A Chance Police Interaction On Floyd Murder Verdict Day

I was confronted by a cop while riding my bicycle yesterday.  Alright,  that sounds worse than it was, but juxtaposed, in retrospect, with it being the day the guilty verdict was announced against the Minnesota officer  in the George Floyd murder case, I found myself pondering it further during my post-ride shower. At the time this happened, I didn’t not know the outcome of the case – I do not watch television – because I had not checked my Android headlines yet, that day.

I write this with a smile and not a frown.  The officer did not turn my world upside-down when he noticed my bike was inverted – he simply wanted to help – unlike much of the banter about policing is these days.  No. Today I come down on the side that most police people really want to help – not hurt good citizens.

Oh yes, by the way, I am a black American man and this officer is Caucasian; I only mention it to accurately paint the word-picture.  I was wearing my “California Republic” kit (very stylish), my helmet, gloves and white wristbands.

My bike is relatively new, having been gifted to me by a former boss, and recently had it “tuned-up” at a local bike shop; my second time riding it since, and this day it threw the chain twice in less than a mile, when I tried to shift gears and this was the second time I had to stop.

The first thing that briefly ran through my mind when I noticed his cruiser’s police striping from the corner of my left eye was that, “Oh, here we go, he’s gonna tell me I’m not allowed to be in the parking lot of a closed business, or something…” As ridiculous as it sounds, during my six decades on earth, I’ve been told many silly rules!    However, the officer quickly dispelled that thought with his genuine concern!  He offered to help and told me about some tool he had that might assist my situation.  When I described what I was going through, the interaction conversation continued friendly, with him telling me about a biking trail and me bemoaning the lack of bike lanes and safe cycling-friendly ways to get to it, which he related to.

We could have kept conversing that day, but I was anxious to get in whatever might be left of my riding exercise and so, I tactfully flipped my bike back upright and thanked him for checking on me, (making sure I used the word “officer” in the sentence) and it was smiles all around as we continued our separate ways, on a beautiful spring afternoon in my new neighborhood. I almost extended my fist, so we could do a sanitary and manly fist-bump, but thought better, not wanting to push it.

10 Reasons Why “African American” (Black) Males Are Getting Shot By Police In America These Days

“When I say ‘Do Not Cross’, I MEAN it!”…

Have you ever noticed that the news rarely, reports of an “African-American” girl or female being “shot by police”? Why do you think this is? I offer now 10 or so reasons why the “African-American” males of the early twenty-first century are being shot by police and some of them will answer the question I posed above.

1. Child Support Laws authored and promoted by the then powerful late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was thought to be a “brilliant” and even-handed Liberal at the time whose ideas about how “minorities” (in other words black women) pimped the system by having many children on the larger (white) populace’s dime. His Welfare Overhaul ideas, enacted circa 1990, led to the current Child Support Laws and explosion of Family Courts who suddenly had more than lame divorces to adjudicate and which led to:

2. The disintegration of the traditional modern black American family thereafter, which:

3. Criminalized, disgusted and disempowered black American men (if they could not affor to pay Child Support) at about the same time that significant numbers of Caribbean (Jamaican and Haitian especially) and African immigrants began to infiltrate those of us black Americans who actually were born and raised here within the fifty states.

4. These laws emboldened women of color (and all American women, by-the-way) to have children out of wedlock (further disenfranchising the men) by removing the previous stigma of illegitimacy. This is the exact opposite effect that the Moynihan/Hillary Clinton camps desired, in my opinion; they facilitated the disintegration of the traditional American family unit! Now, these boys are growing up without the traditional male father in the home who would train them to respect authority and the role of police in society, and as soon as they encounter a situation where they might be acting-out and are “busted” doing so by the cops, they do not have that lesson in their heads that says, ‘give respect to the officer’, and that leads to the worst outcome all too often.

5. The lack of Truant Officers or as some school districts liked to call them, “Attendance Teachers”. Somewhere in the middle nineties, around the time that political correctness, spawned by the Bill Clinton Presidency, was introduced, the Truant Officer became a budgetary casualty across the nation and nobody pushed back against the decision. “Its too mean to make a kid go to school!” some must have said. I tie that into:

6. The lack of sensible and moderate Corporal Punishment and encouraging children to “report” discipline by their parents to outside agency strangers whose only agenda is a paycheck as intruders in situations whose genesis they have no clue about. There are some things better left within a family to iron-out and discipline is one of them!

7. Today’s lowered educational standards and philosophies. Are students even required to begin the day’s lessons by standing, facing our flag and reciting The Pledge of Allegiance to the United States anymore? If not, then that is another huge miscalculation of training the little wild animal beings that are our kids!

8. Television news coverage of these incidents which lack even implied educational lessons by those who report them. Where are the produced Public Service Announcements (“PSAs”) of yester year that provided the moral reminders to us all not to (“litter” for-example) do certain things in the spirit of a better community for us all? That void only leads to:

9. The “copy-cat factor”. Too many bad behavior events in today’s world are the result of acts by too many with mental illness walking amongst the larger and generally sane population, who see and hear this junk and decide to duplicate it so that they too can be “famous”. How ridiculous! However, a whole attitude about rounding-up and putting mental cases in institutions must be revisited and the clock turned back to some of the practices of the pre-politically correct era.

10. And finally, I point to excess Caribbean migration and illegal immigration which began during the Ronald Reagan Presidency and the infamous “Boat People”. I guess intercepting them and turning them back for repatriation was all a sham. What’s more is apparently these individuals were allowed into our society without mandatory schooling about how we black Americans, the descendants of American slaves, had already fought for and won our civil rights during the days of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ebonics be-damned, there is no need to re-segregate ourselves and have to riot and damage what we’ve collectively built since then – all over again.

10a. “No home training” to respect what an officer asks them to do when stopped while driving.

This is not to say that the Cops bear no responsibility for how these situations escalate, nor that teen Caucasian American males are not shot while acting-up. That segment of the population does not take to the streets to “protest” every time it happens. They more likely seek legal help (available to all of us) and work the system behind the scenes. However, in this post 9/11/2001 era of Policing in America, it is even more important not to have a close encounter with any law enforcement Officer.
**Pickhit: IMO there is a difference between “black Americans” (like me) and “African Americans”. Maybe a post for a later date?

Your thoughts or additional Reasons?