Police Are Creating False Justifications For Murdering People

My per­son­al expe­ri­ences with crim­i­nals should have made me bru­tal and uncom­pro­mis­ing toward those who com­mit crimes. I guess I should want every crim­i­nal arrest­ed, giv­en a sham tri­al, and thrown into a dun­geon, nev­er to see the light of day again.
After all, I was shot in the line of duty as a young police­man, even as I was try­ing to ensure that a cit­i­zen arrived home safe­ly after being threat­ened with death. I was again a vic­tim of ran­dom gun vio­lence; this time, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a night­club. The lat­ter shoot­ing impact­ed my life in ways that can­not be ful­ly explained in a sin­gle article.
I have suf­fered theft in tens of thou­sands of (US) dol­lars as a busi­ness per­son. As a prop­er­ty own­er, I have had van­dals dam­age my prop­er­ty, cost­ing me mon­ey that could have been bet­ter spent.
I should be bit­ter and uncar­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly because the lion’s share of the harm I expe­ri­enced was not at the hands of white peo­ple but blacks in the United States.
Conversely, my expe­ri­ences liv­ing and work­ing with and among whites in the United States have been 98% pos­i­tive. I have ben­e­fit­ted from their coun­sel, net­work­ing, and guidance.
I would be jus­ti­fied, hav­ing expe­ri­enced all of the fore­gone, say­ing let the police treat them (black peo­ple) any old way.….…..but I cannot.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​i​a​s​e​d​-​u​s​e​-​o​f​-​f​o​r​c​e​-​b​y​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​f​o​r​c​e​s​-​d​e​s​p​i​c​a​b​l​e​-​a​n​d​-​s​h​a​m​e​f​ul/

The con­tin­ued mur­der of Black peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly young black men, by the police con­tin­ues to give me heart­burn. As a lay per­son, but one who served as a police offi­cer, I see the shoot­ings. I look at them through a par­al­lel prism of the laws of the states in which they occur and their depart­ment poli­cies, and in some cas­es, the killings meet the legal stan­dard but fall far short of moral standards.
And so the killings are a sear­ing indict­ment on those who pull the trig­ger and those who pass the laws cre­at­ing false jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for murder.
The immoral laws also serve as a bea­con to the unin­tel­li­gent, who see them as both moral­ly and legal­ly the stan­dard by which every­one should abide. When unright­eous and evil peo­ple cre­ate the laws, we end up with soci­eties of blood­thirsty cheer­lead­ers to mur­der and oth­er immoral acts.
Over the years, I have touched on this sub­ject as a free­lance writer and a for­mer police offi­cer. Police offi­cers are killing peo­ple not because their lives or the lives of oth­ers are in [immi­nent] dan­ger, but because the laws will not hold them accountable.
In video after video, we see police offi­cers cre­ate the pre­text to jus­ti­fy using lethal force legal­ly. They then kill the sub­ject and go through the motions of ren­der­ing first aid, all while yelling out the right words for the body-worn cam­eras they wear.
They com­mit mur­der, then go home to their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er and their chil­dren and go to sleep. It’s all par for the course.

In many cas­es, they mur­der a per­son of unsound mind, expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal episode, or who wants to com­mit sui­cide by cops.
In the vast major­i­ty of the videos I have watched of these inter­ac­tions, the police claim they can­not see what the sub­ject has in hand, or they yell out com­mands at sub­jects hold­ing a knife that pos­es zero threat to them.
Sometimes the object in the hand of the sub­ject turns out to be a cell phone, a tele­vi­sion remote con­troller, or some oth­er benign object. Police offi­cers are heav­i­ly armed with all kinds of accou­ter­ments and weapon­ry, yet they esca­late the sit­u­a­tion by bark­ing con­trar­i­an com­mands, which fur­ther agi­tates and con­fus­es the sub­ject, caus­ing him to react in ways that jus­ti­fy his killing. These sub­jects are almost always black.
A men­tal­ly dis­turbed Black man died in a hail of police bul­lets. Police encir­cled him as he stood out­side his home with an object in his hand. The object turned out to be a TV remote.
Black teen killed four bul­lets to the chest as he awoke from sleep in a Hyuandi motor­car police said may have been stolen.
The cas­es are too numer­ous to men­tion. Time and again, we see cas­es in which, if only the offi­cers act­ed as police offi­cers and not as amped-up sol­diers on a bat­tle­field they could have resolved the sit­u­a­tion at hand with no violence.
To every ham­mer, every­thing is a nail. You know we have lost our souls when we cheer­lead the shed­ding of blood over some rusty met­als, plas­tic, and glass.
The gov­ern­ment will have to with­draw some of the pow­er it has giv­en to the police. We have already seen the signs that the cit­i­zen­ry is get­ting agi­tat­ed. The police must be con­strained; only then will respect for law enforce­ment return.

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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.