Still, today, I finally felt like he was letting his black side out a little bit and speaking about racism on a more personal level. Some white folks won't like it, but there is nothing they can do about it now. He will be the HNIC for the next three years.
"'Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,' Obama told White House reporters in a surprise appearance at the daily briefing."
Anyway, If you happen to believe that the police in Sanford, Florida cared about just another another young black man being shot to death, and that the reason they were going to let george zimmerman walk---- without even so much of a trial--- was because of a lack of evidence, consider what is going on down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"A veteran Baton Rouge police detective who used a racial slur to describe a homicide victim was suspended from duty recently after an internal affairs investigation determined he violated department policy.
The detective, John L. Colter, [*pic] complained at the scene of a fatal shooting in January that, “It’s my wife’s birthday and I am standing here over a dead nigger,” according to records released Tuesday by the Baton Rouge Police Department.
Colter, who is white, made the remarks among a group of officers that included a black detective.
Provisional Police Chief Carl Dabadie, in May, suspended Colter without pay for 20 days as a result of the incident and ordered that he attend a diversity training course.
*“Your actions could have potentially devastating consequences for this department in our bid to win the hearts and minds of those we have solemnly sworn to protect and serve,” Dabadie wrote in Colter’s letter of suspension.He added, “This type of unacceptable behavior relegates anyone from the ranks of quintessential professional to that of an insensitive, arrogant and callous egotist that has neither empathy nor feeling towards others.”
Dabadie declined through a spokesman to discuss the case after the records were released Tuesday in response to a Public Records Act request because Colter remained hospitalized with serious injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash last week in Livingston Parish.
The spokesman, Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, said Colter sustained “significant brain injury” but is expected to survive.
Colter’s use of a racial slur came to light in February during former Police Chief Dewayne White’s pre-termination hearing. Without naming Colter, White said he had sought unsuccessfully to transfer the detective shortly after the incident, claiming the case highlighted Mayor-President Kip Holden’s tendency to micromanage him.
“Not only were the officer’s comments and conduct deplorable,” White said during the packed hearing in the Metro Council chambers, “but they could potentially cause to be called into question all of his prior investigations involving African-American victims....”
The spokesman, Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, said Colter sustained “significant brain injury” but is expected to survive.
The incident that led to Colter’s suspension occurred on the morning of Jan. 5, when Colter was called out to investigate the killing of 43-year-old Keith Matthews, a West Feliciana Parish man found fatally shot in a vehicle parked in front of a vacant home on Erie Street.
Officers at the scene recalled Colter taking out his smartphone at some point and appearing to photograph the corpse, suggesting he should send a picture to his wife to account for his middle-of-the-night absence on her birthday.
Colter denied snapping any photographs, telling internal affairs officers later that he had been using the flashlight application on his cellphone to see inside the vehicle where the victim was seated.
But Colter readily admitted using the racial slur, adding he quickly apologized to his fellow officers, who had been huddling in strategy over how to approach the “whodunit, head-scratcher” of a slaying.
Colter told internal affairs officers that the racial epithet was a “slip of the tongue” and that he shouldn’t have said it.
“I meant to say dead Negro,” he explained.
In his interview with internal affairs, Colter apologized if his remarks “came off as racist,” but noted he and other homicide detectives often make “very dark, inappropriate jokes” in coping with the gory scenes they encounter in their work.
“We were kind of making fun of the fact that the guy got shot with his pants down around his ankles basically,” Colter told investigators. “There had been other jokes about that prior to my comment.”
Police have said they believe Matthews was in the company of a prostitute at the time of his death.
Police records revealed conflicting accounts of the immediate reaction to Colter’s use of the racial slur. Dabadie, in the letter of suspension, mentioned that a lieutenant who overheard the remarks admonished Colter and told him he “did not want to hear that again.”
But another detective — whose name, like other police officials other than Colter, was blacked out of the records that were released — told investigators the officers “kind of brushed it off” after Colter apologized “and that was the end of it.”
Colter told officials that he prided himself on professionalism and said that his use of the racial epithet marked “the first time it has come out of my mouth in relation to my police duties” of 25 years.
“Truth be told, I probably shouldn’t have been making that comment to begin with,” he said. “We had been out there for about two hours and it was a bad scene.” [Source]
This story is sad, but what made it even sadder were the actions of the black
"..African-Americans feel the context of the Martin killing is little known or denied, "and that all contributes, I think, to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different..."
Mr. President, that "white male teen" would not have been called a "white ass cracka" by the detective investigating his death. I think we can all agree with that statement.
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