First they took our clippers....

To all you brothers in central Florida getting your domes clipped in barber shops, please consider buying some clippers and learning to cut from the comfort of your homes.

Honestly, I have to ask: Is there no place sacred for brothers anymore? It used to be that the barber shop was our refuge. A place we could get together and bond. Cut up. Practice our own form of therapy with each other. But, sadly, if you are in central Florida, you might no longer enjoy the black barber shop experience.

"A while back, some black barbers in central Florida must have felt like they fell asleep – and woke up in 1833.

In Alabama.

That was the year when that Confederate state – as well as a number of others – passed codes that forbade five or more black male slaves from assembling. Such laws were aimed at discouraging slaves from plotting revolts, or sharing wisdom, or bonding too much for their masters’ comfort.

More than a century has passed since then, and black men have been gathering all over the place; at lodges, at the post and especially at the barber shop.

That’s where they get a haircut, where they take sons and grandsons to get their first haircuts, where they talk about the news of the day, and where they dispense wisdom and talk trash.

But nowadays, this misguided War on Drugs seems to have given law enforcement free rein to do what slave owners and Bull Connor once did: To act on stereotypes instead of evidence; to automatically see a bunch of proud and often boisterous black men as being up to no good.

At least that seems to be what’s been happening in Orlando.

Officers with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office raided some 40 barber shops in black and Latino neighborhoods between August and September. Rather than go through the trouble of obtaining search warrants, they tagged along with inspectors from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to enter the shops.

To hear the barbers and customers tell it, what happened next was nothing short of a nightmare.

According to the Orlando Sentinel and other news outlets, witnesses said the officers conducted SWAT-style raids on the shops, complete with police dogs and, in some cases, drawn weapons.

In some shops, barbers were forced to lie on the floor and submit to pat-down searches. Drawers and lockers were pried open with bars and a battering ram, and extensive damage was done.

Lawyers representing the barbers said that customers, including those who were in the middle of getting haircuts, were ordered out of the shop, and criminal checks were run on them.

After all that humiliation, however, only three drug-related crimes were uncovered. But dozens of barbers were arrested and jailed for minor license infractions – and, for extra fun, were driven around in police vans as they moved on to raid other black barber shops.

Keep in mind that only three barbers in the past decade have been arrested for license violations. Most get a citation and a $500 fine.

To his credit Jerry Demings, Orange County’s black sheriff, has ordered an internal investigation of the raids and has said that the license arrests were overkill. The DBPR has fired three officials involved." [Story]

Maybe some over zealous inspector mistook shaving cream for cocaine one day, and things kind of went down hill from there. Or, maybe you Negroes are up to something in those barber shops. All that laughing and joking around has to be artificially induced. You black men are never happy.