When I was in Newark, New Jersey for the last rites of my friend and comrade, poet/activist Amiri Baraka, his son Ras then a city councilman but was running for mayor. He told me then, “Marvin we got Black brothers on the police force with legal guns who back us, i.e., the community.” And I observed positive police/community relations. It is a different feeling when you know the police are on your side. As a matter of fact, during the time of the funeral the police were in and out of the Baraka’s house socializing with and protecting Newark’s “first family”.  Police blocked off the block where the Baraka family lives in the hood.

I was informed some of the officers had grown up with the Baraka children or their parents had been part of the Newark black consciousness, cultural and political movement that was critical in the election of Newark’s first Black mayor, Kenneth Gibson. In short, the police were an integral part of the community, as opposed to an occupying army.

Now let’s be clear, Ras informed me there were police who supported the opposition, but he felt confident with the percentage of officers on his (the peoples) side. Ironically, I was at the Baraka house once on AB’s  birthday (October 7) when the opposition sent officers with warrants to arrest his sons for failure to pay child support. This was done by his political enemies to rattle his cage on his birthday. They do play hard ball in Newark and the opposition is serious. There are former Newark mayors who went down in disgrace for their negrocities (AB term, not mine, he wanted me to let you know) but have sons that they want to be mayor. 

Of course Ras won the election as mayor, guided by his brother Amiri, Jr.’s (Middy) strategic planning. Their mother, Mrs. Amina Baraka, has kept me informed of her son’s progress as mayor. Even the New York Times gave him brownie points for his first 100 days in office.

Mrs. Baraka informed me there have been no police killings since Ras became Mayor, although brothers killing brothers has not stopped. Mayor Baraka has police walking through the hood, Black and White officers, smiling and greeting the people. Mrs. Baraka said she doesn’t know, and many people don’t know, what to think of the white officers smiling so much.

But clearly, community policing is working, thus Newark can be and should be a  model for cities trying to upgrade their police departments from acting like brute beasts in blue uniforms. Why should police take the life of the mostly poor, mentally ill and drug addicted? Why would you kill a man hustling single cigarettes, DVDs and CDs? Why would you kill a man for a broken tail light or failure to signal a lane change.? Why should a man suffer a broken spine from a ride in the paddy wagon? 

Surely after all the hell the Black Panther Party suffered trying to combat police terror and brutality fifty years ago( and we celebrate their 50th anniversary for the sacrifice they made), we must try something new, unless we want to continue bumping our heads against a stone wall.

We don’t have the power to defeat them because they have too much back up, e.g., the army, navy, air force, national guard, FBI, Homeland Security, etc. At some point we will need a reconciliation or things will go from bad to worse as happened in Dallas, Texas. The nature of the panther is to strike when it is backed up against the wall or corner. 

After seeing with my own eyes that there can be at least a symbiotic relationship between the people and the police, I’ve concluded that we need to get brothers and sisters on the police force, especially in cities where we are in the majority, and the white officers must be socialized to understand they work for the people, the people don’t work for them.  The people pay their salaries but not to be brutalized and killed under the color of law. We agree with Chief Brown in Dallas who called for people to be the solution rather than the problem, to become police officers. All they need do is community consciousness, similar to the police who arrested my in Belize, Central America, when I was being deported for entering the country illegally. While I was at the police station awaiting deportation, they surrounded me and when they had me in the center of a circle, they begged me to teach them about Black Power, the real reason I was being deported. Wouldn’t it be nice if the American police would ask the Black Lives Matter people to teach them about Black Power rather than try to ridicule the BLM people out of existence because just as the police ain’t going nowhere, we don’t think Black Lives Matter is either. Stay Woke!