Murderers Row

The gunning down of Patrick Lyoya in Grand Rapids, Michigan has reignited our national nightmare, the one from which too many Americans cannot wake up: Racism.

Having watched the video more times than I cared to, the twin conclusions are stark and simple. First, if the citizen had just allowed that totally incompetent boob of a cop to violate his rights, he might be alive today. Second, if said incompetent boob hadn't violated the citizen's rights, the citizen would certainly be alive today.

The debates have gone on for too long, even after a jury in Minnesota drew the line in the tragic George Floyd case. The police departments in America don't care about that. They're too busy exercising their power.

Power they do not deserve and should not have.

Since America has proven that it is thoroughly incapable of correcting that problem, preventative measures must be taken to protect non-whites from being brutalized and killed by the police. It should start with Public Service Announcements. They could go something like this:

America is a racist country. That fact is represented in our police departments. Not all officers are racist, but almost all policing policies inherently are. This routinely leads to the killings of citizens which may or may not be motivated by racism, but that nonetheless do occur regularly. While cooperating with the police is no guarantee, NOT cooperating fully with the police will likely lead to you being injured or killed.

Armed with that knowledge, non-whites can be somewhat protected from the blatantly false narrative pushed by our local, state and federal governments - that we're all equal. That's simply bullshit; thousands of traffic stops are made every day across this country and it seems like only non-whites get anything more than a ticket.

Everyone else winds up dead.

America needs to be up-front about its racist past and even more so about its racist present. Making such an honest disclosure would give minority communities the knowledge they need to increase their chances of surviving police encounters.

Go along with the program, let the police violate your rights, even if you have done nothing wrong. Otherwise, the police will kill you dead in the street. And we're sorry... But we aren't better than this.

- GG