A Gray Baltimore...

“The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of the modern state over its people resides in its war powers. Today its oil, tomorrow water. Its what we like to call the God business; Guns, Oil, and Drugs. But there is a problem, our way of life, its over. Its unsustainable and in rapid decline, that’s why we implement demand destruction. We continue to make money as the world burns. But for this to work the people have to remain ignorant of the problem until its too late. That is why we have triggers in place, 9-11, 7-7 , WMDs. A population in a permanent state of fear does not ask questions. Our desire for war becomes its desire for war. A willing sacrifice. You see fear is justification, fear is control, fear is money.”

History

The American Revolution, which took place between 1765-1783, was described as "political upheaval" by the Thirteen American Colonies against their British rulers in which they overthrew the authority of Great Britain and established the United States of America. The climax of this revolution was the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which American Patriots, led by Samuel Adams, tossed over $1M (today's worth), 45 tons of tea into the Boston Harbor. 

The organizing principle of any society is for war...

Today

The Twitter account of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund posted every unarmed person of color killed by police since 1999 starting with the death of Amadou Diallo. With the latest unarmed killing of another man of color, Freddie Gray, we are well over 80 victims.

Technology has reached new heights since 1999 where the popular form during that time was a beeper; nowadays, we have "smart" phones with cameras that can produce small feature films. A lot of the killings are caught on a camera phone and replayed back to the world to witness. Never before in history has the "revolution" been televised...

"Baltimore has paid $5.7 million since January 2011 for settlements and court judgments in lawsuits accusing city police officers of false arrests, false imprisonment and excessive force. Virtually all of the people who won large awards were cleared from criminal charges." More on this, click here.

Personal

I am by far anyone's boy scout so I am comfortable with describing my run-ins with law enforcement, as they are almost too many to count! During my senior year in high school, I was captain of the basketball team and voted All-District, A/B student as well as the local NBC news 1 of 12 citizens voted as "One to Look Up To". I was bestowed this honor in the middle of my Senior year and for two days I had cameras following me around school because a full expose was going to be re-played on the 6'o clock news. Did I mention I was the only high school student chosen, the other 11 were clergymen, businessmen, community activists, lawyers, doctors, and educators. 

Everything seemed good if you were to take a look at my life from an outside perspective. The truth, I was constantly harassed by Henrico's finest. During the same star-studded senior year, I was pulled over 40-45 times for reasons that varied from "broken taillight" to literally "driving while Black". Yes, I was told that I was pulled over because I was a "n*gger" in the wrong neighborhood and they wanted to know what I was doing there. Suffice it to say that I have the pullover routine down to a science; I know exactly what to do, what to say, as well as what not to say to immediately keep a possible heated situation to a minimum. 

Did this change my attitude towards police? Absolutely. Am I bitter? To a certain extent. Do I believe all police officers are bad or racist? I DO NOT! Can I empathize with the people of Baltimore? At any point during my younger years when I had my run-ins with the cops, I could have easily become a "hashtag" (even though social media had not been invented yet), my Mother could have lost a son, my brother could have lost a brother and for what? You become angry, frustrated, and most importantly, powerless because you feel and, most often, it is proven that there is nothing you can do about it. It becomes something you just live with, you deal with it and you do not complain about it. It becomes a punchline to our favorite comedian's joke, a mere head nod between Black men because we already know that one or both of us has experienced some level of police brutality and it is just another page in another chapter of our lives. 

Questions

While I sit back in the luxury of my DC home and watch the Baltimore riots on TV and read the commentary on Facebook, I keep hearing words like "thug", "shame", "ignorant" and other names I would rather not even spell out. The first thing I think about is if I, and the thousand of other students, were called thugs when we were rioting during our victorious University of Maryland win over Duke back in the early 2000s? I mean come on, we walked, not ran, but walked through the middle of campus to the football field, tore down the goal post (still have no idea why we tore up the football field over a basketball game), walked the goal post back down the same street through the middle of campus, crossed Route 1, arguably one of the busiest thoroughfares on the East Coast, placed it in the middle of Frat Row and set it afire! Oh, it gets better, we proceeded to burn up over $250K worth of Comcast cable lines, broke the windows to the bike shop (as well as stole a few bikes), looted the pizza shop and just basically ran College Park a muck until county police officers arrived with rubber bullets and sent us all home. Yea, do not remember being called a thug then! 

Then I fast forward to a month ago when the Kentucky Wildcats lost in the Final Four, which ruined their perfect Cinderella season, and watched on tv how the Kentucky students rioted. Were they called thugs, ignorant, shameless? Oh wait, property was destroyed...more on this hypocrisy can be seen here.

If you have ever been to Baltimore, and I mean experienced it in person and not through an episode of The Wire, it isn't exactly Shangri-La. It is a very blue-collar city where the people can be described as "subjugated, underprivileged, undervalued, underrepresented, marginalized, victimized, enslaved, and terrorized" and probably the most important, fearful. Freddie Gray was 25 when he was "injured" while being arrested by Baltimore's Finest. Mr. Gray has become a name on a long list of unarmed men killed by the very people charged with the responsibility to protect and serve. 

I am going to try my best not to make this about color, race, creed, sexuality, etc but what this is about is death. A person is dead for no reason, no excuse and there is a distinct possibility that the person(s) responsible may not be brought to justice. History has proven that there is a good chance the death of a person at the hands of a police officer may go unpunished. As a human being, you mean to tell me you do not find this frustrating? 

So let me place myself in the shoes of a Baltimore citizen that is subjugated, underprivileged, undervalued, well you get the picture, and try to understand how I would feel with death of Mr. Gray. Who is to say that I won't be next? What is the difference between Mr. Gray and I? I now have an overwhelming feeling of fear because what is there to protect me, to protect my family? The system set up to protect us is the same system killing us without any recourse. What do I do, what should I do? Do I wait for my turn or do I fight back?

Now imagine a whole community of people, an entire city of people, feeling the same way, asking the same questions. Now imagine an entire city of people arriving at the same answer! If you push somebody to a corner, they are either going to fold and die or they are going to fight back, viciously. Furthermore, they are going to fight back with the same visceral they are being attacked with meaning, an eye for an eye. You get a bat, I will fight with a bat, you get a gun, I am getting a gun.

Is this right? I keep hearing people ask this question as if this situation has come down to what is right and what is wrong. It is a little deeper than that. Is this about color? An argument could be made but it goes even deeper than that. Human lives are being taken and nothing seems to be happening to prevent it. As a man, I am going to protect my own and not wait around to be exterminated, I am going to take the fight to them. Just like Samuel Adams and the rest of the patriots did not want to be under the authority of the British, the citizens of Baltimore no longer want to sit by and let another Black man die at the hands of the police. This is not right or wrong, about Black or white, it is about self-preservation and wanting to fight for the basic right to live. In this spirit, I support and pray for Baltimore.

Let me be clear about what I do not agree with; if you are a rioting in the streets because you feel you can obtain some free items or doing something other than supporting the actual cause, which is the right to live, then you can stay home. Do I agree with taking lives, burning up businesses, attacking the police, etc.? No I do not BUT I am only one man that believes that there could be another way. I DO NOT CONDEMN OR PASS JUDGEMENT on those who are doing those things because at the end of the day, I have no idea what exactly that person is going through. Emotions are running high, anger is rampant, frustration is visible and people are going to release these emotions the only way they know how and that could come in various forms: speeches, fighting, looting, marching, etc. What I do know is that a city of people feel like they have had enough and they are expressing it right now.

Solutions

As of 2014, did you know that 1 in 2 women in the US married to a cop are victims of domestic violence? That is correct, law enforcement officers beat their significant other at nearly double the national average. I will come back to this...

I listen to The Breakfast Club interviews all the time and today I listened to their interview with Montel Williams, from the Montel Williams Show. No idea why they were even interviewing him, I thought his relevancy ran out years ago. Well, I listened anyway and it turned out to be one of the more interesting interviews they have had. It just so happens that Montel is a native of Baltimore and of course, during the interview, they start talking about the riots. 

As I have tried my best to come up with solutions for this problem over the last couple of years, it just so happens that Montel came to my rescue. First point, the military, has noticed an extreme uptick in the number of soldiers coming home and committing suicide and/or suffering from PTSD. So now, the military is limiting the number of tours a soldier can do in the battle zone. The military finally figured out that keeping soldiers in the battlefield, in a constant, prolonged state of stress, exposure to hard conditions and hard fighting would result in soldiers just snapping and going on a rampage.

Let's think about police departments across America, the institutionalized organizations that have been "nepotistic, closed societies" for 20, 30, even 40 years. And you have officers that have been working at these departments for 20, 30, even 40 years. Heck, for 5, 6 years, constantly in the battle zone without ever taking a break. Think about it, we have officers that are working a heightened, on-edge, day-to-day role for years on end. This is not an excuse, and I want to stress this, this is not an excuse, but when you have a person whose mind is living in a constant battle zone, how do you expect them to react in any situation? And this person carries a gun and interacts with regular citizens, daily. 

Now I will circle back and take a step further; the aforementioned statistic about 1 in 2 women married to a cop being victims of domestic violence. Take that same cop who just smacked his wife is now on the streets, with a gun, a "battle zone" mentality, sent to diffuse situations. This man just smacked his WIFE, you think he is going to think twice about laying hands on you???? 

Solution #1, maybe police departments across America should take a note from the military and start rotating officers from the streets to the desk. Let's train the officers, and then re-train them, on how to cut off the "battle zone" mentality. Let's help the officers research, find, learn, and understand different ways to diffuse a situation, conflict resolution. It could be 3 months in the streets, 1 month on a desk or 2 and 2, whatever but we need to find a way to help re-program and retrain officers on their approach to situations that may occur on duty.

Solution #2, mea culpa. I know loyalty runs deep within police departments and a police officer will never condemn or "snitch" on another officer. Those are the rules and they are understandable but at some point you have to call a spade a spade. It would go a long way if an officer, or officers, would step up to the mic and condemn the actions of their fellow officer. It would be nice to hear, and could go a long way, actual police officers admitting that the action of their colleague was wrong. The perception is that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. If you cannot admit to your partner doing wrong, then you are part of the problem. I could be wrong but I have not heard an officer condemn the actions of their colleague.

Solution #3, we are going to have to take a good look at our judicial system and figure out why very few of these cases end with an officer being convicted and going to jail. I am not sure of the actual percentage but of all the cases, I can go out on a limb and say less than 20% have led to an actual prosecution. The interesting part about it is the fact that most of the cases, the killing is actually on video. In a trial scenario, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to determine guilt. I am pretty sure a video of the actual murder is proof enough but I could be wrong! Besides, there have been cases where people have been sent to jail with less.

Solution #4, in concert with the aforementioned, the President and the Department of Justice will have to get involved and take a detailed look at the federal, as well as, the state laws surrounding murders by law enforcement. It is happening often enough that it deserves some Federal attention. What exactly, I am not sure, I do not have all the answers!!!

Solution #5, examine how and why a community of people feel disenfranchised? How did it get to the point to where they were "subjugated, underprivileged, undervalued, underrepresented, marginalized, victimized, enslaved, and terrorized?" This is more of a conversation, research, and an examination in economics, law, and finance. 

The organizing principle of any society is for war. Baltimore is having their own Tea Party but they are not tossing tea off of boats because of unfair taxes, they are rebelling against unfair, unpunished police tactics that is costing lives. Baltimore is only a culmination of what has been happening since 1999. I leave with two quotes from Samuel Adams:

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks"

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can"

#prayforBaltimore