Manns Medium

Remember the old saying about police of the thin blue line and the old Serpico thing where he stood up to bring light to the darkness of his police department only to survive attempted hits on his life by fellow police officers.  Well something close to that is happening now and have been happening for quite some time now.  Not to the extent of people attempting to assassinate anyone but to the point where it seems to be unwritten rule of lawyers and judges when it comes to the word of police over the regular citizen.  The phrase that I keep hearing from former law enforcement officials like myself is that “you never second guess police regarding the performance of their duties”.   This would make sense to me if the minority of officers who abuse their positions were held accountable and made to follow the same rules and regulations that average citizens have to but this is not the case.  This would make sense if there weren’t outstanding and reasonabl...

You hear so often others say that the rioters and looters in Ferguson Missouri are proof of all blacks in America.  Only looking for something free and the chance to destroy and never to build.  Well this article about these 4 black Ferguson residents just shattered that concept. The article is titled “ Black Ferguson Residents Arm Themselves and Descend Upon White-Owned Business — The Reason Why Is Front-Page Worthy ” written by Jason Howerton.  It reports that “A group of four black Ferguson residents reportedly armed themselves and descended upon a white-owned business following a grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. But unlike many of the Ferguson demonstrators, the armed men were there to protect the business, not destroy it in protest.  The men told the Las Vegas Review Journal that they feel indebted to the white store owner, Doug Morello, who has given them employment over the years....

In an article titled “ National Bar Association calls for Federal Charges against Darren Wilson ” by Onomastic for The Daily Kos it is reported that “In 2010, the last year for data on the number of federal criminal cases and grand jury decisions, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.  Newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment. Last night, the National Bar Association, "the nation's oldest and largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges," is...

What’s the message? It’s simple as long as you wear a badge and a gun, you have the right to initiate a confrontation and if you feel yourself losing that battle, you can now draw your weapon and kill the threat.  You may not be so lucky if you are a civilian but why not take a chance.  You could fall under the George Zimmerman defense or the gentleman who shot and killed that young boy for loud music.  This gives you a 50/50 chance.  But if you are unarmed, hard of hearing or playing with a toy gun, your chances of getting justice may not be so balanced. Consider this, the grand jury said that Mr. Wilson followed the law and the training he received in law enforcement training but I have to wonder if that is true or have the training changed since I attended.  You see, we were instructed never to engage without back up especially if you were outnumbered.  Mr. Wilson’s odds were 2 to 1.  We were instructed to monitor and track until the numbers we...

Ran across this article titled “ Former Marine Brutally Beaten as Revenge for Ferguson; Told Waffle House ‘Not Safe for Whites’; Race-Hustlers Silent ” written by Jennifer Burke.  Was first lured to it because of the title former Marine and being one myself, had to try and find out more about what she was reporting that happened.  What I got out of the article was not that this is truly a hate crime but the constant ramblings of an ideological writer whose idea of reporting the news turned out to be nothing more than an opportunity to rant. The article reported that “Now, it looks like we potentially have our first case of a vengeance based hate crime by individuals who targeted a white guy in the name of justice for Michael Brown.  Former U.S. Marine Ralph Weems, a 32 year old white male, was left with life-threatening injuries after being followed by a mob of 20 black men then beaten. Prior to the attack, Weems, who is a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, en...

Ask the questions of those who commit crimes and often you may get the answer that it’s the only way that they know how to survive.  There is no truth in that statement but many who ask really could care less about the answer or a solution so it’s widely accepted and we all move on.  But if you want to really know the real reason, the ultimate excuse which can be proven, it is the years and years of unequal justice found permeating from within our justice system.  Many have talked about it and some have even made some attempts to deal with it but soon they either run out of energy or just plainly give up.  All the while those who they say could do better can’t because the process  doesn't  allow them to. If you are financially well-off, then justice will be something you think nothing about and often you will take for justice.  If you are not financially well-off then justice will be something you may never know about.  Justice for most ...

I had been waiting on a report that tells us what happened through the eyes of the police officer who was actually involved.  A portion of the officer’s story can be found here but it is imperative that you read the rest of what we could not or did not write here.  In this article,  I've  decided to do something a little different.  Normally I would not interrupt and article that I am quoting but this time I am mainly because you need to see both sides at the same time in order to even begin to understand the complexity of this issue.  My interruptions will appear in parenthesis the excerpts from the article in quotation marks. You can find it in an article written by Eliott C. McLaughlin, Dana Ford and Holly Yan for CNN titled “Caller says she has the officer's side of the Ferguson shooting”.  This was updated at 1:54 AM EDT, Tue August 19, 2014 under the subtitle “Dueling narratives”.  The article reports that “the officer who killed Brown ...