REAL TALK: JUST THIS WEEK IN THE NEWS
I stopped reading a blog about Trayvon Martin to write this blog. ( I hope I got his name right.) Because a few days ago I lay in m bed and heard the sound of death break the dawn, dogs howl, bottles and stones thrown and men quarrelling because a woman was shot by local police men.
In the morning when my curiosity swallowed bravery I walked up to the crime scene and I saw fresh evidence of death.
Her marrow lying on the floor and the stream of blood remaining was being soaked up by the earth slowly. The zinc that acted only as visual block for her killers riddled with bullet holes, 32 to be precise. The bicycle that was parked in the yard still hold pieces of her essence and a bullet that may have landed in her or missed her completely.
When I repeat the story of how she simply decided to take a drink of either Rum or Boom to the little girl’s Nine Night that was only a stone’s throw from her house and returned home because she had work in the morning but was unable to pull her house door before being pinned down by police gun shots, people always ask me why? What did she do? But I just told you what she did; she decided to go to bed because she had work in the morning.
In the night a woman’s voice crept into my room from across the gully she said “Long time Police a kill people it just reach we now.”
For Travyon in Florida he was killed because he looked suspicious, for this woman she was killed because the Police thought it was someone suspicious like dog or an animal in the woods that deserved to be shot 20 times in the face and 12 times all over the body. It is as if the police force as a quota of bullets that must be used up, so this officer felt justified in using them all at once. Many statements have been made that if it was a man already the reports would have been made that it was a shoot out and that the man was wanted by the police. But even if this was the incident 32 gun shots is what is needed. But alas, it was just a woman trying to get home so she can get to work on time.
I don’t know anything about police brutality. Or about profiling, or about suspicious behavior, but I do know about reaction. So I was bothered when in the morning cars where turned around road blocks built and taken down all before 11am. Isn’t this grounds for 9 days of riots? Or have we given up on that?
Many people stated that they will not be holding a placard because they did not want the police to see them and then make them a victim to the very thing that they were uncomfortable with. And so the discontent the unease rose quietly, men took to drinking, women sat and watched fed babies from nipples with their placards resting beside them.
And then three days later there was a complete disregard for the curfew that was instigated by the police force months before, and a sound system blared sounds in blatant opposition to the police. A woman told the selector to “bun out” the police “di dutty Babylon bwoy dem”.
Outside of this there must be a cry for justice. The statistic shows that up until three days ago the police have killed 22 people from the start of the year. Almost as if there is gamble or a stake between the gun men and the police and the police are refusing to be left out of the murdering ranks. A friend of mine said it’s the right time for him to leave.
This state of police always being right (which is the sole evidence you need to realize you are living in a police state) has had immediate impact on the child unable to take her GSAT exams, having watched her mother get gun down by police officers and waiting the many hours it took them to find the 32 spent shells, tear off the gate, shoot through one of the holes and try and figure out a way to get out of it chase away the media and then remove the body et al, as well as the community who sit in fear of reprisals and a country who has to accept this as a mode of behavior by the authorities. Is this the place we are creating out of the paradise?
We are too eager to kill in this world. Too eager to think that we are right.
In the morning when my curiosity swallowed bravery I walked up to the crime scene and I saw fresh evidence of death.
Her marrow lying on the floor and the stream of blood remaining was being soaked up by the earth slowly. The zinc that acted only as visual block for her killers riddled with bullet holes, 32 to be precise. The bicycle that was parked in the yard still hold pieces of her essence and a bullet that may have landed in her or missed her completely.
When I repeat the story of how she simply decided to take a drink of either Rum or Boom to the little girl’s Nine Night that was only a stone’s throw from her house and returned home because she had work in the morning but was unable to pull her house door before being pinned down by police gun shots, people always ask me why? What did she do? But I just told you what she did; she decided to go to bed because she had work in the morning.
In the night a woman’s voice crept into my room from across the gully she said “Long time Police a kill people it just reach we now.”
For Travyon in Florida he was killed because he looked suspicious, for this woman she was killed because the Police thought it was someone suspicious like dog or an animal in the woods that deserved to be shot 20 times in the face and 12 times all over the body. It is as if the police force as a quota of bullets that must be used up, so this officer felt justified in using them all at once. Many statements have been made that if it was a man already the reports would have been made that it was a shoot out and that the man was wanted by the police. But even if this was the incident 32 gun shots is what is needed. But alas, it was just a woman trying to get home so she can get to work on time.
I don’t know anything about police brutality. Or about profiling, or about suspicious behavior, but I do know about reaction. So I was bothered when in the morning cars where turned around road blocks built and taken down all before 11am. Isn’t this grounds for 9 days of riots? Or have we given up on that?
Many people stated that they will not be holding a placard because they did not want the police to see them and then make them a victim to the very thing that they were uncomfortable with. And so the discontent the unease rose quietly, men took to drinking, women sat and watched fed babies from nipples with their placards resting beside them.
And then three days later there was a complete disregard for the curfew that was instigated by the police force months before, and a sound system blared sounds in blatant opposition to the police. A woman told the selector to “bun out” the police “di dutty Babylon bwoy dem”.
Outside of this there must be a cry for justice. The statistic shows that up until three days ago the police have killed 22 people from the start of the year. Almost as if there is gamble or a stake between the gun men and the police and the police are refusing to be left out of the murdering ranks. A friend of mine said it’s the right time for him to leave.
This state of police always being right (which is the sole evidence you need to realize you are living in a police state) has had immediate impact on the child unable to take her GSAT exams, having watched her mother get gun down by police officers and waiting the many hours it took them to find the 32 spent shells, tear off the gate, shoot through one of the holes and try and figure out a way to get out of it chase away the media and then remove the body et al, as well as the community who sit in fear of reprisals and a country who has to accept this as a mode of behavior by the authorities. Is this the place we are creating out of the paradise?
We are too eager to kill in this world. Too eager to think that we are right.
What was her name: do you know?
ReplyDeleteI grieve for the family, the community, for our society. Horror upon horror.
ReplyDeleteI grieve for the woman's family, her community, our society.
ReplyDelete