U.S. Blacks, endangered specie

Are you black? Do you live in America? Chances are that you may not live to celebrate your next birthday if you are unfortunate enough to have an argument with a police officer. Recently, two young black men were shot dead by police in New York City and Cincinnati, indicating that the number killed by […]

Are you black? Do you live in America? Chances are that you may not live to celebrate your next birthday if you are unfortunate enough to have an argument with a police officer. Recently, two young black men were shot dead by police in New York City and Cincinnati, indicating that the number killed by police in the US may exceed 1,000 by end of 2015.
For those Nigerians who think that their country is the very pit of hell, there is room to thank God for little mercies. Yes, we still have the occasional “accidental discharge” from either boozed up policemen or bribe-seeking officers, but by and large our policemen don’t target racial or ethnic nationalities. That is not the case in America where the number of blacks and Hispanics killed by officers is disproportionate to their population.
People are being killed by US officers at more than twice the rate most recently admitted by the much-criticised FBI system, which says 461 victims of police shooting were killed in 2013. According to research findings, among the first 500 deaths 49.6% of people were white, 28.2% were black and 14.8% were Hispanic/Latino. According to the 2013 census, the US population is 62.6% white, 13.2% black and 17.1% Hispanic/Latino.
More than one in every five people killed so far in 2015 – 108, or 21.6% – were unarmed. A significant disparity in the proportion of black and white people killed who were unarmed, which was reported last week by the Guardian, has since narrowed slightly. While 30.5% of black people killed were unarmed, 16.1% of white people killed had no weapon.
Men comprised 95.2% of the first 500 people killed, while 4.8% were women. There are slightly more women than men among the general population.
The Counted, a project working to report and crowd-source names and a series of other data on every death caused by law enforcement in the US this year, found that 547 people had been killed by the end of June.
“In total, 478 of those people were shot and killed, while 31 died after being shocked by a Taser, 16 died after being struck by police vehicles, and 19 – including 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – have died after altercations in police custody. When adjusted to accurately reflect the US population, the totals indicate that black people are being killed by police at more than twice the rate of white and Hispanic or Latino people. Black people killed by police were also significantly more likely to have been unarmed….”
According to Cassandra Fairbanks, US police kill more in days than other countries do in year – “The frighteningly high number averages out to three killed per day, or someone killed every eight hours.… The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less people than the US.
“If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. From 2010 through 2014, there were four fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period.
“China, whose population is 4 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014. Let that sink in. Law enforcement in the US killed 92 times more people than a country with nearly 1.4 billion people. From 2013-2014, German police killed absolutely no one.
“In the entire history of Iceland police, they have only killed 1 person ever. After exhausting all non-lethal methods to detain an armed man barricaded in his house who actually shot 2 police officers, police were forced to take the 59-year-old man’s life. The country of Iceland grieved for weeks after having to resort to violence… Unofficially, it seems that American police kill more than all of the first world nations’ police departments combined!
Here in Nigeria, we know that there is still a lot of work to be done on our police force and other law enforcement agents. But our law enforcers haven’t been bitten by the Hitlerish bug of racial superiority or ethnic cleansing. Considering that millions of Nigerians and other people of colour  who live in the US are literally on the firing line on account of the sustained police killings of blacks and minorities, we join in adding our tiny voice to the cacophony already condemning the bestial comportment of many a US police officer.
These heirs of slave owners, beneficiaries of America’s Original Sin, inheritors of the flag of confederacy, are hell bet on systematically depopulating the black and coloured communities. The civilised world must not just stand idly by to watch the many horror clips on YouTube. It is the responsibility of the rest of civilisation to save America from itself.
Badeh’s anticlimactic apotheosis
Listening to Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh whine during his pulling out parade about how the military was underfunded and under-equipped by successive administrations, my stomach turned in disdain. Here was a man who had been in charge of our war against terror and who had always defended every move of the previous administration now coming out to tell us that it had all been a huge joke at our collective expense.
When soldiers mutinied over poor welfare; when some deserted the war front in the face of the superior fire power of Boko Haram; when the mutineers and deserters were being sentenced to death by the various court marshals hurriedly constituted to enforce discipline in the armed forces, where was Air Chief Marshal Badeh?
It is cheap to take parting shots at a dead administration. Badeh was part and parcel of what went on before now. If he now claims he didn’t know how defence matters were being run then he is guilty of cowardice. He ought to have resigned honourably when he saw that we were sending our troops to face a deadly enemy without the necessary equipment. So much said for the quality of leadership of our armed forces these past few trying years.