If All Lives Matter, Why Don't Police Report Killings?

I sat quietly and serenely calm in my back yard watching the sprinkler fan its way back and forth, waiting for the sun to finally rise like I do every morning.

The change of seasons can be dramatic in Colorado because the vast temperature swings, especially in the morning, are distinctive in the spring and fall edges of summer.  As I get a little older, I'm losing tolerance for the morning cold and I notice how our biting air aches in my fingers and joints, and lately I have to blow hot air into clutched palms or reach for gloves to endure my daily sunrise ceremony.

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This morning was pain free warm and inviting even though August is swiftly running out on its last day.  In exactly  60 days we begin to look for that first snow in Colorado.  As a kid, Halloween was either going to be a wear your actual costume to trick or treat or everybody is the same costume- Yukon Jack the Winterland explorer.

When you live in the place that you were born and raised, you notice things a bit differently than places you find yourself that aren't combined with childhood memories.  Climate change is one thing you can determine more clearly if you've seen the evolution of it firsthand.

Much like the drastic climate change we all are experiencing with the poking and prodding of the Black Lives Matter movement and what its doing to expose our social conscience primarily around policing. Policing is a climate that is rapidly changing and most distinctive to those still living where they were raised.

For those who've had to begrudgingly chew and digest ugly aspects of our nation that we had not anticipated still lived, this has been a big pill to swallow; so big in fact that many have looked at the damn thing and decided that there must be another answer.

Insensitivity towards black lives couldn't be worthy of this kind of response, could it?

That is the message that I keep hearing every time we use another persons death to pretend that All Lives Matter is a real movement and not just a weak way to counter protest that big ass pill.

We track Department of Corrections
officer killings and not people
killed by the DOC? hmmm?!?!
Do prisoner lives matter?
(read this story and find out)

That was the message I heard when my heat rose as I sat waiting for the sun to do the same.  The sheriff spokesperson for officer Darren Goforth, who was assassinated in the Houston area, indirectly blamed  Black Lives Matter for this death even though they have not completed an investigation or received a Dylann Roof type manifesto of the killers motives.  Until that work has been completed, our hope as citizens would be that police officers would remain neutral towards motive and careful towards sharing one with the public.  In reality, police often pre-litigate in the public square only adding to the question of how valuable can a life be when you don't even protect the right to due process?

In part, Black Lives Matter seeks to address grievances of skin color, but in great part this grievance is about  the blackened perception that systematically takes place against the character of  dead blacks whenever police are responsible for the death.

(previous post:)
 Black Lives Isn't Actually About Skin Color

Deputy Sheriff Darren H. Goforth Harris County Sheriff's Office, TX EOW: Friday, August 28, 2015 Cause of Death: Gunfire

    

The rise in my temperature got me to searching to find the statistics of random police assassinations versus the total number of police killings (justified or otherwise) in America.

What I discovered is that one area of facts and details is tracked to amazing specificity, and the other is an optional program that many states (like New York) totally opt out of so we will NEVER know how many people are killed by police, how many of them are justified or otherwise and how many of those gone are essentially forgotten and didn't matter if they are erased in the annals of policing?

I was doing okay with my research until I noticed a page that included every single police death in the United States  including those who police the welfare system or parolee's, as well as one who worked in the DA's office as a detective, but died of a heart attack.

Yep!  Even he made the list of total police deaths in America along side a police death credited  all the way back to 9-11.  The more I started to really drill down on the numbers and exclude the heart attacks and the non-violent deaths, I came across the bottom of the list that included a bunch of cops who all died from heat exhaustion.

Seeing one officer die of heat exhaustion was odd enough for me, but seeing several in a row was beyond odd...until I noticed the code "K-9" at the lead of the officer description.

	K9 Jimmy Hialeah Police Department, FL EOW: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Cause of Death: Heat exhaustion
	K9 Hector Hialeah Police Department, FL EOW: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Cause of Death: Heat exhaustion
	K9 Chewbacca Hancock County Sheriff's Office, MS EOW: Monday, June 15, 2015 Cause of Death: Animal related
	K9 Nitro Stockton Police Department, CA EOW: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 Cause of Death: Heat exhaustion
	K9 Baston Savannah State University Police Department, GA EOW: Friday, July 10, 2015 Cause of Death: Heat exhaustion
	K9 Titus Little Rock Police Department, AR EOW: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 Cause of Death: Heat exhaustion
	K9 Zane Conyers Police Department, GA EOW: Thursday, July 16, 2015 Cause of Death: Heat exhaustion

The actual number of intentional police assassinations that happen without
provocation are so rare that they are ALWAYS front page news, whereas,
laws give us NO actual clue about total number of police killings in America.

Police assassinations are extremely rare and instantly front page news whenever they happen.  From just a pure level of tracking and analyzing, however, it is absolutely clear that police lives do matter, but hard to recognize how lives that don't even get tracked can actually matter more than K9 Jimmy.