Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Shared from Facebook - A Cops Perspective

As seen on Jay Stalien's facebook page.  There is some common ground here.  In the end , the only sides that we have are those that want to destroy this country and those that want to preserve it.



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.

12 comments:

rexxhead said...

I'm in Mensa, the international high-IQ club. That's not to brag; it's just something the Lord made.

Years ago, I worked with a brilliant young black man (at IBM if it makes a difference) and I said to him: "you ought to look into Mensa". He ignored me. Several times. When I finally asked why he shied away from meeting other bright people, he looked straight at me and said: "Don't you understand? You're the ENEMY. If I were to join Mensa, I would lose all my black friends." (Yes, he did use the subjunctive case in his reply.)

I never asked again. What sort of reply might one make to black-on-white racism like that?

Dutchman6 said...

I tend to think of it like triage. There are those you can save and those that are too far gone to be of any use. I fail to invest any emotional capital in people that will never give a crap about me. Some, like the one I spoke about in the Tuesdays with Bernie post, (sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2016/04/tuesdays-with-bernie.html), I have been whittling down. At least now he is forced to admit that MLK was a Republican. I doubt he will come to bury his nose in Alas Shrugged, but at least he is on the path.

The difference between your man and mine is the difference in the brain addling ignorance created by MSM and the intentionally stupid. In both cases their minds are the last plantation.

Gene Urtel said...

This was commendable of you, Matthew, to share this story.

Would there ever be a solution to this tragic state of affairs? If so, what would it be?

“When the Son of God is received as the Redeemer of the race, He fulfills the promise of His Word, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee” [Isaiah 26:3]. Take blood-soaked Africa, for example! A nightmare of continued murder marked the Fernando Po territory and its filthy, slothful inhabitants whose speech was like the grunt of brute animals. Then missionaries came with the Savior’s Gospel, and Fernando Po was a changed place, ruled by peace. War tore South Africa. A notorious Hottentot called ‘Africaner’ was the terror of the colonists. Robert Moffat, missionary of Jesus, went straight to this chief of the black battle-land, although warned that Africaner would use Moffat’s skin for a drum and his skull for a drinking cup. Africaner turned to his Savior, and the hideous wars stopped. Tribal struggles and slave raids cursed Uganda. The murder of infants and aged, sudden and ceaseless attacks on its villages made Madagascar a veritable hell on earth. Witchcraft, killing of twins, and gory conflicts left Calabar a land of weeping and wailing. But the Son of God came to Uganda, to Madagascar, to Calabar, and with Him came peace” (Walter A. Maier, “The Airwaves Proclaim Christ” [Saint Louis: Concordia, 1948], page 19).

The same could and should happen today in America if only true-to-the-Bible missionaries would be sent out, and only if the people would stop rejecting Christ’s soul-saving gospel.

Gentlemen, we need to work and pray on this matter.

Dutchman6 said...

Oh, I am not an LEO nor have I ever been black. I just thought it was a good story to circle back to the fact that we are all in this together. If you draw a line from where we were just a few years ago to where we are now and then extend that out a little more down the road, it certainly does paint a grim picture. I am doubtful that anything can be stopped or even if it should. Some times these things need to come to their conclusion so we can proceed with the reconstruction.

Glad you enjoyed it.

Anonymous said...

And I realized that while this officer makes a very poignant argument about the Black community he serves, he doesn't seem to fully recognize the level of graft and corruption within his profession and within our justice system.

Kudos to him for figuring out what's wrong with his community....now if he could just take that next step to the realization that the police and courts violate the rights of the citizenry when they practice policing for profit and revenue generation by enforcing laws that have no victim.

There are two separate systems of justice in America; one for the politically well-connected and officers of the court, and one for the rest of us. If it were not so, Clinton would be indicted, officers wouldn't be able to claim qualified immunity and civil forfeiture and RICO statutes deeming the citizen guilty until proven innocent would not be the norm.

Just as he claims the Black community is not willing to look at itself; neither is he ready to look at the perverted form of "justice" we practice in this country....and until someone does....it will be the same as it is for the African Americans: No justice, no peace. The national house needs to be cleaned.

Anonymous said...

I'm not in mensa, But even I know that if I was to attach a pound of c4 to a robot, drive it in to anywhere, and have it detonate I would be facing serious state, local, and federal criminal charges.

So?

Anonymous said...

In this world there are two kinds of cops;
Peace Officers and LEOs;
not white, not black, not asian, hispanic or "other".
They are either protective Sheepdogs or Ravenous Wolves in a Sheepdog's uniform.

Peace Officers are duly sworn to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights attached thereto. They have taken the Oath within their hearts. Unjust laws are ignored by these officers, they have a respect for life, you will not find an attitude of arrogance in them.

LEOs are, as well, duly sworn to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights attached thereto. They have - NOT - taken the Oath within their hearts. They are simply a "Tool of The State"......."Sorry, just doin' my job. It's the law, nothin' personal (besides, if I don't do what the State says, I won't get paid.")
Arrogant and cocky attitudes are pervasive within the LEO ranks. Encounters with citizens may go well or badly, yes, depending on the attitude of each citizen....or whether or not the LEO has had a bad day to that point.
For the LEO, "Turn that camera off! Your Constitutional Rights are whatever I say they are."

As a beginner driver -many- years ago, if I happened to be stopped by a policeman, it was usually for a good reason- you guessed it- Speeding.
I knew I had it coming. However, the encounters were never hostile or tense. The Peace Officers were just that way. The mindset was to keep the peace. Certainly there were bad cops, and those in it for the paycheck, but they were the few.

How many of you today don't get a knot in the stomach when a cop drops in behind you in traffic?
"Oh crap, what did I do now."
"I have my seat belt on. My plate registration is up to date. My drivers license is current. I don't have a broken tail light....I hope. I wasn't speeding. I stopped completely at the sign. I wasn't texting. Damn blood pressure, I can feel it coming up. I signaled when I turned. I wonder if my child said an audible prayer at school, or mentioned a gun. I just left the ATM with $500....civil forfeiture?, ETC, ETC, ETC."

Jumping track here but it is relevant.
Black Lives Matter
Really?
Not to other blacks who kill their black brothers by the hundreds every year.

"Stand by our Law Enforcement Officers"
In every case?
No way.

"Stand with our Peace Officers"
Yes I will.

Rules without Relationship never works very well.
The Thin Blue Line has developed into a Thick Blue Wall.
LEOs don't develop relationships with citizens, they have a relationship primarily to their paychecks and by Laws whether conforming to the Constitution or not.

Peace Officers are bound by the Constitution. Period. That is time tested relationship with the Citizens of the United States.

Oh, and thank God for phone cameras. Cameras help to protect the honest and cameras expose the arrogant "Turn that camera off!" criminal.

End of Rant

Anonymous said...

Calm down Neal. None of us have a crystal ball and our ranks are filled with enough Chicken Little prognosticator's as it is.

What you're saying may well be correct....and if it is...we'll respond appropriately if threatened with deadly force. If Blacks in this country are stupid enough to try killing us en masse....they're going to find out how many of us are armed and much more proficient than they are with firearms, in addition to being sorely outnumbered.

Anonymous said...

Good post Anon at 7:58....but think of it another way. Who owns you? Do you own yourself or does the government? If you own yourself, no one else can tell you what substances you can and can't put in your own body...and yet police enforce the laws with regards to the failed "war on drugs".

Under this logic, ANY officer enforcing drug laws is violating a very basic human right to self ownership. Out of the officer's I know (Best Man at my wedding is one) I don't know of any officer who's never busted someone for a drug related offense.

I've never used ANY illicit drug....just not my thing. Heck I don't even drink.

My point is that what you're saying is correct, at first glance...but if you examine the totality of your argument in detail, you find that most of us only have encounters with police during traffic violations that are merely revenue generators in most instances for the state or municipality they serve.

Police are a reactionary force....they do very little in terms of crime prevention and minor crimes go unsolved far more often than not. They are report takers for the most part. No serious person relies on police or 911 to save them in the event of a home break in when confronted with armed suspects. *WE* are responsible for our own safety....as it should be.

Just how necessary are the police? I don't think they are as needed as people believe. As Plato said, "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." A massive reduction in force could happen and if we deregulated laws to those that actually have a victim.....much less 'enforcement' would be needed and we could transition to a peace officer centered model.

Just some random thoughts to consider.

Dutchman6 said...

Neal,

See, that's the problem with civil wars and genocides. It is never defined lines of effort with Team Red vs. Team Blue. I can tell you that if that a segment of the 13% of the population decides to take on the other 87%, it will be very short lived. I just do not seeing it go the way the racists think it will

I doubt that would last long enough for you to even need a snack.

Anonymous said...

Strange, I lived in Brooklyn for a while. Didnt see all that many Black people. They were there but it was mostly whites and Middle eastern. Not much crime either. Makes it kind of hard for me to believe the story.

Chiu ChunLing said...

There's a point at which persistence in the face of mounting evidence that you aren't accomplishing anything worthwhile stops being a virtue.

I sometimes give people advice. Generally I try to make it advice that I believe to be for their benefit. But often it involves telling them that what they are doing not only isn't working but never will work, sometimes just because whoever told them it was a good idea in the first place was just lying.

Having a law-enforcement profession separate from the Militia is one of those things that is never going to accomplish any of the things promoters claim. What it does accomplish, and what it was expressly designed to accomplish, is ensuring that only the politically powerful and connected have any resort to the laws, so that the politically powerful and connected may be insulated from the operation of justice against their own crimes.

That's why police forces even were invented in the first place. It is the only reason they have persisted, in the face of how much worse they are than the Militia at performing all the publicly argued purposes of having such a force. The only thing that a professional law-enforcement force does better than the Militia is protecting government corruption from exposure, indictment, and punishment.

Most people have trouble expressing that clearly, but everyone that has dealt with the police much (in any capacity) knows it in their bones. Those who suffer injustice as a result are angry at cops, those who get away with injustice feel contempt for cops. And those who are cops...feel confused and lost.

If I hated anyone for ever having been a cop, I'd just tell them to keep it up, ignore all the doubts and concerns they have about whether it's the right thing to do, and let them meet the inevitable end that awaits them at the end.

But instead I tell people who are considering whether it is the right thing to do that it certainly isn't and they should try something else, before it's too late.

Because you never know when it will be too late for any given cop, except that it's getting close to the time when it will be too late for all of them.