In Trying To Save And Protect The Black Man, Should We Add Him To The Endangered Species List?

Endangered Species: A group threatened with extinction or destruction. For example, Workers willing to put in overtime without extra pay are an endangered species, or with the new budget cuts, public television has become an endangered species. This expression, originally referring to species of plants or animals in danger of dying out, began in the 1980s to be extended to anything or anyone becoming rare.

At the rate at which Black men are being killed either by police officers, or just in general by same or other race of people, it may soon be necessary to add them to the Endangered Species list.

Though Black people are being killed for whatever the reason may be, the number of unarmed Black people who have been killed by the police is staggering, it almost seems like an epidemic. 

·       Huffington Post, April 4, 2018, Crime Section Headline: New York Police Fatally Shoot Unarmed Black Man on Brooklyn Street.   

·       The New York Times, March 30, 2018, Headline reads: Stephon Clark Was Shot 8 Times Primarily in His Back, Family-Ordered Autopsy Finds.  Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old unarmed man, was shot by the police in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento on March 18, 2018.

·       The Washington Post, March 24, 2018, reported of A deputy in Houston shot and killed an unarmed black man — days after Stephon Clark’s death.

Notice that there was close to one killing of an unarmed Black man by police officers per week.  Don’t for one minute believe that this is normal.  Neither one of these men were committing a crime, or carrying a weapon, or disturbing the peace.  Yet they were shot and killed by one or more police officers.

As of this writing, according to The Post’s database on fatal force, 304 people have been shot and killed by police in 2018 (it was 294 on Friday, today is Monday).   Let that sink in!   We are only in April of 2018, so be prepared to see that number rise daily.   In 2017, 987 people were fatally shot by police, 68 of them unarmed.  Of those unarmed, 30 were white, 20 were black and 13 were Hispanic. For transparency sake, let’s break this number down by Race, etc. for a moment.  

Race	No. Killed	Fleeing the Scene
		Car	Foot	Other	Not Fleeing	Undetermined
Black	60	11	13	2	30	4
Hispanic	38	5	6	3	22	2
White	124	14	18	3	83	6
Other	9	1	1	1	6	0
Unknown	59	11	9	1	32	6

According to the table above, Blacks are not No. 1 on the list, however compared to the percentage of the U.S. population, this chart shows a vast over representation of Black people killed by police officers.  Black people are trying to fight the atrocity of police officer killings by staging rallies, walkouts, etc., but there doesn’t seem to be a cry for help from other Races.  So why aren’t the other groups making any noise.  Why?

Are police officers now being hired to kill?  When did this happen?  Who signed up for this type of execution by the police?  For those who believe that these victims perhaps deserved to be killed, and that it was a “Just” kill, think that through.  Someone could be having a terrifically bad day, mental illness or some other reason and a person who is afraid for their life, (by the way, the go-to excuse,) calls a cop who is also “afraid for his life,” and without asking any questions, pulls out his gun and fires at the suspect.  And just like that — a life is taken.  

It is hard to know when police officers began thinking of themselves as Executioners.  But it’s important to know that the police have been killing Black men since the American Revolution.  Police have been using dogs, guns, hoses and batons to kill Black men for over 400 years.  On April 4, 2018, as America observed the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination, I watched clips of that time period of the hosing, the strikes with batons, the attacks by dogs on Black people as they protest the uncivilized treatments of all Black people.  These actions have been mostly replaced by guns.  Kill a Black man and retire early with your pension intact.  No worries!

Are humans, especially Blacks considered expendable?  Police officers generally say that they feared for their life when there is an officer-involved shooting.  Black men (and women) who are also afraid for their life when being approached by a police officer, are not sure what they should do to prevent an officer from shooting and killing them.  Unarmed Black men who ran toward the police (North Carolina), who ran away (South Carolina), who had their hands up (New York), who lay on the ground (Florida), who followed orders (Minnesota), and who didn’t (Oklahoma), all killed because of the police officer’s fears.  Are there any jobs where a person can kill someone on the job and claim, “I feared for my life, therefore I had to kill him” and that person gets to keep his job and/or get paid thousands of dollars and be allowed to retire?  I couldn’t think of any such job either.

So then, the motto must be “shoot first, ask questions later.”  A wise man would call these actions murder.  But it’s apparent that there are no wise men in the court of law.  Few police officers ever face trial for shooting deaths, let alone are convicted.  Therefore, police officers are almost never held accountable for killing, especially if that someone is a Black man. 

How does America fix this problem?  Perhaps it will remain a problem until the police officers who kill unarmed people are seen as who they are – the Bad Guys, and when there is no longer an implicit bias against Black guys.  When you watch a movie that depicts the good guy versus the bad guy, the bad guy usually looses (unless a sequel is in the works).  When these murderers start spending time in prison for their crime then maybe we can begin to have hope and perhaps heal.

©2018 Radiance Smith (aka Radiance Lite)