Betrayed

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be writing about five black police officers beating to death another black man over a traffic violation. It’s a racist propaganda goldmine… and you know something… ain’t a damn thing I can say about it. I mean as though we don’t have enough white police officers killing black citizens… here come a bunch of black police officers… which some are pointing to as nothing better than the slave patrols of the Antebellum south. Although modern policing is thought to have originated with the slave patrols of the late 19th century, policing actually goes back more than 3000 years, but even then the ranks of police were gathered from the poor and slave caste. So back then the policemen’s job was to protect the poor from each other. It was not meant to protect the haves from the have-nots. I mean they wish a moe would attack a rich citizen and talk about taking sumpin. They’d take yo azz down into some dark dungeon somewhere… The next thing you know people would be seeing yo body parts hanging all around the kingdom on poles with the stolen items hanging off them and a sign that said.. “He Got Off With A Warning..” By the time the Greeks came on the world stage, the police had morphed into a somewhat recognizable semblance of what we have today. Because the military was engaged in military stuff, they started using the slaves to help collect taxes and to maintain peace and order. However, they did not have police powers like charging anybody with a crime or arresting someone. During the Roman Empire, the practice continued, but with a twist. The police were also used as an auxiliary military unit. Their main job was crowd control when the upper class wanted to step out. They also had undercover individuals who would rat on folks they thought were about to do some dirty. Crimes by citizens against other citizens were usually left up to the individuals involved. So if Stealius Yo Shitius got caught by you… then as long as he wasn’t a member of the upper class you could feed him to your hungry lions. Around the 10th century, they used a system that relied on community-based collective responsibility. All male citizens were responsible for their own behavior and banded together if someone came out of pocket. This system evolved into a more formalized group which was headed by a “Tithingman.” Although tithing is used today to describe one-tenth part of something or a church donation, back then a tithing was ten people who live near each other and were responsible for each other’s behavior. Anyway… the Tithingman was subordinate to another entity called the “Hundredman,” and no I swear I ain’t had not a drop… and the Hundredman was responsible for ten tithings. He was also the administrator and judge. Each hundredman was grouped into a Shire and was controlled by a “Shire-reeve.” The role of shire-reeve eventually developed into the modern office of county sheriff in England and in the United States. That’s right… the history of the sheriff’s office dates back over one thousand years! The first sheriff in the United States was named William Stone (1634) and the first elected sheriff was named William Walters (1652). They both presided over the Shire of Northampton in Virginia. The word “shire’ was replaced by the word “county” in the United States. It was basically a power thing.. “county” is derived from the royal title “Count.” Anywho…. between the 16th and 19th centuries individual people started paying for personal and property protection or to recover stolen goods. When communities started paying for these services, a standard set of fees was established and a paid police system evolved. Now, this system was not foolproof. Anybody could become a police person. Criminals would take advantage by stealing someone’s stuff and then returning it for the fee. But Ima tell you something right now.. crime didn’t pay back then… in those days almost every crime was punishable by dismemberment or death. Such harsh punishments were handed out for two reasons—to deter wrongdoers and failing that, to provide criminals with the opportunity to repent through punishment and save their souls. Judge: “Because this is a merciful court …” Jury: “Hallelujah!!…” Judge: “This time we just gonna cut off both your ears for stealing that piece of bread…”

Is That A Vulture Feather

So where does the narrative that modern-day policing come from slave patrols? Well, it comes from the fact that a lot of the early police forces were established to control the slave population. These slave patrols started in the Carolinas in the 1700s and even had a solemn oath they had to take..
“I (Wepp Dataz), do swear, that I will as a searcher for guns, swords, and other weapons among the slaves in my district, faithfully, and as privately as I can, discharge the trust reposed in me as the law directs, to the best of my power. So help me, God.” I put the name in there.. but this was the oath North Carolina patrollers had to take before discharging their duties. The slave patrols consisted of people who regulated the activity of slaves as their civic obligation for pay, rewards, or exemption from other duties. In colonial times it was safer to beat up a chained slave rather than to go out there in the woods and get yo azz jacked up by a half-naked man with a little ax and a feather in his hair. Anywho.. so yeah they said it was their civic duty… I’d say that too… The other thing that separated slave patrols from formal policing is that they didn’t have non-policing duties. The sheriff might collect taxes, preside over courts, or witness and archive official documents and so and so. The slave patrols’ only duty was upholding the enforcement of state and county laws pertaining to slavery. At the end of the civil war and with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, slave patrols were disbanded and replaced by militias and other groups that enforced laws designed to restrict access to labor, wages, and voting rights by blacks. Those laws were known as the “Black Codes.” The 14th Amendment which granted African American equal protection under the law made the Black Codes illegal, but it was swiftly replaced by Jim Crow. By the early 1900s, southern municipalities begin establishing police departments to enforce Jim Crow laws by exerting excessive brutality and penalties on African Americans who violated them. Black man: “I don’t remember seeing that police station next door there yesterday…” Jim Crow laws were made so that any challenge to them could supposedly be legally supported by the Constitution. By the end of the 1960s, all Jim Crow laws were overturned by the Supreme Court.

Are You Gonna Eat That Cornbread…

Now when I was doing my research I was hit with a “GTHOH” moment… The first African American police officers in the United States were appointed in none other than Selma (Nigra Don’t Make Me Tell You Again..”), Alabama, in 1867. Presently there are more than 58,000 African Americans working in police departments in the United States out of a total of about 660,000. So roughly speaking about 9.5 percent of law enforcement is African American… or we can look at it this way… about one African American in every seven hundred African Americans is a police officer. Doing the same math, there is one white police officer for every 300 white citizens. With exceptions, the latest data from the years 2007 thru 2016 indicates that most police departments did not change demographics to keep pace with their cities, although larger metropolitan areas did narrow the gap. So in other words there is a whole lot of celery and raisins in the mac n cheese. In recent years the number of black recruits has declined with many pointing to the outrage and fallout over the deaths of Black men at the hands of the police. This decline in the number of black recruits has resulted in a rise in Asian and Hispanic recruits. So not only is there a whole lot of celery and raisins in the mac n cheese, but you can also count on there being a little bit of soy sauce and Doritos mixed in there too… anywho… experts also caution that having more people of color as law enforcement officers does not always mean more equitable policing. Although there were more people of color on the police force, in a lot of the larger metropolitan areas there were more azz whippings too that were primarily aimed at Black and Hispanic communities. Now while I don’t even condone the police beating on folks, our people can really be the “right one” at times. I’ve seen how some folks act toward the police on YouTube and Tik Tok which made me want to say “Take the camera so they can’t record you when you do it!!!.” Still, that’s their job, and dealing with those types of people in a professional and humane way is what good policing is all about. I mean you got to be able to turn the other cheek if they smack you… if they smack you on that cheek… walk away… if they spit on you… go to yo car….take yo shirt and yo shoes off… pull yo pants down and throw them in the car…. now that you are only standing there in just yo drawers… lean in yo car, take a sip of water… then take off yo watch…. stand up and turn around with yo eyes wide open…. and then run over there as fast as you can… and “WHIP IT…” YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE THAT SHAT!!! Anywho.. the Brookings Institute did a study and found that if there was a nonwhite police chief, the incidents of excessive use of force against blacks went down. The same was true if there were a lot of non-white high-ranking officers. Unfortunately, it also found that the incidents of excessive use of force among the rank and file, “regardless of race,” was the same when applied to black citizens. You are just as likely to get it whipped by a black or white cop.

Betrayed

Just as likely to have excessive force used against you whether the policeman is black or white… just as long as you are black, they say there is no difference in how a black police officer or a white police officer treats you. That’s because they don’t want to remember. One of their greatest stories ever told was about a Roman emperor named Julius Caesar and his last dying words… “Et Tu Brute..” Translated from Latin, it means “and you too Brutus” He was stabbed by 40 Roman senators, the last of which came from Brutus.. a member of his own family who betrayed and stabbed him. Those five black police officers are our collective Brutus. Black men and women died so that they could be policemen. They went to school with our children… lived in our neighborhoods…. prayed at our churches… their fathers and mothers knew our fathers and mothers…
then they stabbed us…
It’s the same story as yours… betrayal. They simply betrayed us.
It’s not only about them beating a black man to death.
It hurts us…
And we don’t want to talk about it anymore…
Do what you will with them…

Thanks for reading ©Hill1News