The Cost Of Overly Aggressive Policing Beginning To Add Up For Cops And Their Families Too…

Two things are hap­pen­ing as a result of the bla­tant racist poli­cies inher­ent in American police train­ing and prac­tices.
(1) Innocent peo­ple, and more specif­i­cal­ly, African-Americans and oth­er peo­ple of col­or are los­ing their lives.
(2) Cops will more and more be held account­able when they abuse, or take the lives of the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect.
The lack of respect for the dig­ni­ty of Black peo­ple in America has nur­tured and nour­ished a dan­ger­ous cul­ture of dis­dain and dis­re­gard which has cost count­less peo­ple of col­or their very lives.
This is noth­ing new, but with the advent of social media and cell phone cam­eras, much of what has been occur­ring under the cov­er of dark­ness has start­ed com­ing to light.
False arrests, lying on police reports, fal­si­fy­ing police reports, fram­ing inno­cent cit­i­zens, and a host of oth­er ille­gal and immoral acts have been brushed aside and secret­ly sup­port­ed by peo­ple in pow­er, [ie] (Judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and Legislators ).
They know that a lot of the peo­ple who get dragged into the court­rooms by these cops are inno­cent as hell yet they press ahead with pros­e­cut­ing and sen­tenc­ing the inno­cent rather than rep­ri­mand and hold police account­able.
In many cas­es, cops are caught lying under oath, [per­jury] is a felony, yet the cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors and judges take no action against them.
Subsequently, their depart­ments take no action against them.

It was that indif­fer­ence to black lives, and the knowl­edge that he would not be held account­able which caused a los­er, a com­mu­ni­ty punk, George Zimmerman to feel free to extin­guish the life of Trayvon Martin.
He was right. Even though he isn’t white, he believed him­self to be, and there­fore enti­tled to the extra priv­i­leges which come with paler skin.
As far as the jus­tice sys­tem is con­cerned, George Zimmerman was cor­rect in his assump­tions.
It was that indif­fer­ence that caused Michale Slager a police offi­cer, to gun down Walter Scott in South Carolina, and lied that he tried to take his taser.
If a con­sci­en­tious per­son had not secret­ly video­taped the entire inci­dent Walter Slager would still be a cop in South Carolina today.
That per­va­sive cul­ture of kill them and go home to your fam­i­ly, caused a cow­ard­ly punk wear­ing police uni­form to snuff out the life of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice for hold­ing a toy gun in a pub­lic park where chil­dren are sup­posed to play in safe­ty.
By virtue of his black skin young Tamir Rice was not afford­ed the inno­cence of being a twelve-year-old play­ing with his toy gun as most of us did.
He was gunned down by peo­ple his par­ents paid a salary to keep him safe.

It was that indif­fer­ence that caused Chicago cop, Jason Van Dyke to fire six­teen bul­lets hit­ting Laquan McDonald sev­er­al times killing him, even though he was walk­ing away from him.
In that case four(4) oth­er cops were fired from the depart­ment and Van Dyke was found guilty of mur­der­ing McDonald.
It caused rene­gade NYPD cops to fire 41 bul­lets at Amadou Diallo hit­ting him 19 times, killing him.
Reckless, depraved, uncon­cerned about the human­i­ty of mis­ter Diallo. Rudolph Guiliani the then Mayor of the city had giv­en them the green light to dis­re­gard the human­i­ty of the African-American pop­u­la­tion in the city.
The killing of Amadou Diallo would be only one of many peo­ple mur­dered and abused in the most grotesque man­ner by mem­bers of the NYPD.
The most base and crass dis­re­spect imag­in­able. A dis­re­spect which no sane per­son would ever con­tem­plate com­mit­ting against an ani­mal. That most grotesque of dis­dain and utter con­tempt was exact­ed on Abner Louima when he was assault­ed, bru­tal­ized, and sex­u­al­ly abused in 1997 by NYPD thugs, Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas Wiese, and oth­ers.
In what should have been one of the safest places for any­one to be, Abner Louima was sodom­ized in the bath­room of a NYPD precinct-house by the afore­men­tioned depraved and sadis­tic ani­mals in uniform.

The list is long: Eric Garner. Philando Castile,. Sandra Bland alleged­ly mur­dered in a Texas jail after a cop pulled her over alleg­ing that she failed to indi­cate before mak­ing a turn.
John Crawford mur­dered by cops in a Walmart for hav­ing a rifle he was hold­ing, even though Walmart sells the guns.
The ques­tion must be, “Would a white man be mur­dered for hav­ing a rifle, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a store in which a large part of their busi­ness is gun sales?
The answer is no!
The dis­re­spect and indif­fer­ence are so per­va­sive that even those who do not hide behind badges feel empow­ered to take the lives of Black peo­ple just because. 

Take for instance Michael Dunn who fatal­ly shot a teenag­er dur­ing a November 2012 argu­ment sparked by loud rap music at a Jacksonville gas sta­tion.
The South Patrick Shores soft­ware devel­op­er was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole for killing Jordan Davis, 17. Prosecutors said Dunn fired 10 shots at a red Dodge Durango car­ry­ing Davis and three oth­er black teenagers dur­ing a Black Friday park­ing-lot dis­pute over the teens’ boom­ing music.
There is not enough time or place in this arti­cle to doc­u­ment the myr­i­ad instances in which this bla­tant dis­re­gard for Black lives, has caused African-Americans their lives.
This leads us to Dallas Cop, 31-year ‑old Amber Guyger who killed the accom­plished 27-year-old Botham Shem Jean in his own apartment. 

Sept. 6, 2018 — Botham Jean, an accoun­tant at the inter­na­tion­al audit­ing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, is in his apart­ment eat­ing ice cream when Guyger, who has just capped off a 13 1/​2‑hour shift as a Dallas police offi­cer by help­ing a SWAT team arrest three sus­pect­ed rob­bers, enters through his unlocked door and fatal­ly shoots him in the chest after mis­tak­ing him for a bur­glar. Moments after the shoot­ing, Guyger real­izes she is in the wrong apart­ment.
Those are Guyger’s allegations.

Sept. 9, 2018 — An arrest war­rant is issued for Guyger, charg­ing her with manslaugh­ter. She is released on $300,000 bond and put on admin­is­tra­tive leave from her job. Guyger, accord­ing to an arrest war­rant affi­davit, told inves­ti­ga­tors she arrived home from work about 10 p.m. and mis­tak­en­ly parked her pick­up truck on the fourth floor of the build­ing instead of the third floor, which cor­re­spond­ed to her apart­ment. She claimed she then walked down a hall­way to an apart­ment she thought was hers, but when she insert­ed the key she found the door was slight­ly ajar. As she entered the apart­ment she heard some­one inside and saw a “large sil­hou­ette” in the near­ly com­plete­ly dark­ened apart­ment that she thought was a bur­glar. She fired twice after telling the person she believed to be an intrud­er to show his or her hands, author­i­ties said. 

Jan. 20, 2019 — A woman who filmed the after­math of the shoot­ing of Jean claims in an inter­view that she has been receiv­ing death threats and was fired from her job after she uploaded the video to social media. The footage shows an appar­ent­ly dis­tressed Guyger, still in her police uni­form, talk­ing on her phone as she paces back and forth out­side Jean’s apart­ment on Sept. 6. 

April 30, 2019 – The 911 call made by Guyger after she shot Jean is obtained by ABC Dallas sta­tion WFAA. In the call, Guyger repeat­ed­ly tells a dis­patch­er, “I thought it was my apart­ment,” and says, “I’m going to lose my job.”
Amber Guyger was more wor­ried about her job than the fact that she had just killed an inno­cent man in his own home.

Amber Guyger was just found guilty of mur­der in a Dallas County court yes­ter­day. On Sept. 11, 2018 — Lee Merritt, an attor­ney for Jean’s fam­i­ly, calls Guyger’s sto­ry “high­ly implau­si­ble.” Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said at the time she had not ruled out a mur­der indict­ment. She made true on her words.
The fact is that even if one agrees with Miss Guyger’s sto­ry there are some fun­da­men­tal flaws in what she did, even if she thought there was an intrud­er in her home.
She did not call for back­up as she was sup­posed to as per pro­to­col. She nev­er once claimed that she saw a gun or any oth­er weapon in mis­ter Jean’s hand.
In fact, the evi­dence is that mis­ter Jean dressed in a T‑shirt and a pair of shorts was set­tled on his couch eat­ing a bowl of ice cream.
Miss Guyger could have tak­en pro­tec­tive cov­er and called for back­up as I stat­ed ear­li­er, after all, who would want to kill an intrud­er in their own home?
Without ever see­ing a weapon or being attacked Amber Guyger lied that mis­ter Jean was advanc­ing on her when she shot him. Ballistics experts even­tu­al­ly debunked that lies as the tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­let showed that the 5 – 3″ Guyger shot the 6 -+ Jean as he was in a crouch­ing posi­tion.
Arguably shot as he was fright­ened at some­one in his home and was about to get up from the couch.
Nevertheless, Amber Guyger felt at lib­er­ty to put down the Black man in what she thought was her apart­ment and so she put two bul­lets in mis­ter Jean’s body, one of which went straight through his heart.
Would she have shot at a white man giv­en sim­i­lar circumstances? 

At the sen­tenc­ing phase of the tri­al on Wednesday, the defense trot­ted out an alleged for­mer drug abuser, a 67-year-old African-American woman who claimed that Guyger influ­enced her to clean up her life. She tes­ti­fied that she was influ­enced to change her life and that Guger attend­ed her grad­u­a­tion after she had com­plet­ed her grad­u­a­tion.
Ironically, she then tes­ti­fied that she begged for Guyger to attend the event, was so it was not some feel­ing of love or com­pas­sion that Amber Guyer had for her.
In fact, at the time Guyger met her in a drug den she wrote her a tick­et, so much for her car­ing, lov­ing spirit.

Immediately after the death of Botham Shem Jean ele­ments with­in the Dallas Police Department released what they thought would be dam­ag­ing evi­dence that Botham Shem Jean deserved to be mur­dered in his own home.
This is a prac­tice of American police when they mur­der black peo­ple, they then assas­si­nate their char­ac­ter as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their killing.
Fortunately, as evi­dence of the young man’s char­ac­ter began to emerge they shelved that strat­e­gy. The alle­ga­tions that they had found mar­i­jua­na dust in mis­ter Jean“s apart­ment would have been enough to jus­ti­fy the death of many young African-Americans. It would not hold water for the accom­plished and upright young man from St Lucia who attend­ed a Christian col­lege, had a bunch of white friends and had done tremen­dous work in his young life help­ing peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty.
The smear would not work, so they jumped off the Amber Guyger ship and tried to save them­selves the shame.

In the end, it may be the text mes­sages between Amber Guyger and the oth­er morons in the Dallas Police depart­ment which will be her ulti­mate undo­ing as it relates to the sen­tence she receives.

n March 2018, her work part­ner and lover Officer Martin Rivera texted her, “I was at this area with 5 dif­fer­ent black offi­cers !!! Not racist but damn.”

“Not racist but just have a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing and it shows,” she responded.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day that year, anoth­er cop also texted her to com­plain about a parade in the civ­il rights activist’s hon­or: “When does this end lol.”

Guyger respond­ed: “When MLK is dead … oh wait …”

And just two days before she killed Jean, a friend texted her that they had recent­ly adopt­ed a German Shepard that “may be racist.”

“It’s okay .. I’m the same,” Guyger respond­ed. A minute lat­er, she added: “I hate every­thing and every­one but y’all.”

According to NBC News, Guyger also once shared a pic­ture of a mil­i­tary sniper with the text: ” Stay low, go fast; kill first, die last; one shot, one kill; no luck, all skill.”
Yes, racism is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Black com­mu­ni­ty but the cost to white America is begin­ning to add up as well.
In the end, Amber Guyger would receive only ten years for mur­der­ing Botham Shem Jean in his own home. According to state law, she will be eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing five of those ten years. She is now 31-years-old, by all accounts she will walk out of prison at the ten­der age of 36 and live a full life. Botham Shem Jean is only a mem­o­ry.
After the ver­dict sup­port­ers of mis­ter Jean left the court­room shout­ing” no jus­tice no peace”. And so it continues.

This arti­cle was updat­ed from its orig­i­nal form after publication.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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