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So last week I attended a community town hall on race and policing at Reseda Church of Christ in the San Fernando Valley. I was really excited for the opportunity to dialogue with the chief of police and captain of some police station. WRONG! This night of possibility turned into a night of ass kissing, placating, and outright showings of how out of touch the Police Chief Green and leaders of the Black community in the San Fernando Valley were. The Black Church Fails
The Black Lives Matter Movement!
Police Chief Green decided to give a long drawn out talk about how they stopped violence in Jordan Downs and two other housing projects in South Central 30 years ago. It had absolutely nothing to do with the current state of affairs between cops and the Black community NOW. He is so out of touch with what’s really going on. Couldn’t nobody on his support staff write-up a speech, white paper, one-sheet, so he didn’t get up there and sound like a complete out of touch idiot.
Every Black person who get murdered by police in LA County ain’t in the three projects you spoke of. The Black community isn’t relegated to certain geographical areas of the city as they were 30 years ago. The police captain rarely got a chance to say anything, but he did say he had an open door policy and he welcomes all members of the community to come meet with him one and one to work on solutions. He may have been Black. Couldn’t tell for sure.
He straight said that the higher the number of stops, the higher the occurrences of uses of force. NO SHIT? His recommendation for curbing violence was to form relationships with moms and children. OK, well what about the black kids who are not elementary school aged. It’s too late for that buy a bomb pop, give a book bag shit. The majority of Black people killed already have an idea of who and what the police stand for. One suggestion from one of the three voices of reason on the panel was to address stereotypes head on. Nitty gritty and really get an understanding and take action on eradicating stereotypes from the community and police POV. When police see Black people they automatically see them as a threat even when they aren’t doing anything suspicious or illegal. When Black people see the police they automatically know that this can go one of two ways…I can go to jail or die.
The majority of those who had the opportunity to speak were expressing sadness that the cops got killed in Dallas and not mentioning the dozens of Black people killed by cops. Police are always pushing that shit about we just want to go home to our families at the end of the night. All parties involved want to go home to their loved ones at the end of the night so miss me with that bullshit!
The pastor of the church just did a whole bunch of pontificating and praising the police for their bravery and service. Not once did he mention the Black people being profiled, unjustly arrested and charged and just flat-out murdered by cops. Not once did he say let’s pray for the families of those who have been killed by cops.T The pastor straight said ” We must not put our officers in situations where they have to figure out of a community member is friend or foe.” GTFOH!
The MC (who is a Black man) had the unmitigated gall to say the following “Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter.” At that point if I had drove I would have got up and left because I was too through! I was livid and my disdain for organized religion and the Black church strengthened as the bile dripped from his tongue and into my ears. Those words made the air in the church stand still like the millisecond of silence and stillness before a bomb goes off. The Black moderator (second voice of reason), in an effort to teach the ignant ass MC, made sure to explain the purpose of Black Lives Matter once he was given the floor.
Oh Baybayyy! The coupe de grace? The church took the power away from the people. Instead of allowing the community to walk up to a mic and address the panel and police, they decided that people in the audience should email the church and some person would screen questions and post them up via PowerPoint to be addressed.
The third voice of reason was a pastor from a church on the east side of the valley. He talked about the need for police and Black Lives Matter and/or activists to talk to each other and not through each other. He also blamed the media for unethical reporting , spreading misinformation, and fanning the flames on the already sensitive state of police-community affairs. His final point was to make the police rules/policies/procedures easily accessible to the public because time and time again they claim that excessive use of force and murder is within the rules, the public knows exactly what those rules are. I personally feel that they need to be condensed into a resource tool and translated in to laymen terms so that the general public can understand all of the legal jargon.
We didn’t stay for the rest of the fuckery, but the one question we did stick around for was one addressing gaps on law enforcement. the police chief admitted that tasers only work 50% of the time, de-escalation training is sorely lacking, and the non-lethal bean bag rounds are kept in the trunk. Without ease of access and to non-lethal rounds, the inability to use their words and negotiation skills and faulty tasers, I guess they just out here killing out of cowardice.
In conclusion, this was a night of respectability politics where leaders of the Black community in the San Fernando Valley failed horribly at making a real impact or action plan.
Think Tank Coming Soon…
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