Two NYPD officers were shot and killed in their car by a black suspect, and it’s pretty much all gone to hell.
Two New York City police officers were shot and killed ambush-style Saturday as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn, according to two law enforcement sources.
Both officers were shot in the head, one of the sources said. Few other details were available.
They had been rushed to a hospital in critical condition, said police spokesman Sgt. Lee Jones.
The families of the fallen officers arrived at Woodhull Medical Center on Saturday afternoon, as dozens of police officers gathered in a show of support.
The alleged shooter was found dead in a nearby subway station from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a law enforcement official.
The shooting occurred near Myrtle and Tompkins avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
Supposedly the suspect also shot and killed his girlfriend and posted a picture of his blood-covered leg to Facebook, but at this point details are still coming in. It’s completely rational to say that nobody here deserved to die, the cops, the suspect, his girlfriend, and neither did Tamir Rice or Eric Garner or Michael Brown.
That’s all I’ve got. I’m just sick about this, for a number of reasons.
Just Some Fuckhead
Damn, the one guy who could have absolved himself in front of a grand jury.
Mike in NC
All in all, this has been a pretty crappy year. Hopefully 2015 won’t be so bad.
Corner Stone
Can we at least wait to see if this has anything to do with any of the rest?
campionrules
Lone wolf. Nothing to see here but a tragedy.
Zandar
@Corner Stone: Not today man. Not fucking today.
Belafon
@Corner Stone: even if they had nothing to do with each other, would that make the statement any less true?
debbie
Fucking guns.
Spinwheel
@Zandar: Get over yourself. Now.
So you agree that “All Lives Matter” then?
Good.
Helen
DeBlasio and Bratten are holding a news conference at 7.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: I’m not sure how ostensibly linking this incident to others helps anyone, without further information.
lamh
Al Sharpton is getting the brunt of the critic and blame for this with no evidence other than the young man’s instagram.
If you dare and want to see the vitriol, check out Adam Serwer’s twitter timeline.
https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/with_replies
sharl
Yeah, the crap is flying fast and furious on Twitter; a good time to remember the sensible advice from the occasionally problematic On The Media in their post, The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook.
One thing is guaranteed though: a lot of the same folks who are at least sympathetic to the anti-LEO Clive Bundy crowd – if not in fact considering them to be folk heroes – will be screaming bloody hell about this one, as one tweeter noted:
I know my tribe, as does the tweeter apparently.
*As a memory refresher, here’s an in-depth look at those Vegas killers, who had been hanging out with Clive Bundy before going on their deadly rampage.
Just Some Fuckhead
The head of the police union is probably composing his “This is why we kill black people” speech right now. Ha. Actually, his speech will blame DeBlasio and Obama because while the rest of us are being shushed into a fawning and defensive crouch, those soulless rightwing fucks will keep moving their fascist agenda.
lol chikinburd
Ban the stalker’s IP. Now. I don’t care what “blog policy” is.
Mike J
This incident doesn’t have to have anything to do with the others. It’s going to be used as justification for anything any cop anywhere wants to do to anyone.
lamh
yeah, ya think. the residents of Bed Stuy dont’ want to become more of the NYPD targets than they all ready are.
Howard Beale IV
From breakingnews.com:
Persia
White guys kill their girlfriends and go on a rampage: Nothing to see here, nothing we can do, move along, kthnks
Black guys kill their girlfriends and go on a rampage: More proof of black criminality, move along, kthks.
Black guy kills his girlfriend and then a couple of cops: ARMAGEDDON.
mclaren
Okay, I’ll go there.
When the police become muggers with badges and belligerently refuse to reform themselves after police indiscriminately murder innocent civilians for no reason, then police officers deserve to die.
At random.
On the streets.
And it deserves to happen execution-style, in the manner of an oppressed population fighting back against a hostile occupying force, until the police wake up and reform themselves.
This is what happens, ladies and gentlemen, when justice disappears and gets replaced by the Law of the Jungle.
Because…guess what?
When society turns into a jungle without law or justice, that jungle becomes as dangerous for the muggers with badges as for their innocent victims. The police want to dispense with the rule of law?
This is what happens.
Deal with it, thugs with badges.
delurkingtopost
mclaren’s comment at 20 is intolerable. ban him right now, Cole. you do NOT want your comment section to be home to this foulness.
lol chikinburd
For the record, I don’t endorse vigilantism against police. I favor a civilized response, using the institutions in place — namely, a federalized National Guard, supported by the United States Armed Forces, moving in to liberate our cities now under occupation by these heavily-armed(-by-us) criminal gangs.
Elizabelle
@sharl:
Thanks for reminding about those demented Las Vegas cop killers. We don’t even remember their names. (Just their personas: the Joker and Harley Quinn.)
But they murdered in cold blood, as did this killer tonight. One episode fell down the memory hole. (Possibly because no one wanted to look too hard at the heartland of Indiana as a birthplace of anti-police violence by white antigovernment types.)
Antigovernment? Nothing to see here.
Steve from Antioch
And its also completely rational to say that one could just condemn this latest bit of senseless violence without also using it as an excuse to trot out one’s hobby horses.
Spinwheel
@Steve from Antioch: you’d think that, but Zandar.
Shrug.
TS
@efgoldman:
This is defining white men with guns – not applicable here
SP
@mclaren: going for 15 minutes by being featured in nutpicking by Fox News?
aimai
@Persia: Yes–a white guy walked into a coffee shop in Seattle, I think, and killed a bunch of police officers and no one thought he was other than insane. In fact, he was insane. A lot of people in this country–white and black–are nuts, are armed, and are looking to kill someone. The central issue is not the secondary people who are killed but the first: its always the wife/girlfriend who gets killed first. In the recent Australian “terrorist” incident the guy was a straight up wife murderer who was also pissed off about race/religion/ethnicity issues. But the first person he killed was his estranged wife. In the recent mass shootings in Alabama (?) by the Iraq war vet he killed his wife and everyone associated with her. He was white so no ulterior political motive was ascribed to his rage-filled mass shooting.
People–but lets get real we usually are talking about men–are angry and are shooting the women in their lives who aren’t able to fix things for them, or who leave them. Sometimes they shoot the police or other outsiders, too. But it has nothing to do with any real political consciousness or intention.
satby
@Steve from Antioch: @Spinwheel: Fuck off you two.
cahuenga
Two more armed good guys, gone.
SiubhanDuinne
@Spinwheel:
Go fuck yourself. Now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve from Antioch: Christ, what an asshole.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
NY Times:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Steve from Antioch:
Yeah, unfortunately, guess what? People are already using this as proof that Garner protestors are out for a murder spree and proves how black people are the most murderous thugs in the history ever, after people have attempted to paint this guy as somehow motivated by the Garner decision. And THAT rush to project is going to be far, far, far more dangerous than a wish that no one had to die in a senseless way.
Diana
@aimai: I completely agree, the violence is always first and foremost against the women. This is why I don’t think of this as a racial issue: black or white, cop or civilian, there always seems to be some kind of macho man element to a lot of these incidents.
That said, what are we supposed to make of the fact that this particular fool posted to Instagram “they take 1 of ours… let’s take 2 of theirs #ShootThePolice #RIP ErivGardner #RIPMikeBrown This may be my final post”???
I’m always suspicious of any narrative that goes “our killings are well-intentioned accidents or random crazy people … theirs are deliberate murder.”
that always sounds Orwellian to me.
Howard Beale IV
@mclaren: It’s called reaping what you sew. It’s biblical, too. The harvest has been bitter for decades-now the crop is turning poisonous.
Those who wield irearms fail to understand that ammunition has no nutritional value, and cannibalism isn’t socially acceptable.
Les Nessman
@Howard Beale IV: Sow
lamh
@Diana: this guy allegedly shot and killed his girlfriend then drove to NYC. Of course the woman he killed won’t matter in all this, just that he made statements on Instagram.
When a criminal fleds the scene of a crime isn’t it the intial crime that should be the focus of analysis.
Heliopause
@cahuenga:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
A bad guy with a gun stopped two good guys with guns, then stopped himself.
Therefore…
This logic stuff is hard.
Howard Beale IV
Meanwhile in mostly whitebread Minnestota, thousands descended on the Mall Of America to protest the recent spate of police violence against black citizens:
cahuenga
@Heliopause:
Exactly my point.
wasabi gasp
@Omnes Omnibus: The OP reads as “this is bad news, but let’s not forget Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Michael Brown.” It’s irrelevant even if the suspect had Rice, Garner, and Brown in his mind.
Cervantes
Meanwhile, says the NRA: “Merry Christmas! (Another day, another dollar.)”
Trentrunner
Wow. The Empire is Already Striking Back:
– NYPD: “Blue flu” action in progress. Not enforcing, not pursuing.
– Retired NYPD officer on CNN: “This is just what Sharpton and deBlasio wanted.”
The upcoming press conference should be very, very interesting.
sharl
@Diana:
Oh shit, I just killed my girlfriend. What are people going to think now? They won’t understand (that the bi*ch made me do it). I’m not gonna get any breaks on this…
…Hey, if I’m gonna go down anyway, might as well do it by being a hero to my folks. Been seeing how bad those NYC cops are behaving… hmm… yeah, I can be a hero here. Maybe folks won’t pay much attention to me killing my girl.
Really, I have no idea how if this is correct, or even close – it’s pure speculation. We may never know the killer’s thinking. But I could see a twisted, desperate mind coming up with something like the above scenario as a Last Act.
Omnes Omnibus
@wasabi gasp: I read the original post as saying none of the recent victims of gun violence deserved to die.
lamh36
Expected this, but also main reason why I am afraid now for any protesters or any of my community anywhere is US who happen to be living, walking, driving, etc while being Black.
We’re already targeted, now more so.
skerry
@lamh: Local Baltimore news sources are saying the woman was not killed this morning. She is in the hospital with gun shot wound in the abdomen. The shooting took place in Baltimore County, west of the city.
Doesn’t make things much better, but clearing things up best I can.
ETA: This shooting in Brooklyn is close to home for me. The subway entrance where the shooter died is the one my daughter uses for her commute to Manhattan. She lives very close. I’m glad she left town for the holiday this morning and won’t be back for a couple of weeks.
Keith G
Two men were shot to death in Houston early this morning. Two more people were killed in a murder suicide in a nearby suburb.
Shit happens. People die. Sometimes they are cops as I hear that cops are not immune to bullets.
Statically speaking, it is likely that about 80 people died from bullet wounds in the last 24 hours in this country – about 30 of those deaths were some form of homicide. At least one of them was under 14 years of age.
It’s messy out there.
TS
@efgoldman:
I hear what you say – but I think it is now impossible “to leave race out”. The police and the media will report on the insanity of white shooters – not so for anyone else.
Spinwheel
Zandar is the one assuming that this is going to be about race, and he feels the need to deflect that criticism now before we know it’s about anything.
Does anyone else see the problem here?
lamh36
@skerry: thanks for that. I know I saw something about him shooting a girlfriend, I may have assumed a death.
But yeah, the dude mindset prior to the cop killings should be factored into any story trying to link him to protesters, but we all know it won’t.
This poor woman won’t even be an afterthought
David Koch
yet no one freaked out when the tea party threatened to kill police officers with high powered sniper rifles
http://www.bradblog.com/Images/BundyRanch_SniperFreewayOverpass_April2014.jpg
Les Nessman
@Keith G: FBI reports 76 Law Enforcement Officers killed last year. Reuters.
Mike J
@Diana:
The big difference is that if this guy were alive, everybody would want him to be arrested and tried. When a cop had walks up to an unarmed person on the street and kills them, many people think he shouldn’t face justice.
lamh36
And people are “outraged” as Zander? This is why unfortunately what Zander said needed to be said!
Bobby Thomson
@Spinwheel: I see the problem. You continue to post here. Get a life.
wasabi gasp
@Omnes Omnibus: I read it as rationalization.
Elizabelle
NY Daily News:
I think I initially saw this gang named in a NYPost article; could have been the Daily News.
They called it Black Gorilla at first. Wish I’d made a PDF or screenshot. It was enough to make you wonder how it ever made it to the website.
Bobby Thomson
@wasabi gasp: then you’re stupid.
opiejeanne
@Howard Beale IV: sow.
chopper
I’m sure ‘witness 40’ will be along to describe the scene.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
Wait to see if something has anything to do with something else? Wait to jump to conclusions, assume facts not in evidence, insist that uncorroborated assertions be accepted as true? On this blog? Surely you jest.
Les Nessman
@opiejeanne: See 38
lamh36
lamh36
Mark my words, NYPD, MSM, liberal media, conservative media and any of the usual waffling “ally” will use and have already use the one Instagram post from this guy to try to link him to protests. The stage is being set.
Baud
@lamh36:
What good is a triple murder if you can’t use it to advance your political agenda?
chopper
@mclaren:
LOL, I’m sure you’ll lead the way, tough guy.
‘Lets go to war! I’ll hold your coat’
Diana
@Mike J: the real question is, what’s justice?
Before a prosecutor can charge a person and bring his to trial, he has to run the case by a grand jury, in secret, and in these cases, two grand juries have found the evidence insufficient to bring a case.
Does justice require a trial, or is it satisfied by any form of due process, or it is something no-one can agree on, such that there can never been any actual agreement on what constitutes justice?
wasabi gasp
@lamh36: Zandar looks absolutely fabulous when standing next to a nutty schlub.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
Yeah, that’s the damn problem
chopper
@Spinwheel:
That you continue to waste oxygen? Totes.
Steve from Antioch
@Heliopause:
Say what you want about Hitler, but he did kill Hitler.
wasabi gasp
@Bobby Thomson: If you would be kind enough to be glue for just a moment…
Baud
@lamh36:
@Baud:
In case it wasn’t clear, I was referring to the tweet, not to you.
JPL
@delurkingtopost: Yup..
lamh36
Brattons also stated “anti-police, anti-criminal justice system, anti-socital” action in the protests across the country…
I hope protesters stay safe out there, especially NYC.
ETA: Britton also said that NYPD received a fax warning them about the suspect from Baltimore PD
lamh36
@Baud: no worries I got what you meant
Gravenstone
@Steve from Antioch: Rather ironic, from a Second amendment absolutist such as yourself, who only slinks out of your hole on posts relating to your fetish instruments being shown in a bad light.
mdblanche
@SP: If mclaren didn’t exist, Fox News would have to invent her.
@Spinwheel: “Does anyone else see the problem here?”
No, but if you check a mirror you can.
David Koch
Bratton just said people protesting police brutality are “anti-societal”
Great appointment, Bill
Keith G
@Les Nessman: So the homicide rate for police is less than one 16th the rate of non police.
Heliopause
@Steve from Antioch:
With a gun, no less.
I wonder how Jack Ruby fits into all this.
Elizabelle
The Staten Island prosecutor and grand jury that refused to indict in the Garner killing have more blood on their hands than Mayor deBlasio.
You can trace a line back to that set of bad actors.
Steve from Antioch
@Gravenstone:
Would you say it It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife ?
skerry
@Diana: I think justice was not served in Ferguson since the prosecutor has admitted that he knew some testimony given to the grand jury was false, out-dated, unconstitutional laws were presented as a basis for the grand jury decision, among other reasons.
Information about the grand jury process in Staten Island or Dayton has, to my knowledge, not been released to the public.
Given the videos in the killings of Eric Garner and John Crawford, it is hard for me to see how justice was served.
I do think the anger and frustration that many feel should, eventually, be directed to try to change the legal process. Open the grand jury up. Mandate independent prosecutors for police-involved deaths. Something like that. While difficult, it may be easier than changing police culture directly, and would provide a concrete goal. The current demonstrations don’t have a real “ask” beyond a call for awareness, that I can see.
My $0.02 from a non-attorney, middle-aged, middle-class white suburban woman.
Steve from Antioch
@Heliopause:
It’s completely rational to simply ask why there is so little documentation about where Jack Ruby was in April 1945.
opiejeanne
@Les Nessman: I saw it. I posted from my iPhone and “sew” had just appeared. Sometimes it takes a while to appear here.
BruinKid
@sharl: The libertarians I know (who hang out with Adam Kokesh) did praise the Las Vegas cop killers, because in their justification, those cops would’ve probably shot some innocent person in the future, so that made it OK to murder them.
They’ll probably be chiming in praising this cop killer as well any minute now.
Shalimar
@Spinwheel: It was already about race in various places on the internet (thanks to the instant reaction ability on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) before Zandar posted this, he doesn’t need to assume. I’ll speculate though. This is going to be used as a reason for increasing violence against anyone who tries to protest police violence. So many police officers are already terrified of superhuman black “thugs”, now they have an incident to peg their fear to.
Gravenstone
So Shitheel, the cops have already linked these killings in their hive mind as retribution for the death of Eric Garner. Perhaps you’d like to retract your objection to the OP making a tangential reference as it relates to all these tragic deaths? Then maybe you can better the world at large by finding a nearby conflagration and leaping therein?
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@mdblanche:
FWIW, we did finally establish the summer that mclaren is a man, not a woman. My entire gender gave a sigh of relief at the news.
lamh36
Statement from Attorney General Eric Holder on NYPD officers shot and killed http://www.
Elie
@lamh36:
This is really sad and revolting. Some sanity needs to pervade the language of the NYPD union. The Mayor is an elected official in a legitimate government. They need to get right with the Lord, so to speak and stop playing insurrectionists…. If they have a bone to pick with the Mayor, they need to talk to him clean and stop with this crap — it is just making things worse and there will be nothing good that comes of this for them — at least for their rank and file that have to walk these beats. This is not a good time to reach for the kerosene can. The Mayor is married to a black woman and has a black son. They are trying to do some fancy extrapolation of that to the Mayor being black and wanting them dead. Someone sane needs to talk to these people… while this may have been a crazy person we don’t want to draw the attention of more functional crazy political extremists on both sides. They (the union), need to chill their language but quick.
lamh36
Villago Delenda Est
This sentence not operational when the subject is Dick Cheney, or Darren Wilson, or Newt Gingrich.
Or Spinwheel, for that matter.
Elizabelle
The police unions need to shut their pieholes.
This is two police officers, gunned down without a chance to defend themselves because they were police officers. Also sons, brothers, husbands, maybe fathers. I get that.
But I did not feel the immediate surge of sympathy I did on hearing about the Las Vegas murders.
Because you had police union thugs, very honestly, out there making it all about “us vs. them”. There’s no defending the cop who shot Tamir Rice. None.
And the elephant in the room no one is going to talk honestly about — because we have a black gunman here — is that police probably fear for their own personal safety, and sometimes reasonably.
Because they don’t know that anyone they deal with does not have a weapon and is ready to use it. We’re a society awash in guns, and with economic and social anxiety in the background. Because times are harder for a lot of us than they need to be.
Thanks, NRA, re the guns.
And thanks right wing wurlitzer and shiftless politicians, for all the anti-government spew.
BruinKid
Yep, so this is how my libertarian friend responds, by mocking their deaths.
And he also posted a link to CopBlock advising when you can shoot a cop.
:-
Marc
@Spinwheel: Jesus Christ. How about not using a triple-murder/suicide to score imaginary points in your endless online stalking?
You too, mclaren.
mdblanche
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): I must have missed that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go feel worse about my gender now.
Spinwheel
@Marc: I find that amusing when the only person “scoring points” is the fellow taking two dead NYPD beat cops and saying “But you guys!!! Eric Garner!!!”
It seems a great number of people in this thread agree completely with that factual observation.
Elizabelle
@Elie:
Yeah. The police union needs to stop the rhetoric, now. They need to get slapped back hard, behind the scenes, or in public, if they persist.
How convenient this tragedy is for them. How sad all around.
Elie
In my opinion, the deeper responsibility here lies on the cops. They are charged with upholding legitimate laws and therefore indirectly, the legitimacy of our justice. They cannot — they must not, lose control in language and in the important work of projecting leadership and honorable behavior to the public — no matter what the temptation. There is just no way off of that ledge once they put themselves on it — they will bring down their own legitimacy and credibility. Once they are just like everything else, it is open warfare — something that will be a disaster. As I said, I know nothing about who is running these NY cop unions, but someone with a brain in their head better have a conversation with someone. They need to be stepping away from the ledge that they are on….they cannot win this without the support of the community around them — they have no legitimacy without that.
mainmata
@aimai: He was a Marine vet from Philadelphia. Otherwise, I agree with your post.
sharl
@BruinKid: Thanks – I think. Philosophically, those types are a minority within a minority – thank gawd – but they’re always out there. I am old enough to remember that Timothy McVeigh initially got praise from a number of the “heartland militia” crowd for his Oklahoma City slaughter. They shut up when they realized theirs wasn’t exactly a popular opinion, but I doubt they actually ever changed their minds.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@mdblanche:
Well, in our binary system, someone was going to get stuck with mclaren. You guys drew the short straw with Dick Cheney, too, so I feel for ya.
Les Nessman
@Elie: Peace through Superior Firepower
Elizabelle
@aimai: Shootings were in Pennsylvania, aka Pennsyltucky.
But yeah.
Can anyone here name the shooter, us being newshounds? Me neither.
MDB
@Spinwheel: Dp you also attend funerals of people you don’t know and yell out “I too have suffered?”
Until white boys are systematically targeted by law enforcement for any and all things ranging from harrasment to murder for the next 250 yes, do us all a favor and STFU with that bullshit.
BruinKid
@sharl: You can’t see his post because it’s only shared with his friends on Facebook, but I put the link up there for posterity because this guy will almost certainly become a key campaign staffer for Rand Paul in 2016. He was recently invited to Glenn Beck’s studio for a long interview with him and two other young libertarians on the rise here in Los Angeles. Rand Paul may not think these thoughts, but he’ll hire a Southern Avenger or people who think like this.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
Regarding this latest shooting, am I reading correctly that the asshole who did this drove up from Baltimore and is not a local? So how in the hell is it the fault of the local protesters, DeBlasio or any other local politician?
chopper
The second thing I thought when I read the blurb on this story was, well now the nypd and police everywhere have the ‘circle the wagons’ rationalization they’ve been itching for for the last month or so. Now the mouth-breathing yard-sleeping fox-watching schmucks will point to this to excuse the police’s general ‘fuck the blacks’ policies all across the country. So yeah Zandar was right to bring up the victims of police murder. Because this is going to be used as an excuse to sweep them under the rug.
Elie
@Les Nessman:
Where is the union going with this? A shooting war as you hint?
Nope — won’t work and won’t happen. As I said — some of these union leaders need to have an intervention.
kc
@mclaren:
Shut the fuck up, you couch-bound blowhard.
lamh36
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): because on his Instagram he used Justice for Mike Brown and Eric Garner hashtags…also too cause he was Black.
So…of course…
Elizabelle
NYTimes:
chopper
@kc:
Hey now, I’m sure mclaren’s five deferments from ‘political holy war’ were all well-earned.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is insane
that’s the Sargeant’s Benevolent Association. There have to be sane people in the NYPD who are revolted by this.
JoyfulA
@Elizabelle: Not Pennsyltucky, NW suburbs about 30 miles from Philadelphia.
Tree With Water
A jarringly discordant note from a sick soul:
“The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words, actions and policies,” read the statement, presumably from the head of the union, Patrick Lynch, “and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly.”
What a reprehensible utterance, that serves to dishonor both the NYPD, and the memory of the two slain officers.
mdblanche
@BruinKid: “Why do all these
homosexualswhite supremacists keep sucking my cock?”Les Nessman
It’s basic dog psychology, if you scare them and get them peeing down their leg, they submit. But if you project weakness, that promotes violence, and that’s how people get hurt.-Bodhi
Liberty60
People who use this as a justification for authoritarian policing were already there. As others have mentioned, there have been plenty of white killers of cops without a peep from the usual suspects.
I’m just at the point where I don’t give the cops the presumption of moral heroism, any more than if I heard that 2 postal workers or utility linemen were killed by a crazed psycho.
After all I have seen and read, the idea that any given cop is good and heroic is a 50-50 call. And the shrieking and pounding of drums for their being heroes is most commonly an excuse to obscure their incompetence and criminality.
Cops are municipal workers, no more, no less.
Steve from Antioch
Shooter has kind of a metrosexual thing going on: http://www.mediaite.com/online/heres-everything-we-know-so-far-about-nypd-shooting-suspect-ismaaiyl-brinsley/
lamh36
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well, the police union is claiming that the “war” statement is not their’s.
Haven’t heard yet from SBA.
Um hmmm…I don’t believe a word from the Police Union Prez
Spinwheel
@MDB:
No that would be Zandar’s soulless pandering.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From a “moderate” Republican who wants to be president, from his verified account
chopper
@Tree With Water:
Why not just issue a fatwa and get it over with?
sharl
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Because, reasons.
@chopper: The early reports are that the two dead cops were African-American. Presuming that is the case, I can hear it now: Look, this isn’t a race thing, it’s a lack of respect for, and danger to Law Enforcement thing!
The final dingleberry on this Shit Pie would be for the talk shows to have Rudy Guiliani on as an expert. Which he sorta-kinda is, but not in a way that he should be proud of (nor the media that brings him on).
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
Christ, the rhetoric coming out, it honest to god sounds like the NYPD is ready to go full on martial law on the entire city.
chopper
@sharl:
One of the cops was Asian and the other Latino I think.
Elizabelle
Sigh. They’ve got a hashtag. #bluelivesmatter
They’re making this all about themselves. Dangerous.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Elizabelle:
Tone deaf, hair trigger psychotics. I know that it’s not all cops, but holy shit, the leadership and the institutional culture is ridiculously toxic.
chopper
@Kryptik, A Man Without a Country:
In bed stuy it will be at least. This happened a few blocks from where I used to hang out all the time. The people in the neighborhood there better keep their heads down cause the cops are gonna be looking for any excuse to kick someone’s ass.
Hal
The fact that he tried to kill the girlfriend completely nullifies this retribution for Garner and Brown nonsense. No one who legitimately opposes police brutality thinks more violence against the police or anyone else for that matter is a solution.
sharl
@chopper: Ah, so much for early reports, as my link at #13 discussed.
Spinwheel
@Elizabelle: the irony.
chopper
@Hal:
The cops, on the other hand, are going to take the ball and run with it. That fact won’t matter in the end.
appelligo
I just don’t know why I should care one way or another about this. The police don’t care, not at all, when a policeman kills a civilian. So why should I care when a civilian kills a policeman? Why should the empathy only be a one-way street? You’ll see lots of New Yorkers bemoaning the deaths of these two officers — but you didn’t see lots of cops bemoaning the deaths of Eric Garner or Michael Brown or Tamir Rice. I’m sorry, but I just can’t stir myself to care about the cops anymore knowing what they think of us.
Heliopause
@Tree With Water:
This scenario is bringing to mind an old quote from Noam Chomsky in a different context: “We have to ask ourselves whether what is needed in the United States is dissent – or denazification.” That is, I’m wondering if deBlasio maybe regrets making all his cops do a three day sensitivity seminar and is starting to think that de-baathification is the ticket.
Country’s biggest police force in open revolt against its mayor? This is not good.
slag
@Spinwheel: I, for one, have seen no comment from you that hasn’t been a complete waste of pixels.
mdblanche
@Kryptik, A Man Without a Country: And launch a coup.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Zandar:
Every day ending in Y, man.
Elie
@Liberty60:
“Cops are municipal workers, no more, no less”
Nope. Cops have more informal and formal roles in terms of our system of justice. Please please do not minimize that… they are are at the interface of our system and us — they are the first line “interpreters” of justice. If we have to “fix” them, lets fix them. But they are not like sewer workers or garbage collectors. I respect the notion of cops and what they are for. I know that some have gotten off the rails — but that does not mean that the role is wrong or unnecessary.
Elie
@Heliopause:
As I said, this has to be thought through and chilled out on both sides. This is very serious
Southern Beale
RIch Lowry, Asshole Of The Day
skerry
@Southern Beale: Again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When crazy people shoot up a movie theatre or a kindergarten, the people saying there’s a direct line from Eric Holder to this shooting tell us we mustn’t politicize tragedy, and the liberal media toes their line.
sharl
@BruinKid: I’ve been thinking about the connection you pointed out, of the guy you linked to a major politician. I really hope an opposition researcher has this same information, not just because I have no use for the politician in question, but because anyone who would actively associate with someone like that deserves to see his/her political ambitions get dashed hard and permanently.
goblue72
@Elie: Having dealt with the police professionally for a couple of decades in various cities across the U.S., I can say that generally speaking, your average police union elects the most retrograde, reactionary, quasi-racist of their membership to be their union president.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Spinwheel:
I hate to Court you for a rational response, but, how is this irony?
goblue72
@Elie: Its not that “some” individual cops have gone off the rail. It is far, far, far worse than that. This is a systemic and institutionalized problem – the rot is through the entire system of policing in this country and clearly has infected the majority of police departments in the U.S.
This is not a situation where a few bad apples have spoiled the bunch. The entire punch is spoiled – and the “good” apples are clearly in the minority – and afraid to say anything.
We have given badges, guns and an almost complete license to kill to a section of society that quite literally is composed of the decidedly less sharp knives in the drawer. (Your average Stanford or Cornell grad is most definitely not heading to the police academy after graduation.)
Les Nessman
In police jargon, deadly force is also referred to as shoot to kill. The Supreme Court has ruled that, depending on the circumstances, if an offender resists arrest, police officers may use as much force as is reasonably required to overcome the resistance. Whether the force is reasonable is determined by the judgment of a reasonable officer at the scene, rather than by hindsight. Because police officers can find themselves in dangerous or rapidly changing situations where split second decisions are necessary, the judgment of someone at the scene is vital when looking back at the actions of a police officer.
Perfect for the less sharp knives in the drawer.
chopper
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
It’s like goldy or bronzy only made of iron.
Southern Beale
Do we know how the shooter got his gun, or is asking such a question “politicizing a tragedy”?
Joel
This guy sounded like a serious piece of shit.
Not much more to say, really.
lamh36
Oh but hey, I thought the PBA was claiming “blood on hands” not legit?
mdblanche
@Heliopause: Unfortunately the main thing de-baathification did was produce a group of heavily armed people used to having power and no chance of being given any by the new regime. There don’t seem to be many good options in these situations.
Villago Delenda Est
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Ah, the hopeful that the idiot stalker troll might be persuaded to answer a question asked honestly and sincerely.
Not going to happen.
Southern Beale
Memory Hole: conservatives Jerad and Amanda Miller kill two Las Vegas police officers as they eat pizza on their lunch break.
Remind me, was the Tea Party movement asked to be accountable for their actions? I don’t think so.
Liberty60
@Elie:
I respect your sentiments- they represent what I wish cops were, the aspirations we all want.
However, I think the glorification of Cop-As-Warrior-Hero has stripped those civil small-d democratic virtues of law enforcement in favor of a dangerous authoritarianism.
I think it would be beneficial to push back and recall that cops are not superheros, and do not deserve automatic deference and cringing compliance.
And when one is killed, it isn’t the Reichstag Fire, but a crime to be investigated coolly and professionally.
sharl
@efgoldman: Actually, in his comment BruinKid said it was Rand Paul, but I was trying to keeps things generic, i.e., ANY politician who would take on someone like that as a staffer or adviser should lose any chance of a political future.
Having said that, BruinKid is right in noting that it wouldn’t be totally surprising that Rand Paul would hire on someone like that, given Paul’s political history (and legacy).
Marc McKenzie
@BruinKid: Maybe he should get together with Spinwheel and McLaren–they’re all full of shit.
DTOzone
@Kryptik, A Man Without a Country: Just the black parts
Elie
In the absence of institutionalized justice, the people will do more things like this — executions of police. Since none of us who are sane, no matter what our politics, wants this, all must come up with another approach. Some of your comments read as though you can’t really appreciate the consequence of having a full out war with the police. That is bullshit and I imagine that many of you who idly entertain that notion would not yourselves have your asses at risk – being white and all. There is a lot at risk and all of us better had get fucking serious about this and stop with the flippant asides. I and my people are a minority and we will get fucking murdered while you do your intellectual white people comment salons. Not interested. We need some serious communication and discussion with the few non crazy people on both sides. I’ll tell you what, those of you who are white who are feeling like you wanna do some macho shit, change your skin color first then do your talking…
mdblanche
Forget it, G’ay’ke, it’s Spinwheeltown.
Spinwheel
@Villago Delenda Est: Really?
If you believe that cops involved in the Rice and Garner and Brown incidents were brutal killers or not, if you believe they should have faced trial or not, Zandar using the deaths of these two cops to push his political point of view is pretty awful.
I am calling him out on it.
I am not the only one.
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I refer to the “making it all about themselves” part of the statement being ironic because it’s very clear that’s what Zandar is guilty of doing.
Again I am not the only person to make this observation.
Heliopause
@Liberty60:
I think it’s also worth noting that, whenever we hear the old trope about police work being a “tough job”, that 98% of the work done in this world is soul-crushing, degrading shit. Easy to forget for academics, writers, and other privileged who frequent blog comment sections.
cmm
Fuck each and every one of you who thinks this is in any way deserved. McLaren, you are a piece of corn stuck in poop that was scraped off Ted Bundy’s shoe.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Spinwheel:
Well, I didn’t expect much from you, and that’s what I got.
Fuck off, twerp.
D58826
@lamh36: The white guy who shot the two Pa. state troopers had a strong biasis against cops but no one is blaming it on other white folks.
cmm
Okay now that I am a tiny bit calmer, the stuff that the various spokespeople are saying about this is unconscionable aND stupid. I have been freaking out and hollering about people randomlY shooting cops for several years now, and up tIL now when any alleged political ideology was involved, it was white people with far right wing ideology. It’s all been horrific and terrifYing and between listening to flow officers sat stupid shit about the protests and listening to people who I am largely ideologically sympathetic with say horrible Shit about police, I am ready to throw up my hands and move to a cabin in the woods. I’m just done with people right now.
goblue72
@Elie: With the exception of mclaren who everyone on this board recognizes is a complete looney tune, almost no one in this comment thread is advocating open war with the police.
There are some folks who are expressing – and frankly, quite understandably – that (1) it gets hard to have sympathy for the cops given the at times apparently wholesale hunting season on POCs by the nation’s various police departments combined with the outright authoritarian statements by said police department’s union spokespeople, and (2) that the MSM as well those with right wing political axes to grind are already using the actions of guy who was clearly nuts as an indictment of the quite legitimate anti-police protests that have taken place over the last several weeks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
can’t bring myself to watch the video, but I’ll take the reporters/tweeters at their word
Villago Delenda Est
@Spinwheel: You’ve read so much in between the lines of Zandar’s post that opened the thread.
You had to make it about you. Not what Zandar said.
Yet, he did not state the obvious political point there: this incident IS BEING USED by the usual authoritarian suspects to attack the movement that is insisting that police be held accountable for their actions.
He did say, very plainly and in standard American English, that not one of the people ensnared in this mess deserved to die.
How you take that as something else is a function of your diseased, obsessed mind.
goblue72
@D58826: Cuz the shooter was white. This is America – different rules apply to white people.
D58826
@goblue72: It’s tragic that the protests have been twisted into an ‘anti-police’ narrative. I think most of the protesters simply want the people to treat them with the same respect that the citizens of the Hamptons receive. They want rogue officers removed from duty they don’t want the police force disbanded. They want the police to live up to the ‘protect and serve’ decals on the police cars. They want the police to be held tot he same level of accountabilty that the citizen is held to. I don’t think that is anti-police.
goblue72
@D58826: Oh, I agree completely. My “anti-police protests” was just a lazy short-hand reference to the protests as opposed to writing out something longer to refer to them.
Shalimar
@Spinwheel: Thank you for your tone policing. Without you, I don’t know how we would recognize all the times we’re not allowed to voice opinions on different subjects. I do have a question though. Is it just black people who aren’t allowed to talk about this in any way that suggests many of our wonderful police officers in this country are quite clearly racist authoritarian assholes? Or is it anyone who might express that opinion? My ancestors were Swedish/French/Scottish, so I really need to know if I have to shut up too, or if it’s just Zandar.
Hal
The protests happening are about over militarization and police brutality. The over use of force and the speed in which police escalate to violence. So how do the police react? By using threats and implied violence. By blaming the DiBlasio and Eric Holder? while running unofficially for President. I’m side eyeing you Pataki.
The police response is exactly what people are protesting. No one wants police dead. People wanted Darren Wilson and the officer in Eric Garner’s death to face a jury, not a firing squad. The ultimate shame in this tragedy besides these two dead officers who did not deserve this is going to be the police in NYC and elsewhere trying to use this tragedy as a way to intimidate and de-legitimize protests against the abuse that’s probably now going to get even worse.
That’s one of the worse aspects of these deaths. People who say “Wow, now the police are going to be out of control.” They’re already there.
d58826
This has already raced way past whatever the facts are. The shooter could have been a member of the Little Sisters of the Poor for whatever good it will do. He might have a record of mental illness a mile long and it won’t matter. He is a black thug stirred up by Eric Holder and before long I’m sure that n-clang in the White House. The country is coming apart at the seams.
sharl
@cmm: I was actually thinking about you during this discussion. You have clearly – and correctly – identified who to ignore in this thread.
There will always be stone cold and/or crazed cop killers out there, whatever the bigger sociopolitical environment may be. Though they are relatively rare, I’m sure you guys have the ever-present worry in the back of your heads that you’ll run up against one of them some day in an otherwise “normal” situation.
I wish you well. Please take care of yourself as best you can, and stay vigilant. Your community needs you, whether they often realize it or not.
Omnes Omnibus
@d58826:
Come on, is it worse than 1965? Honestly, if you want to name a decade, people can find horrors in it. I don’t buy into the apocalyptic crap. We are continuing to muddle through – making progress in some areas and going backwards in others. It is part of the human condition.
Steve from Antioch
@goblue72:
“it gets hard to have sympathy for the cops given the at times apparently wholesale hunting season on POCs by the nation’s various police departments combined with the outright authoritarian statements by said police department’s union spokespeople,”
Yes, the mark of a fair and enlightened person nowadays is making sure that one’s opinion of an identifiable cohort is determined by the actions of its most despicable members.
Dumbass.
Matt McIrvin
@Steve from Antioch: When the president of the organization officially speaking for the cohort seems to be going off his nut, it’s harder to dismiss him as just an isolated individual.
I’m with Elie, that language he was using is incredibly scary. As I said earlier, it is a union’s job to look out for the interests of its members… but the armed representatives of the government are in a special position that demands some discretion; you don’t want an armed security organization in open rebellion against the elected officials they’re working for.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: This.
Monala
@Elie: I posted on the other thread: This is nothing new. In the early ’90s, I was dating a guy whose dad (African-American) was a formerly high-ranking NYPD official before his retirement. We were visiting one weekend when a young, unarmed Latino man was killed by NYPD. Dave Dinkins was mayor at the time, and he visited the young man’s mother to offer his condolences. Local news then reported on the head of the police union’s reaction to the mayor’s visit to the mother. I don’t remember his exact words, but he yelled “m-f-in n****r” multiple times in his rant against the mayor. When asked for a response, Dinkins was unbelievably calm and gracious (although I wouldn’t be surprised if he was seething inside).
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Spinwheel:
Is it equally bad for the police union to be politicizing these murders, or is it only bad when Zandar does it?
Just kiddin’ — we all know you’re fine with the police union politicizing this up the wazoo and only get pissed off when other people point out what they’re doing.
Betty Cracker
@cmm: What sharl said.
wilfred
The police are not the enemy. Most of them are working class people just like everybody else. The problem they have is the same as the one everybody else has. They get derailed from what the real struggle should be and channeled into an us vs. us, the latter disguised as whatever them is being hyped.
They have no class consciousness and are oblivious to their position as a praetorian guard for an economic elite. They are similar to the race mavens, whose own consciousness doesn’t extend past their skin color and who are now involved, like it or not, in a death struggle with the cops. You reap what you sow.
The only struggle is class struggle, everything else is performance art – street theater with a few odd casualties thrown in.
Matt McIrvin
@wilfred: The “race mavens” didn’t invent racism. I don’t see how you can look at American history and American culture and not see that. Nor can we make it go away magically by ignoring it.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@wilfred: Shetterly, is that you?
Matt McIrvin
@Monala: Maybe what’s really changed is that details like this used to mostly get local news coverage, and now they get tweeted around the world.
Spinwheel
@Villago Delenda Est: @Shalimar: @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
The examples of police unions politicizing this incident are awful. The idiots in this thread ready to go to war against the police are also awful.
But those are straw men towering 50 feet high. The issue is Zandar and his use of this shooting to push his agenda. Others have mentioned this here. And none of those groups are posting on the front page of BJ.
You can try to change the subject all day, but it doesn’t change the fact that Zandar’s first instinct was to conflate this tragedy with police killings.
He’s just as guilty and as much of a shitbird for doing that. The end.
chopper
@Spinwheel:
of course. the real issue is always zandar. it’s zandar’s fault you took a runny dump this morning.