By Rika Tyler and T-Dubb-O
It’s been almost a year since our fallen brethren Michael Brown Jr. was fatally shot in Canfield Apartments in Ferguson, Mo. by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.
Wilson got rich, famous, and a vacation after killing Mike Brown, a phenomenon that is occurring all too often across the U. S. In fact, an MXGM (Malcolm X Grassroots Movement) study has reported that every 28 hours a Black person is killed by police. Accountability is the key. Accountability is the answer.
As you may remember, Wilson was not indicted and the community of the Saint Louis and Saint Louis County Region still suffers for it. Ferguson’s response sparked a movement and uprising from people of different congregations, ethnicities, genders, and ages nationwide to stand up against this system and be a voice for Black, brown, and oppressed people.
Since the killing of Michael Brown, there have been numerous similar killings and then protests, rallies, direct actions, and more. Yet it will not stop. From private attorneys to the Department of Justice, there have been several investigations of shootings of unarmed African-Americans; yet we still cannot fully attain the transparency or accountability that we deserve from police officers. Ferguson is still everywhere if you’re Black.
Therefore, we must start moving in a way to create our own narrative. This means doing our own investigations of these incidents involving officers, who are sworn to protect and serve us. The system itself also needs investigating.
In other words, we need policies that establish accountability. Accountability by police would mean them taking responsibility, being liable and answerable for these travesties of justice. Looking at what accountability actually means, can we as a nation say our police departments are truly held accountable for their fumbling of community relationships?
The constant mistakes, bad judgement, racist motives and lack of transparency would result in immediate termination in any other fields in this country. Why don’t normal morals and human standards apply to police officers?
They tell us police have the right to make it home. Well shouldn’t every citizen in this country have the right to make it home? Or how about the right to be able to sleep in your home and not be killed due to reckless gun fire by police like 7-year-old Aiyana Jones who was killed by Detroit police during a raid at her home. Final charges against Joseph Weekley, the cop who shot her, were dismissed early this year.
We must hold these officers accountable. In the Saint Louis Region there have been at least 10 more police involved killings since Michael Brown Jr. which happened in August of 2014. Around the nation, there are too many names to name with similar circumstances with no transparency and no justice in the system: Kimberly Randall King, Vonderritt Myers Jr., Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and more recently Freddie Gray of Baltimore.
Fortunately there are indictments of the officers in the Freddie Gray case, but for the most part around the country, there is currently no way to hold these departments accountable. It seems as if they run the nation and we serve them instead of the other way around.
During protests in Ferguson, municipalities established many unconstitutional rules. For example, they refused to wear name badges even after the Department of Justice said they were legally obligated to do so. They refused to identify themselves. They continued to use illegal unnecessary force against citizens. Ferguson Police officers even issued a five-second rule stating that a person could be subject to arrest if they stood still for longer than five seconds while protesting. A federal court ruled against it. Yet, police officers are still on the normal predator policing tactic.
The Department of justice released a report confirming all the racial targeting that the Ferguson police department practiced against people of color and oppressed people in general. Yet, police still use shoot first tactics because there is no one holding them accountable. Ferguson is still everywhere if you are Black.
T-Dubb-O, a Hip-Hop artist, is a director for Hands Up United, a grass roots organization building towards the liberation of oppressed Black, Brown and Poor people through education, art, civil disobedience, advocacy and agriculture.
Rika Tyler, a community organizer and advocate for children, is a program director of Hands Up United. She works to ensure programs are aligned to serving the community of Ferguson and the Greater St. Louis area.
This article is second of an op-ed series on behalf of the Civil Rights Coalition on Police Reform. The coalition, convened and led by national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, is comprised of over 30 national civil and human rights organizations, faith and community leaders working to address the nationwide epidemic of police brutality and lethal shootings, claiming the lives of Black men, women and youth; and provide necessary reforms to change the culture of policing in America. For more information, please visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.
 study has reported that every 28 hours a Black person is killed by police. The Department of justice released a report confirming all the racial targeting that the Ferguson police department practiced against people of color and oppressed people in general.){kind=link}
Understanding the passion required to harness a change I get young people’s desire to create movement. I do not however condone inciting people with untruths and exaggerations to to further a cause. Legally you and the paper are responsible for the words you print so if a death comes by those words you might BE CERTAIN you are not self serving. The cause is not TRUE if you make up facts to get it!FACT CHECK URL=http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-killed-police/19423
Of those killed by police, 32 percent are black and 64 percent are white.
‘A black man is killed in the US every 28 hours by police’
Not exactly. The figure comes from this unofficial and unashamedly partisan report by a black nationalist organisation, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
The data is a collection well-known cases usually reported by local media. The group claims 313 black people were killed in 2012 by “someone employed or protected by the US government”.
But not all the killers are police officers, or even government employees. They include shop workers, private security guards and members of the public.
In one case, a 13-year-old girl was shot dead by two school friends who found a gun in an off-duty policeman’s car.
You would have to look carefully at the circumstances of every killing before deciding that every one was an example of police racism.
A guest editorial reflects someone’s opinion. But I have no objection to sharing the corrected truth.
Kim Milbauer;
You write as if you have serious reservation about the validity of the problem of police misconduct although you claim to “get young people’s desire to create movement”. It sounds like you think young people just want to have fun doing something – as long as it is movement of some kind. Then you start into some mess indicating your thoughts about legalities if something the paper printed caused a death…so much for that line…And at one point, you make it rather clear that you think the article is lying. You mention a little info about the statistics of murders. Among those is that a black person is killed every twenty eight hours by the police. You take time to attempt refutation of that point by mentioning the source of the info as if the information is wrong just because of the source you say it came from. Then you act like you think the data is not good – although you have no real proof. And finally you seem to think that the article is trying to say that all killings of black people by police are examples of police racism. And I will stop with these matters.
I will agree that police killings that show police racism are to be fought against although this doesn’t seem to be a clear contention of the article. Your statement would seem more trustworthy if it included some of the other points within the article you referenced like “young men aged 15 to 19″…”are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police”. Or for instance; black people are three times as likely to be killed by police as are white people.
After reviewing your statement and the article your referenced, you are not as interested in fixing the problem as much as you are in defending the police – whether they are wrong or right. And I defend the police – only when they are right. They should be treated like any other citizen when they commit crimes. They should deal with all members of the public without regard to differences like race, class, etc. We need to spend more money on the police so that they receive the kind of training necessary to do the job that is required. I don’t mean raise their pay. I mean train them so that they are not bullies and murderers with guns and tasers. They should serve and protect the people. They fail to do that far too often.