Better Watch How You Smell When You're In Public!

    
     As if things are not already crazy enough with the ever-growing list of things that it's dangerous to do while black (driving, walking, standing outside of a store, playing with a toy gun, etc.), now you also have to add watch how you smell!!

NC High Schooler Who Passed Drug Test Suspended for Smelling Like Weed

     Now, of course there is quite a bit of background missing from this article; as usual, it actually leaves more questions than it answers! For instance, why was the SRO searching for drugs in the first place? Were the students sitting at desks in rows like I remember sitting, with a student on either side? If so, how did he single out Jakayla Johnson for closer attention, as opposed to the students on either side of her, or the ones in front or behind? How was this SRO qualified to say that he was smelling weed and it was on her hands from use and not from having shaken someone's hand or held an article of clothing that smelled? And these aren't farfetched or made up things I'm saying. I used to be a heavy tobacco smoker, (a pack to a pack and a half a day) and I know what the smoke did to my clothing, my hair, and everything around me. If I was in the car it was enveloping me as I drove, so when I got to my destination and took off something like a cap or a scarf, hours later when I went back to get the item not only did it still smell, but everything in the closet or area where I left it smelled like tobacco smoke!! (That's one of the reasons I had to quit BTW.) I'm saying this because I know that it is possible to smell like something when you personally have had no contact with it. It's just so unfair, how do you suspend someone for allegedly smelling a certain way? Can you imagine the doors this can open? A teacher has a personal issue with a student and decides one day that the student has to go. Teacher calls the principal, says they smelled marijuana on the child when they came into class so they need to be removed. Easy Peasy, except for the fact that everyone is entitled to due process, including kids in school. There's no law on the books that says that a person can be convicted and punished on the basis of how they smell! Unfortunately, it wouldn't be the first time authority has been abused in that manner....

Jakayla Johnson

So Jakayla Johnson was suspended for smelling like weed. Her mother of course is outraged, but even if the school backtracks (which they won't) the damage has been done. Other schools, other SROs, other places around the country will be trying the same thing. 

When are people going to see just how bad things are getting? Now you can haul a child out of class and suspend her because of how she allegedly smelled!! She wasn't even acting funny or  talking funny, she allegedly smelled like weed, so now she has to miss days of school; what happened to reading is fundamental, and the big push to improve the literacy rates in our schools? 

This is just the type of thing that is going to begin happening more and more, people being snatched off the street and incarcerated for nothing more than a suspicion based on a smell. It's where our country is headed... Big Brother's finally gotten loose folks, and it's not just a fiction novel anymore.

Is It Really White Cops vs Black Youth? Or Is It 'Blue Uniforms' Against Black Youth?

     Of course 'Blue Uniforms' is not meant literally, since not all of them wear uniforms; it's just a descriptive phrase that has been used to mean cops for as long as I can remember. (So we're talking half a century here, folks.)
     I have to admit, after reading this story I'm not sure if the world has actually gone this far out of its collective mind, or if there are those who are trying hard to make themselves look innocent by making others look guilty... Somehow it just doesn't seem like it can be true to me, or could it be that I just don't want to believe that in my lifetime I'm actually seeing something like this? Could I just not want to believe that "an officer of the law", a member of those hired "to protect and serve" could yell "Film this then!" after hitting the boy so hard that he was knocked unconscious? Forget the fact that these 'officers' were black; the issue here, IMO, is that these people are supposed to be members of the force that we should be looking to for help, and for protection! We should not have to worry about if we get stopped for a ticket are we going to get tased, or pulled out of the car and beaten up because we didn't answer clearly enough, or quickly enough! To make matters worse, it seems that elderly age,  physical disability, or an inability to understand instructions (non-English speaking), these things make no difference at all.

NYPD Officer Allegedly Knocks Out Cigarette-Smoking Teen

The officer reportedly thought that 17-year-old Marcel Hamer was smoking marijuana.

      By: Breanna Edwards

Posted: Oct. 9 2014 1:46 PM

                                      

     A Brooklyn teenager was allegedly knocked out by a New York City police officer for smoking a cigarette, the Brooklyn Paper reports. Video footage captured on a cellphone shows the plainclothes officer punching Marcel Hammer, even as he lay on the ground in a gutter trying to protect his face,    saying, “It’s just a cigarette, sir.” 

     “Do you wanna get f--ked up?” the officer asked the teen.

     “Yeah, get it on film,” the officer says to Marcel’s friends.

      According to the Brooklyn Paper, Marcel was walking home from school with his friends when a police officer emerged from a police van and said Marcel was smoking marijuana. The friends started to run, but Marcel eventually stopped. When the officer caught up with him, he knocked Marcel to the ground, according to the news site.

     The actual blow that rendered the teen unconscious is not fully visible in the footage, but Marcel’s friends can be heard protesting in the background. Soon, according to the paper, another undercover cop comes on the scene, helping the first officer handcuff the seemingly unconscious teen.

The incident, which occurred on June 4, according to the Brooklyn Paper, is reportedly being investigated by the New York City Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

     According to the boy’s family, the 17-year-old has suffered memory loss, dizziness and headaches ever since the assault. “He is always complaining of headaches, and he cannot remember things,” his mother, Mary Hamer, said. “He used to be pretty sharp, and now I am helping him.”

And so another one is lost.