Police in Colorado Detain Black Mother and 4 Girls at Gunpoint
HAVANA TIMES – Police in Aurora Colorado detained a Black family at gunpoint on Sunday after mistaking their vehicle for one that was stolen. Video has gone viral showing police ordering a woman and four girls to lie facedown at gunpoint in a parking lot. The girls ranged in age from 6 to 17. Two of the girls were handcuffed. In the shocking video the girls can be heard crying and screaming.
Brittany Gilliam said she was taking her daughter, sister, and nieces to get their nails done when Aurora police drew guns on their parked vehicle. The Aurora police department has apologized and said they opened an internal investigation.
Last year in Aurora, Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old African American massage therapist, died after he was tackled by police, placed in a chokehold and then injected with ketamine by paramedics. At the time he was walking home from picking up an iced tea for his brother at a convenience store.
I have been a Black man in the US and a Black man in Cuba. It is my concrete opinion that being Black in the US is dangerous and inhospitable most of the time BUT at all times I am comforted that the law of the land, if applied equitably, will prevail in favor of the good. On the other hand in Cuba, while the environment is markedly more hospitable and therefore less dangerous, I am constantly aware that if I am violated I have no recourse. Plainly spoken, if I happen to cross paths with a “redneck” PNR officer, I have to accept whatever happens. There will be no lawsuit against the police. No public outcry against police abuse. No nothing. Which is worse? I have no power to protect myself in Cuba. In the US, even as a Black man, I retain some measure of recompense against those who would trample on my rights. That recompense may have to be exercised by those who survive my death at the hands of the police but it remains my recompense nonetheless.
Dan makes a very good point as does Mr MacD.
Despite all their respective flaws I find both USA and Cuba to be fascinating countries.
I have had the great good fortune to have spent significant and valuable time in both these places.
They say that life is an education. I have learnt not to refer to either the USA or Cuba as a paradise.
Maybe there will be paradise in the after life but I’m not holding my breath on that one either.
There is a desperate need in many of the US police forces, to revert to being police services, to revise recruitment systems and to instruct based upon the nine principles established in 1829. Each police service ought to be supervised by a committee of representatives of the community – as they were in the UK – the so-called “Watch committee”.
It is self-evident that police services are required, railing against that, is folly. It is degeneration into militarized organizations that is the evident problem in the US, and has insidiously crept in to other countries. In the UK, the Metropolitan Police of London, has a recognized long history of corruption and in Canada it is time to disband the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and to replace that militarized force with community police services.
But in the US incidents of the type described above, are all too frequent, creating an urgent need for revision and correction.
Olga – You must inhabit the same parallel universe as Mr. Trump. None of the many Black Cubans that I have known in the last 27 years fear the PRN like my clients fear the cops here in the US. It’s also funny that you use that trasnochado trope ” Proletarian Paradise “. Did Nick call it a “Paradise”?
Nick needless to say in the proletarian paradise in the Caribbean. But this family would have their day in court and maybe financial rewards. In Cuba the land if the repression things are worst.
It’s quite shocking what goes on sometimes in the so called ‘land of the free’.
Exceptionalism??
I would suggest that the events described in this report are exceptionally unfair.