(ThyBlackMan.com) I have heard the term “public safety” being thrown around time and time again by pessimistic corrupt politicians whether it be in commercials, forums, debates, and their state of the city addresses. When they also talk about public safety, they only mean public safety for the white community.
One of the main differences between public safety in the white community vs that in the black community is when a white guy shoots and kills a police officer, the white community is never put on lockdown or military police occupation, but when a young black male shoots and kills a police officer, the entire black community is put under heavy military occupation by the police. 
In forums and debates, these pessimistic corrupt politicians often talk about how to impose various forms of colonial state terror onto the black community when they say how many street crimes units or how many “task forces” (aka jump street as they are known here on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama) they can push into our community.
There’s a very shared idea amongst the people that are deeply in bed with the status quo that public safety actually means overfunding the police department and pushing the public policy of police containment onto the black community. It’s like a full-scale military type of occupation of our community that’s similar to the U.S. military occupation that’s prevalent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An example of this military occupation of our community by the police actually happened when I was first arrested at my old home several years ago when I remember seeing between 3-5 police cars outside of my old home and I remember thinking “What the hell is this?” That’s was when I realized that our community is under heavy military occupation by the police that are formed to maintain the status quo/social system and to protect the white community from the poor and oppressed black community.
I also wanna mention that young black children certainly do not feel safe under the public policy of police containment because just last month on November 1, at Jeffersontown High School in Louisville, Kentucky, a young black teenage student was viciously thrown to the ground, had a knee dig into his back, and then was tazed by a white nationalist police officer. This is reflective of the military occupation and terrorism that our kids often face at the hands of the police in these colonial schools.
During the summer of this year, white nationalists in St. Petersburg, Florida referred to a black working class led organization a “domestic terrorist organization”. When you have white nationalists making such violence inciting statements such as “domestic terrorist organization”, it’s quite clear that public safety is definitely not in reference to the black community.
It’s also no secret as to what the U.S. government does to people or organizations they deem “threats to national security” which is really a code word for threats to the status quo/social system. We’ve seen them crush Marcus Garvey’s UNIA Movement, crush The Black Panther Party, and even crush The MOVE Organization in Philadelphia in May 1985.
There are Two Americas, the haves (whites) living at the expense of the have nots (the black community). An example of this is when you go downtown and see all the stolen wealth and resources that whites arrogantly flaunt in our faces in the form of high rises, condos, restaurants, and coffee shops, but when you go into the black community, you see poverty, homelessness, economic depravation, despair, poor education, and food deserts.
To protect this oppressive and parasitic relationship between the haves and the have nots, the police become necessary to maintain this oppressive and parasitic relationship by any means necessary and young black teenagers in particular have been victims of this brutal military occupation by the police from Aiyana Jones, Dominque Battle, Laniya Miller, Ashaunti Butler, Jimmie Goshey, Dejarae Thomas, Keontae Brown, Mike Brown, Laquan MacDonald, Tamir Rice, and the list goes on and on.
And when you look at the budget for most cities with black people in them, the top priority of the city budgets is the police containment of the black community.
An example of this is Birmingham, Alabama where the city has a $420 million dollar budget and one-fourth of the city’s budget which is about $100 million goes towards police containment of the black community in Birmingham.
The Conclusion – Whenever we hear the term “public safety” we should come to a better understanding that public safety is a code word for the police containment of our community.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)
