Sanford Florida and other areas could learn a lesson from Tulsa, Oklahoma and Jackson, Mississippi

When asked why tempers are so high in Sanford Florida, many people just can’t seem to answer that question.  I, myself, have had a hard time attempting to explain why so many are marching for justice and often I use the analogy of people turning out to comb the countryside when The Anderson child was lost or the enormous outcry when Natalie Holloway came up missing.  While many have tuned in to the Trayvon Martin story, they have also been exposed to similar events which have happened and no one seemed to have really paid attention to them.  This has left some furious and others unaffected but what it should have done to all of us is show us that coming together as Americans is the only true way to end this senseless violence upon any community and upon our nation.

Take for example an article written by Olivia Katrandjian of ABC News titled Two Men Arrested, Facebook Clues in Tulsa Shooting Spree.  This article along with the one from Holbrook Mohr of the Associated Press titled Deryl Dedmon Pleads Guilty in Mississippi Hate Crime Hit-And-Run of James Craig Anderson provides us with a clear example of just how justice should be done.

Ms. Katrandjian’s article reports how the entire community of Tulsa working in conjunction with the police department was able to not only solve the case of the multiple murders of Black citizens but capture the alleged shooters in a very short period of time.  These supposedly shooters were immediately booked, processed and jailed which then allowed the city to finally breathe a sigh of relief.  The very same thing happened in the case of “Deryl Dedmon, a white teenager who pleaded guilty to murder and a hate crime Wednesday for running over a black man with his pickup truck in a killing a judge called a stain on Mississippi that will take years to fade,” according to the article previously mentioned above by Mr. Mohr.  He too was discovered, arrested and jailed by the coming-together of the entire community working with the local police department.  Sanford Police and other areas should take a lesson from these examples and see just how less stressful it is when justice is perceived to work for all Americans and not for just a selected few.  You want the community to help law enforcement clean up their streets, then you have to show the community that their lives, property and well-being is just as important as anyone else’s.  After all the motto of “To Serve and Protect” should not be selective.

All law enforcement should also learn that no community enjoys any one of their community making the neighborhood as a whole look bad and if given the chance, knowing that their voice, vote and livelihood means as much to law enforcement as everyone else’s, the community will almost march any perpetrator and violator of the law right down to the police station themselves.  So for those who want to believe that any community, as a whole, will harbor criminals is sadly mistaken.  Many in these communities try very hard to live right and remain a good person but often they are over-shadowed by those who care more about themselves than they ever will about anyone else.  We all must live together and many of us want to but we also must never waiver from fighting any injustice regardless of where we find it.