Police Brutality. Only A Problem If We Talk About It

Whoever say's riots don't work is fooling themselves.

Riots start conversations.  Conversations start change.

They have worked for years.  Sometimes they work to get a bunch of people drunk from the looted liquor stores that often happen behind the peaceful backdrop of organized dissent. They have also worked on freeing some people to lash out at the looters instead of joining the protest against needless deaths at the hands of those we hire to serve and protect us.

Why Talk About A 
Problem That Doesn't Exist?

The behavior of the guilty is usually to first assign blame elsewhere.  This seemingly comes across as a smart and balanced response except that people only respond to matters that concern them.  If the senseless death of blacks at the hands of white cops is not a problem worthy of conversation, it is not a problem worthy of demeaning- especially by virtue of the actions of looters.

That thought came to mind for me while doing my best to ingest white guilt in the nature of distorted statistics designed to pretend that police brutality is a myth. One blogger say's that looting is a silly way to get people to listen to your message while the other says police kill and brutalize more whites than blacks, but none of the black people are complaining about white deaths via cop.

The best of them actually dared to ask me directly:

Baltimore riots are likely to expedite chest cams for cops.
Would it happen as fast without looting and burning?

"Why do blacks end up on the wrong side of the law?"

as if he had uncovered the underlying problem to the matter by smashing that tennis ball squarely on my side of the court, since I'm the black he expected to answer this question.

My Answer?:

I know you think you've asked the million dollar question, but you've only revealed why we don't want you to ever be a cop.  Your engrained belief is what many levy at police who assume blacks to be criminals as well.

Even if your statistics bear out, it doesn't mean a hill of beans to that family with an innocent person that is the victim of perception. Every American should be invested in the lives of innocent victims- not just those who share the same color.

This particular blogger, whom I often find myself at odds with, generated the initial post that challenged the value of burning and looting your own neighborhood.  In my initial response I totally agree with him on the foolishness of the behavior, yet, I can't help but notice that the foolishness becomes the topic and the topic falls to the background every time people employ their Constitutional right to protest against patterned behaviors of abuse. Does anyone recognize the peaceful crowd or is fire and mayhem the only way to insure the intense focus of the camera? The more we watch endless hours of the criminals who come out durings protests, all fingers are pointing towards a stronger impact from the Hennesey theives than the peaceful protesters.

For a while, every station felt compelled to place the heat on Hillary or show compassion in Nepal but nothing beats an opportunity to film that fat brother with his pants falling down while running with a hand full of new clothes.

This should be a wake up call for old school protesting that seems to be nothing more than the smokescreen that malcreants will use to benefit themselves.  These people don't start out in the peaceful protest and find themselves loading their trunks up with Hennesey.  They come out of their house in the hopes that some Hennesey shakes loose from all of this uproar.  If police can take some knowledge from the cycle, they would place a few cops, the elected officials and lots of public services like out-houses and free water and bouncey houses for the kids at the site of a protest, while the armed police proceed towards the business districts to quickly lock up every ass-hole that hopes to gain from another unexplained death. Unexplained means that protesters should not let a spotted history of policing allow them to automatically assume that every unexplained death was unnecessary per se. As for abhored whites who are embarrassed by the onslaught of video abuse, they need to remove their color and their guilt from the trail we are trying to track towards a solution.

One right leaning blogger tried to track a trail that explains the unrest in Baltimore in this way:

The first Democrat mayor of Baltimore was Nancy Pelosi’s brother.
He became mayor in 1967. They’ve had a Democrat in office since then.
How’s that working out? 

To which I responded:

The moment we attempt to free ourselves from the misplaced anger of our young people by pretending politics has something to do with America's deplorable history relative to racial issues, we don't actually point out the problem- we become it.

Yet, even those who misdirect their complaints are complaining their hearts out and revealing them as well.  Would we hear from guilty whites if not for the stupidity of looting? I think not.

Looting must work, otherwise we would see it regularly in the same neighborhoods instead of every several decades or more.  No one appreciates the result of looting and burning during a protest that was intended to be peaceful at the start.  In fact, they dislike it to the degree that they put their heads together towards avoiding its occurance in the future.  Some of the businesses that were burned in Baltimore recently, only came to Baltimore as a result of public brainstorming from interested parties. Those disgusted with the results of Baltimore's recent riot will have to determine if its been 50 years since the last one because of bad people and bad policing or good people and good policing?  

Would Mike Brown Jr. be alive today if he were white?

Mysteriously, every really bad police force in America with a history of a problem in the area of police brutality is one by one becoming exposed by video.  Those of us who understand the power of the spirit and the manner in which it brings us all to the end of our sinful ways find all of this to be far from mysterious and even further from over.

If This Is Not America's Problem, 

then it's not a problem at all.

WE will continue to see video ass-kicking or police murders that cause looting  until WE understand that we are all we got. There is no answer absent the brainstorming of everyone who cares to talk about it.  Once you no longer care to criticize the rioter's or stand by the protester's, then you are finally exempt from this problem.  

For the rest of US, we've got work to do.

The Question Still Remains. WHY DO WE HAVE THIS REPORT?

As the conspiracy theories mount regarding this bizarre series of events, try this one on for size.

This portion of the convenience store theft report (see below) was amended by the officer who took over this case the Monday following the killing of Mike Brown (2 days later).  First question is, why does anyone need to take over the cigarillo case which is listed as a 48.99 loss to the convenience store, but no names of the convenience store workers or notes saying they would pursue this crime. This case should have been shut before it needed to be open, not reassigned so that multiple statements could be entered for a case that died the minute the victim refused to press charges.

The bigger concern is why would the confirmation of the two individuals names be added to an incident that the merchant didn't care to pursue, and since the names were clearly added on Monday by the newly assigned cop on this case, why did this newly assigned cop need to officially name the cigarillo suspects?  The original officer did not include these names.  This eyewitness of Browns dead corpse could have been made by the merchants who are the only people who laid real eyes on the thief.  Apparently, this newly assigned cop has better vision when it comes to turning unknown perpetrators into confirmed dead people by video imaging alone.  As you read this report, it seems as though Johnson is added simply from his televised interviews and not from him admitting to a crime that the video would have cornered him on anyway. Why couldn't they simply force Johnson to admit his involvement in the video taped crime.  BECAUSE THE CASE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLOSED, since the merchant refused to testify, yet notes are continuously being added.

LINK TO THE FULL REPORT

After all of that minor madness, there still is this question of the statement that you see above and the one contradicting it made by the Ferguson police chief.  This Monday morning addendum says that "It is worth mentioning that this incident is related to another..." The chief of Ferguson now says it was NOT related  because Darren Wilson (the shooter), had no clue about the cigarillo theft. Yes, its worth mentioning this report so long as you release the incident reports that you are referring to.  As of now, they have yet to release the only report/s that matters in the death of Mike Brown and the only report that has been requested. Yet, we have mass proliferation of a strong arm theft report with several addendum notes made for nearly a week, before you give us what actually we asked for?  How many times do you need to reword a totally unrelated petty theft that was exceptionally cleared by a non-pursuant merchant  before it was permanently expunged by the death of the key suspect; which made any additional notes on this theft, especially his name, unnecessary  and impossible to prove anyway

Darren Wilson had no clue Big Mike was stealing, nor did America until the chief insisted we read this report.  However, this report directly mentions the only reports that we've been asking for in the first place. Wilson may not have known about this almost meaningless report before he shot Brown, but he better love it like a Bible right now. This report is possibly the report that keeps Darren Wilson from doing life in prison, because in Missouri, there will be less punishment for killing a strong arming cigarillo thief.

Now.  Can we get those other two reports.....please?

Even Eyewitness Testimony Can't Stop Incidents Of Bad Policing

Whenever we get another one of these unarmed black men killed by a cop, we lose a lot of rubber as we spin our wheels in the street trying to find the balance between trusting the men and women we depend on to serve and protect us, while the unavoidable truth is that no one can ever hire perfectly for any job.

Occasionally, police departments hire guys (sorry fellas, but its rarely ladies making these errors in judgement) that love weapons more than they love law enforcement or dislike minorities more than they love justice.  In certain toxic instances, they hire men with all of these traits.  There is probably no easy way to avoid these leaks in the system, and police unions become unfortunate shields for the worst of law enforcement's hiring mistakes.

It would be easy to chalk up the lost lives that will always come from the imperfect process of hiring, but the issue is bigger than Mike Brown from Ferguson or Eric Garner from New York.  I could Google names for hours of young black men that have died at the hand of law enforcement. Even worse, are the many nameless faces that never made it to the news; those forgotten ones that inspired certain residents of Ferguson, Missouri to loot a shoe store.

I know.  Retribution is a funny thing, but so is this unbreakable fear that America has of black men.  Especially young black men that embrace the entirety of hip-hop culture and go by the name Big Mike.  When Big Mike was alive, his 18 years of maturity was easily mistakable for grown man dangerous.  They called the kid Big Mike for a reason.  Apparently, the homicide of Big Mike took place in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri similar to most suburbs of America.  These are the places in America where whites, who can afford it, run away from the places where too many non-whites start to inhabit.  It would be nice if I could characterize it in some way that doesn't sound so disparaging of those who run towards the suburbs. The truth is, anywhere you see a suburban area that is not predominantly white, it is usually the old suburban area that whites have long since abandoned in mass.  Areas like Ferguson, Missouri, where Big Mike took his last breath on earth, or Aurora, Colorado, where I spent my middle school and high school years.

The Denver Metro is a cluster of old school suburbs that evolved from  the main city. Instead of building neighborhoods that distanced themselves from the main city like they do with modern suburbs, metro area neighborhoods  like Denver, extend from the main city by design.  People in Colorado love Denver, even those that choose to live outside of its most active inner circle.  Aurora is one of the first of these offshoot cities with a vibrant history of military bases that anchored the city during its rise.  Lowry Air Force base was a key central part of Aurora before a recent  redevelopment and on the outskirts of the military base are several pockets of housing that offered various price ranges to the military families that occupied the area.

Directly across the street from the base is an upper crust slice of neighborhood that was said to be commonly owned by the officers.  The houses are noticeably nicer than all the others in the area, and only a few people we knew actually lived in these houses.  One of them was one of my closest friends.  His dad was an Air Force officer so he was fortunate to have a house inside of this little slice of heaven. Somehow, when I think back to my Mike Brown moments in history, it always seemed to be with this particular friend of mine, who was every bit as black and as nerdy as me, if not more so.

He was the military family kid that lived on the nicer side of the street. There were a few other black kids that lived in the same area, but they were lighter skinned black kids of mixed race.   When we first got confronted by questionable policing, it was in this 6 block neighborhood where my friend lived. The shakedown  was the basic 'what are you doing in this nice area' kind of shakedown, but a shakedown no less. This might have been one of the last pieces of white sanctity nestled inside of the rough edges of north Aurora, but it was nestled, not isolated like a true suburb.  Shakedowns in other parts of Aurora were very prevalent at the time.   Aurora, once the suburban refuge to neighboring Denver, had begun to lose all of its non-minorities to South Aurora and other areas not called Denver or North Aurora.  Unfortunately, the staffing of Aurora police officers in the 80's is much like that of Ferguson, Missouri today, not reflective of the community that it attempted to serve.

We were two blocks away from his home, probably walking back from hooping on the military base.  Colorado had finally given in to the lottery ticket craze and someone had discarded a loser on the sidewalk along our route home. 30 seconds after we picked up that ticket, a police car pulls up to us and stops us to ask us what we were doing in the area.  The answer of heading home didn't fit the pre-planned agenda for this stop, so he proceeded to take down names and check for warrants.  The few black dudes that lived on the outskirts of this small community probably did have warrants, so his shake of the dice had a reasonable expectation of luck.  When he crapped out so quickly on two high school nerds that actually did live nearby, he was none too happy that I requested his name, badge number and a reason for the stop.  As I recall, he accused us of littering (the lotto ticket was a loser remember) and made sure we never got the rest of that information.

The next time I got a police shake down, I was a sophomore in high school and responsible for pulling off the Sadie Hawkins (girls ask the guys) dance for our class.  While dressed in shirt and tie, myself and that same friend of mine and another young black gentleman in a shirt and tie, had to move the school soft drink machine into the gym for the dance.  I guess there could have been three black burglars in shirt and tie trying to steal a soft drink machine behind a well populated school, with no get away car just as the cop suspected of us.  The white students who were holding open the door for us came quickly to declare that they were pointing guns at the sophomore class president and his most likely to succeed friends, but even the teacher that soon arrived could not digress this overly aggressive act of policing.

The first incident occurred in broad daylight, but the latter was in the dark, backside of the school gym.  From the street view, I respect that this cop might have thought that he had unveiled something nefarious.  Whether he really had a call about someone matching our descriptions or simply used it to quell the embarrassment of the moment is hardly of a concern to me.  In the process of trying to keep people safe, innocent people occasionally endure shake downs (see; airport travel).  My concern is for the unbridled passion at which this officer went about his business.  When police officers regularly treat innocent people as guilty until proven otherwise, they eventually end up with fatal errors in judgement.

To the credit of old school cops, they were more likely to beat young blacks down and leave them to get home on their own instead of shooting them dead.  Now, gun culture and the prevalence of guns creates hypersensitive cops that trust the laws to acquit them against shootings more than they trust the people they are sworn to serve and protect.

Will chest camera's  improve police accountability?

Where do these quick triggered tendancies come from?  Lack of diversity in leadership positions, especially in communities where diversity represents the community at large. These environments demand leaders who reject typical hiring behaviors to insure that diversity, of gender and ethnicity, becomes a priority of leadership itself.  Diverse hiring within diverse communities is a central component for what defines good leadership. White cops, educators, judges....leaders, will never develop minority sensitivity running from intimate minority interaction like working side by side with them every day.  In fact, hiring black officers to police their own neighborhoods seems to be the loudest bone of contention from the more controlled of the angry Ferguson protesters.  Must we always use tragedy to foster the changes that are abundantly apparent long before the tragedy occurs? As we speak, Ferguson police officials seem focused on discrediting the eye witness accounts which drastically differ from the statement of the officer who pulled the trigger in this death (his name has yet to be released in fear for his safety).

In  the wake of the choking death of Eric Garner in New York, NYC, public advocate Letitia A. "Tish" James, is leading a change that includes police with video cameras abreast.  While some cops clearly hate the idea, others, especially those who've  been involved in justified shootings, see this as a way of clearing the name of good cops who get illegally targeted while justifiably performing in the line of duty.

I can hear all of you privacy advocates screaming in the background.    Do chest camera's further exacerbate  our limited privacy? The answer to that question is rather easy.  Integrate or video tape.  The choice is yours.