The Creation of a Manifesto: Black & Blue


About the Author

Cheryl Dorsey was raised in South Central Los Angeles. After attending Catholic school at an early age, she embarked on a career in law enforcement, beginning with the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Investigations, and Narcotic Enforcement, shortly after graduating high school.

She later joined the LAPD in 1980, a time when the department was under a consent decree to hire more women and minorities. Cheryl spent twenty years on the LAPD working patrol, narcotics, and vice assignments for all four bureaus of operation: South, Central, West, and Valley. She is most proud of having spent her entire twenty years working field-related assignments, which included the infamous gang unit known as the Community Resources against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH.

During her tenure, Sergeant Dorsey received numerous commendations and accolades from her command staff and the public she served. Cheryl enjoys spending time with her four sons, being a grandmother, and appreciating the world around her.


About the Book

Let me first state, without any equivocation, I DO NOT condone the senseless murders. However, I do UNDERSTAND. It is my hope that this book will help to make sense out of the nonsense that was instrumental in the creation of a manifesto and the wrong thinking of one individual who challenged the LAPD machine. I pray for the families affected by the violence that God will grant you a peace that will surpass all understanding.

I, too, was betrayed and beaten down by the LAPD system. I was wrongly charged with giving false and misleading statements and ordered to an arbitrary and capricious Board of Rights (BOR). The BOR members are LAPD command staff officers and have a vested interest in adjudicating personnel complaints in a manner which protects the department and the City of LA, by any means necessary. These biased BOR decisions have resulted in numerous civil suits by officers, BOR termination reversals, and officer reinstatements. LAPD’s problems and internal struggles, which precipitated the creation of the Christopher Commission in 1991, are the same issues facing the department in 2013; they’re cultural and systemic.

The department crafts an image of any officer who complains in such a way that makes that officer appear distasteful, and therefore anything that they say or do is rejected. However, I am an honorably retired police sergeant who's willing to expose the department's two-tiered system of discipline and the manner in which the LAPD condones acts of sexism, racism, and reverse racism.

I could have created a manifesto—I chose a different path.


More about the Author:
www.cheryldorsey.net

Love Letters:To Whom They May Concern




About the Author

Ramona Jones was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She graduated in 2007 from the University of Florida with a degree in Marketing and moved shortly thereafter to Atlanta, Georgia to began her career. She is the mother of 2 boys and currently lives in Marietta, Georgia, where she works as an IT Project Manager for Cisco Systems. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta, an avid hiker and traveling foodie.



About the Book

Love Letters: To Whom They May Concern is the first compilation of Jones' poetry. It is the testimony of the gifts and callings we try to outrun, which instead overtake us so that we might give birth to something greater than ourselves.

From the thought provoking "Prevalence of Irrelevance" and "Loaded" to the romantic "Poetry's Ocean" and "Strange-Hers," these 40 soul searching poems are timeless, commanding, enchanting and transparent. Arranged as love letters to the most important things in her life, they reflect the journey Jones has embarked on as a woman, lover, mother and poet. Here is the personification of humanity's pursuit of love --genuine and uplifting -- from a poetic force to be reckoned with.