Washington, DC – The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a faith-based coalition of 34,000 Churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African Americans, painfully observes the acquittal of two white cops who literally murder African Americans in broad daylight. There is expectation among those who are in law enforcement for the average citizens and institutions like the Church to accept their innocent version of the story and they want us to accept this within the context of building civil society and sustaining it. They also want us to believe that everything that the cops have done in both of those cases were the truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.
Both Michael Slager and Betty Shelby are considered by their friends and their family as decent human beings who were caught up in extraordinary situations. They want us to believe that. They want the Black Church to repeat that, but the Black Church will not. Both of them in the eyes of the Church are racist murderous cops. Under no circumstances will the Black Church provide any moral cover for these murderers. Just like the six cops who got away in the Freddie Grey case in Baltimore, the Church declares that they are murderers and there will be no forgiveness of sin until they repent. All eight of these cops are on their way to hell until they confess the truth. Just like the good Scripture says the truth shall set you free. Of the eight that we speak to only one will definitely go to jail, Michael Slager because he knew if he had to be tried a second time he would be a convicted felon without any possible way for parole.
Rev. Anthony Evans President of the National Black Church Initiative says, “The Black Church cannot show any mercy at this point to white racist cops who would utilize the Christian faith as a cover for their hatred of Black people. We will not allow this to happen. We will not be an apologist. We will not provide any civil cover. The only thing that the Church can say is what the Scriptures say, if you continue to attack Black people you will reap what you sow. God will get you back. When your family is in distress, instead of showing you hatred we will come and lay hands on your family for healing but that is not the way you used your hands towards Black people.”
The judge who is to sentence Michael Slager may decide to let him off but the judge himself, in the eyes of the Black Church will be guilty of letting off a murderer. One will say that this is inflammatory language coming from the Black Church, that the Church should never use such powerful language, that the Church should just be for love and kindness and mercy and forgiveness. Those who profess such a thing, who want the Church to turn a blind eye from their sin and the sins of their fellow friends and human beings, first of all have no understanding of the Scripture. Second of all believe that God Almighty is on their side because they were acquitted and thirdly they themselves do not believe that because many of them who profess that the Church should forgive and have mercy, they themselves have a heart filled with racial hatred and violence.
In other words, they are a moral contradiction just like every other human being on this earth who professes one thing but does another and expect the world and God to turn a blind eye to them. The Church is called not to take a blind eye, the Church is called not to ignore sin, the Church is called to expose sin and call it out as it is and this is why we are calling out these particular four cases. Two cops and two racist and full of hatred white males who arbitrarily and at will killed two innocent Black males, not because they were bad people, just because they were Black.
· Oklahoma
A jury on acquitted a white Oklahoma police officer who says she fired out of fear last year when she killed an unarmed black man with his hands held above his head. The family of Terence Crutcher burst into tears and expressed outrage after jurors found Tulsa officer Betty Jo Shelby not guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the Sept. 16 shooting. About 100 demonstrators later gathered outside the courthouse and some briefly blocked a main street.
“Let it be known that I believe in my heart that Betty Shelby got away with murder,” Crutcher’s father, Rev. Joey Crutcher, said after the verdict was announced.
· South Carolina
The retrial of white former police officer Michael Slager, charged with the murder of an unarmed black man after a 2015 traffic stop in North Charleston, South Carolina, was postponed by a judge until August. The 35-year-old ex-cop had been due to stand trial again on March 1 for the shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott. Slager’s initial trial ended with a hung jury on Dec. 5 after four weeks of testimony in a Charleston courtroom. The former South Carolina cop however, plead guilty to civil rights charge in the death of Mr. Scott.
· University of Maryland
A judge has denied bond for a white University of Maryland student accused of fatally stabbing a young black student at a campus bus stop. Sean Christopher Urbanski is seen in a photo released by the Univ. of Maryland Police on May 22, 2017. Sean Christopher Urbanski, 22, of Severna Park, Maryland, is charged with murder in the death early Saturday of Richard Collins III, 23, a recently commissioned US Army second lieutenant who was due to graduate this week from nearby Bowie State University.
Urbanski is a member of a Facebook group called “Alt-Reich,” which spews hatred toward minorities “and especially African-Americans,” University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell said.
· New York
66-year-old man was stabbed to death in Manhattan late Monday, police said, for one reason: being black. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, James Harris Jackson walked into an NYPD substation in Times Square and announced that he was responsible for Timothy Caughman’s death.
“I’m the person you’re looking for,” he said, adding that he had knives in his pocket.
The 28-year-old Baltimore, Maryland resident took a bus to New York on March 17 with the goal of targeting black men, according to NYPD Assistant Chief, Bill Aubry. Jackson is being charged with second-degree murder.
“The attack was clearly racially motivated,” Aubry said Wednesday. “It’s well over 10 years he has been harboring these feelings of hate towards male blacks.”
Aubry said that Jackson randomly singled out Caughman and stabbed him in the back multiple times while Caughman was going through garbage on a Manhattan sidewalk. After the attack, Caughman stumbled into the Midtown South Precinct in critical condition, police said. He later died of his injuries at Bellevue Hospital.
