Why Exactly Do Police Officers Have Rats Too?

I'm beyond anxious about jumping into these waters in this fashion.  Finding the right words for subjects so confounding is hard when you are ripe with emotion and typing back and forth, fighting the urge to become the very thing that angers you, an insensitive social media kook who just doesn't understand that EVERY issue has more than one opinion, and nobody should feel guilty for what naturally spews from their emotional response mechanism.

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.

Read "Good Cop Down".  A blog about the results of
choosing to be a whistle blowing police officer
.https://goodcopdown.wordpress.com/

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.

America Desperately Needs Police To Police Police

Do you remember that time as a kid when adults would encourage you to understand what the American Dream actually means, encourage you to dream and inspire you to chase your dreams.  Before we left elementary school, it seemed everybody  bigger than you wanted to know what you wanted to do with your life and would challenge you with coming up with an actual answer.

I was never that shy kid who froze in the face of adults, but the question always did make you freeze a bit.  In your wildest dreams you had probably dreamed of being a super hero or fireman.  You know?  Someone heroic.

A couple of really smart kiss ups and a few rare exceptions to the rule would actually say they want to be their mom or dad who they saw as a hero.  In reality, the conflict of seeing regular people as heroes and heroines is much of the reason we turned Saturday television into super-hero cartoons and other images for young people to be inspired by.

A couple of courageous dreamers like myself actually had the gumption to say that we would like to be the President of the United States of America- but that answer only lasted for as long as that job remained honorable and respectable and not so regularly criticized by the media that covered them.


Don't you remember when big people asked you what you wanted to do with your life and saying "a police officer" was an admirable answer and an easy way to get big people out of your face?

To dream of being a president is now close to the same category of being a cop in the balance of love versus loathing for each otherwise respectable life endeavor.

I wasn't exactly born back during the "Officer Friendly" era, but I was still influenced by the impact of the message of community policing; or the calming comedy genius of the Andy Griffith Show and how his uniform never made you concerned or angry towards the guy with the gun.

It might just be a part of my imagination sparked by the insistence that we dream so much, but I recall every super hero show starting with the same trumpeting music and a declaration of their mission being something about Truth, Justice and the American way.

I can't even say those words aloud without wanting to poke my chest to the wind and fasten my fists at my waist side.  Policing was the only real equivalent to being a super hero, and smart kids who realized that big people kind of laughed when you said you were going to be Shazaam when you grew up, started using the "I'm going to be a cop" answer as a more respectable default.

Not anymore.

Anymore, someone who tells me they want to be a police officer instantly makes me wonder who they know in their family that inspired such a choice.  Anymore, I want to ask them exactly what they hope to do in policing in the fear that they are joining a job with diminished respect and increased volatility as a result.

Anymore, I wonder how an institution that most regular people depend on in times of trouble, has now become an institution that is universally agreed to be exponentially better than their reputation.

So how do people that are mostly doing the kind of work that everyone needs and very few have the courage to do, become the figures of disdain and disapproval?

That answer is as easy as produce.

One bad squash can ruin the entire batch of .....squashes.

Produce you ask yourself?

Absolutely.  

For as long as we've grown fruits and vegetables for human consumption, we've known that one bad piece of produce can ruin the entire batch.  Although this example is usually described with the use of apples, it is no less true of the rest of the produce department.  If you don't get rid of the bad one's, they will spoil everything else.

Police actually get on television and admit that no organization, including police, can claim to be free of bad apples.  If that is an accepted truth just as we accept that most- maybe 99% of police- are actually good, than why don't we have more situations of those 99% of good cops throwing out the bad apples or admitting when they've found one?

What we do know is that the institution of policing is AUTOMATICALLY predisposed to blacken the life of ANY person that they kill under the natural protocol of PROTECTING THEIR OWN. What we do know is that Corey Jones- the drummer recently killed roadside in Florida by a plain cloths police officer who did not announce himself- had a gun.

I could use this moment to criticize the value of more guns in a nation with less clarity about when they should be deployed, but I will save that for later. Right now I need to know why we know about his gun?  Unless his gun had something to do with his death, its presence should have remained an investigative secret.

It is not a secret, but the police report from the officer who killed Jones is.

How can we really have 99% good police and damn near 0% of whistle blowing from police? What does whistle blowing look like?  A police killing in which we don't already reveal the excuse for the cops behavior before we take a fair and balanced examination into the death and why it happened. Will there ever be cops who do their job exactly the same regardless of who commits a crime?  When that finally happens, it will be the first.

Florida allows George Zimmerman acts.  Is there one person in the world who thinks Corey Jones would not be on trial for murder if he used his Floridian rights to protect himself at that moment and also came out alive?

If police readily admitted the crimes of their brethren,
would we need to pay for chest cams?

Shouldn't the people who are paid to solve crimes finally uncover a few crimes among their own?  Would it not be an element of credibility for cops to expose their bad apples instead of instantly protecting them as a buy product of how they do business, forcing the community to sniff out their malfeasance?

In the spirit of Truth, Justice and the American way, this is wrong.  Until police police police, they will retain the smell of their own produce, for the spirit of truth demands justice be served to corrupt cops as well as those who serve to protect them.

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.

Add caption

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.  

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.

Community Policing Begins With Redefining The Word "Community"

Isn't it funny how things come full circle?

Years ago it was a cooperative effort of left wing extremism and concerned cops who came together to make efforts towards furthering the gun restrictions.  In the wake of so much domestic terror, the war of words over the war with guns has now drawn the battle lines so clearly that proponents of gun restrictions are growing weary with the intensity of the NRA (National Rifle Association) attack against any reasonable restriction of guns

Obviously, the NRA has a vested interest in the revenues that are lost when any gun loses favor in the market, even guns with 7 inch bullets that can take down an airplane, much less a police officer. Yet, NRA supporters will rightfully remind you that even a .22 caliber gun would have worked in the hands of this recent cop killer. As a result, restrictions to gun ownership -that might insure mentally ill people can't easily shoot their girlfriends and then catch a bus to New York to shoot a couple of cops - get treated as misdirected rhetoric.  According to a few disgruntled cops, the mayor of New York Bill DeBlasio and Obama (because everything must be connected to Obama) are the reason for the senseless killing of New York police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

David Koresh (above) and
Randy Weaver sparked the Oklahoma
City retaliation of Tim McVeigh.

While my heart goes out to the nation and the family of these officers, this incident is one of  very few noteworthy episodes of retaliatory behavior against law enforcement.  This killer thought he had killed his girlfriend, whom he shot and left critically wounded- and then he traveled to kill the officers in New York. The plan to kill these officers might have been concocted prior to the plan to kill his girlfriend, but the story seems to suggest something else.

Family of Ismaaiyl Brinsley say that he was troubled for some time and had been in and out of jail without getting help for obvious mental problems.  Social media sites from Brinsley confirm his troubled mind and led Baltimore police to attempt to send warnings to New York officials regarding the developing plans of Brinsley.


Had social media sites been available during the domestic terrorism of Tim McVeigh, they would have shown angered posting towards the US government regarding the killing of David Koresh and the Branch Dividian group outside of Waco, Texas, as well as the deadly FBI confrontation of Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. Crazed lunatics who use their frustration with government to make a murderous statement towards those we pay to protect are uncommon.  We may remember Brinsley's name decades from now like we do McVeigh, but only because he has joined select company.

Tim McVeigh is the only noteworthy retaliation of record.

During all of the protests that have occurred since Michael Brown Jr. and Eric Garner were killed, no reports of police retaliatory murders have happened outside of Liu and Ramos even though hundreds of police line the path of protest.  Neither my news engulfed brain nor Google could uncover anything noteworthy, other than Tim McVeigh, as a clear example of murderous retaliation against law enforcement for the perception of excessive abuse.   Police killings happen all of the time, but retaliation towards police is so rare that blaming anyone for the actions of Brinsley seems opportunistic.

Retaliatory killing of cops might be limited because the risk of return fire provides a significant deterrent, but most protesters have repeatedly stated that 98% or more of police officers are absolutely amazing.  This is a problem of a few bad hires and bad laws that defend bad cops, and the negative perceptions that cloud both sides of this community debate.

Former Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson described the neighborhood that he was policing when he killed Michael Brown Jr. as a place of shame to the community.  What he didn't respect is that 99% of those citizens in that neighborhood are fully law abiding people who totally respect law enforcement even if they live with distrust towards them. Colored by this two-way street of negative perceptions, its no wonder that Michael Brown Jr. lost his life that day. The only surprise came from the 4 hours he lay dead in the street and the lack of accountability when video captured Eric Garner's last cry for breath. If protests against bad policing are as toxic as some are now calling them, then shouldn't we have seen more retaliation?

Its been to all of our surprise, and remorse, that New York has added two of its finest to this conversation of community policing across the nation.  Their place in this conversation might be as necessary as it is tragic. Reports have uncovered that officer Ramos saw his job as a ministry and was studying to become certified as a chaplain.  In many ways, Liu and Ramos were the embodiment of peace officers who were positively committed to representing community policing.  Brown Jr., Garner, Liu and Ramos.  Each of these deaths can surely serve a greater purpose if cooler heads would allow.

All violence is a solution that shuns the quiet whisper of cooler heads.  Our culture of violence has reached a significant crossroad in which we must determine if stronger militarism, more arming of common citizens or better arming of  our police forces is a better approach to violence than the peaceful alternatives that seldom gain attention. Since police officers are growing into a para-military force, the peace officer is becoming a distant dream of the past. Liu and Ramos prove that this is not the full reality, but if the perception towards cops doesn't improve, neither shall their safety....or ours.

The real question of the hour?:

Who is most responsible for the image of the police; the police or the communities that they police?  When finally WE no longer separate our image of police from our image of the community, than WE shall see that the community and the police are inextricably ONE and the same.

Was Big Mike Suppose To Be A Surgeon (or Michael, An Angel)?

I wish I could not relate so easily to young black men who find themselves in the predicament that Michael Brown Jr. found himself that fateful day he left to become Michael, an angel. 

I aint sayin’ he was an angel during his lifetime.  He was human, and he’s likely the kid on the video who "strong-armed" those cigarillos, which are cigars that are used for rolling blunts (marijuana joints rolled with cigar skins). 

Reasonable accounts have Michael Brown Jr. and Dorian Johnson stealin’ and thuggin’ the day Darren Wilson took Brown Jr's life.  It’s something I might have done myself on some level or another growing up in places that make you choose one path  versus the other.  I have certainly seen it live and in living color on many occasions.  For many inner city youth, you either follow those who are stealin’ and thuggin’ or you follow those who are mackin’ and hangin’.  I was not properly suited for either endeavor, so I avoided both and settled on the more traditional route of sports and school, but so did Michael Brown Jr.  To graduate high school means you shunned enough distractions to make it through. He did no less than any high school kid does in the end; he survived and got a diploma and was scheduled to continue his education.

And then the real tug-o-war began.

The world is a scary place and life will be challenging under the best of circumstances.  Every hood in America is basically the same. On one corner they are mackin’ and hangin’ and on the other they are stealin’ and thuggin'. Young black men who live in really tough areas have a duty to insure that they maintain a tough exterior, even if they would prefer to only do the mackin’ and hangin’ instead of the stealin' and thuggin' that Michael Brown Jr. looked to be doing just before he was shot down in the street.  Black men who reject both directions learn how to play act either role for survival sake. If the streets know you are aspiring to do more than these hopeless endeavors, the streets will make every attempt to keep you near.

There simply is no way to question the obvious fear that America has for black men, especially young and dark and big like Michael Brown Jr.  Black men fear one another too.  Turns out that growing up as a young black man is so difficult, you never know who is handling the task very well, so you have to be ready to deal with an angry black man at all times....especially if you are one.  WE understand black male fear because WE live in it.

The oddest part about facing a scary world is that some folks decide it’s easier to be scary instead of scared.  On some level or another, we all assume this survival posture in life, but few of us do it in such a way to incite felony convictions or gunfire. If you are an inner city black man, avoiding felony convictions or gunfire is a magic trick of sorts. It’s not impossible to pull off, but demands more energy than anybody who is not a black man quite understands. Growing up naturally insures mistakes. A world that is inclined to see you as a villain is apt to think you are doing something wrong, even when you're not. People who prefer to label only work to prove themselves right. Incarceration trends have not matched crime for 40 years.

This story demands speculation and it is often unfair to do much speculation, but Michael Brown Jr., much like Trayvon Martin, has risen above his own name and become the symbol of what many poor American’s have said about bad cops for years.  Seldom, if ever, are bad cops convicted for the crimes they commit against regular citizens, so to expect differently is foolish.  Darren Wilson will likely walk, or he will be given a charge of manslaughter and suspended jail time that won’t satisfy the angry.  If he actually goes down for Murder 2 and see's real time, this statue becomes a  monument that is higher and more significant than any of us have seen thus far in this age-old debate.

Michael Brown Jr. is the new and improved Trayvon Martin because the evidence, especially witnesses, have elevated this beyond simple supposition.  This is probability at its finest, and it is probable that we will have all of the pertinent facts necessary to achieve a necessary conviction…….yet we still must preserve the sanctity of policing by not trying to heap years of oppression onto the back of Darren Wilson.

We (I’m talking to my black folk now) should prepare ourselves for the necessity of leniency. On that special day when the police force becomes 67% black in Ferguson because the city is 67% black, those 67% will be YOUR friends and family members burdened with the challenge of policing desperate populations in their area.  One day the news report is of the lost life of a citizen, and tomorrow it is the lost life of an off duty police officer who stepped in to calm young folks who decided thuggin’ at a Jazz festival in Denver City park is a great way to flex your muscle. Not at all the same topic, but young black men are dying at the hand of a lot of bullets and the residual casualties are making the whole issue harder to ignore.

Michael Brown Jr. should have never lost his life, but neither should have Celena Hollis of the Denver police force. I only mention her because when I think of anger towards police, I remember Celena Hollis and her family.  Darren Wilson has a family too.

Is one death more emblematic of a bigger societal problem? Probably!

Yet, if we cause the best of our society to stop sacrificing themselves to the demands of law enforcement, what kind of new societal problem will we experience?  Police are something nobody seems to like except everybody that needs one.  I can only imagine how frustrating these days must be to the good cops of Ferguson; having to listen to the anger of some the same people they had to rescue prior to the death of Michael Brown Jr.

I am not an advocate of disrupting the sanctity of policing, not even for Michael Brown Jr.  The spirit tells me that we won’t have to because Michael Brown Jr., like Trayvon Martin is a flash point to a greater, long overdue discussion.  Our angels for change. Michael Brown Jr. told his grandpa that the world would know him one day, and he was right.

SquareBiz stands committed to this discussion and all of America’s important conversations that we have yet to seriously start or sensibly finish.  Rodney King was the first of this kind; modern day police brutality caught on camera.  While we do not have actual footage of the Brown Jr. shooting,  eye witness and forensic evidence caused nearly two weeks of street protests and rare federal oversight.  Fortunately for Rodney, he lived and L.A. recovered from the destruction it experienced when the cops got off.  Unfortunately for America, the discussion did not live, as it only revealed how opposed many of us were over the latitude we believe policing demands and how this flexibility has disproportionately smacked the hell out of brown skinned people. Quickly, we retreated into our respective corners only to pretend that this was not a fight worth having. After all, Rodney lived.  

Michael Brown Jr. did not live, but will his memory die as well?

We have had our head violently yanked from the sand on this one, but despite oxygen deprivation, it seems we often prefer to shove our head back where it came.  Eyewitness testimony may be inspiring the black president and his black Attorney General to move with haste, but the Ferguson mayor, Missouri governor and every presidential candidate who could be forced to oversee America’s future conversations on race have been slow and silent, much like racial progress. It’s rather easy to alter the face of racism by turning your back on it, but in doing so, you have done little to affect historical change and nothing to lead the change that’s needed today. If leaders chose only to speak on the importance of respecting our good cops during these angered moments, that would have value. Silence is a message of another kind.

If we slap a chest camera on every officer in America is that the license to continue the silent delusion that community policing was not the solution to begin with?  Cities that have implemented chest cam’s have seen up to 80% reductions in violent policing, but have they seen a change in attitude? Integrating will help, but does that ultimately mean more cops, of whatever color, and more jails?  Breaking the tragic cycles of life and prejudice that result in incarceration (or death by cop) should be the greater goals that we look to gain from the senseless loss of another young black man, but even that places the wrong focus on this issue.  Michael Brown Jr., good, bad or in between should not have been shot that day, so the idea of mentoring, as suggested by the president’s My Brother’s Keeper comments, lends itself to the notion that mentoring could have saved the life of Michael Brown Jr. Six foot four, big black and scary, Michael  Brown Jr. needed a cop who saw his own son, and not some menace to society. America needs this too.

If Wilson killed Brown Jr. without knowing about the video............ (Why do we have this video in the first place?)

What mentoring could have done is offered a summer program for college credit that Brown Jr. could have been attending instead of stealin’ and thuggin’, and walking in the middle of the street to go do some mackin’ and hangin'. Seeing a non-athletic, scary black man in college is a visual mentoring of its own kind.  In this case, mentoring could have only forced this awful plight on some other black family, at a different time and place, to watch their loved one become the poster child for police brutality run amok. At the rate of death to young black men by insensitive white cops, this day was inevitable, which also means that some other innocent family of the killer cop would be dealing with whatever the family of Darren Wilson is dealing with in St. Louis. God Bless both families during this trying time. 

I know that my white neighbor, the surgeon, did not call it stealin’ and thuggin’ when he too behaved like Michael Brown Jr. as a kid, despite a much more privileged life than Brown Jr., but he always shakes his head when he thinks about how awful, and how fortunate he was given his travails while coming of age. Imagine the outcry if he'd been killed by police while doing some of the same stuff black kids die for all of the time?

Which lead me to wonder. Could Big Mike have become a world famous surgeon, or was he always destined to be an angel named Mike?