They Say F the Police...Fatal Raid

I'm not one to bash the police on a regular basis.  I try as much as I can to respect the officers who patrol the streets looking to protect and serve.  But most members of "minority" and low-income neighborhoods have a seemingly innate dysfunctional relationship with local authorities.  Those on the outside try to find fault with us.  They say that because we are deviant criminals, guilty of conspiring to do evil at a moment's notice, we hate the very agents who seek to keep the streets safe and free from criminals.

The history of what some would call terrorism is one of the main reasons that minority and lower income neighborhoods scream out things like "F the police".

Today we mourn the death of Aiyana Jones, a 7-year-old girl in Detroit, fatally shot, WHILE SLEEP.  BY POLICE.  Yes. While sleeping.

The story according to the Associated Press, was that Aiyana was asleep on the couch in the living room when the police raided the house looking for a suspect in the shooting of a 17-year-old.  Upon breaking in there may or may not have been a struggle with a 46 year old woman (the girl's grandmother) that led to the firing of one shot that hit Aiyana in the neck and killed her.  The details (as usual) are sketchy but the fact remains that one shot was fired and it killed this poor, innocent young girl.  FULL STORY on CNN

And here we are faced with yet another situation where negligent actions by law enforcement officers led to the death of an unarmed civilian, this time, a little girl.

This rarely (if ever) happens in suburban towns to affluent or upper middle-class white or Asian families.   This type of stuff almost exclusively happens in Black and Latino neighborhoods that are poor.  Now there are a number of perspectives, if there wasn't a murder suspect in the vicinity cops wouldn't have the need to raid a house.  If the neighborhood let go of the nationwide mantra of "no snitching" the raid would've been unnecessary.  Violence begets violence, so if there wasn't a suspect to begin with, who shot a seventeen year old, then this seven-year-old girl would not have been shot.  I can understand the logic. I can understand the frustration that could precipitate such a response from others.

Here's the flip side: I find it hard to believe that police are trained to shoot first in a raid.  I find it hard believe that there was a good reason that the lead officer shot one round because he was in a tussle with a grandmother.  I find it harder to believe that the officer mistakenly hit the person who was sleeping on the couch...after all what better place to allow someone to sleep who's a fugitive than your couch?

No matter the reasons, the little girl is dead, the officer is on paid administrative leave, and the tension between black/brown people and the police continues to ebb...

Sugar Mayweather Death defied.

The title is probably confusing.  Is this fatherhood friday, non-nomadic prose blogger going to now try his hand at giving us his take on a fight that happened three days ago?  Does he think that his follower count will rise if he puts up the names of two high-profile welterweight boxers?

No.  I have a story to tell. Get some popcorn. Nevermind.  That story isn't that long.

I have a twin brother.  We're fraternal.  He has some of the great qualities that women list when they're looking for a man (two of which i'm missing): Tall, Dark and handsome.  (I'm not tall -- 5'8", nor am I dark -- i have a brown sugar, caramelesque complexion).  He was born first, so I feel like that two minute oxygen edge is what did it, not genetics.  In any event Twin A asked me to watch the fight with him at a bar.  Admission was $20 and drinks were typically NY -- too doggone expensive.  Gladly I don't drink much, not just because drunkenness is a sin, but also because drunkenness wastes all of my sunday...

In any event, I left my boo to go meet my twin at a location I'll disclose later (for dramatic effect).  So I jumped on the Railroad from Queens into Manhattan and transferred onto the MTA uptown.  Upon exiting the train it was a madhouse.  Not unlike NYC.  Bustling, like an antfarm on a hot day in your backyard, just mounds of people, bumping each other as if it was urban bumper cars, glamour edition. After all it was saturday night, fight night in NYC.  But there was something strange in the air, not strange like you're looking for the culprit responsible for the stench that has paralyzed you into an angry stupor, but strange like someone is about to do something, crazy, stupid, and you need to make your way out of their way before you're the victim of their irrational stupidity.  Even with the strange air, I moved on ahead towards the fight.

As I'm walking to this bar I see a crap load of NYPD, NYFD and barricades.  Being a NYer I think nothing of it.  I ignore my spidey senses and keep walking.  I follow crowds around the barricades to find the right avenue for the detour.  Finally I ask an officer, what's the deal.  He responds maybe it's a movie or something.  Ok.  That makes sense.  SHoot a movie on saturday night, fight night, on the alien ant farm urban bumper cars scene that is NYC.

THen my cell rings.  My mom.  After a short conversation she tries to convince me that my father heard a boom and that they were evacuating the very area I was to see the fight.  Terrorism.  Now, do I miss what was supposed to be one of the best fights in a few years because of tiny terrorism? Of course not, it was probably the special effects from the movie that the nice policeman told me was being shot.

I go to the fight.  It was good until round 3, then it became a Mayweather slaughtering of Sweet and Sour Sugar Shane.

Later I found out that the boom that my parents heard, and the police presence, and the firefighters, and the barricades was all because of the fact that there was actually a terrorist attempt in Times Square, four blocks from where I was later watching the fight.  Do I consider myself a rebel, a death-defying sports fanatic who will weather blizzards and shootouts to catch a good competition?  No.  Just blessed and Highly favored.  After all, instead of reading this blogpost, you could've been reading an article about a Brooklyn teacher and young father who was one of thousands killed by a car bomb in Times Square, NYC.  Thankful.

Go here to read more about the failed terrorist attack. Same website I got the picture from.

FatherHood Friday: An Appeal to the Parents at War.

Yes it is midnight and I'm just writing this post for FatherHood Friday.  First, the weather up here in NYC was about 75 degrees.  Unlike you folks who are closer to the equator, we don't enjoy such lovely weather on a regular basis.  So this afternoon, evening and night I was out, celebrating the beauty of sunshine, warm weather, and comforting cool breezes. 

We all have our differences.  We surely do.  And in many instances we try to find ways that we can make things work.  The harsh reality is that many of our families are moving away from tradition.  Tradition in the sense of mother and father being married, an item or even friends.  This begs the question of what is normal anymore.  For many kids, especially those growing up in African American households, the reality is living with Mother, and either father visits and supports as well or Father isn't really around.  The truth is that we have moved away from many of the very practices that made the traditional family makeup with all it's members and team dynamic intact. Commitment isn't as celebrated as it once was, premarital sex is far from taboo, and settling down happens much later ([if ever]on average) than the baby boomer generation.  So the likelihood that a woman may become pregnant by a man who isn't her husband (or even someone who is committed to her) is stronger than it ever has been.  My appeal to Moms on this Fatherhood Friday isn't to reach back into the depths of your soul and discover your inner homemaker/wifedom.  I'm not even appealing that you guys wait until marriage to become sexually intimate (even though that's what most religions including mine, Christianity, encourages).  I'm not here to tell you what to do.  My appeal is this: DO NOT USE YOUR CHILD(REN) AS TOOLS TO SABOTAGE OR VINDICATE YOUR EX.

I know it's tempting.  I recently was able to get some revenge on someone who wronged me.  It felt good.  I felt powerful.  But here's the thing, negative reinforcement stops behavior, positive reinforcement changes behavior.  That, my friend, is a pedagogical (art or science of teaching) , behavioral management truth.  So, while this person will probably not step over their boundary with me again, I can't say that it won't happen to someone else.  This type of truth can lend itself to all of you who deal with the challenges of creating two separate households and realities for your children because you guys weren't able to make it as a couple. 

A child should not have to pay the consequences for mistakes we have made.  Sure, some of the residual effects just come with the territory, but making a kid feel guilty about a gift from the significant other of their father's boo, or their mother's boo is just wrong.  Fighting and arguing in front of the kid, wrong.  Making the kid feel malice or anger towards the other parent wrong.  All of these things hurts a child's ability to grow to be functionally social, intelligible, pychologically and emotionally healthy human beings.  It does.

When you tell a kid all that's wrong with their father, you tell the kid that 50% of their genetic makeup is flawed.  Even before they can verbalize the concept of genetic makeup, a kid knows that part of them is from their Daddy.  Point blank.

Here's what we don't realize as adults.  Many of the antisocial, dysfunctional, rude, disrespectful crap that kids end up doing they learn from adults.  We model all of these things either in front of them to someone else or to our kids personally.  My son doesn't have much of a concept of holding a grudge.  He knows that when I don't give him what he wants that it hurts, he's sad and a bit upset.  I encourage him to think about being upset and how it's ok to be at that place. I  discourage him from retaliating with disrespect because that is an antisocial behavior.  If he does respond with disrespect I reprimand him, and when he doesn't I praise him for it. What he doesn't get from me is a grudge, a prolonged period of time where I'm ridiculously upset at him.  The GRUDGE is an adult thing, a behavior we learned from someone and we prematurely pass it to our kids. 

I'm saying all this because I've seen and (on occasion) experienced the frustration and tension that comes from a co-parent who uses a child as a way to get back and control the other parent.  We are adults. They are kids.  It's not our job to make them feel more residual effects from "broken homes" than they do when they call for their father in the middle of the night and they realize, even in their deep sleep that he isn't in the room, home or building to answer his midnight call. 

Just as that call falls on ears that can't hear it, you guys need to turn your critical frequencies towards hearing me out on this.  Your kid will thank you in the end.  Get along for the kid.  Not tea and crimpets get along, but make parenting work get along.  Our community needs it.

Photo found here