Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 4-19-16 Edition

Editorials
It’s About Time
et’s face it. If current Mayor Bob Buckhorn leaves early
to run for Governor of Florida, the sitting chairperson of Tampa City Council will automatically become the in- terim Mayor, giving him an almost insurmountable lead in the foot race for the permanent Mayoral seat. No wonder City Council’s recent attempt to elect a chairperson blew up into the biggest political mess since council members con- fronted the issue of who would be members of the Citizens’ Review Board.
As a result, Councilman Mike Suarez won the chairman- ship. But it didn’t begin that way. Thirteen times, coun- cilpersons voted. Thirteen times they were deadlocked until on the fourteenth round, the decision came down to a choice between veteran chairman Frank Reddick and untried chairman candidate Suarez.
Supposedly stirring the pot was Tampa Police Benevolent Association President and local police officer, Vincent Gericitano, an unlikely suspect, who was accused of making monkey-faces whenever Reddick’s name was mentioned. And so it went.
Could it have been Reddick’s race that caused the PBA rep’s resentment? Might it have been the fact that if Reddick had been given the gavel, especially behind strong Black support, it would have placed him further than anyone else to becoming Tampa’s first Black mayor?
Without question, Reddick has proven himself more than capable of captaining this municipal flagship. Therefore, to steal an opportunity not only from him, but from history is no mystery. It is criminal.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever been nominated,” quipped new chairman Suarez. And certainly, we wish him well. But we also stretch forth a hand of continued support for Frank Reddick. For, the race of the future is not over until the fu- ture race is won.
R esearchers from University of Louisville and the Univer- sity of South Carolina have joined forces to convince the federal government to collect data on all police shootings of unarmed Americans. Researchers’ interest was stoked by a recently released study on fatal shootings by police, which found that unarmed Black men who were shot during 2015 “accounted for 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police,” and “were seven times more likely than un-
armed white men to die from police gunfire.
“Moreover, the study revealed police officers [who were]
involved in the shootings may have been biased in how they perceived threats.”
Because the study was shared with some 50 members of the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, we can only hope our local mid-Florida police chiefs would also review and study the report. The analysis of 990 shootings in 2015 sug- gests that police exhibit shooter bias by falsely perceiving Black suspects to be a greater threat to police safety than non-Black suspects.
Furthermore, Black suspects “shot and killed by police were less likely to have been attacking police officers than whites who were fatally shot by police.” The study also im- plied that officers may have unconsciously developed biases over time and have “become conditioned to view minorities with added suspicion.”
Therefore, the study recommends police departments in- vest in training officers on how to reduce bias (sensitivity training) and that they also purchase body cameras while also becoming more transparent, which not only makes sound police-sense, but would also guarantee even greater community safety and all-around goodwill.
“Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to ac- complish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that pass- ing time to the best possi- ble use.” –
Earl Nightingale
Empowered Greetings.
The clock is ticking. The countdown has begun. It is about time for you to take center stage. Come out of hiding. The world is waiting
for what you have to offer. It’s about time for you to in- crease your presence in your community, corporation, or- ganization and ministry.
Brand and market your- self, your services and the benefits of doing business with you. It’s about time to serve those who have been serving you. Give back. Give of your time, talent and re- sources to help others get where you are or where they want to be. It’s about time for you to step up and step out to live a full and fulfilled
life.
Stop waiting for the so-
called “right time” because time waits for no man. It’s about your time NOW!
It’s about time for you to spend your time creating the legacy you want to leave be- hind. Lastly, it’s about time for you to “Live well, Laugh often and Love much.” For life is just about time.
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the violation of their religious beliefs.
In Kansas City, lawmakers are looking at legislation that would amend the Missouri constitution to prohibit the government from punishing individuals and businesses that refuse, on religious grounds, to provide goods or services for same-sex marriage ceremonies or celebrations of same-sex couples.
As Missouri lawmakers consider the law for a future vote, the NCAA is considering bids from other cities for their future sports events—poten- tially costing the city millions in revenue from lost sporting events. But these states are not outliers. Over twenty states have passed some form of a re- ligious freedom bill or poised to put policies in place that vi- olate our country’s core princi- pals of inclusion and the freedom to live and work free from discrimination.
In a democracy as diverse in races, religions, ideologies and orientations, collisions be- tween the rights of religion and the responsibilities of civil au- thority are inevitable. Our country was founded on the idea that people should not be persecuted because of their re- ligious beliefs, but like any other right, there are reason- able limits to its free exercise.
As our nation’s first presi- dent articulated, those who live under the protection of the United States of America must also “demean themselves as good citizens.” You cannot in- voke a special right to deny an- other their rights as citizens. Religious liberty, as valuable and necessary as it is, cannot be used to break the law, should not be twisted to op- press a class of people, and cannot be tolerated as a means to freely discriminate in a na- tion whose goal, since its founding, has been to create a more perfect union and estab- lish justice.”
Rejecting The Freedom To Discriminate
MARC H. MORIAL President and CEO National Urban
League
“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that an- other enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to per- secution no assistance, re- quires only that they who live under its protection should de- mean themselves as good citi- zens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual sup- port." — President George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of New- port, RI, August 18, 1790
It was not so long ago when one of the most powerful justifications wielded in sup- port of the American practice of segregation was religious be- lief. Segregation and discrimi- nation against Black citizens was enforced by state-sanc- tioned Jim Crow laws that legally separated Blacks from whites and made it illegal for individuals from either group to associate with the other.
Schools were segregated. Restaurants were segregated. Blacks and whites could not legally marry. And even water fountains were designated by race.
Defenders of these race- based policies employed a va-
riety of arguments to support the institution of discrimina- tion by the books, including ar- guing that the fact that God “separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," as was written by a lower court justice in a land- mark civil rights case that would later end all state bans on interracial marriage.
Today, religious freedom bills are cropping up around the nation that would turn back the clock on American progress versus legal discrimi- nation. Cloaked under the mantle of religious liberty, there are those who want to in- voke their constitutional right to freedom of association and religion to deny other citi- zens—those whose lives and lifestyles they say are at odds with their religious beliefs— employment, professional or private services and the right to marry, among other things. The free exercise of religion sits at the heart of our nation’s founding. But we live in a democracy, not a theocracy. We cannot allow religious lib- erty to be transformed into a tool of oppression against any class of individuals or citizens.
Following huge public out- cry and the threat of millions in lost business in the state, Geor- gia Governor Nathan Deal has announced that he will veto a religious freedom bill that was meant to protect faith-based groups and indi- viduals from legal repercus- sions if they refused to provide services or employment to peo- ple on the grounds of avoiding
Bias And Law Enforcement
TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2016 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5
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What Really Happened At City Council