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Justifying the unjustifiable: Killing America's finest

By Christopher Curran
Posted 7/20/16

Throughout American history, police officers have stood as the barrier against societal anarchy. Most men and women who wear a shield do so to protect us and to stand for the law. And on a more primary basis, police seek to simply help others. Not

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Justifying the unjustifiable: Killing America's finest

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Throughout American history, police officers have stood as the barrier against societal anarchy. Most men and women who wear a shield do so to protect us and to stand for the law. And on a more primary basis, police seek to simply help others.

Not dissimilarly to the rest of their fellow citizens, cops are imperfect. They try to execute their duties often when they are in a state of peril, and a wrong split-second decision can cost them their lives and the lives of the people they are sworn to protect. Despite extensive training, an officer can sometimes misread a certain circumstance and overreact. After all, he or she is a human being.

However, the possible overreaction is not necessarily propelled by bigotry, as certain activist groups have recently claimed. In recent years, police officers have been demonized as reckless, gun-wielding bigots. Provocative events in which African American suspects have lost their lives have permeated the news over the past three years. Police have been called into question and the rise of social unrest has now manifested recently in the heinous murder of unsuspecting lawmen.

Vigorously debated in the news and at the kitchen tables of America are whether or not prejudice is on the rise in our modern day society and whether the forward strides towards equity over the past 50 years have been as significant as we once thought them to be.

More specifically, it is seemingly accurate to say that most young black people in this country have an evident mistrust of the police. It is also fair to say that young black people think the reason the statistics of crime in the black community are so high is partially due to black people being railroaded into convictions by corrupt officers of the law. Additionally, it is also realistic to believe that black people feel that “driving while black,” or for that matter just being black, unfairly makes them targets of suspicion in the eyes of police.

Whether or not these feelings are justified is the most pressing question of this society-defining crisis. Are police merely enforcing the law as is their charge, or are they abusing their power as a result of some erroneous perception of guilt?

Recent polls seem to indicate a spreading fissure between black and white people’s opinions on the matter of fairness exhibited by police when dealing with a black suspect.

Notables, black activists, and even the president of the United States have expressed their opinions on the severity of this fissure between black and white. Police officers have been slaughtered with the stated or implied justification that because of the perceived overall unfairness to black suspects, murderous retaliation is valid. The advent of this new insanity that tries to legitimize the murder of those who protect us has been promulgated by those who thrive on ongoing social divisiveness.

So this obvious question arises, is the state of the country as problematic as some activists would depict it? Most importantly, how can anyone try to justify targeting for death people who wear badges?

In modern police academies, recruits are trained in racial sensitivity. These cadets are engrained with paradigms that attempt to thwart racial profiling on the street. Training certification organizations like the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) ensure that new officers are making judgments based upon tactical observations and not appearances of race. Despite this universally required training, officers may be sullied through experience to modify what they have been taught.

In reports produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the amount of crime perpetrated by blacks is indeed disproportionate. In a 2001 report covering eight years of data, 49 percent of homicide victims and 54 percent of firearms-related crime were a result of black-on-black violence. Ninety-five percent of elderly black victims suffered crimes perpetrated by other blacks. Further, in a 2005 report, 34.8 percent of all felonies in the nation were perpetrated by blacks, while the population of African Americans in this country is about 12 percent to 13 percent. These crime statistics have remained relatively consistent for years. They are tragic and sorrowful and as fellow Americans we must continue to try to figure out why this is occurring in this particular community.

However, if a police officer deals with this horrible reality every day, every shift, will not he or she naturally begin to suspect people of color?

Yet even with this presumed suspicion, if an officer is following police procedure to the letter, it does not necessarily mean that the black person who has been stopped was not treated respectfully and constitutionally. Obviously, to stop a person strictly because of how they look is abhorrent to the cause and spirit of individual liberty and freedom.

Correlatively, over the past three years, there have been many incidents where police actions have been questioned. In August 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, robbery suspect Michael Brown was killed when police officer Darren Wilson feared for his life after he and Brown had struggled for control of his gun.

Brown and an accomplice were fleeing from Wilson when Brown turned and rushed Wilson. Wilson shot him dead. After an investigation by the federal Justice Department, Wilson was cleared of any possible charges as it was determined he acted in defense of his life. Many local accounts of Brown’s supposed surrender, claiming he said “my hands up, don’t shoot,” were proved to be absolutely erroneous.

Riots ensued, black professional football players displayed the protest cry of “hands up, don’t shoot,” and nascent organizations like “Black Lives Matter” rang the rallying cry of the murder of an innocent young black man.

Similarly, a man named Freddie Gray was picked up in Baltimore, Maryland, for carrying a concealed weapon. Gray was uncooperative during his arrest. Nevertheless, he was not adequately secured in the back of a police van during transport to jail and in his frenzy he damaged his spinal cord which led to his death. Six officers were charged by Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Three of the indicted officers have been acquitted, while three have their cases still pending.

These two examples of black persons having extraordinary involvement with police cultivate questions and galvanize social activists to claim that police are propelled in their actions by bigotry.

Thus, the Brown incident and the Gray incident and other circumstances between African Americans and police cause misled malcontents and the mentally unstable to consider the murder of police officers.

Case and point, after a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas, Texas, protesting the recent police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Army veteran Micah Johnson killed five policemen, wounded nine other officers, and wounded two bystanders.

Equally heinous, former Marine Gavin Long, who had a presence on social media, murdered three Baton Rouge policemen on July 17, and wounded three other officers. Both these murderers believed they were justified in killing our finest because of a perceived injustice suffered by blacks rendered by the police.

Not surprisingly, a recent New York Times/CBS poll shows our growing division. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say race relations are generally bad, while six out of 10 say race relations are getting worse. Almost 50 percent of white Americans and over 50 percent of black Americans are not surprised by the Dallas police shootings. The same poll indicated that 56 percent of white Americans said the race of a suspect made no difference in how a black suspect was treated. On the contrary, only 18 percent of black Americans stated it made no difference.

At the Dallas memorial service, President Barack Obama said: “We are not as divided as we seem.” I hope he is correct, but I am not as optimistic. There is a growing storm on the horizon. It is a dark, divisive storm of mistrust. Somehow, some way, we need to assure the black community that their constitutional rights are not being ignored. Simultaneously, we need to insure that our police officers are never targeted and that the people who protect our society are valued and heralded for their service. Only through vigilance to our constitutional protections and respect for our lawmen can we endure the onslaught of the storm.

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