Mr. Trump, standing in a City where last April a White officer shot a black man several time while he was unarmed and fleeing, said police are the most mistreated people in America.
Mr. Donald Trump, who once suggested that anyone who kills a police officer should get the death penalty, last night during the first Republican Presidential debate of 2016 said that police are the most mistreated people in this country.
Mr. Trump – standing in the City where last April Mr. Michael Slager, a white police officer, shot Mr. Walter Scott, a black man, in the back several times while he was unarmed and fleeing and then planted his Taser on Mr. Scott to keep up appearances with the false story that was impending – uttered nothing about the mistrust and tension between police and the communities of color they serve, a problem not germane to South Carolina, but one that permeates throughout the nation.
Unsure of whether African-Americans are overly racially profiled by police, Mr. Trump on this subject has always been off-center. But the comment made last night only further proved that not only is Mr. Trump out-of-touch with reality, he’s not the person who can put forth strategies to rebuild the fractured relationship between police and communities.
Pro-cop and anti-Black Lives Matter, Mr. Trump may not be racist, but he’s surely racially insensitive. At a time where grotesque videos of police killing people of color who pose no real threat go viral almost daily, the bombastic billionaire has remained silent on widespread police misconduct and institutional racism.
And the viral videos, in most cases, are the only reasons cops who stray off-course are caught in the act of malfeasance, as the word of citizens, when compared to statements given by officers, hold little-to-no weight.
The most mistreated people in this country are anyone but police officers. In fact, one could argue, given the paucity of civilian oversight agencies and special prosecutors who investigate fatal officer-involved shootings of unarmed citizens, that police are the most trusted and regarded employees of government. They’re given massive power and authority with little checks and balances in place to ensure they don’t abuse it.
When Mr. Trump says police officers are mistreated, he’s referring to the last two years or so where the policing profession has come under great scrutiny, causing some cops, who fear becoming the next headline or YouTube sensation, to resist doing their jobs, a phenomenon titled ‘The Ferguson Effect.’
Before Mr. Michael Brown, a black teen, was shot multiple times in 2014 by Mr. Darren Wilson, a white man and former Ferguson police officer, the policing profession was rarely the subject of the national debates and conversation. It was, however, the subject of conversation in urban neighborhoods, where police brutality and misconduct has long been the norm.
African-Americans in particular have often complained about the use of force that’s applied to them, even when they’ve done nothing wrong. The punitive approach by police officers towards the black body has long been the subject of stand-up comedy routines, sitcoms, and movies by African-Americans.
It’s the mainstream media who has ignored this problem for as long as they could, and when they couldn’t keep the controversy out of the public eye any longer, they portrayed the problem as a new phenomenon, and even then, media makers and pundits debated whether the problem is as severe as many made it out to be, and whether race is the cause for it.
Mr. Trump speaks without knowledge of history and awareness of the present. At best, he’s a provocateur, at worst, a buffoon.
CLICK HERE to listen to ‘Why the Black Vote Matters,’ a podcast from The Dr. Vibe Show featuring a panel of black male thought-leaders, including the co-founder of the ‘Vote or Die’ movement.
Keep a look out in January 2016 for a NPR Music documentary starring Grammy Award-Winner Mr. Christian McBride and co-starring Mr. Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris.
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
“University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period.” But hey… let’s keep the rage on police why don’t we? As a black man you’re far more likely to be killed by another black man than police. I didn’t… Read more »