Policing in America is, and has been, separate and tragically unequal. Policing in America is broken.
I'm not excusing black on black gun violence, almost exclusively carried out by young, untrained and undereducated black men on each other. I'm talking about trained, professional police officers who, time and time again, upon encountering a black man in the routine of their professional duties, are so overcome with fear they discharge their weapon and murder.
And then, like clockwork, the Blue Wall of Silence. Police across the nation close ranks and make excuses for one of their own's gross and lethal malpractice. Not recognizing negligence in one of your own, or, worse, ignoring it when you see it, is not only the definition of unprofessionalism but makes you an accessory to the next murders by fellow officers.
The Blue Wall of Silence is tarring the vast majority of good officers with the despicable shame of the racist, unprofessional and cowardly few cops murdering men who look like me and my son.
Good cops have to push back loud and hard and demand the swiftest and sternest of judgements against those who tarnish the rest of them. Good cops need to redefine policing again as protecting and serving those in need, not fining the most indigent or bullying the most helpless.
Stop and Frisk and "routine" traffic stops give license to police bad actors to hunt and harass black citizens. In the bad cop's mind view, at worst the officer writes a ticket and generates revenue for his municipality, at best, already assuming the black citizen is in some way criminalized, the officer uses the stop as an excuse to make an arrest and is then praised and possibly promoted by his supervisor.
For the bad, cowardly cop, the mere blackness of the citizens' skin triggers such near panic that one of their first responses should be, by their training, their very last.
I wanted to see how Fox News would spin the murders in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, but didn't expect to see Mark Fuhrman, yes that Mark Fuhrman, the n-word enthusiast, and, I came to realize, Fox News' paid resident expert on policing. To hear him, deadpan, make excuses for sloppy, cowardly police work that ended in the murder of yet another black man made me wince, but hearing supposedly slightly centrist Megyn Kelly tee up softballs for him to spew his hate literally turned my stomach.
The Blue Wall of Silence is aided by a Fox machine that reinforces inherent black criminality. In their world, cops can do no wrong and blacks no right.
Both of them have blood on their hands today.