By LaRoyce Jones
It has been a few weeks since the incident involving a former McKinney police officer and African American teenagers at a community pool violently unfolded. The events of that day made national headlines, sparked days of marches and rallies, and subsequently, led the officer involved to submit his resignation.
The city’s police chief, Greg Conley, stated “Our policies, our training, our practice, do not support his actions. He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident.”
We commend the McKinney police department’s acceptance of accountability for its employee’s wrongs. Hopefully, their actions to reprimand and stand for the moral rights of its citizens will ignite other police departments around this country to enforce these same practices.
Although, this police incident with our young people settled with no shots fired, and the charges were eventually dropped against the one young man who was arrested, it could have ended, as we all know too well, much differently. Yet, there is a lesson to be learned from this incident that will include our community accepting accountability for our wrong, and our community standing for moral rights by instilling discipline into our youth.
What are we teaching our kids?
Many of us recall our parents speaking words familiar to these, “Don’t leave out of this house embarrassing us” or “what you do is a reflection on us.” The point is we understood the necessity of respecting authority, whether it was our teacher, our neighbor, our church member, our coach, or a police officer. Moreover, we understood if we were disrespectful, we could expect to be disciplined.
However, if we truly delve into the meaning of our parents instilling disciplines of respecting authority, respecting our home and respecting ourselves, we will conclude that our parents were teaching us how to survive and counter some of the evils they knew we would have to face. They protected us with powerful knowledge to survive.
As we reflect on the McKinney pool incident, it’s evident we must, as parents and as a community, stand up and begin protect our youth by instilling these same disciplines. Not only was the officer out of control, but as we witnessed in the same video, some of our youth were also out of control by refusing to obey authority. In light of this, it’s imperative we also take accountability as parents and as a community to improve relations with our police officers.
What example are we showing our kids?
This brings us to the shameful incident of rapper mogul P Diddy’s arrest this week, and with it, a valuable life lesson we need to heed. Brothers and sisters, it is impossible to teach anything you don’t practice. We need to take pause with some of our actions as parents and recognize our children are watching and are mirroring what they witness.
How can we expect, or even ask, our youth to remain level headed and focus on countering their emotions with the power of knowledge, when we have role models, which in many cases are parents themselves, disrespecting authority?
Granted there are several accounts of what transpired in the UCLA coaching facility between P Diddy and Coach Sal Alosi. However, the common fact reported which incited the incident, is P Diddy was asked to leave the facility, but he refused to do so. He exercised no respect for authority.
We can do much better as responsible parents and a loving community. We must begin to practice order and discipline in the midst of this chaos. Our youth need to understand; everything should be done decently and in order, and when violations occur, we then follow certain protocol to rectify them.
It is without doubt, a necessity for our society to have law enforcers for our protection and our safety. Therefore, it is necessary we communicate to our youth how critical it is for them to respect authority. The authority and commands of police officers must be obeyed, especially, with our society in its present state of uproar.
It must be stressed again that every youth in our community know and understand the Miranda Warning, the right to remain silent which we discussed in our June 18 issue. This knowledge could possibly one day save their lives.
However, when we take responsibility and accountability as parents and a community to instill and practice the disciplines of self-respect, respect for our community and respect for authority (in some cases) there would be no arrests, nor detainments. Therefore, there would not be a need for one’s Miranda Rights to be read.
We must remember, it is now our responsibility, and it’s our turn to make our knowledge of survival powerful by teaching it to our youth and implementing it to form change.
We have taken the blessing of our Father protecting our youth that day in McKinney. Now let’s take the life giving lesson from that day to teach our youth how to survive through respect for themselves and others.
Remember, “It’s a reflection on us” as a community.
Editor’s Note: Visit our earlier story Equipping Our Youth with Understanding: The Right to Remain Silent for more information on teaching a full understanding of the rights we enjoy under the Miranda Rights law.
What are we teaching our kids?
What example are we showing our kids?
These are two key questions that should be asked daily. I remember being a substitute teacher when I graduated from college and trying to disciple a class of un-ruling students. Really there was only one but she was trying to set the tone of how I was going to conduct my class. I remember her first and last comment to me. “You ain’t my Momma. So you can’t tell me what to do” and my reply was, you are correct so let me do me and you a favor and send you home to your Momma to deal with”.
The next day an upset Momma came to school asking why her child had been suspended. My response to her was, “your child was a constant disruption to the learning process therefore restricting other from achieving their goals. Her comment of you aren’t my Momma lead me to believe she my do better being home schooled by her Mother since you are the only one that can give her instructions.”
There are so many kids out there that are being overlooked because they are not the “problem” kids therefore not getting the attention they deserve.
I am not saying that the police don’t have issues but we have to train our kids not to go looking for those red buttons to push. The right to remind silent is a lesson I best learned from my Mother as you have the right to be quiet and avoid this but whooping you are about to get.
This brings to mind the constant lesson from my Granny, “don’t go out there proving what the already believe to be true cause that justifies to them what they can do to you” Thanks Granny for those rules to live by. They have served me well.
And let me add one more thing. My Mother and Granny also taught me that I never had the right to dis-respect an adult or person in authority. If I had an issue with a grown-up I was taught to bring it to them and after they hashed it out with me and found I had a valid issue they would hash it out with them.
Thank you for sharing those insights. I believe they reflect what many of us were taught back in the day. Unfortunately it appears recent generations are not teaching our children the same message.
Sad. That is a complete misuse of force. The cop should get fired. How dare he draw a deadly weapon on a bunch of kids.
Wonderful words. I have been checking the internet everyday hoping to find words that would give me hope. And here they are – THANK YOU SO VERY VERY MUCH!
you weak meek docile blacks need to get your minds out your a– and understand that no matter how you respond to white polices if they want to f–k with you they are going to do just that. tell me all those blacks that got shot in the back running away from white polices what disrespect could have been. are you saying these only going around disobeying white cops. what about the white cops respecting the blacks that they come in contact with. give respect get respect. these cops are suppose to be trained how to respect people. i never see where you peole talk about cops giving the people respect. every person have their breaking point.maybe these kids is set a little lower than you meek weak docile grownups.