After the Black-Lives-Matter protests, the riots and other protest actions across America ‚Media houses grew tired packed up their cameras took down their satellite antennas and went home . While it was going on there was wide expectation and hope that much of it would stop. That finally this ugly , filthy part of America would finally go away but it hasn’t . It hasn’t subsided , the cameras are gone now, the wall to wall coverage has subsided but it goes on as if there was no outcry. There are far more important things to talk about . People are getting killed in Europe, important white people. So the incessant and unnecessary killings of unarmed people of color continue unabated by American police.
According to the [Tech insider] American Police kill more people in a single day than the country of Norway kill in nine (9) years. Now in all fairness Norway has a population of approximately 5.2 million as against the American Population of over 300 million. However it is instructive to note that the reason the comparison is made is that American cops continue to kill unarmed men women and children at a unconscionable clip at the slightest, or without any provocation.
In other instances they kill people armed with small knives , sticks, screwdrivers, and other objects which places no police officer in danger if the officer stays a clear distance away.
American state laws give police unprecedented powers to use force on members of the public. What is happening now is that the very boundaries of whats allowed insofar as the legality of those killings are concerned are being exploited to the maximum.
It is no longer a question of am “I justified in this killing”? There is literally no instance of police killing innocent citizens where the killing is not justifiable under states laws.
However when the videos are replayed over and over in those killings which are recorded the stark reality of these murders become more and more nauseating.
No one is exempt , not the drug addicted , not the mentally disturbed, not the upset, not Black , not the Hispanic, not women and certainly not Black men or boys, the target of their murderous rage.
According to Rutgers University sociologist Paul Hirschfield The public has reached a boiling point in its tolerance of police violence, evidenced by national protests. But local governments and law enforcement groups look upon these mass responses as proof that firearms serve a justified need in society. To break that cycle, those in power must reevaluate their priorities, Hirschfield says.
Failing to enact reform puts more unarmed or lightly armed people at risk of being unnecessarily shot by the police. “Current policies in the United States are extremely effective at protecting police from civilians but woefully ineffective at protecting civilians from the police,” he said. “The public should be given a say in the relative valuation of police and civilian lives.”
Simple put American laws value police lives in ways they do not value the lives of civilians and in certain cases the laws places no value on the lives of some civilians.
Alice Goffman a 33-year-old assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, In a terrific Book titled: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City ‚documents how the expansion of America’s penal system is reshaping life for poor black families who exist under the watch of police, prison guards, and parole officers.
Goffman reports that Starting in the mid-1970s, the United States stiffened its laws on drugs and violent crime and ratcheted up the police presence on city streets. The number of people in American jails and prisons has risen five-fold over the past 40 years. There are now roughly seven million people under criminal-justice supervision. “In modern history,” Goffman writes, “only the forced labor camps of the former U.S.S.R. under Stalin approached these levels of penal confinement.”
In an April 2015 Article appearing in the Los-Angeles Times Timothy McGrath,of the GlobalPost writes : There’s so much we don’t know about why and how often people die during police encounters, and yet, we know enough to know that American police are killing far, far too many people compared to police in other developed countries.
Yet in a shocking display of tone-deafness and political pandering Republican Candidates for President pay homage and cheer-lead on police praise while refusing to appropriately address an issue which is a dangerously simmering cauldron waiting to explode.
McGrath points out that Police in peer nations like Germany, Denmark, the UK and other liberal democracies — meanwhile — rarely kill civilians. Even accounting for population size, the frequency with which American police kill civilians is shocking. Not twice as often, or three times as often. We’re talking factors of 20 to 70.
In case after case ‚after case American police escalate situations even when family members call them to help calm mentally unstable or irate individuals they end up escalating situations which ultimately result in them killing the individual.
It’s gotten so bad that under no circumstance would I voluntarily call police to my home unless a serious incident occurred which demanded that they be notified be notified.
If the police is called to speak to an Black man arguing with his wife, on their arrival the man is sweeping his front yard the broom automatically becomes a deadly weapon in their estimation.[sic]
His color alone is seen as a dangerous weapon , let alone if he is above five feet tall he is automatically a beast worthy of death.
On that basis they immediately demand the person drop the broom and if there isn’t instantaneous compliance he dies an instant death from a barrage of bullets.
As a police officer I was told to be doubly careful when I deal with citizens in their homes. This extra diligence and care was born from the principle that a man’s home is his castle. American cops bombard their way into people’s homes with brute force and lengthy-expletive laced tirades and any protest from residents are met with crushing and lethal force. This kind of behavior is reserved for Black and brown people but is also extended on occasions to poor whites for whom they have precious little to no respect either.
Since this issue took prominence the website the Guardian.com began a count of all the people who die at the hands of American Police . On it’s page titled The Counted is a veritable graveyard of faces of once breathing live human beings gunned down by police. It is extremely difficult to know exactly just how many people are killed as there are no Federal requirements to report to Federal Authorities when local or state police kill people.
There are some reporting which are classified as justifiable, of course that designation is done by Law-enforcement making those determination that their actions are justifiable. Those reports do not include the many people who are killed without any justification. Or people who are beaten or suffocated by police who die later as a result of the abuse they take at the hands of police.
Despite these obstacles the Guardian came up with a total of 1134 people killed in 2015 at the hands of American police. The year 2016 began with a merry clip as police continue to kill and physically assault citizens of color at alarming rates. In many cases they openly threaten citizens in expletive laced tirades before they snuff out their lives and there are no consequences for these actions. In fact there are hardly any cases where any person shot by police survive being shot.
Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
The story is always the same someone lunged at the police or made threatening moves in the direction of officers upon which officers open fire and the victim is stuck.
In case after case it becomes evident with closer scrutiny that the deceased died from multiple gunshot wounds .
Generally all kill shots.
American people of color have become targets for assassination merely based on the color of their skin. They are told to shoot to kill .
It is not out of the ordinary for persons to be viciously beaten or killed while their hands are cuffed behind their backs.
Yet American officials continue to perpetuate the nonsensical notion that the American system is the best. Despite these ridiculous statements hardly any cop gets prosecuted for murder no matter how blatantly obvious their crimes are.
It lead to the logical conclusion then that police murder is sanctioned by the system, and is designed to keep the minority population in it’s place at the peril of death.
Regardless of the barbarism of the killings white Prosecutors put together Grand Juries without presenting evidence of criminal conduct to the jury. These Kangaroo events are designed to placate the aggrieved segment of the public but has nothing to do with justice. The Grand Jury process is merely a process to clear cops of wrong-doing regardless of the crimes they commit.
The http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-killed-8-hours-2015-early-graves-day/reports that in 2015 cops in the United States kill at a rate of 3 each day or one person every 8 hours.