Honestly, no one cares about the average Black Minnesotan. They don’t care when there’s a shooting in our neighborhood either. Seems it’s more about economics. If your family has money, or you know someone in high places, ONLY then do they care. It also seems, to me, to be a breakdown in the neighborhoods. If we are afraid to report crimes to the police, or can’t keep our kids off the streets…it just gets worse.

By Don Allen, Publisher – OurBlackNews.com

So, if you’ve lived in the Twin Cities for any amount of time, the incidents surrounding police brutality, shootings, beatings and questionable arrests have a trademark of the system. Unfortunately, when a shooting happens, like it did over this last weekend, we see the same people jump up, demand justice; hold out their hands and look for “funding” to address these terrible tragedies. If money is the solution to the black communities challenges, then we must do an audit from 2008 to 2014 and see who in the black community received money to address challenges and why the low-hanging fruit of police violence, community blights, unemployment and an under par educational system has failed a people and a community.

First of all, for the record, I am pro-police. Not all police officers are bad. Growing up in South Minneapolis (1970s), there was a time when members of the 5^th Precinct knew the name of your mother and father, your address and what school you went to. It was easy for youth to walk the line within the boundaries of the law, because if you didn’t, mom and dad would have received a telephone call from Officer “Friendly” who would have told them about your nefarious activities. Needless to say, the Twin Cities law enforcement and the community have moved far away from peaceful, cordial and diplomatic engagements of the past. Maybe it’s time to start over; wipe the slate clean and live with each other, versus against.

It’s hard to say what happened over north this weekend now that we have 500 of the lowest common denominators claiming to be witnesses to this unnecessary shooting, but hell, this also happened in the case of Terrence Franklin (oops), remember him…the one you marched in the street for?

I would like to leave you something to think about:

As I get more details (slowly), and information on the in-fighting in the black community (somebody thinks a grant will be issued), what troubles me that we (black folks) make more noise about law enforcement shootings then we do when out black brothers and sisters shoot and kill each other. Are we not our brother’s keeper?