I'm Black and I live in Baton Rouge...my opinion of the Alton Sterling shooting

Well not exactly from Baton Rouge. I live in central. In my opinion, the Alton Sterling shooting was more about money than race. North Baton Rouge is so depressed right now that any black person that can afford to move out has already done so. So what's left in North Baton Rouge?...single mothers, ex-cons, and old people who cant afford to move because of their limited income. So where does Baton Rouge get the revenues for services besides St. George? You don't get any revenues from property taxes in North Baton Rouge. The houses are worth nothing. You do it by generating revenue from arrests and fines. In the Alton Sterling shooting, I felt like he was going to jail even if he was compliant and didn't have a gun. Even if the entire 911 call was bogus, he was going to jail. I don't feel the police wanted to shoot him. I think they wanted to take him to jail for the however many times he's gone before to keep him on the books and generating more revenue. Police departments are now debtor's prisons. I have a friend who went to jail over something domestic. She's poor and couldn't afford the fine. The put her on a payment plan and if she misses a payment, its starts over. She's been paying this fine for 4 years. I went downtown to pay a ticket and the City of BR has a no cell phone policy in the court building. I just went and put mine back in my car. They charge these people a fee to rent a box to store their cell phones in. These poor people who were dropped off or who caught the bus don't have the option of putting their phone back in their car. These types of things will only get worse when St. George pulls out. This is inevitable. I see why Kip didn't want any revitalization in North Baton Rouge. Where is the disposable income to support anything in North Baton Rouge?

The death of Sterling was tragic and shouldn't have happened. The police would rather have this guy alive and using his CD sales to continue to pay his financed debt with the BRPD.

As far as BLM and the media goes, both are equally clueless. They are all opportunists. BLM started out on the right track with the protests. Protests should be catapults to get seats at the table with politicians to effect change. In the past three years, I have seen no progress. This group is splintered into 50 different subgroups all looking for their shine. They need to come together as one, define their agenda and present to the people who can get it done. If they did that three years ago, they could possibly have people in place now that can implement the changes they would have defined. The media is even worse. It's like they pray for these shootings because they draw huge ratings. They don't want to see the peaceful protests. The clashes makes them so much money. If they both focused on the economics of policing, we wouldn't have as many problems as we have now. Just my opinion.