This Black Man May Surprise You!

     Help Me Howard Finklestein says the Fort Lauderdale Police are mistreating the black community by using DWB ( driving while black) , BBB (biking while black) even WWB ( walking while black) to unjustly stop and arrest black people.

                             
                                    Help Me Howard

     But Fort Lauderdale community activist (and black man) Torren Poole calls Finklestein’s stance –  “racial profiling garbage spin!”.

     Poole disagrees with Finkelstein, says he wants to “go on record”, that he supports the local Police. Poole, who recently organized a community get together to fight crime in his N.W. neighborhood, calls himself “just a guy who woke up”.

     Literally, Poole woke up a few years back when he was awakened one morning at 5 a.m. by his wife who said, “somebody’s coming in the house”!
 
     Poole confronted Alonzo B. Brown ( a black man about Poole’s age) breaking into his house.
 
     Alonzo Brown, who had earlier served time for molesting a 12 year old, had broken into the wrong house this time. When Brown pulled his knife on Poole and tried to stab him, Poole hauled off and punched Brown so hard he knocked him “clean out!” Poole says he hit Brown so hard, “I even dislocated my knuckle with the punch”. Before the Police could arrive, Brown woke up and Poole knocked him unconscious again.

     Brown says it’s time to stop crying foul about Police stops.

     The Chief of Police is a black man, for God’s sake” he says. Poole thinks the profiling is a necessary evil that people in his community are going to have to live with to fix his area. “What are we gonna do, sit around and sing Kum-ba-ya?” he asks. 

                                          
                                              black Chief
 
     “We gotta shake ’em ( the community), shake the tree! ” He says part of the problem is the community, who are sometimes afraid to back the Police.
     “We gotta let the Police do their job”. “Black people gotta do their part”.”We need to come together, specially my black people”.


                               
                                                     Poole
    
     Poole is passionate, and pissed! Shortly after the home invasion by Brown, Poole says his shed was broken into and all his work tools, his air compressors, even his kids bicycles were stolen.

     A few weeks later, Poole saw a young black teen riding down the street on one of the bikes. “I ran out and grabbed the bike, called the Police.


                                     
                                                teen thief

     When the teen went to his hearing, so did Poole. A public defender came over to Poole and asked if he was a relative, there to support the thief. “No”, he said “that is the fool that broke in my tool shed”.