A Different Kind of Black History Fact....(a little long)

I'm putting this post under Black History Facts because to most of the United States, that is what it will be by the time they hear about these cases and others like them. In my opinion there are  many others than the ones presented here; unfortunately, for many different reasons a lot of them are never discovered by those who would make them public and show the nation that to many police departments BLACK LIVES DON'T MATTER.

I made a statement  a while back that it "It seems like it's not white against black anymore; now it's blue against colored." (And please do not take offense at my use of the term 'colored'; it is merely a familiar way to encapsulate all those that the 'thin blue line' stands against, i.e. black/African-American, brown/Hispanic-Latino, tan/mixed race or anyone else with fairly light skin, and all the 'colors' in-between, etc.). Officers are all one shade - blue - when it comes to the violent and sometimes fatal encounters we're seeing. The videos we've seen show black officers as well as white standing there and saying nothing when the victims of these attacks occur, so it's not just the white ones! For instance, the young man in Philadelphia who is beaten by more than 10 officers; there have been many reasons given for why he was stopped so no one really knows, but what is known is that there was no reason for more than 10 officers to pull up, jump out of their cars, and run over and take a swing! In the beginning he'd already been beaten by four officers, and although he was struggling they had him on the ground! And what to me makes it really sickening, somewhere around 3:11 into the video you see a black cop milling around in the group who at no time says anything against what is happening. SMH. Sad.

Sadder still? What happens to a black, female cop who does speak up? Cariol Horne knows. She was hit by another officer, and then fired because supposedly she jumped on an officer's back and hit him with her hands to stop him from hitting a handcuffed suspect. The worst thing? Even the officer she was supposed to have done that to gave a sworn statement that it never happened!

That is only the tip of the iceberg. In Googling the subject of  'How many black women have been killed in jail after being arrested?' as well as 'How many white women' etc. I found out some very interesting things, not least among them the fact that when you search for the latter, in the first three pages of Search Results there was no mention of any white females! Instead of no results being found though, the pages found were those trumpeting headlines about Sandra Bland's death.

When you search for the former however, the results are very different. Some of what I found:

     At Least Five Black Women Found Dead in Jail Since Mid-July.

Why haven't we heard this being blasted from every major news outlet in the country? Who are these women that have been arrested and found dead?

1. 44 year old Raynetta Turner, arrested for shoplifting
2. Sandra Bland, stopped for not signaling a lane change
3. Kindra Chapman, arrested for stealing a cell phone
4. Joyce Curnell, arrested for shoplifting
5. Ralkina Jones, arrested for a domestic dispute

All of these women were black, and all five were found dead in jail cells. Does that strike anyone else as being a bit odd, that in the space of about three weeks, five women died in police custody, some in suspicious circumstances? Even though they were all in different jurisdictions, it does to me...

And to make matters worse, I also found this:

• A campus security officer shoots a man in the back of his head while he is behind the wheel of his car, then says the man dragged him down the street with the car, which is why he shot him.
• 57 year old man stopped for not completely stopping at a stop sign is put in a choke hold, hit in the head 16 times, and tased 3 times.

But still, after all that, there are those people who claim that there is nothing unusual going on in this country as far as the violence against people of color by police officers. 

“Poor are those who have eyes but cannot see..." 

                                                                   ― Luis Marques, Kemet - The Year of Revelation