Cause & Effect, Pt. I: The Cause

“The police are paid by the public and carry a public trust, and they take an oath to protect us as citizens. The police have lost sight of that and must be reminded that we pay them to protect us, not to simply engage and cage us.” – Michael Render

Recently, our family has designated Friday to be our dinner and movie night. This where we sit down in the living room and eat our dinner. Since the pandemic, there has been less family movies coming out, so my wife and I have begun reaching back to our childhood to find good movies. A few weeks ago, we watched The Prince of Egypt while eating our usual Friday meal that centers around steak. In the movie, which is the biblical story of Moses freeing his people from pharaoh, Moses says his famous line “let me people go”. What happens next is the normal occurrence of my mind jumping in a rabbit hole. As soon as he says that line, I immediately think of the song “Go Down, Moses”. That leads me to the episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (S01E06: “Mistaken Identity”) where Will tries to uplift Carlton by singing the song while in jail. All of sudden, their cellmate, who has a voice that is the opposite of his exterior, starts singing it too. They were arrested because the cops believed they had stolen the Mercedes they were driving to Palm Springs. Which leads me to the topic of the post. The conversation between Will and Carlton at the end of the episode is a message that is still powerful today. In this back and forth, I see Will as the representative of the mindset of the majority of Black America and their growing allies. On the other side, I see Carlton as the combination of people who feel the system “works” because they are either part of the problem, don’t care because it doesn’t directly affect them or just ignorant to the fact that this is happening and is going with the flow. The common denominator on all of these mentalities is that a magnifying glass needs to be placed on who we empower to wear that badge.

I will say this first: I’m aware that all cops are not bad. If I felt this way, I would be a hypocrite because then I would be just as bad as people who look at all Black people in a negative light. However, there is a problem with the current police system in place. Police shouldn’t be able to execute an unarmed person without proper repercussions. They shouldn’t be able to cover up deaths like those of Sandra Bland and Javier Ambler, still have a job and serve no prison time. Over 1600 Black people have been killed in a 5-year span starting at 2014 with 1,608 of those murders being men. I lean towards men because with that rate, 1 in 1000 Black men could be killed by police. We’ve seen footage (that I can’t stand to look at anymore) of these murders happening. The ones that make it a national platform usually show that there is abuse of necessary force. Those cops should go to jail, right? More often than not, they don’t. There have been 98 officers who have been arrested for killing someone on-duty since 2005. 35 of those have been charged with either negligent homicide or manslaughter. Out of those 35, 4 have been convicted of murder. Does this sound like justice? Does it sound like a that is protecting and serving ALL of the country? Not only do you have cops who seem to look at minorities as lesser than, now you have civilians who weaponize law enforcement. You have neighbors or strangers calling the cops for little arguments because that person knows that there is a high-percent chance that it will create fear in that Black person. This is a learned behavior that traces back almost 100 years. Emmett Till, the Tulsa and Rosewood Massacres are three horrific examples of weaponized anger towards Black people. I feel that the cops that have gotten away with murder have created a comfortability for White America to commit these murders because Black people are demonized, therefore feared. Cops get away with these murders so frequently, using phrases like “I feared for my life” or “I thought I saw a gun”, that regular White people are using the same logic and killing people when their pride is hurt. But why should all of America care about these killings? Because, if you are a taxpayer, you’re paying for the lawsuits filed against these cops. In 2019, $230 million was paid by the taxpayers of NYC for 6,472 lawsuits. And that’s one city out of the 317 incorporated places in this country. Money that could be utilized for schools or building up these impoverished communities. Add on the fact that the police budget in some areas is the biggest bill for a city, there is millions, if not billions, of dollars spent on them. It’s so much that could be accomplished with money spent on the cops.

So, what happens when you have all this information? That moment when you feel like if a cop does kill your brother or sister, you won’t get justice. When you know it’s a big chance that they won’t get arrested and even if they do get arrested, they will get a laughable sentence or probation. Peaceful protests are not working. Legislation isn’t coming fast enough because people who look like you are dying every day. What do you think the answer will be when you try and do it the way they’ve asked and you’re not getting anywhere? You burn it to the ground.