Freddie's Dead

"Freddie's Dead" from the soundtrack of the movie "Superfly" in 1972.

"We're all built up on progress
But sometimes I must confess
We can deal with rockets and dreams
But really, what does it mean
Ain't nothing said
'Cause Freddie's dead."

As the investigation of the death of Freddie Gray plummets into the abyss of the absurd, Mad Man was reminded of the song by the late great Curtis Mayfield. The lyrics simply ask the question; why was this innocent man killed?

It is now being reported that Mr. Gray may have had an asthma attack while in custody that fractured his spine. This will probably end up as another unjust killing of a Black man that will make great media fodder and cause Blacks to march in the streets while doing nothing more than blistering their feet.

Baltimore mayor Ms. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake can't seem to get any answers after this man's death. The only answer so far is that Mr. Gray's spine was severed in three places and the arresting officers are sticking to their claims of innocence. 

Suspicions abound in the eyes of the commonsensical human being when Mr. Gray was taken from an area where there were 
cameras to an area where there were none and it took the officers
40 minutes before they called for aid for this dying man. Don't forget that there was no reason for Freddie to run nor was there any reason for the police to pursue, but as evidenced by previous murders by police of Black men, many of them had every reason to run, with the most important one being the desire to continue living.

The recent refusal of a white policeman to kill a white murder suspect who was charging him just adds fuel to an already existing white hot flame of injustice that is being perpetrated on Black men on a daily basis.

It really doesn't matter that these men were criminals. What does matter is that none of these men posed a threat to the officers that killed them which makes the incident between the white cop not shooting the threatening white murder suspect an abomination and a useless media report. Furthermore, the rules of law state that a police officer shall not use deadly force unless he feels that his life was threatened.

Mad Man has a friend that uses a word quite frequently when she is presented with stupid and nonsensical explanations of how things work and the word actually fits these murders by police and their excuses in the proclamation of their innocence. "Really"?

The real and more serious question that Mad Man asks is ,,,,, just how many of these vigilante-type cop killings happened before cell phone, traffic, and security cameras were invented and installed? It's a good guess that this number could be in the thousands.

Speaking of thousands, the city of Baltimore, Maryland has had 102 cases of police misconduct where the city was forced to pay for their police officer's misdeeds and mistreatment of its citizens, The only reason that the payments have not reached the astronomical amount of millions of dollars is because the city of Baltimore has a limit of only having to pay $ 200,000.00 when  a cop kills somebody for no reason at all. And we ask..... why do these cops kept on killing these Black men?

Maybe it's just as Curtis Mayfield proclaimed in his song
"Ain't nothing said
"Cause Freddie's dead"

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observationsofamadman@verizon.net




Mad Man