(ThyBlackMan.com) If you simply log onto the internet or turn on the news, you see story after story after story of police brutality and murderous police officers, many of whom are not being convicted or even indicted. It’s easy to be upset and I would agree with you. It is getting worse and the cases are not nearly as isolated as we are being led to think. It’s easy to feel the justice system is not working for people of color – not that it ever really has. It’s easy to want police officers held accountable, or even held to a higher standard, and I would again agree with you. But a dangerous trend is has started that has deadly ramifications for all of us. Every month that an unarmed African American is gunned down by a police officer is a month that the same is happening to a police officer somewhere else in this country. So I ask, can we afford that to happen? In a war, there are no real winners because the actual enemy is war itself. But what do we do when it seems war has been declared on us?
Many might argue that justice takes many forms – spiritual judgment, karma, legal justice or even street justice. But retaliation is likely to bring repercussions that the perpetrators have not figured into the equation. If private citizens play “an eye for an eye“, the question is one of who will run out of eyes first – the public or the police. And who will protect citizens if the police become the enemy? Therefore I would hope and pray that we do not play that game. If we do, we run the risk of becoming just like those our community 
despises. Retaliation and retribution are actions that come with devastating and often unforeseeable consequences. And you don’t fight fire with fire – you fight it with water.
Still, are we to stand by and do nothing while oppression is rolled back to a point of slavery and our people are annihilated? No. But our actions have to be both smart and legal, all the while considering the consequences and the most lawful ways to get results.
Order STAY ALIVE: The Citizen’s Survival Kit For Police Encounters Email your request to atlantacrimecommission@yahoo.com
If citizens keep killing police officers in retaliation for the murder of African Americans, the good officers will likely become afraid or ambivalent, hesitant about helping the community and/or less tolerate in volatile situations. That means we will likely see an increase in police shootings for an entirely different reason. As for the rogue officers and corrupt police departments, they will likely use the unlawful retaliations by private citizens as an excuse to extend police authority and possibly even increase police brutality. Therefore there would be no winners in such a situation. I cannot tell you to break the law, but I can tell you to change the law, challenge it in court, hold our lawmakers to a standard of representing the wishes of your community, hold district attorneys accountable when they don’t prosecute murderous police officers, start an organization, utilize social media or become a lawmaker and fix it from the inside.
To attack the problem, we have to attack it at the source. In many cases, the problem is the authority given to the officers. In many cases, the problem is the insufficient amount of training officers are receiving. In some cases, the officers should never have passed the psychological exam. But because police departments needed bodies in uniform, as long as they passed the polygraph and criminal background check, they were hired. It is not likely you will hear many police departments confess to these things, but these are major problems they face. You may not care about that and certainly their problems do not justify the murders of unarmed African Americans, but to attack the problems, we have to realize where the problems are – all of them.
At the Metro-Atlanta Crime Commission we have created a DVD Kit called STAY ALIVE. It is a completely package on knowing your rights and how to handle a police encounter. It was constructed by former detectives and with the input of several good police officers from various departments. You have many legal and lawful options to handle corrupt police officers and police brutality. STAY ALIVE covers video- taping laws, what rights you must know, resources that can help you, all the lawful options you have at your disposal and numerous video examples of what to do or what not to do. This will be the best $20 investment you have made this year, it will save lives and the funds raised will go towards crime prevention and police brutality prevention education.
We cannot afford to play right into the hands of those waiting for a reason to take action against our community. Think about the long term effect of retaliation. Martial law, the King Alfred Plan, Rex 84 and the NDAA, to name a few, are or have been solutions ready to be implemented by the very forces that govern our society. There are many more lawful solutions available than you may be aware of. There is a lot to be said for the methods of Martin Luther King Jr. and he did in fact peacefully get results. I am not saying peaceful approaches are always the only approaches, but we have not even exhausted those peaceful approaches yet. There is power, for example, in economic approaches, political approaches, legal approaches through the courts and in holding our elected officials accountable for those they have placed in power.
Order STAY ALIVE: The Citizen’s Survival Kit For Police Encounters Email your request to atlantacrimecommission@yahoo.com
Spread the word. Before you do anything say anything, join any group or movement, write anything or promote anything, make sure you think through every possible short and long term ramification. Will your actions make it harder on our community or better? That is the problem Black Lives Matter is encountering now. It’s time to respond with action based on intellect instead of simply reacting based on primal anger. Both could possibly make a difference, but one could place you, your family and even your community at risk and ultimately do more harm than good.
Staff Writer; Marque-Anthony
