Neighborhood watch, as it currently exist in the United State, is a concept born of the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese. The watches were created in response to the lack of intervention from onlookers of the crime. Today there are still groups of individuals who patrol their neighborhoods in the hopes of preventing crime. But there is one crime most neighborhood watches fail to consider. Shooting by the largest violent gang operating in our neighborhoods, the police, often go unchallenged by neighborhood watches. A group of individuals in Dallas are looking to change that. They have established a neighborhood watch expressly for the purpose of protecting the people from the police:
A new group calling itself the Huey P. Newton Gun Club launched armed self-defense patrols Wednesday with one stated purpose: to protect Dallas neighbors from police.
Group leader Charles Goodson said recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri over the killing of an unarmed black teen named Michael Brown by a white police officer is only part of the reason for the new Dallas patrols.
The group is named after Huey P. Newton, a founder of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s who was killed by a rival militant in 1989.
“We don’t think that what happened to Michael Brown in St. Louis is an isolated incident. We have so many Michael Browns here in the city of Dallas,” Goodson said.
Another leader, Huby Freeman, said the group wants to educate neighbors about the right to bear arms and the need for it.
“We believe we can police ourselves and bring security to our community, ridding our community of black-on-black crime, violence, police terror, etc., etc.,” Freeman said.
Police brutality is a major problem in this country and it’s nice to see people looking for a solution other than begging the state to be a little less vicious. It’s unfortunate but police officers are unlikely to face consequences for committing acts of murder. Even if evidence against an officer is damning it’s common for him or her to receive a paid vacation and then get reinstated once the media is no longer covering the event. Once in a great while an officer will get fired from the department but that’s a rare enough occurrence to almost be relegated for folklore.
Who watches the watchmen? In most cases nobody. But if this idea takes off there could be watchmen overseeing the watchmen and that could decrease police brutality. If nothing else it would be nice if there were neighborhood watches that would intervene when police officers decided to go all ‘roid rage on somebody.