Season 2 Episode 1 – Happy New Year!

For those of you still in Holiday mode, Reason TV made a video of the sad reality of our police militarization
and lost drug war. It’s a very serious issue but the video made me laugh so you can watch that here
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01f4nfVBOhI).

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to resurrect this blog and use it to really go at the major issues we
face. Too many recent events have happened without any response or action from Amnesty International
here in Houston and we need to step up and show more leadership.
I noted 2 articles that I really wanted people to stop and take a look at.
The first is an article by CNN’s Ann O’Neil in which she descriptively and accurately portrays one of the
more unknown superheroes of our world. She follows Officer Deon Joseph of LAPD’s street patrol. His
beat to do foot patrol is Los Angeles’ “Skid Row” or more commonly known as the Homeless Capital of
the United States. The large imposing black cop nicknamed “angel cop” by the residents of his beat consist
of the most indigent, desperate, despised and ill of our society and he loves them as if they were his own
family. O’Neil follows Officer Joseph through a day of patrol handling homelessness, prostitutions, mental
illness, and drug addictions of those struggling with basic human rights of survival. For a cop who had
never had to fire his gun on the job he also has some deep reflections about the recent violence that has
caused a rift between the police and the people. I am someone that gives police a lot of grief and
considers Commissioner Gordon as the only cop that I would ever trust but even I had a since of respect
for Officer joseph after reading this piece. (http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/02/us/skid-rowcop/
index.html)
The second piece of literature that I would refer to readers attention is the recent article by Radley Balko
of the Washington Post entitled “Horrifying Civil Liberties Predictions for 2015”. Balko is the author of the
recently released book “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces” and one of
my personal heroes of the fight for our civil liberties. Read through the list to discover horrifying
nightmare breaches of our basic human rights and liberties by those that we entrusted to administer
justice. That such things happens really puts the fear of God into you.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/12/30/horrifying-civil-libertiespredictions-
for-2015/)
Let’s work to make sure that these things don’t happen in 2015.
Charles Lee Baird