I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand
to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an
African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is
prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as
Humans.
I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young
African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I
watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own
black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts
lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way
to our 1 bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be
woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to
look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each
other.
It never sat right with me.
I wanted to help my community and stop
watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the
hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my
community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop
the bloodshed.
As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize
something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young
black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood
filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the
unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it
leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a
summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me,
spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off
the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the
sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it
personally, I knew they were hurting.
I remember the countless times I
had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from
the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember
the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having
watched another black male die in front me, having to start my
preliminary report something like this:
Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.
I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and
asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from
the very same family members was always, “Fuck the Police, I ain't no
snitch, Im gonna take care of this myself". This happened every single
time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization
became clearer.
I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my
badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited
for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make
sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the
truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this
job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform
on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again.
I was a
target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I
wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They
called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t
understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing
for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so
torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against
me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I
was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments
in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy?
I dove deep into
that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.
I spoke to members of the community and listened to some of the
complaints as to why they hated cops. I then did research on the facts. I
also presented facts to these members of the community, and listened to
their complaints in response. This is what I learned:
Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the
black man.
Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for
example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting
arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped,
and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the
reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have
a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow
the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to
Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on.
It’s
called Demographics
Complaint: More black people get arrested than white boys.
Fact: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime.
Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173
homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago’s death toll is
almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined.
Chicago’s death toll from 2001–November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The
combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815)
and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total
8,321.
Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they
are killed more.
Fact: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed
by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people
killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.
Fact: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are
only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of
Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime
data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for
Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed
by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012.
Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died
from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually
during this same period.
Complaint: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we
don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.
The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the
more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional
responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I
saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more
loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man….the more I
realized.
I haven’t slept well in the past few nights. Heartbreak weighs me down,
rage flows through my veins, and tears fills my eyes. I watched my
fellow officers assassinated on live television, and the images of them
laying on the ground are seared into my brain forever. I couldn’t help
but wonder if it had been me, a black man, a black cop, on TV,
assassinated, laying on the ground dead,..would my friends and family
still think black lives mattered? Would my life have mattered? Would
they make t-shirts in remembrance of me? Would they go on tv and protest
violence? Would they even make a Facebook post, or share a post in
reference to my death?
All of my realizations came to this conclusion.
Black Lives do not
matter to most black people. Only the lives that make the national news
matter to them. Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or
white people, matter. The other thousands of lives lost, the other black
souls that I along with every cop, have seen taken at the hands of
other blacks, do not matter. Their deaths are unnoticed, accepted as the
“norm”, and swept underneath the rug by the very people who claim and
post “black lives matter”.
I realized that this country is full of
ignorance, where an educated individual will watch the ratings-driven
news media, and watch a couple YouTube video clips, and then come to the
conclusion that they have all the knowledge they need to have in order
to know what it feels like to have a bullet proof vest as part of your
office equipment, “Stay Alive” as part of your daily to do list, and
having insurance for your health insurance because of the high rate of
death in your profession. They watch a couple videos and then they
magically know in 2 minutes 35 seconds, how you are supposed to handle a
violent encounter, which took you 6 months of Academy training, 2 – 3
months of field training, and countless years of blood, sweat, tears and
broken bones experiencing violent encounters and fine tuning your
execution of the Use of Force Continuum. I realized that there are even
cops, COPS, duly sworn law enforcement officers, who are supposed to be
decent investigators, who will publicly go on the media and call other
white cops racist and KKK, based on a video clip that they watched
thousands of miles away, which was filmed after the fact, based on a
case where the details aren’t even known yet and the investigation
hasn’t even begun.
I realized that most in the African American
community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and
deal with every day, which is black on black crime taking hundreds of
innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the 9 questionable
deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes. I
realized that they value the life of a Sex Offender and Convicted Felon,
[who was in the act of committing multiple felonies: felon in
possession of a firearm-FELONY, brandishing and threatening a homeless
man with a gun-Aggravated Assault in Florida: FELONY, who resisted
officers who first tried to taze him, and WAS NOT RESTRAINED, who can be
clearly seen in one of the videos raising his right shoulder, then
shooting it down towards the right side of his body exactly where the
firearm was located and recovered] more than the lives of the innocent
cops who were assassinated in Dallas protecting the very people that
hated them the most.
I realized that they refuse to believe that most
cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been
given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach
if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be
intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot
someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes
through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they
believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says
so, even though the numbers prove otherwise. I realize that they truly
feel as if the death of cops will help people realize the false
narrative that Black Lives Matter, when all it will do is take their
movement two steps backwards and label them domestic terrorist. I
realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full
of hate and racism.
Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that
more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people,
for a tragedy that began 100’s of years ago, when most of the white
people today weren’t even born yet. I realized that some in the African
American community’s idea of “Justice” is the prosecution of ANY and
EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black
man, no matter what the circumstances are. I realized the African
American community refuses to look within to solve its major issues, and
instead makes excuses and looks outside for solutions.
I realized that a
lot of people in the African American community lead with hate, instead
of love. Division instead of Unity. Turmoil and rioting, instead of
Peace. I realized that they have become the very entity that they claim
they are fighting against.
I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my
own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged
political climate, I am now more likely to die,... and it is still hard
for me to understand…. to this day.
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