POLICE VIOLENCE CAN BE ENDED BY DOCUMENTING THEIR EVERY MOVE, A COSTLY BUT NECESSARY DUTY OF CIVIC VIGILANCE

THE CIVIC VIRTUE OF VIGILANCE

Is it our civic responsibility to speak up when we witness crime and injustice?  Even if we cannot physically intervene when we witness wrongdoing are we not bound by virtue of the loftiest principles of humanitarianism to speak up, speak out either directly or anonymously?  If we fail to act after seeing evil prevail does our apathy reinforce the right of others to do evil?  Do we have a right to expect renumeration in any way other than apathy when we become the victim of injustice?

Anyone who lives in a major urban area where there is a large subway or airport is familiar with the ubiquitous public announcement encouraging the masses to “Say Something” if they’ve witnessed a crime or potential terrorist activity.  An appeal is being made to our moral and ethical constitution that assumes we are fundamentally responsibility to take positive action whenever we see that an injustice has been or may be done.  In a truly democratic society focused on protecting the individual and collective welfare of its citizens this philosophy totally works.  

Let us then ask ourselves if we live in such a society?  The theory of collective responsibility assumes that we have each other’s back and can therefore expect a return on the support that we give to the unified team.  But in a country where there are historically opposed teams the level of return is directly proportional to the sophistication of resources each team can draw from.  Teams with the best resources can expect the best response and outcomes while everyone else… well… we all know how that cookie crumbles.  Teams or should I say communities having little or no resources can only expect a proportionally small response and outcome to injustice.   When we factor in racism as a variable the squeakiness of the wheel really has no relevance at all for the disadvantaged community reaching out for assistance because it is strategically, structurally cut off from political and economic power.  Obviously the primary reason these communities are disadvantaged in the first place is because they have no political or economic power therefore if they are to survive they must manufacture their own power in creative ways that will make them unavoidable and formidable.  The philosophy and practice of being thy brother’s keeper has selectively been denied black American men in America and they have been excluded from the decision making sectors of our government and private industry.  Outside of the angry rantings of urban rap and hip-hop black men in this country have no voice of power.  America has cultivated a blind-eye when it comes to the protection of the rights, and well-being of black men allowing its citizens to witness all manner of social atrocities being committed against them without indulging them to “Say Something”, do something or change anything that would deviate from the historic path of oppression and indifference.  Culturally this problem plays itself out like a broken record numbing everyone to the tune without ever making an attempt to get a fresh record and needle or even a new machine. It is quite clear that American culture does not care about the welfare of black men and has set aside vast prisons as a strategic reservoir for locking them out of its consciousness.  Over the past few years while social atrocities have continued to be committed against men of color there have been no public service announcements to proclaim the intrinsic ethical and moral responsibility of American citizens to speak up and intervene whenever they see a black American man being publicly lynched or murdered by the police or even worse by random vigilantes.  This is due cause to ask ourselves if there is any difference between the deliberate assassination of black American men by police and the potential of some random act of violence perpetrated against humanity by an unknown terrorist?  The obvious conclusion is that the police are actually the terrorists, their violent acts the primary threats of terrorism that Americans should report as suspicious and malefactious.  Only by virtue of some mesmerizing hypnotism has the media successfully brainwashed the American people into ignoring what the rest of the world sees as the cold blooded murder of black men.  The sport of lynching black men is still the national pastime; it is the official national sport after over 300 years!  Publicly condoned atrocities against black men, their families and community go back hundreds of years in this country setting a legal and social precedent for what can only be viewed as a specialized genre of racial terrorism.  So while the media broadcasts programming designed to make Americans tremble and cower in their couches, on planes, trains, buses, in automobiles and places of public assembly in fear of foreign terrorists plotting to bomb, shoot, main, behead and destroy America another silent terrorist attack is being inflicted on black men in America.  America must decide which terrorist group it needs to fight first, the internal terrorists that continue a racial war on black men in America dividing this country or foreign terrorists who will use the racial division in this country to undermine the whole.  The internal terrorism is not proclaimed as a threat to the American people, it has been kept silent, like a covert military operation at least until recently with the advent of global social media where its grisly images have outraged the world.  As the murders and images keep coming forth it becomes all too clear that the power structures represented by the Justice Department and the local jurisdictions where these civil rights atrocities occur do not have the best interest of the black man or his community at heart.  Where then does the black community turn for support?  What should the black community do in reaction to the unrelenting reign of terrorism launched upon it for hundreds of years? There are really only two ways the black community can act and neither of them promise immediate results.  The first choice is rioting and violent retaliation which is certainly the least desirable choice and clearly not a viable solution in the long run.  The second choice involving the organization and perpetuation of a strong economically and politically leveraged platform is the most viable solution but one that would take considerable time to accomplish.  The second choice is an investment that will see fruition in time but it will see countless souls lost through attrition until an economic and politically viable foundation is prepared to carry the weight issues it must combat.  As the civil rights violations against black men rise time is a luxury the black community does not have, it must quickly galvanize itself as a comprehensively effective power to counteract what can only be viewed as a flagrant challenge to its very existence by the police and the municipal and private institutions that have historically supported them.  So when someone who is not black asks why so many black Americans do not trust the police we can easily answer with, “Just google it baby!”  There is a third choice that includes an attempt within the black community to compromise with forces which have historically acted against its best interest.  That difficult dialogue has been put off far too long and it must be initiated by a community armed with burgeoning self-empowerment.

Only in the past decade has the camera phone and personal video recorder taken subjective media control out of the hands of the major broadcast industries placing them in the hands of the ordinary citizen.  The potential of an individual to refute and reverse racist propaganda that could be interpreted as lies and prejudices actively promoted and perpetuated by a mass media historically insensitive to the community of black Americans is limitless!  The assassination of a black man by a police officer in Alabama was instantaneously documented on a private citizen’s cellphone.  The cold-blooded murder of a black man incarcerated by Baltimore City police was documented in fragments allowing the police time to administer an organized but impotent non-assassination scheme during an interstitial time after his arrest where objective cameras were not able to document what had transpired.  But when a man dies from a severed spine after being detained by the police and the arresting officers say they don’t know how or presumably why he died we have a game of ruthless but primitive wits to expose.  On the street there is an old saying used to call out someone who is lying bold-faced in spite of the fact that it is an obvious deception.  On the street if someone told me the story that the Baltimore police have told the public I would say, “YOU MUST THINK THAT FAT’S NOT GREASY”.  But we all know that fat is greasy, it always has been and it always will be greasy.  What racially motivated police terrorists must understand is that black Americans and the American peoples will no longer agree to affect blindness to their terrorism, they will be held accountable for their actions and the tradition of lynching will forcefully end.  So we must step back from the Baltimore slaying to contemplate what reality the police who arrested this newest victim of police violence are attempting to sell the world?  Are they building a twisted parallel reality theory comparing for example spontaneous human combustion to a self-severed spine? Can anyone really believe that a perfectly healthy man could burst into flame mirroring the Baltimore case where we are led to believe a man’s spine mysteriously severed itself?   Can we intuit the “I don’t know” of their testimony serves to answer their own fears and insecurities about why they chose to murder him in cold blood!  This case in particular confirms my personal theory that humans are capable of some of the most reprehensible crimes which they will all too easily rationalize away if they are allowed to get away with it.  Humanity must make certain these murderers do not get away with their crime! We must hold these and every other murderer accountable…

If permitted police terrorists will continue to defer to a technique where they can administer their cruelty off-scene, away from the scrutiny of ordinary taxpaying citizens.   For this reason 100% surveillance is necessary from the time a person is approached even while he is in his cell awaiting trial.  If anyone asked me whether the cost to support this level of surveillance was justified I would say certainly, yes.  The cost to policemen who fail to produce seamless video documentation of an incarceration gone awry must also be instantaneous and irrevocable conviction.  When racist and violent, homicidal police understand they are being watched this kind of violence will stop!   It is quite clear that we cannot rely on the integrity of our police forces, they must be watched at all times in order to ensure the safety of every American citizen, it has come this this bleak standoff between the taxpayers and those charged with the lofty task of enforcing and protecting our personal safety.  For my part I opine that the police have created conditions that have ultimately come back to haunt them and after hundreds of years the general public is finally paying attention to every breath they take and for good reasons.  We are close to the end of an era of police terrorism but it is not over yet.  No person and especially no officer charged with the protection of the well-being of citizens is above the law and it is about time that we stopped affording them carte blanche amnesty from evildoing.  We must place them under the same microscope that the rest of the American citizenry is placed.  Yes it’s about time!

But let me get back to the underlying theme of this article.  This essay is an appeal to the individual.  It is a proclamation that charges every American citizen with the responsibility to speak up and be held accountable to defend the human/civil rights of everyone around them whoever they might be, regardless of sex, race or ethnicity.  Although we may ignore this responsibility apathy will not make it disappear and we all run the risk that our blindness may someday come back to haunt us.  I opine that as citizens of the larger collective of humanity it is our incontrovertible duty to be our brother’s keeper.  So if we ever witness or suspect any evildoing we are bound by a higher moral and ethical force to take that knowledge to a responsible person or body of authority.  I do not believe we have a choice in the matter because it serves to keep in balance that sense of karma in which a deed is exchanged for a deed of equal value.  In this we should not be focused on remuneration, we should only be selflessly focused on our ethical and moral responsibility.  We as humans are ethically and morally responsible to do whatever is within our power to balance the scale of evil and injustice.  We are bound by a soulful covenant with our humanity and with all creation to practise the civil virtue of vigilance taking action against injustice and evil by exposing them in every way we can to end police terrorism freeing up society to pursue the greater good of a unified American people.

WRITTEN BY BIGDADDY BLUES