The recent testimony of the law enforcement on Capitol Hill about the attempted coup insurrection on Jan. 6 of this year proves beyond a reasonable double that crime and punishment in this country is and has been a selective biased process.
DC Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone said that while he was giving testimony, an angry threatening and harassing voicemail was left on his phone included slurs and vulgarity so profane, I’m not going to list it here. But you can search Don Lemon and Fanone and listen to it in its entirety.
And of course, Fox News is making a big deal about how Lemon’s program is struggling for ratings since changing its show name. Pardon my language, but what the fuck does ratings have to do with anything?
Fox New shares some of this blame for this mess, along with OAN and Newsmax. Last night, I watched The Dead Zone. It’s hard to believe in the 1980s that a politician like Greg Stilson would ever succeed to an elected office past a very local level. Now, almost 40 years later, we are loaded with too many Stilsons.
If a Congressmember, like Stilson, grabbed a toddler and held it as a human shield at the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt, conservative news media would’ve hailed the child for doing his civic and patriotic duty.
Capitol Officer Harry Dunn said it was the first time he was called the “N-word” in uniform. Take what he said. It was the first time in uniform. I’m sure Dunn and countless other BIPOC who have put on a military or law enforcement uniform have been called that while not in uniform.
What happened on Jan. 6 was an attempt similar to the events of 1898 insurrection of Wilmington, N.C. The last thing some people want in this country is to feel they are no longer superior. Some white people don’t have much going for them. They can barely afford medication or to pay their bills, but at least they are least likely to be targeted by police.
And for some, that’s what they want to keep going. Law enforcement in this country was born out of the runaway slave posses from the 19th Century. And I’m saying this as a courts and crime reporter for more than 10 years, our law enforcement and judicial system is still believed to operate like those antebellum days.
I’ve had so many angry phone calls from middle-aged people about how their 35-year-old babies were unjustly arrested. Or how it is all a misunderstanding and the charges will be dropped. The brother of the former mayor in the town I worked in was driving under the influence and actually backed up into a patrol vehicle, then tried to elude them.
Wanna guess what his skin color is? Another white former mayor of a nearby town, also driving under the influence, caused a fatal traffic accident that cost the life of a very prominent chiropractor. He was white too. And he got leniency because he was a senior citizen.
When I worked at K-Mart in the mid-1990s, two white teens tried to nab condoms but the security alarm sounded. They let them go. At the same time, they would tell us to watch the Latinx people who were carrying a package of batteries. Since it was northwest Georgia, there were a lot of carpet and textile companies who hired undocumented immigrants.
The boyfriend/partner of my ex’s daughter drives a Jaquar. He’s from Jamaica and has been pulled over a few times on suspicion. I have long hair and a beard. I have driven a Grand Marquis and a Ford Escape for over a decade and never been stopped or pulled over.
I’ve even heard it from the mouths of people that for the newspapers, I should be “more selective” in who we choose to list in the police blotter. I’m sure you know what that means. Crime stories are the most read and most clicked on stories. If someone beats their wife to the point she ends up in the hospital or holds up a liquor store, it shouldn’t matter about skin color.
But in every town, city and community in America, there are two groups of people – those who “just made a mistake” and those “who should know better.”
The biggest divide between this is when it comes to substance and alcohol abuse. White people are allowed to destroy their bodies through alcohol abuse and drug addiction but they need help. (And they need help. I’m not condescending, they do need professional help.) But BIPOC get involved in alcohol or drug addiction, we throw up our hands, saying, “Well, what do you expect from those people?”
So, it’s no wonder Fanone, Dunn, and DC Metro Officer Daniel Hodges and Capitol Police Sgt. Aquillino Gonell are being criticized by the Trump supporters. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and many other MAGA supporters only see law enforcement as a conservative fascist agency that targets certain people. They want to return to the days when law enforcements allowed lynching and should resort to martial law.
But that should be just against a certain group of people.
It’s crazy because law enforcement is really a sales position. It’s about supply and demand. It exists in relation to how much crime there is in the area. If there isn’t much crime, why do we need so many officers? That’s why they want law enforcement to target BIPOC and drug-addicted people from the wrong sides of town.
Most communities have a small ratio of law enforcement to the general public. And most crimes occur behind close doors. The best way to stop or prevent crimes is to change our ways.
But law enforcement should target BIPOC so they can be incarcerated in jails and prisons in predominantly white and conservative regions, so they can be counted as the population and change elected officials if needed.
I firmly believe we need to reform law enforcement. We don’t need to do away with it directly. But we should get law enforcement out of schools because they’re not trained to deal with students. Instead of hiring ex-military, department needs to hire people who focus on more than authoritarian procedures.
And every damn law enforcement officer needs to take and pass a course in English composition and learn to write a report.
Some of these probable cause affidavits read like an illiterate high schooler trying to write a 500-word essay and filling it up as much as they can. I read one in which they referred to a woman of southeast Asian descent as “Oriental.”
Unfortunately, education is what people who stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 don’t know or don’t want others to have. If they had breached the Chambers, they’d been more bloodshed and I think the attempted insurrectionists would’ve been killed.
By the time the Mike Pence called the National Guard, they would’ve arrived guns firing. Pardon the pun, but we dodged the bullet there. But as they say, attempted coups lead to successful coups.
And if that happens, I’m sure the rest of the world’s leaders have a contingency plan. America has meddled in others affairs and paybacks are a bitch.
Zane Says 