Editor’s Note: All opinions on RMU Sentry Media are the writer’s own.

Do black lives matter? Black bodies pile up on the streets everyday due to social injustice and police brutality, and nobody does anything. The police believe what they’re doing is just; the police believe they are victimized, but some of them are corrupt people extinguishing an entire culture.

Black lives do matter.

The police believe the world is a dangerous place. Officers around the country share the same mindset and beliefs; too often, nothing is written down, but police departments around the country follow the same set of rules. The police condition themselves to believe that they are in non-stop danger and the only way they will survive is by dominating the citizens. They are supposed to protect us. These beliefs push officers toward rash decisions and racist behavior during intense stressful interactions on the streets or let alone in someone’s home.

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Americans are good people. If you walk among us and see how we live, you’ll see American citizens are good for HELP. If someone sees someone on the streets looking for money, citizens will give. Black Americans grow up with the mentality that the police are out to kill them at all times, believing constantly that the police are not here to help but to harrass and to ambush. The quote “Protect and Serve” has never meant anything, but it’s constantly being frowned upon. How could law enforcement lie on a car and lie to our faces about the actions they portray when they see us all as the enemy.

Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force. Police have killed 781 people in 2020. For reference, that’s one body a day for two years; 28% of those in 2020 killed were Black Americans. Black Americans make up 13% of the United States population, but are 3 times more than likely to be killed by the police and two times less likely to be armed with any type of weapon. And 99% of killings by the police since 2013-2019 have not resulted in officers paying for their crimes.

The police are killing not only Black Americans, but Americans at a stunning rate. The police will extinguish an entire culture before people realize that they took arms against innocent people who only begged to be noticed, begged to live, begged to say that our lives matter. The fight started in 1865, continued in 1965, and continues in 2020.

Where will you stand on the side of history when our kids pick up the textbooks and see the sides of a fake black and blue American flag, and the red white and blue American flag?