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Editorials/Columns
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN
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Neighborhood Crimemobile On The Prowl
hen politicians run
for office, the first thing they promise is to be a voice for the voiceless. Once they get elected they forget about the voiceless and any- one else who may need their
help.
Thank God that there is
still this one elected office who can still hear the voice- less in their silent effort to be heard and their powerless ef- fort to deal equally with the power of the system.
A recent investigation by the Tamps Bay Times has re- vealed the blatant wrong doing by the police depart- ment and they know about it.
The cops have been ac- cused of profiling Black bicy- cle riders in high crime areas. They are said to use this tac- tic to search Blacks and run
background checks on them. But alas, all is not lost.
The elected official who remembered why he was elected has lent a voice to clearing up this could be na- tionwide scandal. City Coun- cilman Frank Reddick has called for Mayor Bob Buckhorn and Police Chief Jane Castor to re- port to Council a full report as to whether Blacks’ Civil Rights are being violated. I guess the rest of the elected officials will want to know that, too, one day. I am sure that the Blacks being ha- rassed live in somebody else’s district besides Coun- cilman Reddick’s.
I want criminals arrested and put in jail. But I don’t want it done at the expense of innocent people. I want
everyone stopped for the same things only if they break the law. People can be made to commit crimes. All government has to do is to make what wasn’t a crime a crime. For instance, riding a bike with no hands; when I was a child, that was legal. A police can pull you over today for that same thing.
One would think that as many bike riders as they have on Davis Island and Bayshore Boulevard more tickets would be written in these areas, but that isn’t so. I wonder if it is because so few Blacks travel these areas?
They have ‘driving while Black.’ Now we have ‘pedal- ing while Black.’ I feel like Councilman Reddick, the mayor and the police chief should check into this matter and make a detailed report to Council and to the citizens of Tampa.
We always bill this city as a great metropolis and a wonderful place to live, work and play. I don’t think this kind of publicity is good for this city’s reputation.
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Earth Alert: NASA Budget Cuts Don’t Add Up
ell us. Could it be that a Republican majority of the
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technol- ogy is proposing a $16.6 billion funding cut for the Na- tional Air and Space Agency’s (NASA) budget simply because Republicans don’t want the agency to monitor earth’s weather and the impact of climate change?
Saying the funding was “enough money for NASA to achieve its main objective and was realistic given the tough fiscal circumstances,” Republicans doggedly de- fended their cuts.
Most certainly, we could abide with Conservative space cuts if, perhaps, they did not include deft incisions to NASA’s Earth Science program, Astrophysics program, the Planetary Science, and Education program. Why cut when such programs include weather tracking and mon- itoring of climate change, studying and monitoring poten- tially dangerous asteroids and discovery of new planets and accompanying space missions?
Furthermore, since we just celebrated Earth Day, this past Wednesday, the proposed NASA budget cuts may show exactly how much Republicans (do not) value Mother Earth. Indeed, Republicans insist on ignoring or debunking the threat to Earth’s climate all together.
It Sure Ain’t Funny
hey say that laughter is
the best medicine. I have to agree because, rather than allow frustration to continuously raise my blood pressure every time I come across incidents that high- light how blatantly different whites are treated, as op- posed to Blacks when deal- ing with law enforcement, I've found that chuckling at the absurdity and hypocrisy eases the pain.
For instance, earlier this week when CNN showed a body camera video of a white cop refusing to shoot a white suspect (wanted for his con- nection in a murder) who was charging at him scream- ing "SHOOT ME! SHOOT ME!" I thought it was hilari- ous. It wasn't the incident it- self that I found humorous. The funny part was how big of a deal they made out of the cop showing, what they con- sidered, "great restraint" in the way he handled the situ- ation.
Instead of simply blowing
the guy away Dirty Harry style, as would have probably been the case if the suspect were Black, the police officer in question, Jesse Kidder, claims he didn't think the maniac was going to actually shoot him and in his words "wanted to be absolutely sure" before he used deadly force... Really?
I mean, you have to laugh at this right? The fact that they are seriously praising this cop for not killing a guy when the situation clearly al- lowed for the officer to use his weapon, after always seeming to find an excuse as to why a black man's life had to be taken in far less threat- ening scenarios, has to be a joke.
If anything, the real story here should have focused on how a white man, who actu- ally committed a murder, was able to threaten the life of a police officer and leave the scene of the crime with- out a scratch while a few weeks ago a Black man, run-
ning away from child sup- port payments, got shot 8 times in the back? Maybe I'm the crazy one. But I need someone to tell me in what world does this make any sense?
The irony of this story re- ally hit home when, on the same day as the story of the "self-controlled" cop aired, it was reported that yet an- other Black male lost his life while in the custody of police officers in Baltimore, Mary- land. His end coming after his arrest when he suffered a mysterious back-breaking injury. I guess the memo telling cops to practice that same kind of "restraint" with Black people hasn't been placed in circulation yet.
When it's all said and done, you really do have to give it up to laughter. With all of this tragedy falling down upon us on a regular basis, and the reality sinking that our fight for justice is a never ending battle that our great grands will have to en- dure, it truly is the only thing that keeps us from crying or going completely insane...
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Com- pany. Anyone wishing to contact Clarence Barr can email him at: reality- onice@yahoo.com.
Bike Tickets: Benefit Or Blitzkrieg
e can understand Tampa Police Department Chief
Jane Castor when she says a recent newspaper ar- ticle, “Odds Are You’re Black,” which spotlights the fact that Black bicyclists in predominantly Black neighbor- hoods have received the lion’s share of police citations, strikes (in Chief Castor’s words) “the comparison of Tampa to Ferguson MO., and New York [which] is inciting at best.”
We further concur with the Chief when she concludes, “To try to imply that I or the members of the Tampa Police Department are racists is insulting to our entire commu- nity.”
However, rather than deal with the statistic head-on, Chief Jane Castor in a recent op-ed article latched onto local ex-convict, Alphonso Lee King, reciting everything about his criminal background as a reason why he was de- tained and his bicycle was ticketed.
The response reminded us of a police concept called “Pretext stop,” a Supreme Court sanctioned technique wherein “an officer can use a traffic infraction as a justi- fication to stop a vehicle where the officer is really inter- ested in searching the car for a more serious crime.”
For a bicycle, this concept connects with the 2007 TPD- embraced initiative entitled “Bicycle Blitzkrieg,” initiated by then-Chief, Stephen Hogue, which supported “aggres- sive enforcement of bike violations.” But why use a seem- ingly neo-Nazi code word?
Unfortunately for outgoing Chief Castor, many of her predecessor’s initiatives have racked up stark realities of ‘targeted’ policing. And because, according to the St. Pete Times, most of the 1,000 bike citations have been given to Blacks, “the thing explains it- self.”
FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2015 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5-A
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