We bear witness to one of the craziest dichotomies in the history of this country. We have a large, well funded, often criminal, organization that seems to exist to oppress all non white peoples populated now with Black Kings. Not Black Officers, but Black Kings. These are the good cops, one of which is a member of U.I. These are the brothers that are in uniform on video giving it to you raw. There’s a few vids out there. YouTube has quite a few. Twitter has many.

To me there are two types of Afrikan police officers. One is characterized by an almost instinctive desire to fit in. He sees nothing. He is part of the group. For example, the young black officer who shot Brother Afrika in L.A. Now we find out he pressed his pistol into this guys chest, after you tased him and shot his heart out the other side. Not point blank, mind you, skin contact. If this goes criminal I’m interested to see if white AmeriKKKa get behind this brother like they got behind Tensing’s ass.

The other is characterized as the brother that knows that if he and others were not there, our oppression would have no defenders at all. They are in the loop but outsiders because they don’t allow bullshit around them. They are not many but they are there. They don’t get the top assignments. They are not out in the street. They are not around the high profile shootings. They make it known even on Social Media that they won’t stand for foolishness around them. They however cannot move against their department because they were not witnesses to the high profile killings.

Can you imagine what it must be like to be a Black King around a bunch of folks that you KNOW are racist but there is little you can do about it. What are you going to do, report something that we already know? Think about the structure of the modern police department in this country. They ALL have major Internal Affairs Divisions, where are they when departments across the country are paying settlements to victims and their families in the hundreds of MILLONS of dollars. Why are you there if you are not going to fire a bad officer on the spot, when something like this happens. What purpose do you serve when you are part of the wagons that circle around a fatal police/citizen encounter? Some jurisdictions allow officers to view evidence and testimony PRIOR to giving a statement about the events that led to the death of [insert name of dead, mangled, assaulted, raped, battered, and arrested person you either know or have heard of]. We hear about the high profile deaths but look at the thousands of cases that didn’t end in death but just general fuckedupness. You know, broken limbs, noses, eye sockets, ruptured spleens, concussions, paralysis, etc. etc.

This shit is real in the paint to MANY black officers in police forces big and small. What can they do? Remember, nails are meant to be hammered. They risk their careers if they stand up too straight. They can easily go from part of the group to outsider targeted by the group. None are cowards but they KNOW better than anyone what a large, militarized police force can do to one or even a small group of them. (Ask those Parole Officers that were surrounded by police with guns drawn. One wrong move and they could have been dead) They are NOT a joke. That’s pressure.

We all would like to say what we would do if we were in their shoes. These are the same people that usually argue about what they would do if they were in Obama’s shoes. But you’re not in their shoes, so you can’t say what you would do. You don’t know. So I feel for these brothers. They have seen with their own eyes good officers leave because of the pressure, both black and white. Some assume that all black officers are like unfeeling agents in all this. Like they don’t have family. Like they don’t have friends in the hood. Imagine you are a Black King. You hear about a white officer killing a young unarmed black man. You come to find that the deceased is a childhood friend of yours. That white officer has not connection to that brother at all. He’s a target. Put the brother in the same situation. He may do the same thing but here’s the twist, that young brother was armed. He did what he should do as an officer, he neutralizes the threat. Somehow though he is expected to shoot to wound, you didn’t have to kill him. But the same people will line up to forgive white killers of blacks.

Think about how that young man may be his childhood friend’s son. Think about all the ones that you don’t hear about. A young brother is wanted for a double homicide. You are a black cop, you know that more than likely that young man is probably dead. They are sending the SWAT team to get him. You are just support. The first in the door is going to be SWAT, just the opposite of what you see on the television shows. The heroic white cop doesn’t kick the door in with SWAT behind him or her. When the SWAT team goes in they looking to kill something. If we get you alive, oh well that’s cool too. You know what’s going down and it ain’t shit you can do about it.

Think about the fact that you are in the midst of madness and trying your best to save some of these crash test dummies but it seems futile. The only black officers getting press are the ones stealing on folks and doing stupid shit. Your community picnic got no press. Your thing at the barber shop. No one heard about it. You patrol a war zone and no matter what you do you rarely see change. You know why a lot of these drive bys in Chicago are so called unsolved? Because the shooter is already in jail for some OTHER stupid shit. You link him to the crime and two years later when he comes for sentencing, no one will remember. After all, he shot Keisha and her baby. If he would have shot Kate and her baby, he’d be on CNN. That’s the life you chose when you a Black King that happens to be police officer like I happen to be an aspiring writer.

Think about that. Why are you a cop???? You can’t win. No matter what you do, you’re wrong, you’re underappreciated but you get up everyday and go do that shit anyway.

And very few give you props for that.

That’s crazy. If shit really get bad folks. Don’t just expect black officers to ride with the government. They have families. This ain’t the Vietnam War. This aint the gulf war. These new kids are a bit more aware that other generations were. They will think about their families. Both Black and White. Many of them know that no matter what they are the minority. They can’t win, they are less than one percent to the population. They can do the math. They are going to look out for theirs, believe that. Its not going to be the popular view of them against us. Its actually going to be everyone against everyone. They going home to their kids, trust me on that.

Fuck the police is all good as a saying but who do you want to arrest these bad cops??? The police. Who you want to investigate all this black on black crime???? The police. Who you want to supervise the local police departments????? The bigger police. Think of this world without the police. Now its about survival of the fittest. That’s not us, we not the fittest. We the bravest, the hardest, fight to the last manest people on this planet. We, however are not bulletproof and they have more bullets. Simple as that.

Since we need the police, what we really need is police REFORM. True reform. We need police to be from the community they serve. The MUST live there. Their mere presence in large numbers depresses already dropping violent crime. We need Internal Affairs Departments staffed by Feds, and where possible an equal mix of white as well as black investigators. IAD would have the power to fire on the spot any officer when evidence warrants that they committed a crime. No more six month investigations to figure out you just executed a man. How many times did you have to watch that video before you figured out that “you know, maybe this guy executed this dude?”

To establish these changes though, the Black citizenry cannot just keep trying to persuade through force of will this system to change. They must make it financially toxic for the status quo to remain the same. We must cost a city a Super Bowl or a Final Four because of disruptions. We must make new business think twice about locating there. Hit em where they hurt. Honda want a new plant in the city, thousands of jobs. You ain’t building shit unless we get X% of those jobs. We make Honda change its plans. A production facility that provides three to four hundred jobs costs BILLIONS from concept to design to implementation. Make them change those plans, somebody will be to holla at somebody. Stop these construction sites building apartments that are out of the price range of residents that have been there for years. Problem is, most of us in the city are renters, not owners. You are not in control of the space you live in. Read most leases very carefully. You actually control very little of that space. The problem with corruption is that your main defense at your trial is an appeal issue. You have to be found guilty before you can use it. So if your landlord opens your door for the police, what are your options? We need financial control of our spaces.

We need our Black Kings to protect those spaces. They can only do that if the system changes to the extent where the good are rewarded and the bad are either never hired or fired at the first offense of misconduct. This will only happen if we give them something to protect other than FB posts and likes. Reach out to these brothers, find a way to amplify their efforts. Lets keep it real folks, if you in the middle of a police officer and an armed person your natural tendency will be to run toward the police, not toward the other guy.

Being a Black King in a police department is a job you couldn’t pay me enough to do. I’m hard, but I ain’t got the heart for it.