Commissioner Howard T Spence

In her video, Judge Vann of Detroit weighed the pros and the cons of law enforcement and overly aggressive or rogue cops... This video of about 29 minutes received over a million views as Judge Vann tried to explain the factors that she considered before sentencing a rogue cop to the Michigan Department of Corrections in 2017.

I worked as the statewide director of inmate classification and programming at Jackson State Prison from 1971 to 1976, and I saw some of the rogue cops from around the state who for whatever reason got sentenced to the MDOC. Suffice it to say that cops who got sentenced to prison did not do well then, and many were pretty much locked up full time in max security and protection units...

Even back then, it was obvious to me that inmates of all races and ethnic backgrounds who were sentenced to prison included some people (both young and old) who sat across from me in my office who I would never want to meet on any street in America. There were and still are plenty of really dangerous people who serve life sentences in the MDOC who might have been on death row in any state that allowed the imposition of a death sentence...

Later in my life and career I served as Eaton County Commissioner representing Delta Township Michigan where I was a member of the county's Public Safety and Judiciary Committee. I also represented Eaton County on the Michigan Association of Counties Public Safety Committee along with Judges and Prosecutors from around the state of Michigan.

I have sat in closed sessions of the County Commission with attorneys defending our county against wrongful death lawsuits where members of our county sheriff's department had killed or injured persons - some of whom were only teen agers - during "traffic stops" or 911 responses.

There will always be "mistakes" and wrongful deaths in police-civillian interactions where sometimes decisions must be made in a split second - like we see in some of the ICE/DHS homicides across our nation like those that occurred in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

As the judge in the video I share indicated, training and de-escalation are key, but sometimes adequate professional training of police officers just gets lip service, and civilians and/or officers end up dead.

While members of minority communities are often targeted as this judge discusses, sometimes the rogue police officers are actually Black or of color who go out of their way to show aggression towards members of the very communities they have sworn to serve and protect. Historically some of the most vicious and heartless keepers of the peace or overseers in prisons or on plantations have been Negros anxious to gain favor with those to whom they report.

We saw that in predatory and pack-like beatings recently in Memphis where a group of Black officers killed a young gay boy - apparently to show him "pain compliance" and who was really in charge in their world.

I have had a number of meaningful and thoughtful conversations with Eaton County Sheriff Tom Reich about the potential benefits of bringing "diversity and inclusion" to our county sheriff's "Road Patrol," but I quickly agree with him that while diversity was a positive and desireable goal, it is always best to have professionally trained police officers with good temperaments rather than a diverse police force of rogue officers of any color.

As all of us must realistically acknowledge, being a police officer is a dangerous - and sometimes seemingly thankless - profession. Judge Evans herself acknowledged that in her lengthy discussion of our police officers forces in the embedded sentencing video. My heart hurts for the loved ones of police officers who are not racist who have been literally assassinated while on duty in some communities.

Some of my friends get offended when I say that if police departments get "defunded," it will not be because of demands by members of communities advocating that Black Lives Matter. After having seen how expensive and avoidable deaths and injuries in traffic stops can occur, and after seeing how required damage settlements can result in government budget depletions and even layoffs of police officers because the funding in budgets is gone, it seems pretty clear to me that one of the quickest ways to "defund the police" is to hire the wrong police officers and then to not train or supervise them.

One of the reasons I share this video again at this time is because today we clearly have an overly aggressive ICE/Border Control/DHS police cadre of poorly trained opportunists and racists seeking to make money from "bounties" collected on brown skinned people - many of whom have no criminal history whatsoever except maybe "rolling through a stop sign."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI-KBPlOky4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI-KBPlOky4

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MAGA MONEY? WONDER WHERE THOSE PENNIES HAVE GONE? NOT ALL TRUMP MONEY WILL SPEND ANYWHERE OTHER THAN IN THE NEW CONFEDERACY! ARE THESE THE PENNIES THAT GO TO FUND POST OFFICE EMPLOYEE PENSIONS?