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Editorials/Column
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Blacks, COVID-19 & Rattlesnakes
I want to extend condo- lences and prayers to the families that have lost
loved ones to the COVID-19 virus. I also want to dedicate this column to people you don’t know, but who are working on the frontlines of the war against the Coron- avirus . . . Abdul, April, Dashaun, Lynette, Erin, Michael, Nicole, Ostine and Traci.
They are my sons, grand- son, nieces, and goddaugh- ters who are also police officers, nurses, deputies, and a paramedic. Each of them have husbands, wives, and children totaling nine- teen with whom they live.
My message is to all of you who refuse to wear masks, who go to wall-to- wall house and pool parties; who refuse to stay six feet or more from other people; who still have birthday and other traditional group celebra- tions; and who refuse to practice other safe measures such as handwashing and keeping surfaces washed, (In other words, being clean) I resent you doing as you please and then expecting my family members and other first responders to take care of and risk their lives for your selfishness.
Every time one of them comes in contact with some-
one with COVID-19, they are risking their lives and the lives of their family members and numerous co-workers to save you. They have no choice, you do.
Many of you wonder why so many Blacks are getting COVID-19 and dying from it. There is no conspiracy ex- cept a conspiracy of selfish- ness. We are orchestrating our own deaths because we refuse to do what we need to do in order to stay safe until a cure or vaccine is devel- oped. I certainly hope you can see the danger behind opening churches and other densely populated busi- nesses without monitoring whether the facilities are ca- pable of providing all of the safety measure recom- mended by the CDC.
Just in case you missed the news, a study found that 5 feet of social distancing is not adequate and you need to be much farther away from people. Another bit of COVID-19 trivia is that there is a correlation between COVID-19 and blood type. The virus attacks more Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in higher numbers whose blood types are O Positive (Blacks 47%, Hispanics 53% Asians 39%, Whites 37%), A Positive (Blacks 24%, His- panics 29%, Asians 27%),
and B Positive (Asians 25%), based upon a study by the Southern University of Sci- ence and Technology.
Moreover, other data shows that people who are obese are more likely to have a higher death rate, and the obesity rate among Blacks is higher than all other ethnic groups. This is definitely a reason for us to lose weight and change our behaviors and traditions.
Think about it! If you were told that there are rat- tlesnakes lurking in shrub- bery in your flower bed, would you choose to pull weeds from your flowerbed with your bare hands? I don’t think so.
We need to treat COVID- 19 the same way we would treat a rattlesnake for which there is no antidote. Every person who comes within 10 feet of you should be consid- ered as deadly as a rat- tlesnake. Therefore, if you would not take precautions to avoid being bitten by a rat- tlesnake, you need to have your head examined. The irony is that when the snake bites you, everybody you come in contact with is bitten also.
I don’t know what histo- rians will write about as to how Americans handled the COVID-19 Pandemic. How- ever, they surely will men- tion how our own behavior as a people contributed to our disproportionate Coron- avirus deaths.
Indeed, we need to change our behaviors and traditions in order to reduce our susceptibility to deaths from COVID-19.
Remember, COVID-19 is just like a rattlesnake.
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Good Cops, Bad Cops
We extend our appreciation to Mayor Jane Castor, Police Chief Brian Dugan, Police Chief Kenneth Albano, and Sheriff Chad Chronister for joining the com- munity in a protest march against the behavior of a bad cop, Derek Chauvin. Besides the continuation of adding to the litany of names of Black men and women who have been killed, maimed, and injured excessively by active and retired law enforcement officers in America, there is an- other sinister problem lurking among the ranks of law en- forcement officers and their Blue Wall of Silence . . . domestic violence.
Both of them need to be excised from police depart- ments in America. No, NFL players do not have a monop- oly on domestic violence. In fact even though they are criticized for domestic violence because of greater media visibility, they actually have a lower domestic violence rate than do police officers (40 percent) and the community rate (10 percent). The link between law enforcement vio- lence against Black men and women and law enforcement domestic violence is that they both are pervasive, swept under the rug, and go unpunished.
So, instead of looting, destroying, and ruining the busi- nesses and jobs of innocent business owners and employ- ees (many of whom are Black and other minorities), we should be sitting at the table with good cops and negotiat- ing solutions to this problem that we have been facing for four hundred years, beginning with slave patrols (pa- trollers, patty rollers, etc.), white men who monitored and enforced discipline upon Black slaves in the antebellum South.
We should be negotiating full transparency by our law enforcement agencies. We should be asking why a police officer could have eighteen complaints, be involved in two shootings, and be disciplined twice, and still be on a police force interacting with the public. We should want to know why his partner with six complaints and one disciplinary action is still on the force. We should want to know why Chauvin felt comfortable killing someone for what would have been a misdemeanor at best (IF found guilty), with the whole world watching?
Instead of wasting productive energy in marches and protests, we should be negotiating policies that can stop at least one hundred Blacks from being killed by law en- forcement officers each year. Among those polices are:
1. Requiring body cameras and dashcams for all law enforcement officers to be used whenever interacting with the public.
2. Requiring periodic personality tests, anger management tests and training, aggres- sion testing, and mental health evaluations for all new law enforcement recruits and veteran officers.
3. Implicit bias association tests and training should be required of every officer be- fore they are allowed to interact with the public.
4. Diversity and implicit bias reduction training should become a continuous part of in-service training plans for all law enforcement officers throughout the officers’ tenure in their prospective agencies.
5. Law enforcement agencies should form a diverse group of officers to serve as a quality control committee as a means of providing self-monitoring, suggestions, men- toring and ideas as to how departments can prevent and resolve bias behaviors and com- plaints.
6. Law enforcement officers should weed out officers who are “ticking time bombs” and are more likely to engage in unprofessional and abusive behaviors to avoid loss of life and millions of dollars in damages because of their behavior.
A few bad cops ruin the lives and safety of good police officers who seldom, rarely, or never receive complaints and who work trying to build better police-community rela- tions. Bad officers should no longer be allowed to hide behind their badges, uniforms, and a blue wall of silence. They should be called out, disciplined or/and or terminated.
America can no longer afford “The Fire Next Time,” again. It is too expensive and can ultimately destroy America and millions of lives.
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