Visit http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=dca to see the long list of statistics collected by the department.

Follow the link to the page describing the “Deaths in Custody Reporting Program”, that includes “quarterly records of all deaths during the process of arrest by each of the nation’s state and local law enforcement agencies”.

Read the resultant boast of accomplishment: “Presents the first findings from the law enforcement collection of the Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP), which is the largest resource of information ever collected on arrest-related deaths.”

Then look at the dates: 2003-2005. These “first findings” are also the last: four years later, and the Justice Department still has not published updated findings. The latest raw data (for 2006 – the year Sean Bell was murdered) shows that reported homicides by law enforcement – which remained essentially unchanged for the three previous years – rose nearly 20% in 2006. So the Justice Department response to a significant rise in reported killings by police has been to quietly stop reporting those killings. Those lives are not even worthy of a mere body count.

President Obama’s concern for those lives is equally clear. When Sean Bell’s killers were acquitted, he expressed his concern over violence – not the actual violence of the police, but his imagined violence of the public’s response to unchecked murder by the state.

And if we judge people by their deeds, not by their skin color, we would not be surprised that there’s been no change in the Justice Department under Eric Holder, the corporate lawyer and federal judge.

When we truly understand that all agents and agencies of the government work not for our freedom, but to maintain control – through violence, intimidation, and indoctrination – then where else can we look for deliverance but ourselves?