African-American Police Officer Posts of the Reality of Patroling in the Inner City | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Benjamin Spock once wrote: "Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal."

    Robert Kennedy once wrote: "Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on."

    Let's look at both these statements.

    With respect to Dr. Spock, we can say that for the most part, his statement is true. But the reason might be that white middle-class white people obey laws, live in stable families, embrace decent values, and live in communities with others who share similar values. Middle class white people have priorities that include education, employment, and church. They conduct themselves in a civilized manner and are respectful when they are in the presence of a police officer. I have never lived in an inner city, but from what I read and see on TV, and what I've seen in the public school system, it's pretty clear that the people there don't share the same core beliefs or values. Poverty is not an excuse to raise one's children poorly.

    With respect to Mr. Kennedy, his statement certainly sounds like it should be true.

    Jay Salien, a police officer who works in Riviera Beach, Florida, assumed as much. But Salien is no ordinary police officer. He is an African-American police officer who patrols a predominantly black part of town. Now, Riviera Beach may sound like a resort area - a place people with money might go to retire or for a vacation. But the reality is something quite different. The town is known for its significant rate of black on black crime.

    In the wake of the growing Black Lives Matter movement and the countering movement, the Blue Lives Matter movement (which is a result of the intentional, wanton violence against police by BLM supporters), Salien felt he couldn't remain silent. As the BLM, and even our own president, allege that our nation's police forces are filled with trigger-happy racist officers, Salien took to Facebook to post the brutal reality of what a police officer faces each day when he patrols a predominantly black community.

    His entire post is shared below:

    "I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.

    I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1-bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other.

    It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed.

    As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally. I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim...of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this:

    Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.

    I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone "did you see who did it", and the popular response from the very same family members was always, "Fuck the Police, I ain't no snitch, Im gonna take care of this myself". This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer.

    I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, "Make sure you come back home to us". I always replied, "I will", but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me "Uncle Tom", and "wanna be white boy", and I couldn't understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn't understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called ...I was there. Every time someone died....I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives...I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question...Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.

    I spoke to members of the community and listened to some of the complaints as to why they hated cops. I then did research on the facts. I also presented facts to these members of the community, and listened to their complaints in response. This is what I learned:

    COMPLAINT: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.

    FACT: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) ...will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It's called Demographics

    COMPLAINT: More black people get arrested than white boys.

    FACT: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime. Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173 homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago's death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. Chicago's death toll from 2001-November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total 8,321.

    COMPLAINT: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more.

    FACT: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.

    FACT: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime data from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson's research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period.

    COMPLAINT: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don't need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.

    The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man....the more I realized.

    I haven't slept well in the past few nights. Heartbreak weighs me down, rage flows through my veins, and tears fills my eyes. I watched my fellow officers assassinated on live television, and the images of them laying on the ground are seared into my brain forever. I couldn't help but wonder if it had been me, a black man, a black cop, on TV, assassinated, laying on the ground dead,..would my friends and family still think black lives mattered?

    Would my life have mattered? Would they make t-shirts in remembrance of me? Would they go on tv and protest violence? Would they even make a Facebook post, or share a post in reference to my death?

    All of my realizations came to this conclusion. Black Lives do not matter to most black people. Only the lives that make the national news matter to them. Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or white people, matter. The other thousands of lives lost, the other black souls that I along with every cop, have seen taken at the hands of other blacks, do not matter. Their deaths are unnoticed, accepted as the "norm", and swept underneath the rug by the very people who claim and post "black lives matter". I realized that this country is full of ignorance, where an educated individual will watch the ratings-driven news media, and watch a couple YouTube video clips, and then come to the conclusion that they have all the knowledge they need to have in order to know what it feels like to have a bullet proof vest as part of your office equipment, "Stay Alive" as part of your daily to do list, and having insurance for your health insurance because of the high rate of death in your profession. They watch a couple videos and then they magically know in 2 minutes 35 seconds, how you are supposed to handle a violent encounter, which took you 6 months of Academy training, 2 - 3 months of field training, and countless years of blood, sweat, tears and broken bones experiencing violent encounters and fine tuning your execution of the Use of Force Continuum. I realized that there are even cops, COPS, duly sworn law enforcement officers, who are supposed to be decent investigators, who will publicly go on the media and call other white cops racist and KKK, based on a video clip that they watched thousands of miles away, which was filmed after the fact, based on a case where the details aren't even known yet and the investigation hasn't even begun. I realized that most in the African American community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and deal with every day, which is black on black crime taking hundreds of innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the 9 questionable deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes. I realized that they value the life of a Sex Offender and Convicted Felon, [who was in the act of committing multiple felonies: felon in possession of a firearm-FELONY, brandishing and threatening a homeless man with a gun-Aggravated Assault in Florida: FELONY, who resisted officers who first tried to taze him, and WAS NOT RESTRAINED, who can be clearly seen in one of the videos raising his right shoulder, then shooting it down towards the right side of his body exactly where the firearm was located and recovered] more than the lives of the innocent cops who were assassinated in Dallas protecting the very people that hated them the most. I realized that they refuse to believe that most cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says so, even though the numbers prove otherwise. I realize that they truly feel as if the death of cops will help people realize the false narrative that Black Lives Matter, when all it will do is take their movement two steps backwards and label them domestic terrorist. I realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full of hate and racism. Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people, for a tragedy that began 100's of years ago, when most of the white people today weren't even born yet. I realized that some in the African American community's idea of "Justice" is the prosecution of ANY and EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black man, no matter what the circumstances are. I realized the African American community refuses to look within to solve its major issues, and instead makes excuses and looks outside for solutions. I realized that a lot of people in the African American community lead with hate, instead of love. Division instead of Unity. Turmoil and rioting, instead of Peace. I realized that they have become the very entity that they claim they are fighting against.

    I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,... and it is still hard for me to understand.... to this day.

    The black community is responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of violent crime in our nation's communities - mostly in their own communities. The senseless violence boggles the mind of men and women in uniform who devote their lives and sacrifice their safety for the protection of others. There has to be some accountability and culpability for the racial divide that is currently plaguing us by the black community instead of the usual blame game - "racism." Government policies MUST encourage a strong sense of family and actually achieve this goal. Right now, its policies encourage the destruction of the family and encourage out-of-wedlock births. Government MUST tear down its "wall of separation" from religion which it keeps "high and impregnable" and embrace policies that encourage and achieve a greater influence of religious teachings in citizen's lives - particularly our youth. They need this guidance so badly. Government policies MUST encourage parents to take responsibility for the upbringing of their children and stop leaving it to schools, the police, prisons, etc. There is nothing more tragic than a mother who cries over the body of her slain son, killed while going for a gun when stopped by police when she herself didn't raise him properly, didn't check on the friends he was hanging out, didn't follow up on what he was doing at night, or know that he even carried a gun."

    Serious dialogue is needed, and not just the usual allegation of "racism." But while the tension between the Black Lives Matter movement and the police in general seems to be escalating (BLM is now calling for a "Day of Rage" to be celebrated by a wave of protests all over the country), the last thing the BLM seems to be interested in is an honest dialogue or solutions. I read somewhere that one of their so-called solutions is a collection of states just for blacks.

    Last night, I watched a Bill O'Reilly episode, which I very rarely do. O'Reilly asked democrat commentator, Kirsten Powers, if she believes the Black Lives Matter movement is seriously looking for solutions or just acting out in rage. She responded that she believes they are interested in solutions and are essentially a peaceful group. O'Reilly then showed her a clip of what happened when one of Fox News reporters went into a black community to ask why they hate police. It was not a civilized response. [See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7uc6YznICU. Advance to 19:30 min for the interview segment]

    I wondered then, where is this Black Lives Matter is headed. What do they want? What can the American reasonably believe might be the outcome. Will our nation's communities be safer and will the rioting and violence stop? Will the random and wanton violence against police officers stop? And then I heard President Obama's remarks at the Dallas Memorial Service yesterday, July 12.

    As long as our President proclaims to our nation and even to the world that we are a racist nation and that our police forces are populated by officers who can't help but be consumed by racist thoughts, why would the Black Lives Matter ever think it has to make any concessions at all. Obama's remarks give the black community every reason to be absolved of the behavior they exhibit in their communities and in inner cities. It was unfortunate that he publicly justified the slaughter of the five Dallas police officers because of "righteous rage" in the black community that has remained (or more correctly, has escalated) since the days of slavery and Jim Crow. In his remarks, he went out of his way to convince America - and we all know the Black Lives Matter is hanging on his every word - that racism still exists; that for the past 50 years, the country is still the same as it was back in the early 1960's. "If we're honest, perhaps we've heard prejudice in our heads, felt it in our own hearts. We know that. None of us is innocent. No institution is immune. And that includes our police departments." The one thing that is most evident from what he said is that HE, the person who holds the office of President and who represents every single American, is the one who is racist. He admits that he can't help thinking that way. He can't help having "righteous rage" and resentment against white America. And in his remarks at the Memorial Service, he attempted to force his own personal demons on the rest of this country. It's a sad day when a President of the United States reminds his countrymen that they are inherently evil and unjust.

    What can we expect as an outcome when the President supports a violent movement? What can we expect as an outcome when the President gives legitimacy to a movement which justifies its violence, its rioting, and its civil disobedience on "rage."

    I know what movement I would suggest for the suckers who are collectively called "US taxpayers" !!


    References:

    Jay Salien, facebook post - https://www.facebook.com/jay.stalien/posts/911372818974402

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7uc6YznICU (Bill O'Reilly, Fox News clip; See 19:30 min for the reaction of the black community when a reporter visits)