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Registered: 08-2006
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posticon Interesting Commentary on "Knucklehead Culture" (I just said its interesting, dag)


Commentary: Is ‘Knucklehead Culture’ Contributing to Incidents with Police That Invariably End Badly?
Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2006
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Already, I’m wondering if knucklehead culture killed Sean Bell as surely as New York City’s finest did.

This past weekend, Bell and a few of his friends decided to celebrate his last night of bachelorhood at a New York City strip club. The 23-year-old had finally decided to marry his high school sweetheart and the mother of his two daughters, so he was having a sinful send-off before settling into the responsibilities of family life.

Tragically, Bell’s last night of bachelorhood turned out to be his last night on Earth. He was killed in a hailstorm of more than 50 bullets fired by police officers who were patrolling the nightclub. According to police and other sources quoted in The New York Times, an undercover officer who overheard a dispute between Bell’s group and another group of men believed that one group was leaving the club with plans to return with a gun. So the undercover officer -- who reportedly identified himself as NYPD -- confronted Bell and his friends.

But instead of complying, police said, Bell drove his car into one of the officers and into an unmarked police van. That prompted the police to unleash the barrage of bullets that killed Bell and wounded two of his friends.

Let me put a pin in right about here.

I know that details of what happened that night are still trickling out. But firing more than 50 bullets to stop some guys who only had the clumsiness of a car rather than the keenness of a firearm at their disposal as a weapon strikes me as extreme.

It’s also clear that what the officers did was in violation of department policy -- or at least the spirit of the policy. According to the Times, NYPD officers are trained to fire no more than three shots before stepping back to assess a situation, and they are largely banned from firing at vehicles.

I also believe that the Rev. Al Sharpton and other activists are right to demand answers. After all, the memory of Amadou Diallo -- a West African immigrant who was shot 41 times back in 1999 after police though he was reaching for a gun when he was reaching for his wallet -- is still fresh in their minds. Spraying black suspects with bullets and asking questions later seems to be SOP for the NYPD.

Yet at the same time, we ought to be asking why we have allowed our communities and our culture to deteriorate to the point where we need so many police hanging around in the first place -- especially when they are largely there to protect us from each other. We ought to be asking ourselves what we can do about a culture in which petty disputes easily evolve into gunfire and violence.

That’s knucklehead culture. It’s that culture that now forces us to invite too many police officers, along with their fears and prejudices, into our lives. To me, we also need to be just as concerned about the climate that feeds that culture as well as the one that feeds police brutality.

It’s a culture that abounds in too many black neighborhoods.

Now, up until the time Bell was alleged to have tried to run over the police in his car, it seems he was trying to escape all that. Even though he had been arrested four times, he had talked of leaving New York to escape the violence, and to maybe even resume his efforts at a professional baseball career.

I hate that he died before he got a chance to do that.

Yet one of the things that killed Bell was an environment in which all too often, young black males react to each other by grabbing a gun. It’s an image cultivated in movies and music; one that makes black males loom more as predators than ever before. And the thing to understand is that once police are put in that environment, they are focused less on sensitivity and more on trying to get a situation under control.

Unfortunately, their definition of control can vary widely, based on the degree of fear and stereotypes that may rule them at the moment. In the case of Bell, they apparently thought control meant firing more than 50 bullets.

That’s scary.

Now, I’m not saying that police don’t have a duty to not overreact when it comes to the use of deadly force. What I am saying, though, is that I have no confidence in them to do so -- because it keeps happening.

That’s why I believe that while it’s important to raise questions about the improper use of deadly force, I also believe it’s time for us to work on more ways to tamp down the knucklehead culture and violence in our communities so as to require fewer police to look out for us. Because as long as some of us continue to disrespect each other’s lives and drive up crime rates by picking up a gun at the slightest insult, the police aren’t going to respect our lives either.

And no one will be any safer.


---
Life is simple, we make it difficult.


12/1/2006, 12:13 am Link to this post Send Email to 7Akil   Send PM to 7Akil Yahoo
 
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Re: Interesting Commentary on "Knucklehead Culture"


Just to be fair and balanced:

It Needs To Be CED: Them Damn Cops!
by Big Ced of Theindustrycosign


It seems like all I have to do is place this on the site every 3 months or so and it will ring true. What makes it even worse is that it’s been going on for so long that I am not the least bit surprised. One of my fears is that it will be me that it happens to next. Excessive firing at an unarmed Black man, they make it seem as if it is a right of a police officer to use excessive force when dealing with Blacks. If this were an isolated incident, we would look at it differently. Is it a natural fear of a Black man that causes even Black and Latino cops to react like their white counterparts?

As a Black man having been stopped to many times to count (in just this year alone!), I can say that I am ALWAYS fearful for my life because of a police officer’s ‘assumption’ that I may be a criminal. Nowadays, it’s not about a description anymore (As in, ‘You fit the description of……’, this was the phrase I’ve heard ever since I got my license), it’s about either a look or skin color. I just happen to match both, being dark-skinned and wearing ‘Hip-Hop’ attire which means automatically that I am engaged in some type of illegal activity. In fact, the last time I was stopped with 3 other ‘types’, we were illegally taken out of my car, illegally searched while my car was being treated the same way, as they had no right or reason to go into, not only my vehicle, but my glove compartment, which, any law enforcement official should know, is a no-no, grounds for dismissal, if indeed something illegal is found! But, growing up Black AND in New York City, it’s a shame, but you just learn to deal with it as it is a way of life. Go figure!

I have NEVER seen ANY police officer, pursue aggressively, white men when they are in fact being rowdy. They approach cautiously with a ‘let’s take it easy’ attitude. But when dealing with Minorities, it’s a ‘My way or the get beatdown way’ mindset. You can look back to earlier this year when the riot in Crown Heights (Brooklyn, NY) happened and see how the Jews were treated, as if they had done no wrong and they were very peaceful. There were videos of people throwing garbage cans, spitting at police and acting very ‘unfriendly’, yet, there were no arrests or injuries reported. If that was Harlem and involved Black people, there would have been several deaths, numerous injuries and police swinging batons and firing shots into the crowd.

There is never an excuse to firing so many shots when none are fired at you. I have been stopped and when I ask for identification from undercover officers, some, no, most never show me their badge. I am sure when and if they approach whites, they are very respectful, badges showing and carrying out everything by the letter of the law. Maybe it’s a fault for not complaining or lodging complaints with the police force. I have always said that when we are mistreated we need to file formal complaints the way the whites and Jews do. You will NEVER see them treat and harass them the way we are harassed.

The first step is to make those accountable for their actions. How can the police force judge its own and be fair? History shows that when the police are involved, they are usually right, ESPECIALLY when dealing with Blacks. We are always viewed as being stupid, lazy and criminal. We need to show outrage EVERYTIME something like this happens. Try that !@#$ in Crown Heights or any predominantly white or Jewish neighborhood and see what happens to the offending law breakers, cause that’s what those officers became when they killed that unarmed, non-breaking a law Black man. And that idiot, Detectives’ Endowment Association President Michael Paladino had the nerve to say ‘If the driver of the vehicle had responded to the detective’s command this would not have happened’. What is wrong with this guy? Do you have to be a dick to become president of his organization? If you have any men approaching you with guns shooting and not identifying themselves as law enforcement, are you supposed to just stop and allow them to keep shooting?

---
Life is simple, we make it difficult.


12/4/2006, 1:23 pm Link to this post Send Email to 7Akil   Send PM to 7Akil Yahoo
 


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