The Detroit Michigan police department has a long standing habit of charging black males with felony concealed carry when they see them carry guns openly and lawfully with no concealed pistol license. This has now happened quite a few times over the course of the past 5 years and with startling regularity. Detroit's equally corrupt court system also has no desire to stop this. This has turned the lives of many good people and good families upside down.
We have been told that the Detroit cops get bonuses in their checks for felony arrests, and if true this would explain why this happens so frequently. The agency's leadership deny any wrongdoing, and essentially hide behind the fact that the NRA tries to use the chief as a posterchild for gun rights. (The chief, James Craig, is himself black, as are most if not all of the cops who create this malicious prosecution.)
The standard, reliable response of every other pro gun and pro freedom organization has either been thorough apathy, or in some cases denying it's happening, or claiming "we are playing the race card" for simply stating what is happening.
With no one else to help us, and little else to do to try and address the situation, we have taken to the streets well more than a dozen times to protest these abuses, always with long guns, body armor, and many video cameras. Not marching in front of their buildings, because that would do little more than reinforce the idea that they're in charge. Rather, we generally prefer residential streets and a bit of downtown, because we can meet the public and warn them about this to both keep them safer from these renegade thug cops, as well as help generate public pressure for it to stop. We also try to spread the message of general liberty on these walks.
We now carry signs as a general rule in order to make sure out point is thoroughly understood by the public and have found that to be very important for long gun carry, but in the past we didn't. Below is one of my personal favorite videos of a protest walk in Detroit from before we carried signs.
