“BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Two weeks before he was killed on the job, Baton Rouge police officer Montrell Jackson wrote on Facebook what it was like to be black and a cop.
Jackson, 32, was killed along with police officer Matthew Gerald and sheriff’s deputy Brad Garafola on Sunday morning in Baton Rouge by Gavin Long of Kansas City, Missouri. Long, who was wearing body armor and carrying a rifle, wounded three others before he was killed by police. The killings completed a circle of violence involving police across the country that began when two white Baton Rouge police officers shot and killed Alton Sterling, a black man selling CDs in a parking lot, on July 5.
Two days later, black militant Micah Johnson shot and killed five white police officers in apparent revenge for Sterling’s death and that of Philando Castile, who was also killed by police.
That was the week Jackson was reflecting on when he took to Facebook.
“I’ve experienced so much in my short life and the past 3 days have tested me to the core,” he wrote. “I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat.”
“I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me”
Short answer: No
They don’t love you
They view you as a direct threat to themselves and their liberty
You are not looked at as a hero
You are viewed as a thug, an abuser, a perjurer
Were you those things?
Who knows , and at this point it doesn’t matter
You have been colored by your fellow officers
You are viewed through the tainted lens of their actions
Their behavior has in fact cost you your life
There is a collective dissonance happening right now with police nationwide
And every day that goes by, every killing, every abuse helps to order that into a clear and cognitive recognition of an out of control police state
Does the city love you?
Maybe it would have in the day and age that presaged the cell phone video
Maybe then you could have claimed to be one of the heroes risking your life every day to keep anarchy at bay
But in this day all people see are videos of abuse and killing
Day in and day out
Cops beating people
Lying
And worse
And yet Montrell puts out the plea “Don’t let hate infect your heart”
But that is not up to us
That is up to your fellow officers
There is only so much abuse that will be put up with before the abused strike back
If you want the love of the city then you can’t allow the abuses to continue even if you don’t perpetrate them
Because in the end you will have to pay for those abuses
As you did
Deborah Lee Jarrett 
One thought on “Slain Baton rouge officer : “I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me””