It is my categorical intention that all statements contained herein, not be construed as a rant against white killers or white law enforcers . . . far from it.
Just when the memories of George Floyd’s final moments at the knee of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin was becoming less painful, on came the trial. The significance of the May 25, 2020 killing of Floyd while in police custody became the catalyst for protests and a larger cultural conversation about racial injustice and police brutality.
Watching the trial of Derek Chauvin once again exposes old feelings, hurt and resentment, feelings that have not been felt since initial visual contact with the video of the deceased Black man begging for his life.
It is re-traumatizing and triggering.
Only in America could the police respond to separate calls for similar incidents, and have two drastically different results depending on the race of the suspect. History has shown time and time again that Black individuals accused of much less have suffered much worse fates at the hands of police.
For perspective’s sake, police killed George Floyd over nonviolent allegations surrounding a purported counterfeit $20 bill. The rules change drastically when white folks are involved. Whites the Police save—Blacks they send to their grave.
Variations of this dichotomic truth still continue to play out in real life. Robert Aaron Long, a suspected white supremacist killed eight people in three separate killings in Georgia, that had all the hallmarks of a racist attack against Asians. The mass murderer led the police on a car chase prior to his arrest but was taken into custody without incident.
Benjamin Murdy of Harford County, Maryland fired nearly 200 rounds from a rifle and a handgun, while “police never fired a single shot,” according to WMAR Baltimore. After an hour-and-a-half standoff with police, he eventually called 911 and turned himself in. Despite the evident threat Murdy posed to the arresting officers, he was taken into custody peacefully and later charged.
Roger Hedgpeth was arrested a block away from the White House after threatening to kill the president of the United States. The Florida native was armed with a sheathed knife on his left hip, and police report revealed that he told a secret service officer: “I am here to assassinate President Donald Trump. I have a knife to do it with.” Reports describe the 23-year-old individual as a “critically missing/endangered person as well as a mental health consumer.” He was taken into custody by the secret service for threatening, “to do bodily harm and possession of a prohibited weapon.”
The knife on Hedgpeth’s person had a 3-½ inch blade. He was also wearing an empty pistol holder, according to the report.
In another strikingly similar example, an armed white man allegedly shot and injured a police officer after barricading himself in a home during a contentious standoff with law enforcement The suspect managed to be peacefully arrested in North Hollywood, California, a far cry from, how Baltimore cops treated Freddie Gray before he sustained his deadly injury in the back of a police van over suspicions about a pen knife.
In the line of continuity the incident in North Hollywood came almost two weeks after a suspected double murderer, Peter Manfredonia was arrested in Maryland six days after he allegedly killed a 62-year-old man with a machete, held another man hostage, stole the hostage’s guns and vehicle, killed a former classmate, kidnapped the former classmate’s girlfriend in her car in Connecticut.
The killer also previously accused of a range of other violent crimes was safely taken into custody without the police resorting to any violence, let alone lethal force.
Not so lucky was non-violent suspects like Jacob Blake, who was unarmed when he was shot in the back multiple times at close range as he tried to enter his car in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Jerri Kelly decided the best reaction to four Black teenagers who knocked on her door while fund-raising for their high school was to pull a gun on them and keep her firearm aimed at them until police arrived. Although this blatantly racist episode that unfolded in Arkansas resulted in Kelly being arrested, it took the Wynne Police Department — which arrived on the scene to see Kelly holding the boys at gunpoint while they were forced to lie on the ground — five days to actually take her into custody.
Kelly, the wife of the local jail administrator, was arrested with tender loving care for something — if the roles were reversed — that arguably would have gotten one or all of the boys shot and killed by police.
Suspected white supremacist father-son duo Gregory and Travis McMichael was arrested and charged with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was jogging when he was killed after he was racially profiled.
The arrests of Gregory and Travis McMichaels came more than two months after they killed Arbery… a cold-blooded act that was recorded on a video that leaked on social media.
Reports state that Anthony J. Trifiletti told the Saint Paul Police Department that he saw Douglas Lewis “reaching toward his waistband as he advanced,” the supposed reason for shooting the unarmed Black driver four times at close range in an apparent fit of road rage. To worsen matters, Trifiletti tried to imply that Lewis identified himself as a gang member. However, two witnesses said they never heard Lewis say that he was “GD,” a reference to the Gangster Disciples street gang. Trifiletti, armed and dangerous, was peacefully taken into custody and charged with second-degree murder.
Nineteen-year-old Matthew Bernard shot and killed two women and a child in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. Bernard, who was naked and armed with a rifle, also choked a church caretaker and chased a police officer.
He posed such a threat to the public that seven local schools were locked down. Nevertheless, police found a way to de-escalate the situation without resorting to the type of lethal force cops often rely on when confronting Black suspects accused of far less.
Patrick Crusius, the El Paso mass shooter who is accused of killing at least 20 people, was booked without a scratch on him after his surrender for launching a racially motivated mass killing that reportedly targeted Hispanics in the Texas border city.
The mass shooting suspect, who was reportedly pro-Trump and against “race mixing,” was said to have used an AK-47 assault rifle, which should automatically consider him armed and dangerous.
However, responding law enforcement was somehow able to apprehend the heavily armed Crusius 21, and arrest him safely.
Pictures of these murderers being arrested alive stand in stark and infuriating contrast to the pictures of Black males such as Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Laquan Mc Donald, Philandro Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray and others all victims of trigger-happy law enforcement officers, also George Floyd and before him Eric Garner being body slammed to the pavement by officers and then being choked or neck kneeled on to death.
The list of similar examples literally goes on and on, serving further proof that when you are white, no matter if you gun down people at a church or even assault police officers, you can expect to be peacefully arrested or be taken to a fast food joint to sate your homicidal gastric urge en route to being booked.
Additionally, the pattern is always predictably the same in the inevitable avalanche of news clips, press reports and news features in the aftermath of their murderous attacks. White killers are described as “troubled,” “a loner,” ‘hostile,” and “no clue he was dangerous…” terms that have become the platform to dismiss Black life as less valuable and perpetuate a negative and criminal connotation in forms of micro- insults and micro-invalidations are thug, savage, gangster, hulk, animal and criminal.
Violence against Black men and women at the hands of white authority is foundational to the United States, and continues to influence its policing culture to this day. Cellphones and dashcam videos have given the world an unobstructed view of the tactics used by police when they endeavor Black males to subdue.
Testimonies during the trial of Derek Chauvin, a white police officer who killed George Floyd an unarmed Black man by pressing a knee to his neck for almost nine minutes, has once again brought to the fore, the strained race relations and a warning that Blacks can take it no more.
No Threat! No More Death!.
Aleuta—The struggle continues.
