"Freeze, Niggas..."

Frankly, I'm tired of this shit.

I'm tired of everybody who seems think that black men's lives just don't matter. I'm tired of a justice system that can know that a(nother) young black man was shot down like a dog by trigger-happy police for doing nothing more than "looking suspicious" and still utterly exonerate the cops who slew him. I'm tired of feeling like there's absolutely nothing I can ever do to stop this bullshit.

What to do in the wake of this horrific miscarriage of justice?

"Stay calm," say the politicians, the "black leaders," the power structure itself.

What they really mean -- what the fuck they have no other choice but to mean by so callous a demand that we tacitly comply with verdict after verdict after verdict after motherfucking verdict -- is that they want us to "stay still." Don't move. Sit there. Look on. Cry. Rant. Preach. Pray.

But don't you dare move. Hold still. That's right: Freeze, niggas...

In other words, continue to let us take target practice on you. Let us continue to stack body after body in hails of blows and bullets. Because your lives — lives like that of Sean Bell's — mean absolutely nothing to a system that has never found a cop guilty of murdering you. (And no, I haven't forgotten that too often black folks lives don't mean much to us either; but neither is the average black criminal allowed to duck the consequences of true justice by hiding behind a badge and a union? And speaking of the badges, I also haven't forgotten that )

I knew long before this verdict would be rendered that these cops would walk. Scott free. I told friends. Some people I knew were incredulous that I couldn't see this as an open-and-shut case.

And I couldn't see what they'd ever think otherwise.

We saw this coming. We hoped it wouldn't end this way. But we knew, deep down, that it almost certainly would. Same as the others, this case stuck to the script. The mainstream media smeared the victims, cast aspersions on their backgrounds, distorted the events of the night of the shooting. The justice system pretended to take in all the facts of the case, pretended to examine the cops' action deliberately and fairly, pretended to render a verdict that in any way reflected the reality of what those officers did. The politicians, the "leaders" poured out of the woodwork and asked us to "be calm." Lay down. Stop squirming. Freeze, niggas.

So what to do?

Perhaps we begin to patrol more of our own communities, reinstate citizen patrols, and keep an eye out for crackheads and killer cops alike. You see a cop in your neighborhood doing dirty shit, grab your cell phone camera on the low. Take footage of that bullshit, whether it be the way they run stop signs with no sirens and lights and no regard for pedestrians or the way they shake down the local drug dealers. It's time we started telling on their asses big time. They do a lot of dirty shit in our communities and some of these cats should be ratted out. Seriously. As Cube famously asked, "Who Got The Camera?"

We cannot continue to endure brutality, individual or institutional. We need community police review boards -- with subpoena power. We need authoritative bodies governed by the people that will help keep an eye on those who are supposed to be protecting and serving, even in black communities.

And it's still not enough. Not for me. Not for the families of all those black men and women who've been murdered by the cops over the decades with utter, sickening impunity. I wish these cops — and all the other badge-wielding scumbags who've needlessly and fatally shot and beaten black people and all the other the "blue brethren" who've covered for them— nothing but the worst of a short, miserable, pus-filled life. Fuck them. I hope they all get Ebola. They killed that man for no good reason and walked out of the courthouse looking like they could give less than a shit. In the event of your own untimely, bloody deaths, consider the feeling mutual. (And no, that's not a threat...but I damn sure wish it was.)

And it's still not enough. It will never be enough. Not as long as our communities are stalked by tax-paid, gun-wielding po-lice who think they have a license to kill black men at will. The license needs to be revoked. Murderers in blue need to be brought to heel. And politicians and leaders need to take their tired asses back into the woodwork.

Black people should never "remain calm." Should never hold still as a murderous police culture and uncaring criminal justice system take our lives even while deeming those lives worthless. Damn all this about holding still. Keep it moving, niggas.

Because we freeze at our own peril.