🔵 By David Breaux. Photo by lauragrafie.
One of the most corrupt and violent cities in America. “The Windy City!” I was born and raised on the South Sides of Chicago. I turned on my T.V. this summer and to my shock and awe I saw Germans, White men and women in Germany of all places marching in protest over the police murdering George Floyd. For a brief moment I was overwhelmed by the sight, I was blown away, left speechless, then the reality of my life experience told me nothing would ever change, as the Killing by police of 12 other Black men and women proved even while the trial was going on.
My second cousin is Aaron Patterson, released from death row after almost 20 years because Chicago Police framed him. I was 12 years old the first time the Chicago Police beat me and my friends down, then lied and filed false reports for curfew violation against us. It was around this time the Chicago police murdered Malcom outside the Yale building. Malcom was a pimp and drug dealer who refused to pay off the police. He had his hands up when they shot him. No one told me this, I witnessed this. Builey a detective with the GUI (Gang Intelligence Unit) was known for extorting hookers and drug dealers, now I’m told he was put in charge of the Drug enforcement squad.
A Cop named or called Topsie Hall used to write tickets in the neighborhood and after he wrote multiple tickets he’d lay in wait and stop those who hadn’t paid their tickets, or he caught them on a suspended license, then stop and extort them. He caught one of my brothers and took him for a hundred bucks one day. I caught Hall sleeping with his head out his window and I was going to crack his skull with a Louisville slugger (a baseball bat) and my brother, the same one he extorted money from, stopped me.
Detectives like Builey and other officers would pick up gang members from one gang and drop them off in a competing gangs neighborhood, once they dumped them out of their car or paddy wagon they’d be sure holler a gangs name, even fire a shot to get the other gangs attention! They complain about gang violence in Chicago but what the police don’t tell you is how they help start those gang wars and how they sold, gave and supplied the guns to those gangs. In 1965 give or take a year if my memory serves me correctly, the Chicago Police were involved in a “raise” dispute with the city (this is the event that gave rise to the Blue Flu) so in order to expedite getting their pay raise, they ramped up the gang violence to support the arguments.
Richard once joked that Chicago was the only city in America where a “nigga” could get accidentally shot six times in the chest by the Chicago Police. Police have been murdering Black people, men, women and children in cities in all 50 states long before I was born, there just was no internet and cameras so readily available. Corrupt Police in Chicago, Racist Police in Chicago is the norm, and Black and Hispanic officers have joined in on that abuse and corruption; modern day Houseniggas! The more things change the more they remain the same. The Federal Government put out a study when I was still a teenager stating that most Black males would be dead or in prison by the time they were 25 years old. The new slave labor force is now prison populations and the slave owner now a company called Unicorps!