Black Future: The Police

In 2007, Harlem-based hip-hop artist Cam'ron told Anderson Cooper during an interview that he believes there's never a reason to ask for police assistance or help police during a crime investigation.  This was around the tail end of his "Stop Snitchin'" campaign, aimed at telling his community and fans to stop involving the police in, well, anything.  This was also after he had been shot in a botched robbery attempt after leaving a nightclub in Washington D.C., where he drove himself to the hospital and told the police he didn't know who shot him or anything else about the incident.  Cam'ron, by all accounts, is solid on his anti-police rhetoric.  By word and deed, there's no cooperation about cooperating.  Because of this he should be honored as an urban legend.  They should rename the club he was attending the night of the incident Club Cam and Howard University should have a course on him.  Unlike Tupac Shakur (who has courses about him in a few colleges across the country) Killa Cam didn't talk to the police or go on record to discuss working with them, like Tupac did.  Cam'ron was real...at least to himself.  To most of black America, however, he and his anti-police views are media fodder and fantasy....because we really, really love the police.

This is a real scenario.  Shortly after Super Bowl Sunday Lady A, inspired by pop superstar Beyonce's halftime performance gets on Facebook and voices her devotion to Beyonce and her performance geared to combat racist police policy.  Lady A goes further and promotes disgust towards the several police departments who [allegedly] are refusing to protect her during her tour when she stops in their city.  Days later, Lady A loses a family member to gun violence...and then posts a message for those aware of the situation to allow the police to "do their jobs."  I can't recall the officer who said this, so I'll paraphrase.  But he said something like "they claim to hate the cops...until they need us."  Without getting offended by his use of the word "they", I knew exactly what he was referring to.  We hate the cops on social media, when marching, while rapping or signing, or water cooler-ing.  But in real, real life...we love the cops more than we love God.

You been to a funeral of a murder victim lately?  You heard a news report about one?  You ever notice God gets asked why (in some more emotional than others) but the cops get the cooperation?  Did you hear former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the comfort of Fox Studios essentially say that Beyonce has some nerve bashing the cops when it was the cops who protected her at the same event she bashed them?  He had a point.  The Beyonce brand is no idiot.  And instead of soliciting protection from a defunct Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, or Black Lives Matter, she went with the proven candidate...or at least one she felt she could trust with her safety...the local police.

And so do you.  See, when it all goes down, when you need protection, when you want to feel safe, you're not protesting or posting or getting in formation.  And you're certainly not Cam'ron,  You're gonna snitch and you're be as honorable to the police as you can.  You're gonna demand they help you and wait in the freezing cold until they do.  The organization that you continue to verbally dismiss you depend on tremendously.  And if they do what the media is reporting some departments are doing to Beyonce, you'd scream every ism in the book.

I believe the general African-American perceived relationship with the police is one of blatant disrespect.  Clearly, the key word here is general, still it's hard to find the opposition to this perception.  For every meme posted about good police there's dozens that highlight bad police.  For every article written about outstanding policing there's also dozens more of pieces written about how broken the system is.  And in all of this, no one is offering any real solution...except the one I offered that imposes federal fines on police departments that have instances of excessive aggression and brutality.  Regardless, the consensus is so against police that it seems ridiculous that we use them so much.  We laugh at the deranged white militias across the nation; but the closest thing urban, ethnic communities have are street gangs.  This actually is one of those instances where urban liberals are more conservative than they would like to admit.

What if there was a unified effort to support the officers and departments that respond to our calls efficiently, that help our children get to school, and that patrol our neighborhoods just as we hope they do?  What if we, instead of falling into highlighting those who have no understanding of their task, we honor those that take "to protect and serve" seriously?  No?  Then where's your protection agency?  The Crips?  Vice Lords?  Your church?  Of course not.  So just stop it.  Learn to get so involved in the community that you live in (not the virtual one) that the collective effort won't tolerate unfit police officers.  Pay more attention to who you vote for for sheriff and who's selected as chief.  Blow your senators' mailbox up with requests to look at your police department.  Stop grouping everyone in one negative light.  Or...just be Cam'ron and don't use them at all.  But you know that's not gonna happen, you and your part-time fight the power antics aren't built like that.  Because the truth is that there's so much anti-system talk that I believe we've forgotten we continue to draw from that same system...willingly.