Detroit Gang Squad

I think they done a great job of showing me that gangs weren't really a good thing to get into.

In my opinion this is a horribly racist program. It reveals that young black men who have no means to make a legal living are engaged in the sale of cannabis. Not Coke. Not Heroin. Not Speed, but Cannabis. It further shows a cadre of full grown athletic male black police officers (essentially a sanctioned gang of thugs) armed to the teeth with shotguns, assault rifles and pistols. These officers are being used to imprison young men and women of their own race, while white people in far away (read safe) offices dispatch warrants and examine evidence to be used in the prosecution of the young black males. In this episode none of the ballistic evidence gathered against these people proved to be viable or demonstrate that there was any connection between the young men who’s home was raided and any violent crime. Yet arrests were made! The officers portrayed themselves as heros on the job to clean up the streets of America. I see them as thugs working for the white man who are now complicit in imprisoning their own young brothers and sisters in what is nothing less than a continuation of punishing people of color for being poor. They would be far better off establishing themselves as mentors which would serve to heal the community, rather and tough talking gun slinging super cops destroying lives in their community, though I doubt any of the officers live anywhere near where this footage was shown. Also the commercials which paid for this program had an especially southern white male flavor to them. This is yet another factor which demonstrates the purposefully racial structure of this programming. The demonizing of young black males by the National Geographic Channel, is not only shameful but propagandistic in its nature. The supposition that the young man arrested for the crime of murder “Looked” like the person who committed the crime is a flimsy excuse to launch an all weapons out bust on kids selling pot. If that were the case, procuring a warrant would be as simple as saying “yep he/she looks just like the kid that did the crime. No problem warrant issued! Even in this program, the officer flatly stated that he saw the owner of the house selling pot. I never saw any person selling pot, although I did see several young men enter the house. I am a white male who was raised in a black neighborhood. I know what these poor disenfranchised human beings are up against. They are daily pitted against poverty, joblessness, hunger, excessively harsh laws regarding cannabis possession and the rampant availability of fire arms. One of the officers interviewed stated that there was no way to stop the flow of weapons into Detroit. Well I highly disagree with that statement. If the white people who own the factories were made to shut down their blood for money factories, there would be no guns on the street of any town in America. America would be far better of if the officers were busting down the doors of these weapons manufactures and imprisoning the workers and owners as they are the true criminals who are producing the guns in the first place. In other words stop it at the source. If one tenth as much energy and money was put into stopping the production of guns as is put into the war on cannabis there would be no guns on the street. America is building countless prisons to house people of color. Color is not a crime!!! Orbmanelson