Unchecked Police Violence Wreaking Havoc On The Lives Of The Poor

Driving down a stretch of the Taconic Parkway in Dutchess County some­time after sev­en one morn­ing recent­ly, we came upon a state police traf­fic stop on a nar­row strip of the two-lane road with no guardrail on either side.
It is a time of the morn­ing when work­ing peo­ple rush to get to work so they can take care of their fam­i­lies. The salaries they earn are hijacked even before they receive them, and tax­es are removed, and there­after, almost every pen­ny they spend is taxed to pay for goods and ser­vices they often­times do not receive.
The traf­fic stop cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for the dri­ving pub­lic based on its loca­tion as motorists head­ing south hap­pened upon it and had to brake sud­den­ly after round­ing the corner.
My wife and I simul­ta­ne­ous­ly won­dered why it was so impor­tant to effec­tu­ate a traf­fic stop at that time of the morn­ing, let alone at that loca­tion, jeop­ar­diz­ing lives to col­lect rev­enue. What traf­fic offense could have neces­si­tat­ed that lev­el of igno­rance and abuse of state power?
To top it off, New York has a “move over’ law that forces motorists to move over and away from emer­gency vehi­cles when they are stopped on the roadways.
Motorists had nowhere to go except over the embank­ment or careen into each oth­er just so some lousy cop could exer­cise authority.
But the New York State Legislature isn’t done. When the morons behold­en to the police unions you elect have noth­ing to do, they find ways to give more pow­er to the police state and take away more of your rights.
They are already plan­ning to broad­en the ‘move-over’ law to include oth­er vehi­cles, not just fire, ambu­lance, and police.
They argue that there are road fatal­i­ties year­ly from motorists crash­ing into emer­gency vehi­cles. They do not include in their nar­ra­tive that the actions of [Police], in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­ue to jeop­ar­dize the lives of the trav­el­ing pub­lic con­trary to the lying nar­ra­tive they spout.
The rapa­cious desire to fleece the American cit­i­zen of their hard-earned resources have seen state and local leg­is­la­tures ramp­ing up non­sen­si­cal laws aimed at fill­ing rev­enue cof­fers, all while lying to a gullible and igno­rant pop­u­la­tion that it is about their safety.
The fact of the mat­ter is that on any bright and sun­ny sum­mer day, dri­ving down Taconic Parkway into the Bronx, you will encounter State and County Police hid­den in des­ig­nat­ed spots and patrolling the park­way. Driving on the Taconic Parkway and Routes 84 and 684, I usu­al­ly count the num­ber of them I see.
However, if there is a lit­tle rain show­er, they all dis­ap­pear. They are not there to help the pub­lic. A fend­er ben­der will result in a long wait. You will be told there is only one troop­er on duty, and he is at anoth­er acci­dent scene. Where did all the rest of them go?
Fewer peo­ple are dri­ving above the speed lim­it; they pre­sume few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to extract stu­pid tax­es from motorists who speed or fail to wear a seatbelt.
It is all about rev­enue col­lec­tion and has noth­ing to do with your safe­ty or mine. So they will con­tin­ue jeop­ar­diz­ing your safe­ty and mine to pro­tect the rev­enue collectors.

A cou­ple of days ago, two French motor­cy­cle cops stopped a 17-year motorist Nahel M in a yel­low BMW motor­car; two oth­er occu­pants were in the car with the young dri­ver. What tran­spired still remains murky, but things esca­lat­ed quick­ly, with one cop threat­en­ing to shoot the young man dead.
He did just that!!!
Since then, vio­lent clash­es have occurred in the sub­urbs around the French Capital, Paris. Thousands of demon­stra­tors have clashed night­ly with French police, and cars and busi­ness­es have been torched, result­ing in many arrest­ed and many cops injured. The traf­fic stop is rumored to have been over a minor traf­fic infrac­tion. Across the Western world, we see the mass mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police and the heap­ing up of pow­er, includ­ing the right to use dead­ly force on civilians.

Police ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed Nahel drove his car towards them to injure them, but footage lat­er showed he was shot at point-blank range by an offi­cer point­ing his weapon at him through the dri­ver’s win­dow.
Those of you who recall the mur­der of George Floyd will remem­ber Minneapolis police lied that mis­ter Floyd suf­fered a med­ical emer­gency until a video tak­en by a teenage girl sur­faced show­ing Derek Chauvin and the oth­er mur­der­ers assist­ing him end­ed George Floyd’s life.
As it is in the United States, where police are giv­en wide lat­i­tude to act as judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, French police are allowed to shoot when a dri­ver ignores an order to stop and is like­ly to risk oth­er peo­ple’s life or phys­i­cal safety.
Of course, allow­ing police to shoot in those sit­u­a­tions opens the door for the types of killings that hap­pened to Nahel M.
If that cop did not feel he could get away with mur­der­ing anoth­er human being over a minor traf­fic infrac­tion, he would not have threat­ened death to the young­ster, and he cer­tain­ly would not have pulled the trigger.

When career politi­cians seek­ing to cur­ry favor with police unions do not have any­thing pro­duc­tive to do, they default to cre­at­ing laws like the one in France that result­ed in the death of a 17-year-old teenag­er. Driving away from a traf­fic stop is com­plete­ly wrong, but the penal­ty [can­not] be to mur­der the offend­er. What kind of soci­eties are we fos­ter­ing if the gov­ern­ment can end the life of cit­i­zens for such frivolities?
[In 2016, at a Paris hous­ing estate, a male cop suf­fered seri­ous burns and was put in an induced coma after a group of youths pelt­ed petrol bombs at his patrol car. Police unions protest­ed and demand­ed a strong response from the gov­ern­ment. Following that inci­dent, the law on the use of firearms by police was amend­ed. Officers were allowed to shoot when faced with one of five sit­u­a­tions — one being when a dri­ver ignores an order to stop and is like­ly to pose a risk to oth­er peo­ple’s life or phys­i­cal safe­ty]. Knee-jerk appease­ment to police union cost lives.
Mathilde Panot, pres­i­dent of the left-wing polit­i­cal par­ty La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment for send­ing anti-ter­ror police into work­ing-class areas and says President Emmanuel Macron “knows only repression”.
Writing on Twitter, she adds the gov­ern­ment must repeal the law’s “license to kill” and rebuild the police from the ground up.

This writer con­tin­ues to make the case that hir­ing more police, mil­i­ta­riz­ing them, and empow­er­ing them by pass­ing more bru­tal laws do noth­ing to elim­i­nate crime. Governments have a sacred duty to elim­i­nate injus­tice, pover­ty, and oth­er social mal­adies, which are all ampli­fied by over-polic­ing and white cops who vio­lent­ly inter­act with those under­served com­mu­ni­ties with racial animus.
Hatred for the poor and pow­er­less is not a strat­e­gy. Ultimately the tears and frus­tra­tion of those who are down­trod­den will boil over, cul­mi­nat­ing in a dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ment for everyone.
Jobs, some­thing to live for, and equal oppor­tu­ni­ties go much fur­ther in cre­at­ing soci­etal har­mo­ny than anti-ter­ror cops and weapons of war…

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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.