And Jesus Wept…

A few years back there was a TV show called “In the Heat of the Night”. It was a spin-off of the movie by the same name. The TV series starred Carroll O'Connor as Chief William O. 'Bill' Gillespie and Howard E. Rollins Jr. as Chief of Detectives Virgil Tibbs.

The events of yesterday (the execution of Troy Davis) have unsettled me in a way I did not think was possible.

In one of the shows entitled; “A Trip Upstate” (1989) George Brownlow sends word to Bill Gillespie that he wants to see the Chief at Parchman prison on the day of his execution. George was the driver in a bank holdup. Two bank robbers killed a guard and a customer before Bill killed them in return. As an accomplice, George was sentenced to die.

At Parchman, Bill sees George, who persuades Gillespie to stay until he is gone. The execution is devastating to the Chief. (Thank you to Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com))

When the Chief returns he and Detective Tibbs have a conversation about capital punishment and if it is the right thing to do. Tibbs points out the US Constitution makes reference that no cruel or unusual punishment can be administered. It is at this point the Chief relates his experience with the person who was executed. After hours of listening and watching the condemned man, he comes to the conclusion there is no way to invoke the death penalty and have it not be cruel or unusual.

He then gives this example (I couldn’t find the script so this is from memory).

“You take the man who is about to be executed for his crime and you sit him in a chair in front of you. You then tell him he is forgiven and that he is free to go. Then in the moment you see in his face the relief, the happiness at such good fortune, you tell him he is free to leave and go home. As he stands and turns to leave for his newfound freedom, you step up behind him and shoot him in the back of the head.”

To say the least I was stunned. In that bit of TV writing I recognized there is no way to kill another human being without being cruel or unusual.

At 6:30pm last night on CNN it was announced that the execution had been put on hold as the US Supreme Court took a final look at it. According to the experts Mr. Davis would have already been in the “death room” with the I.V. in his arm and preparing to receive a sedative to calm him. Then suddenly everything stops. I don’t know if they left him on the gurney or took him someplace close by; however his final hours were exactly what torture is all about. The really sad thing about it is the State of Georgia was really trying to do the right thing by waiting. According to Georgia state law they didn’t have to, they could have proceeded.

So, now I sit here and think damn, this was a cruel execution.

Thanks to Amnesty International and their website for some basic facts about the death penalty. www.amnestyusa.org

“Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row.

Factors leading to wrongful convictions include:

Inadequate legal representation
Police and prosecutorial misconduct
Perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony
Racial prejudice
Jailhouse "snitch" testimony
Suppression and/or misinterpretation of mitigating evidence
Community/political pressure to solve a case”

So how on earth can we continue to fight for a system of such a final solution if it has been wrong 130 times and maybe 131 times if you count Mr. Davis? How can “we the people” allow the government to kill even one person if the system is that broken? Those who are constantly harping about us being a Christian nation do not get this?

At least Governor George Ryan of Illinois, in January 2000, said,

"I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life... Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate."

Thereby

“declaring a moratorium on executions in his state, after the 13th Illinois death row inmate had been released from prison due to wrongful conviction. In the same time period, 12 others had been executed.”

I shudder to think how many people have been executed for a crime they did not commit.

How about this little factoid:

In a 1990 report, the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office found "a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty." The study concluded that a defendant was several times more likely to be sentenced to death if the murder victim was white. This has been confirmed by the findings of many other studies that, holding all other factors constant, the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.

Wow, the system is not only broken but it appears to have a deep bias.

The most troubling thing for me is that “Capital Punishment” is about as far from a Christian response as one can get.

In the book, “The Shack”, the main character Mac is having a conversation with God about his inability to forgive the man who brutally raped and murder his very young daughter. The character of God says this in response to Mac’s trouble with forgiveness;

“For you to forgive this man is for you to release him to me and allow me to redeem him.”

I know this is not a scriptural quote but isn’t that really what Jesus taught? There is no real way we can decide a person should die and be justified. All of the New Testament is about “agape”, unconditional love and forgiveness. So as Christians, how do we come to the conclusion that someone is beyond God’s reach and it is ok for us to come up with all kinds of fancy ways to kill them?

People who commit heinous crimes against others are a reason that calls for us to get revenge, get even, to get a pay back. However, while that may be our knee jerk reaction, my friends, that is not what we are taught…instead we are taught to let the first one without sin cast the first stone. We are taught to forgive not once but seventy times seven.

Forgiveness acknowledges that a wrong was committed.

Forgiveness changes us from a victim to a victor.

Forgiveness takes the power from a bad act and turns the act to good.

Forgiveness is the only road to freedom.

Jesus, as near as I can tell, never made the act of forgiveness a bargaining chip for revenge and judgment.

I did not know Troy Davis, nor did I really know a lot about his particular case, except that he was convicted of shooting an unarmed off-duty police officer. Was this crime anymore heinous then the fella in Texas who dragged a black father to his death and was then executed on the same day as Troy Davis?

I also know there was enough hell raised around Mr. Davis’s case to know that something was terrible wrong. I also know there was no hell raised about the execution of the man in Texas and this too says something is very wrong. Has our lust for blood, retribution and power become such we now want God’s job? Do we get to decide a color code for heinous crimes and then ignore our faith teachings and kill?

A Presidential candidate recently bragged about how many people had been put to death in Texas, while claiming to be a born again Christian. The audience was filled with Christians and they cheered his accomplishment. Really? Oh my God, really?

This might be a stretch here but I would guess most of the folks in the audience and the presidential candidate himself are also what some would call “pro-life”. How does this square with “Capital Punishment”? I mean, if all life is sacred and cannot be terminated; does that not make these folks who support “Capital Punishment” nothing more than “late term abortionists”?

Our Christian faith and its leader Jesus are very clear on this point. We do not have the ability to make clear judgments which allow the government to take a life. 130 plus wrong convictions is really all the evidence we need.

I wonder who in this whole debacle showed more mercy and justice? Troy Davis, who asked for a polygraph test and was denied, said as his final words;

“The incident that night was not my fault, I did not have a gun…I did not personally kill your son, father and brother. I am innocent.”… “Those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless your souls.”

Was the State of Georgia merciful in waiting to see if there was some “legal” reason to stop the execution or were they just covering their political ass?

Today, I am heart-broken and weep at the thought there are those who really believe it is okay to play God. I am heart-broken that in the end there are far more than a few who can see past forgiveness and a direct command from Jesus; “Love one another as I have loved you”, and find creative ways to come up with all kinds of justification as to why it is ok to ignore the teachings of the one that Christians call Savior.

Today, I have a better understanding of why Jesus sat on a hill outside of Jerusalem and wept. May God have mercy on us all.

“To Serve and Protect”…NOT

Leave it to the Atlanta Police Department to give me more grey hair, or something to write about or maybe just vent or maybe just bitch or make a call for action.

Seems the Atlanta Police Department is in what is known in the world of sports as a prolonged slump.

Generally, in major league baseball when a prolonged slump gets too long the President of the ball club fires the manager.

In the case of Atlanta, the manager is the Chief of the Atlanta Police Department George Turner and the President is Mayor Kasim Reed.

Mayor Reed appointed Turner chief, after being less than honest during his campaign for mayor by saying he was going to do a national search and get the best person for the job in the country.

Chief George Turner was the Mayor’s man. Really? This choice was best in the entire country? Really?

“The Ramage Report”, Atlanta's well-informed commentary on policy and politics noted in an on-line article from February 12, 2011, as Mayor Reed was getting ready to do a national TV interview:

Reed’s “police year,” however, began in January 2010 when he appointed former Deputy Chief George Turner as interim police chief with the obvious goal of shoehorning him into the chief’s job—something Reed eventually accomplished by overruling the citizen committee he had appointed to choose Atlanta’s next police chief.

The New York and Washington-based journalists on “Meet the Press” won’t trouble themselves with Atlanta’s public safety concerns. The show focuses on national and world issues and its regular guest journalists make their careers by identifying rising figures on the national political scene. It is no accident that one so often hears them say “Well, as I pointed out, you may recall, back in…” Reed has carefully positioned himself as a rising star in the national Democratic Party. Meet the Press will look more at Reed’s affinity with Gold Dome conservatives—regardless of his long track record of carrying water for the Democrats—than at the effects of hiked permit and parking fees on small local businesses. These talking heads think in terms of ideology, facts be damned, and that is one reason that American politics has become a matter of branding rather than a matter of public service.

They certainly won’t consider the fruit that Reed’s underhanded manipulation of the police chief search has produced.

But for Atlantans, that fruit is undeniable. For the past year Atlanta’s taxpayers have dug into their shrinking bank accounts and shelled out cash for lawsuit after lawsuit filed against the police department: The $1 million-plus lawsuit over the Eagle raid developed almost entirely under Reed despite the raid itself having been carried out under his predecessor; the relatively frugal $40,000 lawsuit over police illegally taking a cell phone from a resident grew out of an incident that happened several months into Turner’s interim tenure; and another lawsuit, this one over officers unlawfully strip searching citizens during a traffic stop, is on tap. And there are others in the pipeline.

Though there are certainly some cops who are simply stupid and evil, at some point we must face the fact that these lawsuits were not a matter of a rogue cop here and there. The reality of the APD is that it is a rogue organization with intelligent, well-trained, ethical police officers who do their jobs not because of the department but in spite of it. They work, to the point of exhaustion, for little pay, without needed equipment or support, under stress generated by supervisors and command staff who promote an environment of ass-covering to the detriment of the citizens’ safety. Cops with about 10 years or more on the force are painfully aware that most of their co-workers are clueless when it comes to criminal procedure. They are also aware that an alarming number of their co-workers are little more than criminals themselves.”

That was just a year into the loosing streak of the APD. Here we are 7 months further along and the Eagle mess is still not settled. Further those officers who committed criminal offences have not been arrested and charged for their crimes.

Like the “gift that keeps on giving” a 2nd lawsuit has been or will be filed soon. The outcome of this lawsuit is sure to once again cost Atlanta taxpayers a boatload of money.

Within the past week or two we have also been let in on a really big secret. Many of the officers of the APD on the streets making arrests, supposedly protecting us from all from the dangerous homeless, the ever present prostitutes, those damn sex driven queers and those awful people who pee outside (tongue firmly in cheek) lack the authority to make those or any arrests because they have not met state requirements for certification.

When the story broke the Atlanta Journal Constitution in an on-line article from August 18th wrote:

“The Atlanta Police Department is still reviewing records but already has found that dozens of officers lacked the authority to make arrests because they had not met state requirements for training.

“The APD administration’s failures have just compromised a ton of criminal convictions and pending cases,” said a past president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Christine A. Koehler. “Somebody’s not doing what they are supposed to be doing over there. ... They have big problems.”

At least 51 APD officers had not received the state-required 20 hours of training per year, and that meant they could not make arrests. Maj. Jeff Glazier, commander of the Atlanta police training academy, said Thursday that more APD officers will likely be found deficient as agency investigators still have about 600 files to review -- or about one-third of the force.”

Chief Turner says it is not his fault. Really? Really? Who the hell is in charge at the APD if it is not the Chief?

Adding further fuel to the fire we have this little gem reported by Copwatch of East Atlanta which according to their website is a group of civilians organized to protect our communities from police abuse. They monitor police stops, using video cameras to document any brutality or violation of rights. They also educate people about their rights and how to file complaints about mistreatment by the police:

Nearly a dozen officers and medics were surrounding a man who was lying on the street in handcuffs and appeared to be writhing in pain.

Officers poured water on the man's face and made comments suggesting police had pepper sprayed him earlier.

Officers asked us to step back, and we complied. However they then began to move us even further down the block, using up to four officers and their bicycles to obstruct our view of the person in custody. Officer Basile, told us that it was illegal for us to film the man on the ground. When we asked if he was ordering us to stop filming, Basile replied "yes".

An ambulance arrived and further obstructed our view, so we moved to the other side of the street. The four officers followed us, continuing to obstruct our view and attempt to intimidate us. At one point, officer T. Dziamba asked if we had media credentials and told us to stop filming if we didn't.

Although we were pushed to the end of the block, other civilians were allowed to walk through the scene.

As a result of a lawsuit brought by Copwatch, APD now has an official policy of not interfering with civilians recording police. A recent federal ruling reinforces that right. However as this report shows, police on the street are still determined to use intimidation, interference, and lies to prevent the public from seeing what they do.”

Then of course if you live in and around midtown, it appears the APD has given up law enforcement to Midtown Ponce Security Alliance as their newsletter shows;

“During the early morning hours of August 31st, MPSA Patrol responded to a 911 call about an apparently unconscious person in the rear of a property in the 700 block of Piedmont, and found a white male lying face down near a dumpster.”

Make sure you read this quote closely and ask yourself a question; since when does a non-profit security company answer 911 calls? In fact if you read their webpage it reads like they run the operation as if it is a bona fide police force.

Let us not forget the gay men who were cutting through Piedmont Park after spending an evening at Blake’s who were roughed up and arrested by APD.

It should also be mentioned here about the kids who are routinely hassled by APD at Piedmont Park for doing nothing more then dancing…really? For dancing?

Yes, we all know the APD is understaffed and under paid and that is never good for moral or encouraging a smooth operation. However, one would think the Police Chief would be spending his time trying to fix this challenge, however it appears like many other happening within the APD this is not his fault.

So why the reader might be asking at this point is a pastor who is writing a faith blog writing about this?

The answer is simple. The sworn duty of the APD is to “serve and protect” the citizens of Atlanta. It is far too obvious from these brief examples our city is neither being served nor protected by APD. One only needs to read the 2 reports issued concerning the Eagle raid to see and understand our tax dollars are going to an agency that is out of control.

In fact if you read these reports and are not worried about what might happen should you come in contact with APD I respectfully say you are naïve.

We are coming up on the 2-year anniversary of that raid and precious little has been done to correct the situation.

Read what Copwatch of East Atlanta is reporting and it becomes painfully obvious APD does not want to be held accountable for their actions.

What is happening within the APD is without good ethics and is an immoral handling of the power given to them by the citizens of our community.

I think my friend Art Izzard summed it best when he said on his Facebook page:

“Seriously, we've had a 92 year old woman shot to death in her living room. Patrons at the Eagle have had their civil rights violated. Men have had cavity searches performed on them in public. 85 officers don't even have the certification required to perform their duties. Now we learn the APD has denied employment to a HIV+ applicant who was otherwise qualified. How low can this department stoop and for how long will the citizens of Atlanta foot the bill for the never ending lawsuits and settlements?”

Yes how long? How long before the community as a whole and in vast numbers begins to express it’s outrage over the chaos that is APD. How long before we figure out that like in baseball you can’t fire the whole team but you can fire the manager? In this case the Chief of Police.

So here are the questions that are begging for an answer. How many more lawsuits have to be brought to court? How many more unanswered 911 calls? How many more 911 one calls being answered by some other non-profit agency rather then APD? How many more wrong establishments being raided, wrong homes being invaded, or citizens bullied? How many more officers do we have to find without proper certification?

How much more will we take before the Mayor of this city hears a unison cry from the people; Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho this police chief has got to go!