·        Darkness always lies ahead of the light ready to detour and reroute any and all whom are on the path to righteousness.

It was 5 in the morning and the excitement was hot and coursing through newly promoted Detective Tamara Davis’ veins. It had been exactly 2 weeks since she had been promoted to detective and now she stood in the pre-glory of a new achievement, getting ready to accept an award for her research in police combat and definitive regulatory skills, today she would bring forth new ideas of social justice and new ways of identifying and targeting criminal activities.

Today she would make a step towards changing the social views of the NYPD especially in the black community and she was especially proud in this fact.

Over the past ten years there had been to many marked resonances of the natural distrust her people had towards government and authority, for too long it had hindered the mental, social and economic growth of black children especially males but females alike.

This was a huge step towards changing that demographic, if she could add trust back into the lives of these youths, they could potentially grow into their full power as men and women, kings and queens, as they naturally were.

This was her views on the social structure of the black youth and this was why today was so important to her. This was why she had been hunched and nearly cowering over her bathroom sink for the past hour.

Still half dressed she finally decided to light some jasmine incense to calm her nerves, though it wasn’t rumored to have calming qualities it worked for her and was her favorite. Besides she couldn’t very well go to a ceremony filled with policemen dying to take her spot smelling like sage which smelled too much like marijuana.

She turned on Lauryn Hill and after sipping half way through a cup of black tea she was finally calm enough to finish dressing and practice her speech one last time, before hurrying out the door and into the dreadful New York traffic even at 7 in the morning it was packed and moving slowly.

With the smell of jasmine still lingering in her nose Tamara sat quietly in traffic, Bob Marley loomed from the speakers but never made it to her conscious hearing, she was too busy hoping and praying that she was right in her ‘discoveries’, though the deputy commissioner had congratulated her on her remarkable research she still felt some sense of  impending doom with the project, ever since it had been announced that she would receive an award for a technique that hadn’t even been tried, tested or proven correct.