(ThyBlackMan.com) You hear about it every month. you see the tears, the vigils, the rallies and the protests. Yet police brutality and killing of private citizens keeps right on happening and its far worse than you think. Are there good police officers? Of course there are many good officers and some great ones. But are there a lot of bad officers? Yes there are and more than you know.
The names of the victims must not be forgotten or they died in vain. Sandra Bland was arrested by former State Trooper Brian Encina. He was fired then indicted for filing false information on his police report. And there is progress being made whereby bad officers are going to jail, but it is not happening fast enough to catch up with all of the bad officers out there.
Contact us. Email atlantacrimecommission@yahoo.com or by phone at (404) 384-7731.
It is critical to overstand that cases of police brutality and the wrongful death of private citizens is not always about a racist officer, though many times it is. I currently serve as Senior Legal Analyst for the Metro Atlanta Crime Commission and we have a good handle on what is really going on. We have placed all local uniform police officers nationwide into 11 categories. And if you know which category the officer fits into, you will have a better idea of why he did what he did. Therefore, to end police brutality, you must recognize where it is coming from and why it keeps happening.
The 11 types of local uniform police officers in your city include the following:
Good Officers, Great Officers, Racist Officers, Bully Officers, Mentally Unstable Officers, Poorly Trained Officers, Tired Officers Who Need To Retire, Fearful Officers, Officers Who Try To Impress Their Colleagues, Officers Who Go Along With Whatever Their Fellow Officers Do,
Here is what you need to know about the strategies that abusive, renegade or murderous officers use to get away with their crimes. The first thing they will do is say “I determined or believed my life was in danger“. This has gotten far too many bad officers off the hook. What a police officer puts in the report and how he or she words it will have a major impact on what is done about the incident. That is why bodycams for police officers should be a national requirement.
The next thing bad officers will do is round up support or corroboration from their fellow officers. Officers often follow an unwritten “Blue Code” of covering for each other, even to the point of lying, intimidating witnesses or tampering with evidence. A good attorney should know to check for such things as well as any video footage from citizens or store cameras etc. so picking the right attorney if you are a victim of police brutality is very important.
Here is what you need to know about attorneys. There are good ones, bad ones and then there are those who will not do all they could do to win your case. If you can afford a real attorney instead of a public defender, interview him, ask for references and research him and the cases he has won. Go to the internet. You must remember that an attorney is first an officer of the court, second a member of the bar just like the judge and the prosecutor and the attorney has you as a client generally coming in third place. So if you expect an attorney to tell you everything, do everything he possible could and be faithful to his client above all else, slap yourself and wake up.
THE SHIELD THAT PROTECTS BAD POLICE OFFICERS
The shield of protection for bad police officers is keeping them on the streets. I do not mean the shield or badge they were on their uniforms. I mean the cloak that hides bad police officers and thus protects them. The biggest problem with police brutality is denial that allows it to continue – people do not think it will happen to them until it does so people are neither proactive nor preventive. But even a law abiding citizen is in danger from a racist, bully, poorly trained or egomaniac officer – no matter where you live, what you drive, how much money you make, your age, gender or color. Denial results in doing nothing and that is how police brutality has grown into the monster it is today. Visit www.killedbypolice.net or www.policemiscconduct.net.
Harriett Tubman could have freed more slaves but many of them did not even know they were slaves. And the only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That is exactly what has happened but we can fix that and African Americans can start by attaching the maximum value to African American lives, not killing each other even more than police officers kill our people. If African Americans cannot or will not show others the way when it comes to how we must be treated, we don’t know where we are going and that means we are lost.
The next biggest problem is the deliberate cover up for and protection of bad police officers with a protective shield. This includes district attorneys who will not prosecute bad officer, grand juries who will not indict them, judges who protect them, other blue code officers who do not intervene, citizens who do not videotape or photograph police brutality, local and state governments who give police officers too much power, peace officer regulatory councils and training academies who do not require more and specialized training for officers and mayors and police chiefs who tolerate bad officers because the cities need bodies in uniform.
THE SOLUTIONS TO POLICE BRUTALITY:
Here are the solutions to police brutality. They are political, economic, sociological, spiritual psychological, legislative, and judicial. They involve waking up our churches, getting our citizens lawfully and proactively involved. Our social activist groups must be smart, lawful and strategic in their approaches, building support instead of polarizing or isolating themselves.
As a former detective and now a senior legal analyst with the Metro Atlanta Crime Commission (atlantacrimecommission@yahoo.com), I created POLICE ENCOUNTERS 101 to teach citizens their rights, how to handle a police encounter and what to do lawfully if they become victims. More training, specialized training and community relations are only parts of the solution. Other solutions include technology like bodycams on every officer, better pre-screening and better psychological exams, annual psychological exams, swifter punishment for police officers who break the law, grand juries that will indict bad officers, citizen videotaping instead of states blocking it from happening, changes in state laws that reduce police powers at the discretion of the officer and informed citizens who follow the law, know their rights and how to handle an encounter with the police. Find us on Facebook: Police Encounters 101.
WHO TO CONTACT / WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE A VICTIM OF POLICE BRUTALITY
You have to learn to use social media for more than just entertainment. Utilize the news media. File a civil law suit against the officer, the department and the city. Gather your evidence under the open records act including the officer’s training records, performance records and performance bonding information. Pursue criminal charges. Pursue constitutional civil rights charges against the officer and contact the ACLU or SCHR.org. Contact the police department’s internal affairs division but be careful of their hidden methods of retaliation. Thus it is best to have as many people, media outlets etc watching your case as it develops.
You are empowered more than you know, as long as you are not in jail, in the hospital or in the morgue. Therefore your objective in any police encounter must always be to leave the encounter with your safety intact, no tickets, no charges. This must be true even if your rights are violated because you can address that later. But first you must survive or you cannot address anything.
Every state has a primary regulatory agency that authorizes each and every police officer’s certification. In Georgia, for example, the agency is called the Peace Officer’s Standardized Training Council (P.O.S.T.). Find the agency equivalent for your state and file a complaint with them. There is much you can do without having to break the law, riot or feel hopeless. Many attorneys will tell you that police officers are shielded from civil suits, but you need to know that is not always true and there are ways to penetrate those barriers.
I could give you a dozen other solutions right now but I would rather encourage you to do your homework and use the internet for research purposes, starting with Google. I would also encourage you to contact the Metro Atlanta Crime Commission and schedule a seminar or workshop for your church, group, community or business. Our phone number is (404) 384-7731 and our email is atlantacrimecommission@yahoo.com. Send us an information request or request membership info to join our nationwide effort to end police brutality and we will tell you how. Knowledge is the most powerful tool that you have, if you have the knowledge. But never place yourself at unnecessary risk as so many BLM people foolishly have done. There are better ways, safer ways, lawful ways to get results. This article barely scratches the surface but you can neither be lazy nor leave it all to an attorney. You will have to read and research.
People do what we allow them to do and our communities have been asleep on this problem too long until they woke up one day and the problem was a colossal monster. Citizens wouldn’t go to city council meetings, county commission meetings, learn their rights, study the laws that impact them, teach their children respect for authority and that guns are not toys or think preventive. Citizens were too busy watching the game, going to concerts and assuming police brutality was not that bad. Then all of a sudden, so we thought, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Samuel Dubose and others. But police brutality did not just begin with those incidents. They just made the country take notice.
Help us to save lives such as yours and those you love BEFORE something happens. You can be part of the solution or do nothing and thus be part of the problem. POLICE ENCOUNTERS 101 is a nationwide seminar and workshop training series for private citizens developed by the Metro Atlanta Crime Commission.
Staff Writer; Marque-Anthony
