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When is enough really going to be enough when it comes to the police killings and murders of Black people?
How much longer will we continue to listen to meaningless political speeches about “thoughts and prayers” after other innocent Black people are rendered dead by American policing?
On Friday, the world witnessed a most savage example of recorded police murder. We saw a gang of thuggish, brutish, Black-faced police take pleasure in inflicting punishing pain while murdering a non-violent human being to death. What we witnessed was white state murder, carried out “under the color of law,” by Black executioners.
What is it really going to take from a collective Black America to put a stop to this racist violent behavior of corrupt cops?
This year, one week before the commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday, America’s police committed murder in Memphis. On Jan. 7, 29-year-old Tyre Nichols was used like a punching bag when he was brutally beaten “like a human piñata.”
On Jan. 10, after suffering for three days this son, brother, and father, died from this barbaric police beating.
Tyre was mauled and murdered around 80 feet from his home by five Black mercenary agents of white American policing. These killer-cops did to Tyre what white cops have always done to Africans-Americans ever since their early days as Second Amendment slave patrolling militia-police. They terrorized and tortured Tyre.
These five Black cops mirrored the internalized, indoctrinated, anti-Black hate, they learned from inside racist white police academies, departments and institutions.
The killer-cops were simply following the white mandate of American policing. This is why we must still point out that Tyre was indeed a victim of racial profiling. The fact that Black officers did it only illustrates the pervasive prejudiced nature of American policing.
These Black cops would not have done this to a white Tennessean.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith have all now been charged with murder and kidnapping in Tyre’s death. Some in American policing and politics are denouncing this particular despicable act of blatant murder. The video proof evidence here makes it hard for them not to do so.
But many of those now condemning these wild mad dog assassins are equally culpably for Tyre’s killing and the unabated Black bloodletting on America’s streets because of their actions.
Who makes it possible for police, including Black ones, to routinely target criminalize, brutalize, and kill Blacks all over America? Who protects them from facing accountability and transparency? Who bloats police budgets while claiming there is no money for social safety net programs?
For years, we have heard this idiotic notion which posits that if a Black cop is present during the killing of a Black victim racism must be ruled out as a salient factor. But who dictates policing policy besides largely white politicians who don’t live in Black communities?
There have always been Black people willing to sacrifice other Black lives for their own preservation, and to make money in the process of doing so. During slavery, there were Black slave-drivers who brutalized slaves to aid the white plantation master’s profiteering enterprise. These Black cops are modern-day Black-skin oppressors of Black people: who were given jobs by the white political establishment to do just that.
Black Americans must now identify, isolate, and put under unrelenting scrutiny, Black police and politicians who facilitate Black oppression to selfishly secure personal power and prestige for themselves.
There is nothing new or abnormal—at least not from an institutional policing standpoint—in the bullying behavior of contemptible cops towards their Black victims. This is why the police groups and unions are largely silent now (despite an FOP statement) in the face of something so abominable. The difference now is we live in a camera and video technology age that is providing evidence that was once unavailable in documenting the widespread nature of cop crimes against Black Americans.
The Memphis Police Department has now disbanded the Scorpion Unit in which these killer-cops operated. Are we surprised a violent police gang named after a lethal predator has committed cold-blooded murder? The record of these brutes must be fully investigated.
American policing is obviously a clear and present predatory danger to the lives of every Black person living in America. Unfortunately, it is even worse than many imagine.
The FBI has said American policing has a white supremacy problem. Why is mainstream media burying this story?
In October 2006, a FBI report—updated in 2015—warned of White supremacists “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The FBI labeled these individuals “Ghost Skins,” a term signifying their covert nature as “undercover White power warriors.” How many “Ghost Skins” Klan cops do we now have policing Black communities?
Recently, NYPD officers were recorded allowing Proud Boy members a free ride into the city’s subway system. That incident underscored a report several months ago which talked about the connection between cops in states across America and white supremacist groups involved in the Jan. 6 attempted coup on Congress by MAGA terrorists.
How can America’s white media establishment downplay a story showing the connections between police and white supremacists? Black independent media must take the lead and make sure we give this story maximum coverage.
Black Americans must realize only sustained pressure will stop the scourge of racist police violence. We must become creative in utilizing multiple strategies to force change upon police and the white power structure that empowers them to abuse us.
We must now pressure President Biden and Democrats to battle Republicans to pass the George Floyd Policing Act. Many have talked about things like finally ending qualified immunity so killer-cops will have to confront legal liability for their reckless actions. Biden must be asked hard questions about funding unaccountable and nontransparent police departments.
We must also wage economic war on those who make money off of Black America while funding police groups like the Police “Benevolent” Association. Why should we continue to support corporate businesses who give money to police who are killing us?
After the death of George Floyd, and all the global protests that followed, many thought Floyd’s murder would create change in policing.
Black Americans need to realize that we must be relentlessly consistent—and be willing to try a multitude of tactics—if we truly want to end the murderous institutional racism in American policing that is killing us, as it did to Tyre Nichols.
