Despite national and even global protests on police misconduct and killings of unarmed Black men, another Black male, Rayshard Brooks, is shot twice in the back by a white police officer in Atlanta, Georgia for what amounts to sleeping while black!

As I pointed out elsewhere, twenty years ago I wrote a collection of poetry on police misconduct, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats.  Nearly every poem in the collection is based on an actual case of police misconduct.

This is my favorite poem, “Blue Knight Riders,” from Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats:

They don’t wear white sheets

Or burn crosses in the night,

But there’s an unmistakable connection

Between these blue and white knights.

They kill innocent Black males

For horrific crimes real and imagined,

And because grand juries won’t vote true bills –

They give these cops a license to kill.

There’s something familiar in their faces,

A clearly recognizable white rage –

There since the birth of this nation –

Misreported in this tabloid age.

This is no mere comedy of errors,

But a full-fledged reign of terror.