There are some young, black men in my life. And I worry about them. I worry that another young black man might cause them harm. That is the nature of the beast, after all.
But as much as I worry about that, as of tonight, I’m now much more worried that open season has been declared on young black men. Because if a young man who was walking home with a bag of Skittles and Arizona tea can be followed and shot because he’s a young black male in the wrong neighborhood, and the man who shot him can claim self-defense and walk home a free man–then the message comes out loud and clear that young black men are disposable, do with them as you will.
And I also know, that had the situation been reversed–and the young black man was the one who survived—he would be on his way to prison for the rest of his life.
Me and G-d have to have a long talk tonight.
East Of Midnight 
30-year-old Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima , was arrested and sodomized with a broomstick inside a restroom in the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. The case became a national symbol of police brutality and fed perceptions that New York City police officers were harassing or abusing young black men as part a citywide crackdown on crime. One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum and then thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault. As the legal case wore on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.