Terence Crutcher did not plant any bombs.

 I am glad that law enforcement caught caught that maniac who was making and planting bombs in New York and New Jersey. We can rest a little easier as a nation now that one less depraved lunatic is off the street.

Having said that, I find it ironic that law enforcement  was able to shoot and take down a terrorist who attempted to cause mass destruction and carnage without actually killing him, while police officers in Tulsa, Oklahoma killed an innocent man who actually had his hands raised.

"Video footage released Monday showed Tulsa police shooting an unarmed man to death on Friday night after he approached his SUV with his arms raised.

In footage filmed from a police helicopter, Terence Crutcher, 40, can be seen slowly walking from the edge of a street north of Tulsa toward his vehicle, which authorities said had been reported abandoned at 7:36 p.m. (8:36 p.m. ET) and left running in the middle of the road.

For several seconds, an officer follows Crutcher from behind with a gun trained on him. Three more officers then converge on the scene as Crutcher lowers his hands and approaches his SUV. While standing beside the driver's side door, he suddenly drops to the street. Moments later, blood can be seen saturating his white t-shirt.

The Tulsa Police Department also released dash-cam video of the incident.

During a news conference Monday, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said that Officer Tyler Turnbough tasered Crutcher, and a second officer, Betty Shelby, fired at him after telling a dispatcher "that she's not having cooperation from" Crutcher.

Citing an ongoing investigating, Jordan declined to provide additional details, though he said that no weapon was found on Crutcher or in his SUV. Jordan, who called the footage "disturbing," said that he asked the Justice Department to review the case.

"I will make this promise to you, we will achieve justice," he said.

Shelby, who was hired in 2011, was placed on routine administrative leave with pay.

During a news conference Monday, a Crutcher family lawyer, Melvin C. Hall, said that Crutcher was only having problems with his SUV before he was shot to death. "They treated him like a criminal," added a second lawyer, Benjamin Crump. "They treated him like a suspect. They did not treat him like somebody in distress who needed help. Instead of giving him a hand, they gave him bullets."
Crutcher's twin sister, Tiffany, described him as a brother and father who was enrolled in Tulsa Community College and loved singing at church.

And she criticized one of the officers in the chopper who can be heard telling a second officer aboard that Crutcher looks like "a big bad dude."

"That big bad dude — his life mattered," she said." [Source]

Of course his life matters, but when we remind people of that we are told that "all lives matter," and that we shouldn't just single out the blacks ones.

Still, when you see what happened to Terence Crutcher, you have to wonder if some folks in law enforcement got the all lives matter memo.

And folks, if you are having a  Déjà vu  kind of feeling after reading this article, your instincts are not failing you.

"A jury found a sheriff's deputy guilty of second-degree manslaughter Wednesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect.

Robert Bates, who was a volunteer reserve sheriff deputy for the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office last year at the time of the shooting, never denied shooting Eric Courtney Harris.

Bates, 74, said he meant to use his Taser stun gun, not his revolver, on the suspect, who had been tackled by other deputies and was being held on the ground." [Source]

We will soon be getting that feeling again, because sadly, some lives still matter more than others. Even the lives of terrorists.   

*Pic from rawstory.com

Sorry is the easiest word to say.

The Field Negro education series continues.

Shout out to Philly's own David Love for giving us this thought provoking article.

"Is the policing of black men the new sport for white officers and wannabe cops?

This is a question worth asking, in light of this season of police killings, particularly the April 2nd fatal shooting of a black man named Eric Harris, 44, by Reserve Deputy Robert Bates. After officers brought Harris to the ground, an officer yelled “Taser” twice, after which Bates shot Harris with his gun and said, “Oh! I shot him. I’m sorry.” Apparently, Bates meant to shoot the man with his Taser rather than his gun.

As Harris yelled that he was shot, he said, “I’m losing my breath,” to which the officer responded, “f*** your breath.”  Harris died an hour later.

But oh well, what difference does it make, right? Whether it’s a Taser or gun, it’s just another dead black man we’re talking about. Plus, the man said he was sorry.

Robert Bates, 73, who has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in Harris’ death, is a prime example of someone who went out of his way looking for trouble. To put it another way, he volunteered to be in that situation, or rather, he paid a lot of money to volunteer. Now a man is dead from a situation that did not warrant using a Taser, much less a gun.

But who gave Bates this authority?

One has to ask why the 73-year old CEO of an insurance company — with one year of full-time experience as a cop back in the 1960s — would be allowed to be in the thick of it, in a major, high-stakes operation where he had the power of life or death over Eric Harris.

On the surface, it would appear Bates was a “pay-to-play” wannabe cop. It turns out Bates had donated video equipment, weapons and cars to the Sheriff’s Office, not to mention $2,500 to Sheriff Stanley Glanz’s reelection campaign in 2012. And he even served as the sheriff’s campaign chair. As Vox reported, as many as 130 reserve deputies in Tulsa are “wealthy people,” and it is not unusual for them to make donations. And as Salon had reported last year, some police departments openly ask for donations for a badge and gun permit.

Auxiliary police are nothing new. There are around 400,000 volunteer officers across the nation who, in a time of cash-strapped police departmentshelp fill in the gaps. But apparently, there is a wide discrepancy when it comes to what reserve cops can do. For example, in Los Angeles, they are allowed to do community relations and desk duty, while in the NYPD they are unarmed.

This state of affairs would give us the impression that anyone, at least in a department such as the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office, can play cop—at least if the price is right. It is also painfully evident that some individuals are all-too-eager to become police officers Just to take it a step further, it is exceedingly difficult to fathom that these folks would be allowed to carry on in white communities and “accidentally” fatally shoot white citizens the way this reserve deputy killed Mr. Harris. It would not be allowed.

It is a little harder to wrap one’s head around this Tulsa incident unless we understand this country’s history concerning the policing of black people. Some would suggest the concept of police volunteers goes back to the Wild West, when common folk were deputized to fight crime and catch the bad guy. Although this is a valid assertion, there is also another troubling legacy of policing in America that is implicated in the shooting of Eric Harris.

As for black people, our first experience with police were the slave patrols. As Brittney Cooper reminds us in Salon, American policing traces its origins to these patrols.

During slavery times, all whites were encouraged and sanctioned to exert control over blacks. White men were deputized as members of the slave patrols — both slave masters and non-slaveholders alike — which were a crucial part of the slavery police state and economic order maintained by wealthy whites to maintain control over blacks. According to Professor Carl T. Bogus of Roger Williams University School of Law, these patrols were militias under the Second Amendment, designed to protect whites against slave rebellion.

“Virtually all able-bodied white men were part of the militia,” Bogus notes of Southern men, “which primarily meant that they had slave control duties under the direction and discipline of local militia officers.” [Read more here]

So yesterday it was Tulsa, and today it's Houston.  Eh.

The police say that they feared the  man in Houston was reaching for a gun. But as of me writing this post they have not said whether a gun was actually "found at the scene."

Of course that incident was not all caught on video tape, soo.......oh look, there is a Glock under his seat.

Stay tuned.

Mamas, don't let your daughters grow up to be hip hop dancers.

"Are you aware your daughter is with two Black men?’ When I said, Yes, I’m aware of that, he called into questioning [my] parenting,” the Mother said....

My racism chase tour continues. Tonight we head down to Houston, Texas.

"When Houston police spotted Landry Thompson (pictured left), a 13-year-old Tulsa, Okla., dancer in the company of two Black men, Josiah Kelly (pictured right), 22, her dance partner, and Emmanuel Hurd (pictured center), 29, instructor, at a convenience store at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, they reportedly assumed she was in danger, so they handcuffed the crew and sent Thompson to child services.

Thompson, Hurd, and Kelly were traveling from Tulsa to Houston to work with hip-hop artists at a dance academy and to perform in a video. After reportedly rehearsing all day, they decided to stop at a convenience store to get gas. When Houston police officers saw Thompson in the company of two Black men in the wee hours of Sunday morning, they reportedly jumped to conclusions and refused to listen to the trio’s explanations.

Consequently, all three victims were reportedly dragged out of their vehicle and placed in handcuffs against the patrol car. “They were convinced I was a runaway,” Thompson told KHOU.

Thompson ended up being separated from the men and placed in the custody of Child Protective Services (CPS), while the men were held and questioned.

Hurd and Kelly were eventually released but reportedly waited six hours in their car for Thompson to be released outside of a CPS facility.

According to Destiny, Thompson travels all the time for dance performances, and she willingly placed Hurd in charge of her daughter. Destiny even provided Hurd with official documents, such as her daughter’s original birth certificate, insurance card, and a signed letter of consent from both she and her husband just in case there was some question or unforseen situation that would require such documentation to be produced.

Despite the fact that Destiny and her husband faxed copies of their driver’s licenses to authorities, spoke to them at length about their daughter being in trusted hands, and even had the Oklahoma police speak to them as well, the Houston police reportedly still did not believe the parents, Hurd, or Kelly.

According to an issued statement by the Houston police department regarding the case — given the age discrepancies…and that fact that the child had no relatives in the area — officers used an abundance of caution to ensure her safety and sent her to CPS.

Still, the Thompson family, Hurd, and Kelly are all convinced that their incident with the Houston police department is a clear-cut case of racial profiling." [Source]

Noooo! Ya think?

Anyway, I know that things are still bad here in America, but just remember, there was a time when things were a lot worse.

On this day 44 years ago the government sanctioned a hit on Fred Hampton who was the leader of the Illinois Black Panther party while he slept in his home.

Back then they didn't arrest Negroes; if they thought that we got out of hand they would shoot us.

Back then, being caught in the company of a young white girl in the wee hours of the morning was a death sentence. Now it just gets you some jail time. And, if you are lucky, the press will hear about your case and the charges will might be dropped against you.  

It might not seem like a lot of progress. But hey, in a "color aroused" world, we will take it.