Black Non-Violence

Only Spoiled White Americans,

Most Notably Police

Do any of you recall some kid named Malcolm-something trying to take a plane to Iran last week, and getting arrested? And Mary J. Blige was playing his grandmother in a TV movie of some kind, and all this was upstaged by a brother going on a shooting spree. Seriously, LAPD Officers can’t stop being dumb cops even while in the midst of trying to find someone who is targeting them. That in itself is a testament to how deeply corrupt they are. Sadly, it took two women getting shot, two women delivering some newspapers. Black, white and red all over.

Before the siege on Dorner, many of you probably missed that the LAPD Chief of Police immediately admitted publicly that the shooting of the newspapers ladies was probably a case of mistaken identity. No sign of cover-up or overly-officious speeches about “waiting for all the facts to come in.”

Of course “waiting for all the facts to come in” actually means “waiting for us to get all our lies together.” Several questions arise in the aftermath of the hunt for former-LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner; does this on any level mean there will be changes for the better regarding the racist policies of the LAPD and ultimately police agencies around the country? Do we need 500 more Officer Dorners? Did most of Dorner’s targets have it coming? Dorner is really the black man that white grandfathers warned their children about, who rarely ever existed, but whites know deep-down-inside should have. There used to be an old saying, “Blondes have more fun.” White American police officers have always had more fun than blondes; they just can’t put that in an ad.

Consider that most white police officers don’t like sensitivity or cultural training, no fun. Consent Decrees, no fun. Videotaped footage of them manifesting their bad attitudes, no fun. Town hall meetings regarding them, no fun. Having to arrest white criminals, no fun. In fact some white officers will openly admit this to you once you buy them a couple rounds after happy hour. Other than drinking, what else do a large segment of white cops like? The 3 Bs; bullets, brass knuckles, and batons. One more thing they do NOT like, considering black officers their fellow officers. This dark frat-like brotherhood has little or no tolerance for the darkest people wearing their dark para-military uniforms. This of course brings us back to Christopher Dorner. Not a “Django” as some journalists and social network bloggers have tagged him. Django was a former slave, but never ever a fellow slave-owner. Compare him to “Skyfall.” Like the crazed villain of the last James Bond movie; Raoul Silva, Dorner was once one of them, returned to attack his own agency.

White Americans in general live in a world created by their ancestors for them, by laws written by them. Not to mention policies written and unwritten. White law enforcement officers and officials have been the biggest beneficiaries of those laws and policies. In this world they created, the law that states their job description; “To Protect and Serve,” has been trumped by their policy of “whoever naturally reacts to our treachery will be construed as evil and therefore scorned.” That’s an awful lot of power.

Dorner served in one of the nation’s most infamous precincts, even after having undergone reform, bad seeds were manifesting themselves among left-over and new officers on his beat. Dorner wouldn’t even allow them to say the N-word in general conversation between each other if within his earshot. Police and their reporters are having a hard time trying to lump Dorner in with Colin Ferguson or John Muhammad, much more so someone along the lines of an Adam Lana. Too many fingers black and white pointing back at them. Dorner served in a department far more racist than the US Military, he dared to intervene when a white female officer - Teresa Evans (now a Sgt.) - repeatedly kicked a mentally-ill suspect. White female officers piggybacked off the same affirmative-action laws that black civil rights leaders pushed into being. In spite of her record of bad behavior it was Dorner who was fired.

There are a lot of whites around the country who simply can’t figure out, or pretend they can’t figure out why a lot of blacks aren’t pulling out their crying towels over Dorner’s victims. That’s how far gone they are from ever understanding us. Today Christopher Dorner is a murderer; yesterday he was a real cop, an honest cop. We shouldn’t have to live in a world where the words “honest cop” go together as if it’s a term that’s the exception to the rule. This is a man who once turned in $8,000 of church money into the police. That’s free shakedown money, free bribe money from the standpoint of the LAPD. For a church pastor, it’s a down-payment on a new Cadillac. As of now, how they wish he had turned in his bullets.

Dorner gave us the unthinkable - a first time glimpse of a black man profiling some bad police officers and even their families. Lives will be forever changed by his action. Do not fall for those reports of the LAPD re-opening the case of his firing. Consider it desperation, a prayer from Copland that he turn himself in based on false promises. This may have worked were Dorner insane. His manifesto and hunting down his former fellow officers like “niggers” was planned from way back. Call this the Hate that Hate Produced pt.2, charging him with murder and attempted murder before he is arrested is more in line with their natural thought-process. Captain Phil Tingirides did not leave his home after hearing what Dorner had skillfully done to the daughter of former LAPD Captain Randall (Randy) Quan, and having him named in his manifesto (I’m not sure if he has come out even after the fire-bombing). In fact reportedly several officers and their families have been sequestered in their homes since then. Odd behavior for a bunch of guys normally flocking to crime-scenes and over-zealous suspect pursuits. Just think about that for a minute. Members of the big bad former Ramparts Precinct imposing a sentence of home-confinement... on themselves... over a fear of one black man. 50 more Christopher Dorners among the nation’s police forces could change policy, 500 more could outright turn it upside down.

During and after the Dorner ordeal, several more black LA-area law enforcement officers have stepped forward to acknowledge that they know completely well what Dorner went through. Hindsight is 187/187. All big city black police officers need to form a coalition in their respective cities so they can collectively combat racism, and welcome-in, brief and support newly-hired young black officers. There is a history of this being done, and quite effectively. It’s desperately needed just as much today as it was yesterday. Why? Another former police officer calls it reciprocity. Theodore (Ted) Kirkland had a book published last year that details much of the things that Dorner outlines in his manifesto. The precincts Kirkland worked were some 3,000 miles away from Los Angeles, in Buffalo NY, but his book, Spirit and Soul: Odyssey of a Black Man in America should be not just required reading for police academies nationwide, it should be mandated as a study-guide for aspiring officers white and black. Spirit and Soul was on my mind throughout this whole Dorner affair, Kirkland feels Buffalo Police is more racist than the military, and he served in both. Two weeks before his academy training was over he heard rumors that he would be assigned to undercover and what would be expected of him: “We (Blacks) are supposed to arrest Blacks, while the Italians who bring drugs into the Black community are ignored” said Hughes (a black narcotics detective).”

This was just the tip of the iceberg in the early ’60s Buffalo Police Academy training: “But racism was also taught at the academy. It was built into the training material, lectures, and the manner in which material was presented to the trainees. On the pistol range, black silhouette targets were used... Taggert (the only other black in his academy training) and I were often talked down to or not spoken to at all, as if invisible. Racism was blatantly shown in the training films, slides, old criminal case materials, and newspaper clippings that was used to resource material. This material disproportionately portrayed blacks as the more likely to commit the more horrific crimes. Through visuals and the other materials, the trainees were brainwashed into seeing Blacks as the enemy, the pariahs of the criminal element, and the most perilous people they would confront as police officers.” Through this training many in the Buffalo Police Department (BPD) became possibly that town’s biggest liability. Kirkland joined a precinct located in the Polish section of town dubbed “The Bloody Eight” and according to him not one officer had extended his hand to welcome him. Of course the existence of internal racism in many police departments can’t be denied, all whites aren’t racists, but white people know white people. Dorner’s statements however are receiving confirmation from an unexpected source that’s been all-too-silent over the decades.

Over the course of the past week several African American officers have come forward (One even went so far as to say it’s not the criminals causing them stress, it’s the department) and disclosed to the media that they understand what Dorner has gone through because they themselves went through it. Initially you, as I, may have been tempted to ask what took them so damn long, but look at it from the standpoint of the white officers who were being portrayed as risking their lives to save the people of Los Angeles and Big Bear Lake (while needlessly shooting at motorists and incinerating property) and you’ll realize what they did was downright radical. Each of these black officers went through Dorner-like ordeals, each situation could have been much better for them if the black officers would have just closed ranks and organized. Unfortunately Spirit and Soul shows this is nothing new: “Black officers had no camaraderie or unity; they were as separate as the fingers on my hand. In the plants where I worked, there was a sense of identity among blacks; they were conscious of the racism around them and of white supremacy... whereas black police officers seemed aloof, afraid of being identified with their own and with Black causes particularly.” You make up your own mind as to how far or little blacks have come. It is inescapable that white officers take all the blame when black law enforcement opt for such racially-evasive stances while constantly surrounded by racist, organized white lions.

The blue line can no longer be used as an excuse for white cops bent on violating the black line. People who say “there were other ways of dealing with this” are forgetting he had been there and done that. Dorner took his grievance to what is strangely called the Board of Rights from within the department including two of Evans close friends. This is really an issue of manhood to disregard such obvious complaints and expect blacks to just take it, put up with it, while whites go skipping along happily-ever-after.