Wonder why the Black Community doesn't trust cops?

http://colorofchange.org/oscar/

Another man executed by police. He did not pose an immediate threat. He was handcuffed. This kind of thing happens all the time. This one just happened to get caught on video. The police in this country for too long have operated with impunity in our neighborhoods. Is it a coincidence that it is normally white police officers shooting black "suspects". This has gone back for a long time. In south police officers use to take part in lynchings. Now they simply execute them and call it self defense. There is no excuse for this in our society. The problem is that they continually get away with it. No officers were convicted in the Sean Bell or Amadou Diallo cases. These men were shot at more than 50 times, were unarmed, and posed no threat whatsoever to the police. In the Sean Bell case he didn't even know the police were present. I often wonder what those people on the jury are thinking when they let these murders go, and that's what they are. If I handcuffed someone, held them down, and shot them in the back, I would be charged for murder. So why aren't Oscar Grants killer charged? Because the average middle class citizen has two ideas in their heads:

1. The police deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Let me say I know that there are good police, but they are far and few between. Think about it this way. Remember the guys who wanted to be cops when you were high school. How many of them were the kind of people that you would give the benefit of the doubt to? Personally most of the ones I knew were overly violent racists who like shooting guns.

2. Black people are scary and criminals.
Don't think that's true. Ask an average black man what a white woman does with her purse when he walks by. Better yet ask white teachers what they think of their black students. I know that the ones my wife used to work with are scared to death of the black boys, and they are in middle school. (Important to note that none of the students have ever attacked any of the teachers) Just because some people were willing to vote for a black man for president, doesn't mean that we don't still have some serious issues with race in this country.

How can we fix it?

1. Require that police officers have to live in or close to the neighborhoods they patrol. Anymore many cities don't even require them to live in the same city. So it is easy for them to see the people as no more than animals that need to be controlled. If they live in the community, then cops have a need to better the community. They have a vested stake in being liked by the members of the neighborhood.

2. Make it a requirement that if a defendant/victim is black that one black person has to sit on the jury. A bunch of white people saying it's OK for white cops to shoot unarmed blacks isn't working. Why not give it a try. I'm not saying that a black person would always vote differently, but maybe they would have a little perspective.