The verdict is not correction, change, or a rectifying methodology when systemic deadly actions harm and kill without justification.
And yes, it’s about the police!
This is what has occurred with “qualified immunity,” a.k.a “the powerful invisible blue wall,” and a system founded to protect the rights of people with the least amount of melanin.
The following has occurred and is still occurring…over and over.
The jury sat and listened.
Or were they already biased from the six o’clock, three-minute, top-of-the-hour prime-time, no-time-to-lose news.
The media pressed ears, pens, and lenses, like noses to a line of doubled tracked snowflakes of powdered coke waiting for the fizz.
The deadline jazz of racing to the scoop of a good story, the horror story, guaranteed to raise the advertising dollars and eyeball viewing ratings; aiming at the dart-board bullseye of a Pulitzer Prize. Not the belief, passion, empathy, or the story; rather, the words of ego, emotion, and recognition.
The judge of literal conservative law oversaw the courtroom.
The prosecution pled its case and dug a big 6-foot graveyard via TV, assuring the maximum punishment or sentence against one of its own. An appeal is guaranteed.
Caught mooning but bare for what was accepted and never questioned: the switch from the tree hanging to a choke hold knee lynching with no reprieve, only death.
The defense spoke for the accused, alleged defendant knowing there was no escape. The ordeal was caught on tape and traveled round the world faster than an orbiting star.
The victim’s family cried, grieved, and begged for justice.
What was going to be fixed?
Nothing!
Transformative change? “No. Not at this time.”
Not the right time.
Maybe the next time.
Hope says, “You will see.”
Increased awareness, fear, anger, tears, anxiety, depression.
Four hundred years, unchained and still beaten to the ground under the dirt of the unholy soiled souls of an inhumane man.
Or was it a grab of revenge, retaliation, primal hateful response?
The court of public global opinion would sentence only one sacrificial lamb to save the face of the past, present, and future offending maintainers trained by legacy to carry on traditions and customs that barred and restricted blacks, women, immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, and LGBTQ from equity to just plain be and live.
The jury sat, pondered, followed the instructions of the court and rendered its verdict. One person, one price; the rest of the oppressive trained to do “that” go free.
That is change, nor transformation, nor justice. Everything stays the same and as the last year has shown it is a repeat of many repeats of authorized legalized practices of systemic oppressive abusive treatment and criminalization. The verdict that makes a change evolve; that is the people’s prerogative. It’s time we relieve, change, and guarantee the end of such inhumanity.
We should listen to the NAACP’s discussion on accountability.
Eighteen thousand police forces training officers generically in the same curriculum, needs to change. Let your elected officials hear from you. Pass the legislation to rewrite and reform the responsibility and the accountability of the police, including holding police chiefs and government officials responsible for misguided leadership and ineffective oversight.
Get busy. Start calling. Now.
