The past weeks have revealed fields of emotional responses and an epidemic of old scabs that we've unwittingly yanked off with the graphic deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and five officers of the law in Dallas- Sr. Cpl. Lorne B. Ahrens, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, and Officers Brent Thompson, Michael Krol and Patrick Zamarripa- all at the hands of Micah Johnson, a man that our American military trained to do exactly what he did that day.I won't spend much time on the killer, or even mention him as another soldier committing murder, suicide or both from the post traumatic stresses of war. We don't care about our killers because they and their families lose the humanity that was vital to avoid such terror before it happens. After the fact, they become the forgotten ones who we only think about long enough to blame them for expressing the very anger that many of us expressed with our typing thumbs and not our trigger fingers.
I bring Johnson and his certain guilt stricken family into consideration only because this conversation is a broader investigation into scabs and rats. Beneath the many scabs that were revealed from each of these deaths are gaping wounds that show how terribly infected this situation has gotten while covered with makeup masked scabs.
Fully exposed, we now see that same 'ol crowd of loud and angry blacks who've been screaming for change in policing for some time now. But next to them this time are WAY more non-blacks than any of US recall seeing before this situation unveiled itself. We're hearing stories of the same police who were being protested against literally laying their bodies on the line for civilians. Although this time their noble efforts may have done more harm than good since this killer trained himself for killing them. He knew exactly who would be his target, and as a result, only two civilians took stray bullets.
What became abundantly clear for blacks like me, who also have lots of social media interaction with other blacks, is that many angry blacks don't see Johnson as the disturbed murderer that most of us think of him. In fact, Micah Johnson has been widely lauded by the extremely angry blacks and browns, as the guy to did what MANY others were talking about doing in the hours and minutes before he actually did it.
For days since, I've been tormented from recalling so many of my friends and family posting about doing what Johnson actually did. Now, I just consider them all part of the legion of these uncovered scabs that we've found existed out there. Whites had their own wounds with scabs because policing for profit hurts blacks and poor people the most and colors our entire society- whites by default- as biased against blacks. Blacks had several old crusty scabs, but we now have a new wound because our previous pain and anger might have inspired this murderer and all of this new, unforeseen pain and anguish. Police are hurting because they've lost more of their own, but they are also hurting from the pain of being colored by the bad behaviors of so very few within the force.
Which has me hurting to understand, why exactly do cops use the term 'rat' against good cops who blow the whistle? Doesn't that term draw a definitive line between the people who do bad and the only hope we have to stop it? Doesn't the very existence of the word rat in the mouth of any officer of the law serve to protect the actual rats against the whistleblowers?
With So Many Already Locked Up.....Why Is Policing So Hard?
If the job of policing is becoming unreasonably demanding, why can't the police and it's union strike out each day against these unfair community policing demands that they complain keep getting added to the task of policing, without pay or appreciation? And why can't they ever do it days before we complain....again, about needlessly losing someone else? I never hear about the job being not worth the money until the quality of product gets challenged by those who pay the money.
Although starting base pay hasn't grown with inflation over recent decades, advancement has always been fairly swift and overtime plentiful in most police forces. Whether via strike or public statement, police rarely complain about the job being not quite worth the money, until they get called onto the carpet....again to address the actions of another one of their bad apples.
Although public safety concerns make's it against the law for cops and certain public officials to conduct organized strikes, we've seen random impromptu police strikes, but usually only for wage issues or from anger when the retaliatory assassination of cops began. What we have yet to see are cops organizing to remove their own internal corruption. Forget about the rats for a moment. Does anyone know of one scab (union line buster) who disagreed with a police union who attacked a whistleblower?
Have we ever seem any rat (aka., law abiding police officer) remain employed?
What we readily see is a protection of the shield that creates an environment in which police- with support from FBI or CIA- can uncover and convict every crime known to man- except their own. If doctors are bound to a hippocratic oath of do no harm, how exactly do we uphold a policing environment of "shut your mouth", that exact same oath to secrecy that the street gangs and thugs survive under each day?
A small group of former police have attempted to blow the whistle on the conspiracy and protection of blue, but their voices are muted or destroyed by the violent silence of every man and woman still employed to serve and protect us.
Smart defense lawyers and brutally honest cops will tell you to NEVER talk to a cop because they are trained experts at making you incriminate yourself. Once you find yourself in court against one, these trained statement thieves we call cops become a trusted citizen to judges and jury's. Cops are assumed to be telling the truth because it is a necessary assumption of their societal role. Since anything you say can and will be used against you, suddenly your life hangs between your word or the preordained credibility of a cop.
I've found myself wondering if practicing the art of making people talk makes you eventually grow to realize the supreme power of shutting the hell up? Maybe that kind of power conditions even virtuous people to tip-toe on the line of integrity with the supreme confidence that the shield will always silence the rat to protect the shield? Only God knows how this power overwhelms the truly dirty cops.
If there is a case of the rat winning, I have yet to find it in my research of this question. I challenge you to search for any rat who won. They don't exist because they all get rubbed out. Every time another police force rat gets removed, we embolden our nationwide, state sanctioned shroud of secrecy gang called cops.
Is that too harsh?
No harsher than ignoring a clear knowledge that ALL of our police still use the term RAT from shore to shore. Let me repeat. Police are law enforcement officials that are SWORN to the task of serving and protecting the citizens that pay them, not the shield they wear or the lawbreakers they work next to from time to time. Their choice to NEVER rat on each other comes with the consequence of being colored by the true rats,the very rats that the so-called rats swore to remove. How do you seriously complain about how you are perceived while protecting the bad apples that created your bad image?
Any internal investigations- after the fact- into an organization trained to shut up, will only uncover the stinky odor of another senseless death. True justice for cops will always require a trustworthy witness to determine who this crap belongs to....again, since motives are impossible to discern, but techniques are taught, standardized and mandated for compliance. Way too often, the dead victims are literally being blamed for getting crapped all over, as if they were not even humans at all.
Human beings like Sterling, Castile and countless others. WE could all gain comfort and display calm from our respect for the difficulty of policing, if we finally fully trusted that police will hold their own accountable when situation truly demands and stop asking civilians to be more calm with a gun in their face than cops prove to be with the gun in their hand. This job might be getting harder as so many like to tell you at these moments, but the statistics will tell you that it isn't because more and more people are shooting at cops.
With roughly a million law enforcement officials nationwide exposed to potential for violent attacks against them (not all cops work the streets or dangerous assignments), yet roughly 50 violent deaths per year, that says most cops are never even seeing gunfire or imminent violence directed at them at all. The numbers just don't justify cop paranoia, nor do they reveal any example of successful internal review that isn't isolated or forced by an irrefutable video. Because of the utter failure of the internal investigation process, we are now at the mercy of public video just to call even one of this year's nearly 600 people killed by cop, a murder, forget about the hundreds upon hundreds of other possible unjust murders by cop that happen year after year after year. They are the gone and mostly forgotten.
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To this point, all Rats have been ruined and The Shield is undefeated, unexposed yet far from unblemished.
If cops feel the shield has lost its shine because we are focusing on the actions of their few, it will take each of those in uniform- those sworn to the task of serving and protecting- to finally honor their own sworn pledges by upholding their first law abiding whistleblower, and start to return the shine to the shield.
All silence is violence.
This problem is personal.
