“Unless the powerful are capable of learning to respect the dignity of their victims, impassable barriers will remain, and the world will be doomed to violence, cruelty, and bitter suffering.”- Noam Chomsky

September 6th was a warm night in Dallas. Nothing out of the ordinary for one of America’s most prominent international cities. 26 yr old Botham Shem Jean was firmly nestled in his apartment. Perhaps he felt a sense of complete security. Maybe he was planning out his day for 7th. Maybe a very important meeting with a high powered client. It would be logical since he was a high powered executive at the prestigious accounting firm of Price Waterhouse Cooper in Downtown Dallas.  Maybe he resigned to call it a night and hit the sack after he finished his bowl of cold breakfast cereal. It his highly improbable that we will ever know the last thoughts of Botham Jean. What we know is that he never finished the cereal. Botham Jean was robbed of the most precious appointment of all———The appointment of tomorrow.

In a cruel and bewildering provocation, his life would end at the hands of someone who was sworn to protect him.  But not just anyone. His killer wore a badge that carried with it, the power of the State. His killer was his very own down stairs neighbor.

Amber Guyger was a 30 yr old, 4-yr veteran of the Dallas Police Department. When she returned home from duty, she somehow lost the ability to count. Because even though she lived on the floor beneath Jean, she somehow confused his floor and his apartment for hers. She also lost the ability to distinguish between colors. Jean had a bright red colored doormat at his door, while her apartment had no such mat on the floor. With this gross distortion of reality, her 4 yrs of experience as a police officer indicated that her apartment was being burglarized. She rushed up to Jean’s apartment, knocked to obtain entry, made some authoritive commands and fired two shots into Jean’s abdomen. Jean would later die at the hospital.

Though Guyger would make contradictory statements about what happened in her affidavit, the statements must have somehow triggered suspicions in the police department, because it sought to obtain a warrant to search Jean’s apartment. This was strange. Because other than Guyger’s call concerning the incident, no one reported anything remotely criminal coming from Jean’s apartment. Why the police got a search warrant for a crime scene remains one of the most mind numbing questions involved in this unjustifiable homicide. I’m lying! No it isn’t.

Because it is clear to anyone with a modicum of rational judgment that this was a shamelessly disgusting public relations ploy to mitigate the overwhelming evidence of cold blooded murder. For all of its’ trouble, the department’s actions were quickly side eyed and scrutinized by a righteously indignant rebuttal of public opinion. The unreasonable search yielded Jean’s bowl of cereal, his sneakers, and allegedly, some marijuana in one of Jean’s concealed containers. However, what the investigation has failed to produce is a toxicology report showing marijuana in Jean’s system, or a criminal record which would link Jean to any criminal activity; past or present, that would justify a warrantless search and killing of a man locked quietly in his own apartment.

Only in a society of ungovernable barbarism would people seek a justification for the unjustifiable. It’s a hollow mockery of the word justice when we seek to investigate a murder victim to exonerate the murderer. But the initial perversion is not the fact that this man (Jean) was an upstanding law abiding citizen,———–A kind of ideal black man free of criminal blemish. It is that we have actually reached the point in America where we rationalize an executive arbitrary execution of American citizens beforehand and run background checks after the fact to determine the use of excessive force.  It is an ironic aberration in a society where the constitution is sacrosanct when the machinery of justice scarcely trembles when it deprives a man of his LIFE before anyone even says the words DUE PROCESS.

At the behest of the Texas Rangers, Guyger was charged with manslaughter. But Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson indicated that she (Guyger) could face a more serious charge. Thus, on November 30, Dallas County Court handed down a charge of murder.  However, before the charge was amended, Guyger bonded out of jail on a $300,000 bond and moved out of her apartment at the South Side Flats in Dallas.

So what happens now? Well? As the police unions hire both her attorney and an expensive public relations firm to clean up their image. As her attorney calls the subsequent murder charge an “outpouring of vindictive emotions”. And as the city of Dallas braces itself for an aftershock that will change police and community relations forever. We must bury another black man. We must endure the site of another grieving mother. Another million dollar cash settlement will be quietly paid. And the larger society will find another farcical fallacy for this crime. So if murder be the case, then why not the verdict of guilty? Because in America, where there are vast concentrations of unchecked bureaucratic power, with a black victim, the rules are never itched in stone even with the facts are indisputable. Therefore, though murder is the case and the verdict should be guilt, Black Americans are always reluctantly ready to swallow the unpalatable bile that God will get you before the law will.

TONY MACEO is a senior blogger at the Negromanosphere and the Chief Blogger at Power and Strategy.com. Like, Share and subscribe to the website. Also become a Patron @powerofstrategies on Patreon or support by paypal at wayofstrategy44@gmail.com. And if you are so inclined, check out our chess store. TILL NEXT WEEK, I’LL HOLLA!