists to put their free­doms, safe­ty, and even their lives on the line to expose the stench of America’s rot­ten racist police culture.
I am so in awe of the cit­i­zen-jour­nal­ists of all races who risk being bru­tal­ized, arrest­ed, or even killed to bring the truth of what American police offi­cers rep­re­sent for the world to see.
God for­bid that the cor­po­rate media would do a lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion into the hor­rif­ic sto­ries that police per­pet­u­ate on cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or, daily.
Instead, they accept news releas­es pre­sent­ed to them, you guessed it, by the police. They then put those dis­tor­tions on tele­vi­sion, and that’s the end of it.
When a video sud­den­ly turns up that con­tra­dicts those accounts of how an inci­dent occurred, they cre­ate more lies to jus­ti­fy the lies they fed the gullible, lazy, and com­plic­it cor­po­rate media.
That explains why they are so hate­ful to the aver­age joe stand­ing on the cor­ner record­ing their activ­i­ties. They can­not lie with­out being found out as they have been accus­tomed to.
Even so, when they are caught abus­ing and even mur­der­ing unarmed peo­ple, the courts jus­ti­fy the atroc­i­ties by stretch­ing the bound­aries of the applic­a­ble laws into grotesque exam­ples of increduli­ty to pro­tect the murderers.

America’s polic­ing prac­tices is [not] a polic­ing fail­ure; it is Government pol­i­cy val­i­dat­ed by the high­est courts.
As police com­mit more atroc­i­ties, the courts move the goal­posts by cre­at­ing new inter­pre­ta­tions of the con­sti­tu­tion to jus­ti­fy their crimes. If you own oper­ate a busi­ness, you must acquire insur­ance, doc­tors, lawyers, con­trac­tors, store own­ers, lawn care pro­fes­sion­als- just not police offi­cers. The tax­pay­ers pick up the tab in the rare instances they are held account­able civil­ly. The egre­gious Supreme Court doc­trine of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty lit­er­al­ly gives police blan­ket cov­er to com­mit crimes against cit­i­zens they do not like with impunity.
Qualified immu­ni­ty is [not] in the con­sti­tu­tion but, as I out­lined, was cre­at­ed by The US Supreme Court.
It is a prin­ci­ple that grants gov­ern­ment offi­cials per­form­ing dis­cre­tionary func­tions immu­ni­ty from civ­il suits unless the plain­tiff shows that the offi­cial vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known.”
This is where American cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or. In the hands of the least edu­cat­ed, poor­ly trained, most big­ot­ed peo­ple are placed awe­some pow­ers, includ­ing the pow­er of life and death.
And take lives they do, more often than not Black lives. Police mur­der black peo­ple for sleep­ing in their beds,(Breonna Taylor) eat­ing ice cream,(Botham Jean) walk­ing home from the store. (Elijah McLain, alleged­ly fail­ing to use a turn sig­nal (Sandra Bland) dri­ving home with his family,(Philando Castille) Shopping in a Walmart (John Crawford), sell­ing loose cigarettes,(Eric Garner), alleged­ly ten­der­ing a fake bill, ( George Floyd), stand­ing at the front door of his apart­ment build­ing (Amadou Diallo), run­ning away (Walter Scott, Daunte Wright, being at a gas sta­tion (Alton Sterling) and hun­dreds more).…..
Unarmed Black Americans have been mur­dered by police doing every con­ceiv­able nor­mal day-to-day activ­i­ty. Usually, they get to inves­ti­gate them­selves, or a neigh­bor­ing agency inves­ti­gates and finds that every­thing was done by the book.
Corrupt Prosecutors and Judges move moun­tains to cov­er up their crimes.
In the end, they are shield­ed by qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty civil­ly and cloaked with impuni­ty against crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion by cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors who take mon­ey from their Unions, and of course, they get to inves­ti­gate themselves…

It is a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion that now goes beyond the risk American cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black and Brown peo­ple, take sim­ply for get­ting in their motor­cars. We know about the pre­tex­tu­al stops they use, fail­ure to sig­nal at least 100 feet before the turn, bro­ken tail light, tail­light bulb not work­ing, tire hit­ting the yel­low line, dri­ving too fast, dri­ving too slow, air fresh­en­er dan­gling from the rearview mir­ror, on and on .….and police are allowed to fol­low cit­i­zens around for any length of time they chose, then use any pre­tex­tu­al stop to jus­ti­fy an ille­gal stop.
So you get mad at the cop that abus­es you, but you give a pass to the leg­is­la­tors who vio­lat­ed you by mak­ing the ordi­nances. You give a pass to the pros­e­cu­tors who pros­e­cute the made-up vio­la­tions and offens­es and the Judges who do absolute­ly noth­ing even when cops are caught lying under oath.
The two sys­tems of jus­tice are so obvi­ous they don’t even both­er to try cov­er­ing it up any­more. A cit­i­zen who lies under oath is severe­ly pun­ished, usu­al­ly with prison time. A cop who is caught lying under oath to incrim­i­nate a cit­i­zen suf­fers .….zero penal­ties. These ladies and gen­tle­men are how the police devel­oped impunity.
There have always been two America’s, sor­ry Barack Obama, grow­ing up in Hawai, you had a com­plete­ly utopi­an idea of what America rep­re­sent­ed. Becoming pres­i­dent sure­ly brought that house of lies crash­ing down real fast.
American polic­ing is not bro­ken; it works exact­ly how it was cre­at­ed to work. It was always designed to keep Blacks in their place using what­ev­er means necessary.
The police are mere­ly the man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inher­ent­ly bro­ken and immoral sys­tem that was cre­at­ed in the blood of inno­cent Native and Black people.
Twenty-two (22) years old Amir Locke is mere­ly the lat­est iter­a­tion, the lat­est inno­cent vic­tim to have his inno­cent blood­shed by a rot­ten immoral, and cor­rupt system.
How do you ille­gal­ly enter a man’s cas­tle where he lays sleep­ing, then mur­der him as he is awak­en­ing and try­ing to fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing in his home? You then send images of the legal gun he has to the com­plic­it cor­po­rate media and lies that he point­ed it at you only to find out that the gun is appro­pri­ate­ly registered?
If a cit­i­zen can­not be in his home asleep with­out the gov­ern­ment enter­ing and killing him in his sleep, what kind of coun­try is that?
How You Start is How You Finish.

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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.