Alton Sterling – Danii Gold

Last week has been very eventful and not in a good way. Tuesday night July 5, Alton Sterling was shot by the police in Baton Rogue outside of a local market. Less than 24 hours later Philando Castile was shot by a Minnesota police officer in his girlfriend’s car while they were being stopped for a broken tail light. After he was shot, his girlfriend immediately started broadcasting it. That’s TWO killings of black men by police officers in one week.

More recently, FIVE police officers were at a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas Thursday July 7. The shooter—Micah X Johnson, a black man with no criminal history, who was an army reservist that spent some time in Afghanistan.. Before he was killed by a robot bomb, he said he was outraged with the killings of the black men that occurred last week.

The next day ( July 8) a police officer was killed in Ballwin, Mo; which is a small suburb community outside of St. Louis, my hometown.

Black people are fed up. Fed up with being mistreated, discriminated against, KILLED! Even with body cameras and bystanders recording the last few killings in the past 2 years, the police are still getting off the hook for these killings of black people, NOT just men but women as well.

At this point, the question is: what else can we do? We’ve protested, marched, recorded, read our rights to know what to do in these circumstances, complied with the law, been upfront and honest when asked if we have any weapons on us and STILL, we get killed. So is the answer to the question to keep fighting, protesting and recording OR fight back the police and kill them like Micah Johnson did ? I’m not saying killing the police is right but until there is equality….its going to be a war out here is the real until our voice is heard and we are treated with the same respect and rights as the next race.

#BlackLivesMatter

Photo Credit: youngdems.com

WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?? Another black man being killed by a white police officer is nothing new to the WORLD.

Alton Sterling, a 37 year old man, was selling CDs outside of a local Baton Rogue market when he was approached by two white officers. The police got a call saying that Alton was outside of the market, threatening people with a gun. There is footage of the incident circulating around social media. In the video, you can see the officers tackled him to the round and one officer yelling “gun” (but there was no gun in sit from the victim” and then you hear and see the office fire 6 shots into Alton’s chest. Talk about GRAPHIC.

The store owner, who was a witness to the crime said that the police tazed Alton and pushed him on the silver car. Then they tackled him to the ground.He says that Alton didn’t reach for a gun and it was not visible when he was on the ground. The store owner says that the gun was only visible when the police officer reached in Alton’s pocket and got it out, AFTER he had been shot. He adds that, from what he saw, the police didn’t have to shoot Alton and the police could have handled it differently. All Alton was trying to do was find out why he was being arrested.

Celebrities have expressed their concerns about the incident. Cardi B from Love and Hip Hop New York went on a rant saying “If you fucking scared of a black man laying on the floor, you shouldn’t be a cop, you a coward.” Actor Jesse Williams had a series of tweets on how he felt about the incident. Even rapper The Game shared a long post on Instagram saying that we need to do more than create hashtags on social media; we need to take action!

Alton’s family spoke out about the crime of their loved one and you can see his 15 year-old son breaking down on television. It was heartbreaking to see him cry and even sadder to see the mother of his son try to hold back her tears while talking about the crime.

Alton Sterling Family Breaking Down (Video Credit CNN.COM)

In my opinion, this is getting ridiculous. By “this” I mean the killing of our black people by police officer AND by other black men. It seems that since black people are killing black people, the police see that it’s okay to kill them/us as well. These killings have spiraled out of control and now that there is footage supporting the injustice, justice is still not being served. When will it stop? Will it ever stop?

Featured image credit: heavy.com

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A War Has Started

#AltonSterling