Results: The Ugly Side Of Law Enforcement

We are taught from a young age that the Police are your friend -- they are there to protect you and should be treated with respect. We are told if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. But things are a bit different if you happen to be Black. It's known as "The Talk" — a discussion left almost exclusively to black parents and family members about police. "The Talk" was the topic of a New York Times video from 2015, explaining how black parents have to prepare their sons for police encounters — out of fear, mainly, that such interactions can go horribly wrong, ending with their son dead. These are the types of fears that have existed in black communities for generations, but they've recently received far more mainstream attention in the aftermath of high-profile police killings since the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014 and many others since: Philando Castile, , Antwon Rose Jr, Botham Shem Jean, Robert Lawrence White, Anthony Lamar Smith, Ramarley Graham, Trayvon Martin, Wendell Allen, Sandra Bland, Kendrec McDade, Jonathan Ferrell, Jordan Baker, Laquan McDonald and many others. In this age of "guilty before proven innocent", their very skin colour is all the police seem to need to draw their weapons and fire. Last season, the ABC TV show Blackish dealt with this very topic in a touching and thought-provoking episode. Watch the clip and see if you agree they handled the topic well.What did you think?

Many studies have agreed that black males are shot by police at disproportionately high rates. According to several different studies, black men aged 15–34 are between nine and 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other people. And these statistics are backed up by other alarming findings. Study after study show black men are frequently perceived as larger, scarier, and more prone to criminality than people of other races. For black parents, that means a typical police stop turning into a violent encounter is a very real, terrifying possibility. My sister's sons are bi-racial, and when he enters a store with his white friends, he notices that store employees watch him closely (he has even been asked to wait outside but his friends are allowed in). Have you ever witnessed such examples?

A new movie that recently opened in the theaters is The Hate U Give, which is not based on a true story, despite being a scary and all too accurate portrayal of exactly this situation. In the film, 16-year-old Starr Carter, played by Amandla Stenberg, witnesses a police officer shoot dead her friend Khalil at point-blank range. By this stage, Starr's father has already given her The Talk, the time-honored ritual where African-American parents instruct their children how to behave if stopped by the police: be polite, stay calm, put your hands where they can see them. When their car is pulled over, Starr follows the drill. Khalil reaches for a hairbrush. The police officer thinks it's a gun. That's all it takes. And even though the story is fictional, the emotions and subsequent reactions are very true to life. Taking a stand is not without consequences, and that is what this movie relays. The Hate U Give has become one of the most challenged and banned books in recent US history, and the movie should also open up a dialogue -- and that is what this country needs. Will you go see this movie or did you read the book?