It Is Time That Investigations Of Police Violence Be Supervised By The Feds, Local DA’s Cannot Be Counted On

Andrew Womble, the District Attorney In the North Carolina County in which Andrew Brown was mur­dered by Sheriff’s deputies, on Tuesday, May 18^th, announced that there would be no charges against the offi­cers who shot a flee­ing Brown as he tried to escape get­ting arrested.
Andrew Brown was shot at least three times with all three bul­lets enter­ing his body from the back, one through his shoul­der blades and two through the back of the head.
The offi­cial police ver­sion is that they went to the premis­es to search for illic­it drugs on one war­rant (there we go again, anoth­er life lost/​ruined based on the war on drugs), the oth­er was to arrest Brown on an out­stand­ing warrant.
In nei­ther instance was Andrew Brown tried on either war­rant, found guilty, and sen­tenced to death.
Yet the police embarked upon a process of enforce­ment which said we have the right as state agents to exe­cute you if you do not bow to our demands.
The District attor­ney and 2022 aspir­ing supe­ri­or court judge can­di­date Andrew Womble, in deliv­er­ing his deci­sion, was most caus­tic in his remarks, unboth­ered about the sanc­ti­ty of Andrew Brown’s life, much more to give def­er­ence to the dead.
One would imag­ine that as the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, he would be a lit­tle more cir­cum­spect in his lan­guage in com­mu­ni­cat­ing, at least to Andrew Brown’s fam­i­ly, that [he]had no inter­est in bring­ing mis­ter Brown’s killers to justice.
The Brown fam­i­ly called the shoot­ing an execution.……and it was exact­ly that, an execution.
But, the most dis­tress­ing event for me per­son­al­ly goes beyond their refusal to release the body­cam videos, the judge’s deci­sion to refuse to release the video to the pub­lic, or the doc­tored 20-sec­ond clip they showed to the Brown family…
It is the cal­lous dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect that Andrew Womble showed to the Brown fam­i­ly when they are griev­ing the death of their loved one at the hands of state agents.

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The shock­ing real­i­ty is that for decades black peo­ple have been com­plain­ing about police act­ing like invad­ing armies with­in their com­mu­ni­ties, killing them with­out consequence.
I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly on this phe­nom­e­non, argu­ing that the police are empow­ered because District Attorneys like Andrew Womble are com­plic­it in their mur­der­ous activ­i­ties, which empow­ers them to act with absolute impuni­ty. Additionally, the nation’s high­est court gives them an extra lay­er of immunity.
But think for a moment about the incal­cu­la­ble harm done when peo­ple like District Attorney Andrew Womble are ele­vat­ed to supe­ri­or court judge as he is aspir­ing to be next year?
Imagine what he will do as a tri­al judge?
Just imag­ine what kind of supe­ri­or court judge he will be when pre­sid­ing over a bench tri­al in which a cop is a defen­dant? Under Womble, that cop has zero chance of fac­ing justice.
Imagine a sce­nario in which a black defen­dant, inno­cent or not, has to face the ran­cid racism of Andrew Womble; what are his or her chances of get­ting a fair trial?
This is a grave mat­ter that should gar­ner every sane per­son­’s atten­tion. Imagine the harm that Womble as a sin­gle Racist piece of garbage District Attorney has wrought in one munic­i­pal­i­ty to the black com­mu­ni­ty, then build it out to the fifty states.
The answer is the pris­ons filled with black bod­ies, and worse, the many inno­cents who have been exe­cut­ed on the per­se­cu­tion of a jus­tice sys­tem led by the likes of Andrew Womble.

ANDREW WOMBLE’S JUSTIFICATION:

District Attorney Womble said the fol­low­ing in explain­ing his deci­sion not to file crim­i­nal charges against the cow­boy killers who exter­mi­nat­ed Andrew Brown with bul­lets to the back of the head;“ the three offi­cers rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was jus­ti­fied.”
[Sure]! Cops are allowed to judge, jury, & exe­cu­tion­ers, with a heavy empha­sis on the exe­cu­tion­er. The sad real­i­ty is that giv­en the American stan­dard on when lethal force may jus­ti­fi­ably be used to stop a per­son flee­ing from being appre­hend­ed, police have low­ered the bar of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to irra­tional lev­els heav­i­ly influ­enced by the lack of val­ue they them­selves place on human life…
Given the pow­er cops have, no one should be under any illu­sions that those who have min­i­mal edu­ca­tion­al train­ing will be judi­cious stew­ards of the trust placed in them; a few may, most won’t.
“Mr. Brown’s death, while trag­ic, was jus­ti­fied because Mr. Brown’s actions caused three deputies with the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to rea­son­ably believe it was nec­es­sary to use dead­ly force to pro­tect them­selves and oth­ers.”
If you did not know who made these state­ments and was asked to make a guess, the quick­est answer would be that these state­ments in red were made by a defense attor­ney, not a pros­e­cu­tor who is sup­posed to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal con­duct.“Officers were duty-bound to stand their ground, car­ry on the per­for­mance of their duties and take Andrew Brown into custody.“They could not sim­ply let him go, as has been sug­gest­ed. He engaged in dan­ger­ous, felony-lev­el mis­con­duct as he decid­ed to flee.”

In oth­er words, deputies had war­rants signed by a judge to arrest Andrew Brown, and on that basis, if mis­ter Brown did not sur­ren­der, the police had every right to end it.
Kill him.….Kill him they did.…this was a death squad that had one inten­tion, they were going to mur­der him, flee­ing or not.
I have zero con­fi­dence that a Federal inves­ti­ga­tion will bring the mur­der­ers to jus­tice, but hope springs eternal.
Nevertheless, a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion needs to be done to unearth all of the facts. Facts that Andrew Womble and his cohorts seem all too quick to sweep under the car­pet. It appears that some­one had it out for Andrew Brown. Regardless of mis­ter brown’s crim­i­nal past, the police have no right to exe­cute any­one. The raid was car­ried out like a hit.
The way this whole event unfold­ed and the secre­cy and cov­er-up that has ensued stinks of some­thing sinister.
Did some­one want him dead? Was his killing planned before the cops encoun­tered mis­ter Brown?

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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.