The Use Of Dogs By Police As Instruments Of Terror Against Blacks Persists From Slavery To Present Day.…

During the sum­mer of 2020, after mur­der­ous police lynched George Floyd in the light of day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there was a mass upris­ing of American cit­i­zens against what they had pre­vi­ous­ly refused to acknowl­edge; bla­tant police mur­der of African-Americans.
In the white house as pres­i­dent was Donald Trump, an igno­rant and vile racist in the vein of Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and a long line of racists to occu­py the office of president.
Trump, angry that Black peo­ple dared to demand equal rights under the laws, warned that “vicious Dogs” would be unleashed on pro­tes­tors who dared to protest against police vio­lence and murder.

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An escaped per­son try­ing to elude slave hunters and their dogs. Hand-col­ored wood­cut of a 19th-cen­tu­ry illus­tra­tion. (North Wind Picture Archives via AP Images)

(13 Amendment to the con­sti­tu­tion Sections 1 & 2.) Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion. Congress shall have the pow­er to enforce this arti­cle by appro­pri­ate legislation.

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After the 13th amend­ment was rat­i­fied, abol­ish­ing slav­ery as it was, slav­ery by oth­er means rapid­ly came into effect because of the clause,” except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, which was a delib­er­ate inclu­sion that cre­at­ed anoth­er form of slav­ery albeit by anoth­er name.
As a result of that wig­gle room, African Americans would be tor­ment­ed through peon­age prac­tices, Jim Crow, and oth­er forms of insti­tu­tion­al­ized Government oppres­sion for over 80 years cul­mi­nat­ing in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence move­ments that char­ac­ter­ized the 1960s.
Though sig­nif­i­cant, the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s did not change many of the struc­tur­al built-ins that remain a part of the American legal orthodoxy.
African peo­ple are con­vinced that they are free cit­i­zens of the United States. Still, the 13th amend­ment, which sup­pos­ed­ly end­ed slav­ery, is the amend­ment that memo­ri­al­ized slav­ery of anoth­er kind, in the words “except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, “speak­ing of slavery.

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In the 60s, police used dogs as a weapon against peace­ful Black demonstrators.

By def­i­n­i­tion, the very words” except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, lit­er­al­ly incen­tivize the mass crim­i­nal­iza­tion and incar­cer­a­tion of Black peo­ple, forc­ing them back into servi­tude, only by a dif­fer­ent name.
This is not a prac­tice that came to an end; it is 2022, and police are arguably the great­est dan­ger to black peo­ple in the United States.
Pew Research not­ed that Blacks have long out­num­bered whites in U.S. pris­ons, an under­state­ment if ever there was one. But a sig­nif­i­cant decline in the num­ber of black pris­on­ers has steadi­ly nar­rowed the gap over the past decade, accord­ing to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Police use of dogs as instru­ments of ter­ror against Black Americans has con­tin­ued from slav­ery even as slave catch­ing has evolved into policing.


At the end of 2017, fed­er­al and state pris­ons in the United States held about 475,900 inmates who were black and 436,500 who were white – a dif­fer­ence of 39,400, accord­ing to BJS. Ten years ear­li­er, there were 592,900 black and 499,800 white pris­on­ers – a dif­fer­ence of 93,100. (This analy­sis counts only inmates sen­tenced to more than a year.) The decline in the black-white gap between 2007 and 2017 was dri­ven by a 20% decrease in the num­ber of black inmates, which out­paced a 13% decrease in the num­ber of white inmates.
Notably, the num­ber of incar­cer­at­ed Blacks sen­tenced to a year or less in prison was not includ­ed in the data. Add the num­ber of Blacks incar­cer­at­ed for pet­ty offens­es, steal­ing a slice of piaz­za, mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion or sale, inabil­i­ty to pay a traf­fic fine, inabil­i­ty or unwill­ing­ness to pay child sup­port, and offens­es of that nature and the data change exponentially.

In Baton Rouge, police dogs bite a teenag­er 17 or younger every three weeks, on aver­age. Charles Carey, 19, shows the scars on his leg from a 2019 Baton Rouge police dog bite. His grand­moth­er Patricia Rogers is at left. TRAVIS SPRADLING/​BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE

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Efforts by Democrats in some states to end cash bail and have non-vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit minor offens­es be giv­en non-cus­to­di­al sen­tences have also played a part over the same decade in low­er­ing the num­ber of Blacks locked up in American prisons.
The Republican par­ty, which is now a full-fledged Fascist white suprema­cist par­ty, is vehe­ment­ly opposed to these fair and humane ges­tures by the Democrats. So too, are police and their unions that ben­e­fit from the mass incar­cer­a­tion of black people.
In a shock­ing­ly illu­mi­nat­ing arti­cle in 2021, the Marshal Project detailed the mind-blow­ing sta­tis­tics behind police in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, use of dan­ger­ous canines on non-vio­lent Black peo­ple with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy, includ­ing chil­dren as young as 12 years old.
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A spokesper­son for the depart­ment told reporters, “Every sin­gle per­son that we caught was in the process of com­mit­ting a felony, they were pos­si­bly armed, and they were resist­ing arrest,” said Capt. Wayne Martin, a long­time K‑9 offi­cer and now com­man­der of the Uniform Patrol Bureau. “If any of those things are absent, we don’t use the dogs.”

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It goes with­out say­ing that advo­cates have evi­dence that this cop-splain­ing are total and utter lies; we know they lie rou­tine­ly. The irony, many depart­ments do arrest a larg­er num­ber of armed and vio­lent felons with­out using dogs to inflict cop pun­ish­ment on them. Even more sig­nif­i­cant in America is that the police paid by the pub­lic to pro­tect and serve do not see them­selves as sub­ject to the dic­tates of their boss­es, the citizens.
Police have become pow­er­ful over­lords that law­mak­ers are ter­ri­fied of offend­ing, and this is the def­i­n­i­tion of a police state. For Black Americans, this is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the way things were dur­ing slav­ery, sure, some things have changed, but essen­tial­ly, the more things change in America, the more they remain the same.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​6​0​374 – 2/

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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.