From [HERE] On the night of April 24, 2013, six residents living in a neighborhood just north of downtown St. Louis say they saw the same thing.

A young Black man — 25-year-old Cary Ball Jr. — crashed his car, got out, stumbled onto another car and limped away. And then each said they saw Ball drop a gun from his hand and raise his arms to surrender.

That’s when they saw two police officers stand over Ball and shoot him repeatedly. Analysis of the evidence three years later by a Washington University professor concluded Ball was shot 25 times from within five feet range.

The police stated in their report that they feared for their lives because Ball pointed the gun at them. A police and F.B.I. investigation of the incident cleared the officers, and charges were never filed.

A year later, Michael Brown’s shooting death in Ferguson started a national movement calling for police accountability. Ball’s shooting barely registered with local or national media.

There was no blueprint for what Ball’s mother, Toni Taylor, or his younger brother, Carlos Ball, should do or who they could turn to.

“When my brother was killed, I wish it could have been an impacted family that reached back and grabbed us,” said Carlos Ball, who was 24 at the time. “But there wasn’t.”

Carlos Ball and his mother are now leaders in a group of largely grieving families who respond to officer-involved shooting scenes, called the Fatal State Violence Response Team, which was organized by the ArchCity Defenders nonprofit law firm.

At crime scenes, volunteer “crisis responders” ask the questions of witnesses and law enforcement that Ball’s family wish someone would have asked for them — including the names and badge numbers of the officers involved.

And they also try to support the families in every way they can.

“There’s no book that comes along with this fight,” Taylor said. “So what [Fatal State Violence] has done is basically provided a little structure of pamphlets and brochures to at least get the families in the right direction and be of assistance.”

The team also writes up reports and inputs information into databases that they can use for future analysis for the ArchCity’s overall Fatal State Violence project. The project’s January 2021 report found that from 2009 to 2019, at least 132 people have been killed by police in the St. Louis region.

Of those deaths, 72% of the people were Black.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department was responsible for more killings per capita than any other of the 100 largest police departments in the nation. The report, citing data from mappingpoliceviolence.org, indicates St. Louis city police killed about 18 people per 1 million residents, exceeding cities like Chicago (4), Los Angeles (4.7) and Denver (7.4). [MORE]

The group uses the analysis to support their calls to action. And those calls have resulted in action by local government — including a June executive order from the mayor to end no-knock raids and legislation the mayor signed last week to create a civilian-led agency to investigate police misconduct.

No more no-knock raids . . so now cops will knock and then murder or just claim they did like with Breonna. A civilian-led agency to investigate police misconduct? Nevertheless, citizens; have no power to hire or fire officers, are legally and morally obligated to obey all police commands, cannot decline their public service or resist even an unlawful arrest and have no power to control police authority, which is absolute on the street.

The statist, liberal who wrote this article for NPR goes on about reforms, missing the point, talking about “change is coming.” [MORE] Naturally, the answer from white liberals to all this “black lives” trouble is to vote for Democrats. It’s like a psy-op. The Democratic Party has dominated St. Louis city politics for decades. The city has not had a Republican mayor since 1949 and the last time a Republican was elected to another citywide office was in the 1970s. As of 2022, all 28 of the city's Aldermen are Democrats. With 2 exceptions it has been this way since 1981. [MORE]

At the federal level, in Missouri's 1st congressional district, a Republican has not represented a significant portion of St. Louis in the U.S. House since 1953. [MORE] Blacks make up 43% of St. Louis and 70% of Ferguson and the Black votary has undoubtedly helped Dems dominate St. Louis. Obviously, this has not translated into Black power or much of anything but continued powerlessness in a system of racism white supremacy and authority.

Change is always coming and will always be in the future for slaves or Black voters waiting for their masters to free them! FUNKTIONARY explains,

reform – superficial change in form and formalities (fictitious change) which only further lubricates the status quo by renovating and painting old society in new colors. 2) appearance of change sans the change. Reform is always in the service of the status quo and the politician: it serves the privilege of the past not the promise of the future. Reform creates hypocrisy as a matter of course. Reform is the first stage in the three “R’s” in hue-man evolution; the other two being revolution and rebellion. There are two basic types of reformists: those who are preparing the ground for Third Eye revolution and those who are trying to prevent the conscious revolution. (See: Revolution, Status Quo, Meme & Change)

reformers – naïve politicians. They came to do good and stayed to do well. Reformers themselves get reformed into the structure, consciousness and content of the dominant exploitative system—and thus become the system. (See: Revolution)

Statism – the belief “citizens” and “states” exist and the memetic thought patterns supporting such beliefs. 2) the religion of oppression and domination coupled with the science of exploitation and sociopathic control. 3) the opiate of the so-called Elites. 4) a philosophy that idealizes majority rule gang force (authority) over individual authenticity (autonomy). 5) servitude over liberty and statutes over humanity. So long as “states” are viewed and accepted as natural, normal, reality-based and inevitable, they will continue to violently abstract humans into extinction. Statism is mind control; people both unwillingly and willingly surrender their property (labor being one’s most inviolable property) to men and women pretending to be “governors,” “commissioners,” and “presidents” etc. because they believe they are “citizens” of a so-called “state” and must pay their proverbial “fair share” to support such abstractions or fictions of law.

voting booth – the PIT—a place where one takes a Political Ineptitude Test. Haven’t you heard or come to realize that secret ballots beget secret “government.” Until they pay you for your vote, you will pay for (casting) your vote. “I shall not go the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can say or do.” ~W.E.B. DuBois, 1956.

voting hoax – “Help Slave America.” “We would do well to remember that voting is often a way not of consenting to something, but only of expressing a preference. If the state gives a group of condemned prisoners the choice of being executed by firing squad or by lethal injection, and all of them vote for firing squad, we cannot conclude from this that the prisoners thereby consent to being executed by firing squad. They do, of course, choose this option; they approve of it, but only in the sense that they prefer it to the other option. They consent to neither option, despising both. Voting for a candidate in a democratic election sometimes has a depressingly similar structure. The state offers you a choice among candidates (or perhaps it is “the people” who make the offer), and you choose one, hoping to make the best of a bad situation. You thereby express a preference, approve of that candidate (over the others), but consent to the authority of no one.” ~A. John Simmons. “It’s not who vote that counts—it’s who counts the votes!” ~J. Stalin. (See: Taxtortion, Freedom Iron Rule, Political Power, Technology, Ph.F. Degree, NOW, Golden Rule, Property, The Matrix, MEDIA & Elections)

voting power – an oxymoron. 2) a transitory form of illusory power. 3) the appearance of power without the juice.