AXE...The Great?

Axe St. Claire Shore Police dog

On the morning of November 5, 2018, I woke up and turned on the television. One of the news reports that was airing on Fox 2 News, was one about a man who was killed at a reception venue in St. Clair Shores.  There had been a baby-shower going on. A man thought that his family was in danger and grabbed a gun and took off outside. People working at the venue, saw that the man had a gun and called the police. When the police had gotten there and asked the man to drop his gun and man took off running, instead.  The police then sent the dog, Axe, after the man down the parking lot. The dog, bit the man on the backside and the man still didn’t stop and neither did the dog. Once the dog was on the man, again, the man shot and killed the dog. The police, St. Claire Shore police, then returned fire and killed the man. He was shot 10 times, and I can imagine if it was while he was running in the back. It seems that the life of the dog was more valuable to the police than the life of the man. Several policemen, thought that they were in imminent danger, because at least three of them returned fire. It has been 20 years, since I fired an M-16 for the US Army, but the rules are that you shoot a weapon in a triangular grid. Therefore, three shots, in succession, and the goal is to get three shots off, three breaths and three holes in the target. So, I get confused when people are shot once or twice or ten times, someone doesn’t know the rules. You shoot that weapon, you shoot it three times, because three times is one time.

Those shots should be tight, too. Each bullet should land on top of one another to be precise. That triangle ideally should be one big hole, from each bullet falling on top of the other.  If your triangle is big as your hand, you are a bad shot.  Bigger, a lousy shot and smaller, you are a pretty good shot. So, either one officer was over zealous, in my opinion, or a few were holding back. Either way, somebody or somebodies did it wrong. I always think of Method Man and Mary J.’s song “Your all I Need to get by”. At the end of one of Method Man’s verses, he says, “So, keep it tight, alright?” That’s what Drill Sergeant Mondragon insisted on. He even cheated, and to us to a simulation that helped us learn that concept. We were score on how many times we hit our target, but before we got scored the object of our shooting was to make the tightest triangle you could make, and perfection wasn’t even to hit your target. He claimed he could work on your aim later. Maybe you needed glasses or something, but those shots needed to be tight. I say all of this to say that I’m confused. How does a man get shot 10 times, an even number, when three is odd?

But what else got to me that morning, after hearing that a man had been killed was an interview. Camille Amiri, Fox 2 News reporter was talking to a man outside the venue. The man had said, “This is usually a pretty nice neighborhood”, or something like that. My Black folk radar went up immediately. I thought, “That man was Black.” Later on in the morning, after some investigation they showed a picture of the man. He was a Black man, and the baby-shower was for his unborn child. That “usually”, made me know that there was something going on at the venue that wasn’t “usual”, and like I told the Head of Personnel at Walsh College, Black folk know every place where we’re not wanted. Sometimes, however, we extend our Blackness and go where we are not wanted for a nicer result. We know when we do this that we are risking our peace, there is a chance that we won’t be treated right and like in this case that we could possibly die. The local police are staunch on getting their point across. If ever anything happens in their city limits with Black or Latinos (who they put a little more value on, based on their skin) it is their goal to send a message that we aren’t wanted there. The shooting on November 4, 2018, let us know that St. Claire Shores police put more value on the life of a dog more than the life of a Black man.

For me and people like me, it is obvious. St. Claire Shore, one of the places we know aren’t welcome. The life of a dog is more valued than the life of a human being that is Black. We are less than a dog in St, Claire Shores. Now, they are putting blue lights all around the city. People are putting blue lights up on their front porch. The people of St. Claire Shores, loved this dog so much that they call the local hardware store for blue bulbs at a steady rate. St. Claire Shores loved this dog and has not said one word about the child that has lost its father. What I heard from the newscast is that he was an ex-convict that had did time in prison that was carrying a gun.  The dog in this case was worth shooting a man in the back. No one is collecting money in St. Claire Shores for the unborn child that no longer has a father. They killed a man who was trying to protect his family. A man who was obviously scared, because he took off running from the police. He already knew what was going to happen or at least he suspected he would be hurt or harmed. If not, why would he run. In Pontiac, we know when we entered Waterford back in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that we would more than likely be pulled over. Driving my brother’s 1977 Cutlass Supreme, I knew that I would be stopped. When I was, I got five tickets, because I “played the race card”. It was my reality, but O.J. had gotten off for murder, and some police were out to prove a point.

Besides, it wasn’t “Playing the race card”. My driving record is the proof what I said was true. I couldn’t keep a driver’s license when I drove that car. I had suspended license the entire time that I drove it, from 1997 to 1999. Waterford had been the final straw that “broke the camel’s back”. I worked every day, and my mother worked in Bloomfield Hills, every day. That car was the only way we could get to work. I drove into Bloomfield Hills and was stopped three times in three months. My mother would be stranded at work, because I was on the side of the road being search and the car searched. Usually, I would just get my tickets and drive away. In Waterford, however, the cop had a chip on his shoulder. He knew that I was driving home from work. But when I said that he only stopped me, because I was Black. That chip got larger, and my fate was sealed. He not only gave me five tickets but towed my car. That’s what I got 20 years ago for driving a “doper ride”. Nothing has changed for us even today. Waterford has changed, because a study showed they stopped more Blacks than Whites. Plus, the majority of their tickets were written on the border of Waterford where it touched Pontiac, Dixie, Elizabeth Lake Road and Telegraph.

Like most larger cities, Pontiac and Detroit have suburbs. In order to get to Detroit to Pontiac or Detroit to Port Huron, you must first drive through those suburbs. St. Claire Shores or Sterling Heights. The drive to Lakeside Mall is a scary feat to for Black folk. Imlay city is right up the block, Utica and other racist White cities. I can’t even name them all, because I know to not go that way. Many of the cities like Dearborn near Detroit have succumb to Middle Easterners’ and aren’t as bad, anymore. But the racist still live there, one of my professors at Walsh told me that “You go across the street and it’s a whole new world now.” I guess they limit the residency of the Middle Eastern families. My professor was born and raised in Dearborn. She had a very negative view of Black people, when she read my work for the first time, she accused me of cheating. They added a section to on-line uploads that makes you swear that the work is yours. Come to find out that she was a fake PhD. She was the cheater and Walsh's administration a lie.

I understand all too clear about racism. I went to prison, because Oakland County Judicial System can’t stand inter-racial relationships. They don’t like Black folk here. As long as we stay in Pontiac, and too many of us don’t move into their neighborhoods they are fine. We don’t get the help we need on foreclosures that others do, and I believe that’s to have us move out. That way they can have water and sewer and not drains and water softeners. Like St. Claire Shores, they have a way of showing you by their police that you aren’t wanted. There are systems that they create to keep you out of their city. Mainly it is the higher property taxes. You may be able to afford the mortgage, but not the taxes. When all that doesn’t work, and they find Black folk getting to comfortable in their city, they do what St. Claire Shore did and kill one of us. Then we will get the clear message that we’re not wanted there. It works for me and I don’t want to go anyplace I’m not wanted.  I want to see what’s going to happen to those police in St. Claire Shores, who shot a man in the back for killing a dog. If nothing, it will send the message that a dog’s life is more important that a man’s life. As long as they can demean a man, call him a criminal and disregard that he was protecting his own life, you can kill him and get away with it.

What is even more disheartening, is that they have put no regard in the life of the mother or his unborn child. Men are out in the street selling bracelets for a dog and haven’t said one thing about how the child will be raised without a father. How the woman will care for her child without a father.  The total disregard for a man’s life is astonishing, because he was a Black felon. While they allow White men to rape and pillage their cities, because they don’t even suspect them of being criminals and allow them to roam their streets freely. I’ve met numerous White people while in “the system” that got away with robbing ritzy neighborhoods for months, because they were robbing their own. They need to tell it; White people commit crimes against other Whites. Black people commit crimes against other Blacks. That is a statistical fact, and White people get away with crime disproportionately than Blacks. Black people also get harsher treatment and die at a higher rate when encountering the police. This incident in St. Claire Shores is just a microcosm of life for Black men in America. Which is sad, because that means they are ignoring the truth.

The true life of a dog!

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