As a black man with a black wife, I am concerned every time that my wife steps into her car to go out onto the streets.
I am not concerned about regular criminals doing something bad to her. I am concerned about the criminals who wear uniforms and are vested with the power to abuse and take the lives of others under the color of law.
It does not matter that my wife is a college-educated woman or has given decades of service to the Federal Government beginning in her early twenties. And it certainly does not matter that under most circumstances, she may be heads and shoulders intellectually over any cop that would pull her over and seek to abuse her.
I have given that question much thought, and I wouldn’t say I like how the prospect of that happening makes me feel.
As the nation faces a reckoning after the George Floyd killing, and as people begin to talk about reimagining policing, all of a sudden, the nation is facing a national upsurge in shootings.
Violent crimes have trended down across America for over two decades. Is anyone skeptical about this crime surge as soon as some cities contemplate moving resources from police to areas where those dollars would be better spent?
Police across the United States continue to use mundane traffic stops to escalate minor and insignificant infractions into major arrests followed by a litany of felony charges.
The laws give them the power to manufacture charges, and prosecutors are all too happy to prosecute those charges with vigor befitting someone who actually saw the commission of those offenses.
A simple failure to indicate before initiating a turn can result in major felonies because the Ku-Klux-Klan members posturing as police officers make them so.
First off, they bark several contradictory orders which no one can follow, [all part of their God-comlpex]. They bark those contradictory orders knowing that no one can follow those commands, but that is exactly the point.
And so when the driver refuses to move out of fear of being gunned down in their own cars over what may have even been an illegal stop, they proceed to break windows and destroy people’s cars, they then drag the driver out of their car under the fraudulent claim that the driver refused to follow their commands.
God help the driver if they are Black because if they are Black, the best that can come of that situation is that they get badly beaten and hit with multiple felony charges.….….… The upside is that the driver escapes getting several bullets to the back and a few to the head.
And if you believe the tax-payers-funded body-worn cameras make a difference, think again.
There are no hard and fast rules that mandate that these criminals must turn on the cameras. And so, even if they turn them on initially when they are about to commit crimes against the public, they either turn them off or cover them with their hands.
And of course, as you may imagine, there are no penalties for those clear acts leading up to more serious criminal conduct.
Even in the rare instance that they videotape an encounter, their departments insist that the footage is not public property, even though our tax dollars pay for them and pay the criminals who are parading as cops.
A court-ordered release of cop videos to the public sometimes ends up with distorted, redacted, disturbed, and even tampered videos being released, and no one is held accountable.
Police officers plant evidence and fabricate evidence to criminalize people of color.…..people they hate… Black people.
When they commit crimes, Prosecutors covers for them, some judges nullify jury verdicts to prevent them from going to prison, and of course, the supreme court gives them blanket immunity to do as they please without civil liability under a doctrine the court created, not a constitutional construct, a court created one. (Qualified immunity).
There isn’t even a mechanism to punish cops who are caught lying under oath in court, even though the average citizen who lies under oath faces prison time and is usually prosecuted and imprisoned for committing perjury.
In case after case in which police encounter with Black residents are recorded, it becomes clearer that the police do everything in their power to escalate minor traffic infractions and turns them into something that seems to justify the use of force.
I see it as an across-the-board disrespect for African-Americans, but I also see it as something else.
The Klan is no longer interested in wearing white sheets when they can wear black robes and police uniforms. Why wear white hoods when a business suit and stiletto pumps do the same trick.
My fear, in the end, is not about what they could do to a member of my family. My fear is about the reaction they could trigger if they ever used those racist tactics on a member of my family…
.
.
.
.
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.