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You are here: Home / Put Up or Shut Up

Put Up or Shut Up

by John Cole|  December 22, 201410:07 am| 164 Comments

This post is in: Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment

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Since the right wing and members of the media have decided to blame everyone but the god damned shooter for the murder of two policemen in NYC, a phrase keeps popping up over and over and over again- “anti-police rhetoric.” Here is a prime example:

We have seen nothing but police bashing from some of the highest offices in the land.

Michael Brown and Eric Garner died resisting arrest. Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died doing their job. It is a very important distinction. Michael Brown and Eric Garner were committing crimes. Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were protecting all the citizens of New York City.

The national dialogue on proper and effective policing has been totally distorted. Activists purporting to represent the majority of the black community have been bolstered by a 24 hour news cycle that gives them unwarranted credibility. I do not believe for one minute that Al Sharpton represents the feelings of most hardworking, law abiding black American families. I know through dozens of community meetings during my time as NYC Police Commissioner that what the black community wants most is what we all want—a safe environment in which to live their lives.

***

When Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley brutally executed Officers Ramos and Liu he did so in an atmosphere of permissiveness and anti-police rhetoric unlike any that I have seen in 45 years in law enforcement. The rhetoric this time is not from the usual suspects, but from the Mayor of New York City, the Attorney General of the United States, and even the President. It emboldens criminals and sends a message that every encounter a black person has with a police officer is one to be feared. Nothing could be further from the truth. We will never know what was in the mind of Brinsley when he shot officers Ramos and Liu. However we do know that he has seen nothing but police bashing from some of the highest officials in the land.

No one, however, provides any examples of this so-called anti-police rhetoric. It’s just there, like phlogiston or the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography or the Lord Jeebus’s undying love for you. You can’t pin it down, you can’t point to a concrete example of it- well, except for the doctored Fox news video of Al Sharpton. It’s just an article of faith. It’s there, and you just have to believe to see it.

Putting aside the fact that “anti-police rhetoric” is a phrase that has rocketed into prominence faster than anything I can remember since the Dick Cheney “gravitas” chorus of 2000, I would like to see some of this so-called anti-police rhetoric. So put up or shut up. Show me some anti-police rhetoric from Obama, Holder, etc. I’d love to see exactly what is off limits, because this sure as fuck isn’t:

The suspects in Sunday’s shooting spree in Las Vegas that claimed the lives of two police officers and a shopper were a young married couple who espoused extreme pro-gun and anti-government views on their Facebook pages and who had spent time at the ranch of Cliven Bundy, whose standoff with the federal government made him a cause celebre in the so-called “patriot” movement.

***

A few days later, Miller shared a photo that proclaimed, “The police have never attacked a pro gun rally.”

On her YouTube page, Amanda Miller liked videos called, “Shooting Cops,” “Citizens Can Shoot Police,” and “When Is It Okay To Shoot a Cop.” She posted a video of Jerad Miller interviewing people at the Bundy ranch. Her Facebook page contains photos of a woman posing with guns and she shared a picture of the “best coffee table ever”—it was a table with a drawer full of guns.

So let’s see what this “anti-police rhetoric” really looks like. Links, please. Don’t just sit on the edge of the bed and tease me. Let me have it.

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Reader Interactions

164Comments

  1. 1.

    RaflW

    December 22, 2014 at 10:13 am

    They don’t need quotes, they just know that libs hate cops.

    I actually saw a big outpouring of sympathy for the NY cops and condemnation of anti-cop violence on the FB feed of many of my #blacklivesmatter friends and organizations over the weekend.

    But never mind, these media jackals will make up a narrative that fits, and too many will believe it because it ‘fits,’ not because it exists.

  2. 2.

    drkrick

    December 22, 2014 at 10:15 am

    It’s like the anti-abortion and anti-gay Christianists. Anything other than 100% agreement is murderous repressive hostility.

  3. 3.

    dan

    December 22, 2014 at 10:16 am

    There are hours and hours showing hundreds of thousands of people peacefully protesting. But that isn’t useful, so we won’t see that.
    There is a total of 1 youtube videos (“What do we want? Dead cops!”) that I swear to FSM is fake. It’s basically exactly what Patrick Lynch would wish for, all tied up on a bow. It’s not news footage. It’s shot from 1,000 feet away, so you can’t see anyone ACTUALLY saying that. In this day of everyone having a camera in their hand, there is no second video confirming this happened. The chant is the most well coordinated chant that I ever heard.
    I know that the video pre-dates the police shooting, but it smells fishy.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    December 22, 2014 at 10:17 am

    It’s fascinating how, in the eyes of conservatives, a person can’t be called racist unless they’re video’d donning full Klan regalia and lighting up a cross, but that “anti-police rhetoric” just exists wafting on the ether.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    December 22, 2014 at 10:18 am

    It’s called ‘thoughtcrime.’ Another pertinent Newspeak word is ‘crimestop’:

    Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

  6. 6.

    rikyrah

    December 22, 2014 at 10:18 am

    keeping police accountable = anti-police rhetoric

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    December 22, 2014 at 10:21 am

    Kevin Drum yesterday:

    But I assume this means we can blame Bill O’Reilly for his 28 episodes of invective against “Tiller the Baby Killer” that eventually ended in the murder of Wichita abortion provider George Tiller by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder. We can blame conservative talk radio for fueling the anti-government hysteria that led Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City. We can blame the relentless xenophobia of Fox News for the bombing of an Islamic Center in Joplin or the massacre of Sikh worshippers by a white supremacist in Wisconsin. We can blame the NRA for the mass shootings in Newtown and Aurora. We can blame Republicans for stoking the anti-IRS paranoia that prompted Andrew Joseph Stack to crash a private plane into an IRS building in Austin, killing two people. We can blame the Christian Right for the anti-gay paranoia that led the Westboro Baptist Church to picket the funeral of Matthew Snyder, a US Marine killed in Iraq, with signs that carried their signature “God Hates Fags” slogan. We can blame Sean Hannity for his repeated support of Cliven Bundy’s “range war” against the BLM, which eventually motivated Jerad and Amanda Miller to kill five people in Las Vegas after participating in the Bundy standoff and declaring, “If they’re going to come bring violence to us, well, if that’s the language they want to speak, we’ll learn it.” And, of course, we can blame Rudy Giuliani and the entire conservative movement for their virtually unanimous indifference to the state-sanctioned police killings of black suspects over minor offenses in Ferguson and Staten Island, which apparently motivated the murder of the New York police officers on Saturday.

  8. 8.

    kindness

    December 22, 2014 at 10:24 am

    C’mon John, you know the drill. All those salivating over this are only playing their part pimping for those who will declare half the nation ‘Not American’ and then shoot us down like dogs in the street. That’s only partially snark. There are those who fully want that to happen. Making us not human means it won’t be murder when they do pull out this card and play it.

  9. 9.

    Emily68

    December 22, 2014 at 10:26 am

    So we can’t point out how badly some policemen behave when some policemen behave badly? A guy charged with jay-walking, a guy charged with selling cigarettes on the street both end up dead and we have to keep quiet about it? And God forbid we make any mention of Tamir Rice.

  10. 10.

    Davis X. Machina

    December 22, 2014 at 10:28 am

    @kindness:
    What are they longing for? An American Freikorps? Or the sons of the slave patrols?

    It’s so hard to choose…

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    December 22, 2014 at 10:29 am

    Refusing to address the protestors’ very real concerns is actually cowardice by the cops.

    Can they not deal with those officers in their midst who do not belong on the force? Because they and we would be safer without them.

    Turn it back on them. This is about bad police practices. It’s not about Bill DeBlasio hurting their fee fees, and it’s not in the least people slamming the whole profession. The problem is the bad cops and corrupted law enforcement systems.

  12. 12.

    Splitting Image

    December 22, 2014 at 10:29 am

    So let’s see what this “anti-police rhetoric” really looks like. Links, please. Don’t just sit on the edge of the bed and tease me. Let me have it.

    Well, there was the Wayne LaPierre letter that referred to law enforcement as “jackbooted government thugs”, which supposedly persuaded the elder Bush to tear up his NRA membership. That was quite awhile ago though.

  13. 13.

    chopper

    December 22, 2014 at 10:30 am

    Well, there was that time Obama pointed out how dumb it was that his friend was arrested on his own front porch for ‘contempt of cop’. Clearly that shows that the president wants all cops to die horribly.

  14. 14.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    December 22, 2014 at 10:31 am

    I like how that if there was such a thing as a massive wave of national “anti-police rhetoric” (which there sadly is not) that nobody considers for one second that it might be totally justified.

  15. 15.

    gbear

    December 22, 2014 at 10:31 am

    The top headline on MSN right now is ‘Police Officers On High Alert – Fear More Attacks’.

    Might as well shorten it to ‘Police Are Trigger-happy’.

    God bless save us, everyone.

  16. 16.

    sharl

    December 22, 2014 at 10:33 am

    @dan: A scumbag troll well known to long time commenters here – and whom I thought had been perma-banned – linked the video in a weekend post here, assuming it’s the same one you are referring to. Just so other can see for themselves: a local NBC affiliate in NYC apparently felt it sufficiently newsworthy to post it, and it’s on YouTube here.

    There are only several dozen marchers in that video, filmed from a considerable distance and with somewhat muffled audio. Hell, in NYC you could find several dozen people who would sign up for membership in the Ebola Fan Club. But yes, the reporting on this micro-rally is really, really thin. Who are these people? Who started the chant, assuming it was for real?

    The questions, they linger.

  17. 17.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 22, 2014 at 10:33 am

    @dmsilev: It wasn’t that long ago that some were arguing that cross-burning wasn’t racist. It was just first amendment free expression, donchano.

    :-/

    Just as Jesus wants you to be rich, and the Constitution is a Christian document, and gold is the only true money, and vaccines cause autism, and CO2 is not pollution, everyone who matters knows that it’s Obama’s and Holder’s and DeBlasio’s fault. Open your eyes, libtard!!111

    (sigh)

    Don’t hold your breath, JC.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    December 22, 2014 at 10:33 am

    Incidentally, Nancy LeTourneau (guest blogger at Washington Monthly) had a great rundown yesterday, on responses to the NYC murdered police from Flame Throwers (Giuliani and Pataki, the odious Patrick Lynch) and Fire Fighters (Obama, Holder, AG nominee Loretta Lynch).

    Flame Throwers and Fire Fighters.

  19. 19.

    Hal

    December 22, 2014 at 10:33 am

    I’m truly amazed at the rhetoric coming out of these police unions. Anti-police means anyone who criticizes the police in any manner. Patrick Lynch was mad that DiBlasio, an elected official, even met with organizers of the protests of Garner’s death.

    The NYPD is use to mayors like Rudy or Bloomberg who would defend the police from anything. Shoot an unarmed man 40+ times? No problem. Rudy will release his criminal record immediately and declare him “no angel.” Erroneously imprison several young men for a rape they didn’t commit? Don’t you dare settle out of court.

    I’m of the personal opinion that this is a massive overreach on the part of the police unions. Sure they’ll get massive support on Fox News and some of white America, but that was already the case. People are not going to shut up and move on, and in the end, the police are going to have to deal with some of the core issues the protesters are raising, whether they want to or not.

    Also:

    I know through dozens of community meetings during my time as NYC Police Commissioner that what the black community wants most is what we all want—a safe environment in which to live their lives.

    Yeah, thanks for clarifying that black people oddly want what white folks want. How strange.

  20. 20.

    Rex Everything

    December 22, 2014 at 10:35 am

    I wish we could just relieve the current NYPD of duty and start over, sending the psychos packing and screening replacements for sadistic/fascist tendencies. I know we couldn’t pull this off without bringing in the armed forces, but it would be worth it.

  21. 21.

    mai naem mobile

    December 22, 2014 at 10:37 am

    How come the elephant in the room gets ignored? Easy access to a plentiful supply of guns? Never mind I know the reason for the ignoring. I was listening to Harry Shearer and he talked about the London attack of.the whackjob on the off duty soldier Rigby who happened to be wearing his uniform. Anyhow, Shearer mentioned the Brit cop shot the attacker in the leg so unlike this American cop thing I keep on hearing about you can train cops to shoot to injure not kill.

  22. 22.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 10:40 am

    @RaflW:

    They don’t need quotes, they just know that libs hate cops.

    Very true. I am a far left liberal and I don’t dislike much less hate cops. Sure I might think they shouldn’t shot somebody that is unarmed. Choke a person to death. Put those darn tasers away. But I also realize the cops that do those things are a small, small percentage of the whole.

    Folks like Lynch are just so darn tone deaf. My issues with the way some police respond to this or that is I want LESS violence. Not more. So clearly harming a police officer is like the last thing I want. He can’t seem to grasp this basic concept. That is sad.

  23. 23.

    schrodinger's cat

    December 22, 2014 at 10:40 am

    @Elizabelle: You know who is even worse than people who are spewing openly inflammatory rhetoric? People like David Uriah Brooks who is using this display by police unions to bash teachers unions.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    December 22, 2014 at 10:41 am

    @mai naem mobile:

    I also heard that. There’s a female security guard where I work who’s an ex-cop. She said she’d been shot twice. Once was while walking up to a car she’d pulled over on the highway. The driver shot her in the side, she fell to the ground, and when the driver got out and started walking toward her with his gun, she pulled hers out and shot him once in the knee. Fell like a brick.

    Guess it’s not manly enough for most cops. Gotta get a kill notch on the belt.

  25. 25.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 22, 2014 at 10:41 am

    Eric Garner died resisting arrest.

    Not in the video I saw.

    @MattF:
    This has another name. It’s ‘rationalization’, and it’s proven to be the basic human thought process, not logic. Never be surprised when it pops up. It’s normal. It’s the base human state. It takes effort and discipline to avoid doing this.

    @kindness:
    I wish you were wrong, but you’re completely right. One Hell of a lot of whites fantasize about shooting blacks, and their political positions make that abundantly plain.

  26. 26.

    Eric Lindholm

    December 22, 2014 at 10:42 am

    Oh, OK, here’s Mayor de Blasio calling the NYPD a bunch of racists:

    “De Blasio, who is white, gave some details of the conversations he and his wife, Chirlane, who is black, have had with their 17-year-old son, who is a senior at Brooklyn Technical High School.

    “With Dante, very early on, we said, ‘Look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do. Don’t move suddenly. Don’t reach for your cellphone,’” said deBlasio. “Because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.”

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-details-talk-son-dealing-cops-article-1.2036870

  27. 27.

    schrodinger's cat

    December 22, 2014 at 10:45 am

    Reading what’s on the news makes me want to join hibernation kitteh, who btw made it to the first page of ICHC/lolcats this morning.

  28. 28.

    Lavocat

    December 22, 2014 at 10:45 am

    Don’t hold your breath, John. Evidence? Allegedly-persecuted white males in positions of power don’t need no steekin’ evidence!

  29. 29.

    beth

    December 22, 2014 at 10:46 am

    @sharl: I question that video also. The sound is muffled to the point of not being able to understand what they’re saying up to the point when they chant dead cops. Then it’s crystal clear. Strange. I thought at first that it was an NBC video but it looks like it was just a video posted on YouTube by a winger that the news stations picked up on without verifying its authenticity. I’ve seen lots of news coverage where the reporters were marching alongside the protestors so I find it curious that no one’s been able to independently verify this actually happened.

  30. 30.

    Mike in dc

    December 22, 2014 at 10:46 am

    It’s nice to see conservatives embrace the law of causality. However, if they are going to posit a causal relationship between “anti-police”(brutality ) protests and anti-police violence (by an incredibly disturbed individual ), it does beg the question as to what cause preceded the protests in question. A question that conservatives will neither ask nor answer.

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    December 22, 2014 at 10:47 am

    @sharl: I didn’t watch the video in question, but I don’t have any trouble believing a city of millions could barf up a handful of immature assholes who are unable to refrain from saying stupid things during highly charged, emotional events. Hell, we’ve got one or two wannabe bad-asses right here on this blog who have said similar things. But that’s nut-picking, and it has jack-all to do with President Obama and AG Holder, who are being falsely accused here.

  32. 32.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 10:49 am

    @Eric Lindholm: Ask your African American friends. They have all had that conversation. It was foreign to me, as a white dude, when I first heard of it. Never happened in my household. But from my friends it is a universal conversation. And that it is nearly universal, well I think that speaks volumes.

  33. 33.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    December 22, 2014 at 10:50 am

    The right wing is name checking Al Sharpton (who has publicly condemned the killings), Louis Farrakhan and Samuel L. Jackson so they really are making an attempt to divert attention from the real problem: Police officers DO NOT consider themselves civilians (when, in fact, they are) says all that needs to be said. Period. End of discussion.

  34. 34.

    burnspbesq

    December 22, 2014 at 10:51 am

    @Hal:

    I’m of the personal opinion that this is a massive overreach on the part of the police unions

    That may be an accurate assessment, but isn’t overreach the core function of all unions?

  35. 35.

    Lavocat

    December 22, 2014 at 10:51 am

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: We have a winner! Pretty much goes to show you how fascist this country already is.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    December 22, 2014 at 10:51 am

    @Eric Lindholm:

    Amadou Diallo was shot 19 times because he reached for his wallet. Just three months ago, a black man was shot in South Carolina because he went back into his car to get the driver’s license the cop had just asked him for.

    You call DeBlasio’s words racism — I call them realism.

  37. 37.

    JPL

    December 22, 2014 at 10:52 am

    @Tommy: My sons are not black and I taught them that the majority of police officers are good guys but not all. If stopped, you address them the same, yes sir.

  38. 38.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    December 22, 2014 at 10:55 am

    I wish we could just relieve the current NYPD of duty and start over, sending the psychos packing and screening replacements for sadistic/fascist tendencies. I know we couldn’t pull this off without bringing in the armed forces, but it would be worth it.

    @Rex Everything: Oddly enough, the armed forces screen for those tendencies. Police departments do not.

    Anyhow, Shearer mentioned the Brit cop shot the attacker in the leg so unlike this American cop thing I keep on hearing about you can train cops to shoot to injure not kill.

    @mai naem mobile: Sigh. I’m not a cop. But I am a lifelong shooter. And the reason that they teach cops to do this is not to drop a perp and notch the belt, but because it’s a lot harder to hit a moving limb than a non-moving torso, and if you miss, that bullet’s going to travel for a least a couple of miles before it is stopped by something. And what it’s likely going to be stopped by is a bystander.

  39. 39.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 10:55 am

    @JPL: And what I said wasn’t totally accurate. I was taught as you, yes sir/no sir when talking to the police. Do as they say and everything will work out.

  40. 40.

    samiam

    December 22, 2014 at 10:58 am

    Wr0ng way Cole continues to waste keystrokes to try defend his usual wr0ng way on this. Not unlike a mindless mob that always settles on the most childishly simplistic answers to every problem.

  41. 41.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    December 22, 2014 at 10:59 am

    Ask your African American friends. They have all had that conversation. It was foreign to me, as a white dude, when I first heard of it. Never happened in my household.

    @Tommy: It did in mine. And we’re all white. But my grandfather was a cop, you see. He knew it wasn’t just blacks who can get plugged by a cop who’s had a fight with his wife, was raised by shit parents, or hits the sauce too much after work.

    Racist? Shit, it applies to everyone and if you think you’re immune from getting shot for no reason because of your skin color, you best reconsider.

  42. 42.

    Eric Lindholm

    December 22, 2014 at 11:00 am

    And this:

    “Mayor Bill de Blasio has again spit in the face of city cops — using the word “allegedly’’ to describe the vicious mob attack on two NYPD lieutenants, outraged police reps said Sunday.
    Bending over backward to praise the city’s anti-cop protesters for their “peaceful’’ behavior — even as some chanted on Saturday night, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” — the mayor said the attack was “an incident . . . in which a small group of protesters allegedly assaulted some members of the NYPD.””

    http://nypost.com/2014/12/15/cops-rip-nincompoop-de-blasios-response-to-protester-attack/

    Remember when de Blasio condemned the protesters calling for “dead cops”? Yeah, neither do I.

  43. 43.

    schrodinger's cat

    December 22, 2014 at 11:00 am

    What is not getting much play here for obvious reasons is the easy availability of guns. Even absent racism, police are trigger happy because they don’t know when they will encounter a crank with a gun. There are countries, India and the UK come to mind and there may be others that I am unaware of, where most beat cops are unarmed except for a stick.

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    December 22, 2014 at 11:00 am

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    As I understand it, in Great Britain and other European countries, only specific cops are given guns, and they’re much more highly trained than our patrol cops. Essentially, only proven marksmen who are capable of accurately shooting a small target are given guns, so they are more likely to be successful at non-lethally shooting someone.

  45. 45.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 11:00 am

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: I am about the most non-violent person you can find. But if a person feels they need to pull a gun, or in this instance they have already been shot, I want that person to put at least one bullet center mass. Or as my father taught me, although I have shot one twice, if you pull a gun you better be prepared to use it.

  46. 46.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    December 22, 2014 at 11:01 am

    I don’t know if you can actually get through to someone who blames Eric Garner for his own murder.

  47. 47.

    Mandalay

    December 22, 2014 at 11:02 am

    @mai naem mobile:

    Shearer mentioned the Brit cop shot the attacker in the leg so unlike this American cop thing I keep on hearing about you can train cops to shoot to injure not kill.

    The story is even more remarkable than that. The attacker was shot in the leg and the stomach but still had the gun in his hand and was preparing to take aim at the police, and a cop shot him in the hand. I don’t know if that was brilliant shooting or a terrible miss, but the bottom line is that an attacker who had already hacked a man to death and was preparing to shoot at the police was shot three times and survived to have his day in court. Here is testimony from the police at the murder trial:

    After shooting Michael Adebolajo, E48 got out of the car and noticed Michael the second man, Adebowale, pointing a handgun.

    “I know become aware of the second male… pointing a firearm. He was clearly a greater threat.”

    Adebowale was shot in the stomach and leg by officer E42 and fell to the ground but attempted to aim the gun at them again, the court heard.

    E48 said: “He raised one of his arms up. I still have a distinct image in my mind of him holding a black revolver in his hand.”

    Adebowale was then shot in the hand.

    After securing the scene, E48 bandaged a wound in Adebowale’s leg which was pouring blood, the court heard.

    “Once the threat is neutralised we have duty of care to all persons. We will try to save their life, whoever they are.“

    The mentality of the British police seems fundamentally different to ours.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    December 22, 2014 at 11:03 am

    @Eric Lindholm:

    Remember when the news team verified that video that a member of the public — not one of their news crews — uploaded to their website?

    Oh, right, they never bothered to do that. No one knows who shot the video or who the people in it are, but the mayor of NYC is supposed to condemn it because Reasons.

  49. 49.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 11:04 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: I’ve gotten into watching some police shows on the BBC. You watch a procedural police drama on US TV and it seems they are pulling their guns every ten seconds. Almost never a gun on the BBC shows. I think it is kind of telling.

  50. 50.

    Xantar

    December 22, 2014 at 11:04 am

    @Mnemosyne:

    There’s also so little gun ownership in UK and Europe that your average Bobby just doesn’t need to have a gun. Even in the US the vast majority of cops go through their entire careers without discharging their weapon in the line of duty.

  51. 51.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    December 22, 2014 at 11:05 am

    Cops need to be interacted with the same way one would interact with an unfamiliar animal. You don’t know if that animal has rabies or is injured in some way. Use caution, no sudden moves. When the cop indicates friendliness, only then can you pet him.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    December 22, 2014 at 11:07 am

    @Tommy:
    Thing is Tommy they are not a small percentage of the whole. They could easily be routed out if that was the case. They make up a large portion of police and they get protected by both their numbers and by the organizations they work for. As well as the mass media on the whole, the local prosecutors offices – usually, and by a pretty good percentage of the fine upstanding citizens of this country who are just fine with killing unarmed people that just happen to not look like them.

  53. 53.

    Rex Everything

    December 22, 2014 at 11:07 am

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    Oddly enough, the armed forces screen for those tendencies. Police departments do not.

    Nope, with police departments those tendencies get you fast-tracked to a leadership position on the union.

  54. 54.

    JGabriel

    December 22, 2014 at 11:10 am

    John Cole @ Top:

    Since the right wing and members of the media have decided to blame everyone but the god damned shooter for the murder of two policemen in NYC, a phrase keeps popping up over and over and over again- “anti-police rhetoric.” … No one, however, provides any examples of this so-called anti-police rhetoric.

    By anti-police rhetoric, I assume the media means quotes like, “If we can’t win at the ballet box, we’ll resort to the bullet box” and “”If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies. … I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”

    Right?

    No?

  55. 55.

    Bill Arnold

    December 22, 2014 at 11:11 am

    @Eric Lindholm:
    You hightlighted this:

    greater chance it might be misinterpreted

    That in no way says that police officers are a bunch of racists. A subset of officers who have a habit of racial profiling would increase the chance of misinterpretation of e.g. a sudden movement.
    (Realistically, in any large PD there are probably a few racists in the mix.)

  56. 56.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 11:14 am

    @Ruckus: I hope and/or think you are wrong. I’ve seen recent stats where if you take out a handful of police you do away with most of the shotings and aggressive force complaints. It seems only a handful of people can really muck stuff up.

    Now where I think you are totally right is why are the good police officers not speaking out and getting these ugly people off the force? That IMHO is a question that needs to be addressed.

  57. 57.

    Mandalay

    December 22, 2014 at 11:17 am

    Hot off the press this morning:

    Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Christopher Manney won’t be charged because he shot Dontre Hamilton in self-defense. Manney is at least the third white police officer to not be charged in the past month after a confrontation that led to a black man’s death…

    …Manney shot 31-year-old Hamilton on April 30 after responding to a call for a welfare check on a man sleeping in a downtown park. Manney said Hamilton resisted when he tried to frisk him. The two exchanged punches before Hamilton got a hold of Manney’s baton and hit him on the neck with it, the former officer has said. Manney then opened fire, hitting Hamilton 14 times.

    How the heck do you end up shooting an unarmed man who was sleeping in the park fourteen times?

  58. 58.

    Berial

    December 22, 2014 at 11:19 am

    I think this guy gets it. “Memes” that everyone agrees on doesn’t get propagated, the ones that DIVIDE or ENRAGE everyone get spread over and over. We’re fucked by our own damn human impulses to talk about that which causes us RAGE instead of HOPE.

    The internet and TV ‘ratings’ demand that we talk this way instead of actual dialog because dialog is boring. Everyone is looking to get their hit of rage so those places that give it to us prosper while those that don’t go under.

  59. 59.

    Howard Beale IV

    December 22, 2014 at 11:19 am

    Today’s so-called conservatives are nothing more than modern day neo-Fascists, supporting billionaires on the Forbes 400 and using their religious enclaves like Cato, AEI, Heartland, Heritage, etc. to keep themselves in power-and if it takes using the government at all levels to keep their power, all the better.

    As posted on the fans of J. Michael Straczynski’s Facebook:

    Understand something: we don’t want you to succeed. We don’t want someone coming along to slice the pie into smaller pieces. We want to own all of it. If we really wanted more of you where we are, do you think we would have spent the last thirty years consolidating every major company into smaller and smaller groups owned by fewer and fewer people?

    We are the New Aristocracy because we were born into it. We got our money the old fashioned, Medieval way: our parents gave it to us. We were born into the wealth that we stole from you and your family over the last fifty years. You were not born into anything other than poverty and struggle. You will never be us. You will never have our advantages. And we like it that way.

    We like that you peer through the bars of your cage to all that we have. We like that you think you can have it yourself one day. Because that illusion keeps you on our side. But you will never have those things. We’ve made sure of that. Because what you’re looking at is ours, and we do not share.

    The world we have carefully constructed for you is like one of those boardwalk games of chance where if you knock down the big pins with a baseball, you win a huge prize. But the pins are weighted and positioned so that you will never, ever knock them down. Yet you’ll keep paying anyway, and keep throwing, until you exhaust yourself and your wallet. And we like it that way.

    We don’t want you to have opportunities, we don’t want you to have an education, we don’t want you to have a voice in what happens to you, we don’t want you healthy, we don’t want you to do anything but be frightened, helpless, docile consumers who will eat and watch and buy what we tell you to eat and watch and buy while we keep all the good stuff to ourselves.

    Because you’re not in our club.

    Because we are the New Aristocracy.

    And you are the New Peasants.

    And we very, very, very much like it that way.

  60. 60.

    Kryptik, A Man Without a Country

    December 22, 2014 at 11:24 am

    @Berial:

    Which pretty much explains why right-wing memes are given the utmost credence and respect and treated like the gospel truth, while anything from the left side (or hell, the reasonably sane side) has to be rhetorically beaten to death before people even recognize it, and that doesn’t even guarantee that people won’t run screaming the other fucking way into the strong-but-wrong arms of right wing nuttery.

  61. 61.

    Roger Moore

    December 22, 2014 at 11:24 am

    @Mandalay:
    The key is to have a weapon that unarmed perpetrators can easily steal to give you justification for shooting them. Look at how many of the police-involved shootings of unarmed suspects are justified by claims that the victim suspect was trying to steal the officer’s gun. IMO, any officer who allows an unarmed suspect to steal his weapon- or is so terrified of that happening that he needs to grab the weapon and shoot the suspect- is probably not competent to continue serving in the police.

  62. 62.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 11:25 am

    I am watching Democracy Now. Maybe about the most liberal TV news show you can find. If you watch the show they don’t have any ads. Where an ad would be they just play music for up to a minute. Often the music is related to a story they just covered. So if they are talking about the climate change conference in Peru, they play a band from Peru.

    They are just playing classical music with video of memorial service for the slain police officers in NYC.

    This is where I think us liberals are different. Nobody is on TV yelling. They are not happy with what Lynch or Rudy said, but measured in their response. It is nice to see.

  63. 63.

    Howard Beale IV

    December 22, 2014 at 11:26 am

    @Mandalay: I think it’s time for all black citizens – especially in states where open carry is permitted – to start packing heat. And if the NRA doesn’t back this – then you’ll know exactly who and what the NRA really stands for.

    It’s long past time for Oprah, Dr. Dre, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, et. al to be sitting on the sidelines.

  64. 64.

    Kryptik, A Man Without a Country

    December 22, 2014 at 11:26 am

    @Roger Moore:

    Unfortunately, it’s clear that our sense of what is ‘competent’ and the institution of police’s sense of what is ‘competent’ are rather far apart.

  65. 65.

    Mike in NC

    December 22, 2014 at 11:28 am

    I read somewhere that when the Chinese government executes a criminal, the family gets billed for the bullet. Looks like we’re heading in that direction.

    Remember, if cops bust down your door during a drug raid in the middle of the night, then end up shooting your wife and kids, the onus is on you to prove your innocence.

  66. 66.

    sharl

    December 22, 2014 at 11:28 am

    @beth: Wouldn’t even a small march like that need a permit from the city, especially in NYC? In light of the subsequent murders of the two police and all the resulting flying fur in the media, I would think an enterprising NYC reporter on the city beat would ask to see that permit, then track down the march organizer(s) to get some questions answered.

  67. 67.

    Rafer Janders

    December 22, 2014 at 11:31 am

    @sharl:

    Wouldn’t even a small march like that need a permit from the city, especially in NYC?

    As someone who lives in NYC, no. There’ve been dozens and dozens of such small, unsanctioned protests going on in the city the last few weeks, none of them permitted.

    That said, I still believe the audio on the video is a fake.

  68. 68.

    Patricia Kayden

    December 22, 2014 at 11:32 am

    @dmsilev: Very well said. Why are Blacks being asked to condemn police shootings when the same isn’t asked of Whites? Something has to be done about the spate of shootings of Black men. Period.

  69. 69.

    Howard Beale IV

    December 22, 2014 at 11:32 am

    @Mike in NC:

    Remember, if cops bust down your door during a drug raid in the middle of the night, then end up shooting your wife and kids, the onus is on you to prove your innocence.

    They normally shoot your dog first, saying it was attacking you.

    That’s one of the reasons we all need to have trained bobcats at our residences.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    December 22, 2014 at 11:32 am

    Also, I have to say that I am greatly disappointed in Bill Bratton. He did us a lot of good out here in Los Angeles by getting a culture change started in the LAPD. They still have a long way to go, but our anti-police protests have been mostly peaceful because there have been no overreactions by the police, and most of the arrests have been either vandalism or people who are getting arrested as part of the protest. A huge part of that is because, while Bratton was chief, he didn’t let cops get away with bad behavior like when they beat reporters up at an immigration rally and a lot of commanders were held responsible for letting things get out of hand.

    So it’s really sad to see Bratton immediately devolve back to Police Can Do No Wrong as soon as he got back to New York.

  71. 71.

    Kryptik, A Man Without a Country

    December 22, 2014 at 11:37 am

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Because whites in this country are the only ones that are given the honor of individuality by default. If a black or a brown person does something wrong, they’re never individuals. They’re an example. And even if a non-white person gets bestowed the honor of actually being an individual, it’s usually only so they can be used as a bludgeon against the greater group.

  72. 72.

    tam1MI

    December 22, 2014 at 11:37 am

    My advice to the activists trying to turn back police brutality is this: The day after the funerals of the police officers, start up the protests again as if nothing had happened. Don’t let the Fox crowd derail you.

  73. 73.

    D58826

    December 22, 2014 at 11:38 am

    The right has spent the past 48 hours assigning blame to all of their usual suspects. Something that I haven’t seen discussed however is how did this multiple-convicted felon get a gun? Since it is the NRA that opposes any and all measures that would make it more difficult for felons to get guns maybe we should point the bloody finger at the NRA

  74. 74.

    gene108

    December 22, 2014 at 11:39 am

    @Hal:

    Anti-police means anyone who criticizes the police in any manner.

    It actually means blackity-blackity-blacks standing up for themselves.

    The NRA and gun-nuts have had a hard-on for “anti-police rhetoric” for decades now, but those guys are white so it does not seem to matter to most cops.

    Also, too cracker redneck militia anti-cop heavily armed white folks are not likely to visit NYC, so Lynch et. al. could care two figs that these guys might do to law enforcement in upstate New York or rural Michigan or eastern PA.

    But blacks in New York City better know their place, with regards to what police can and cannot do to them.

    The uproar over this is straight up racist shit. Period.

  75. 75.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 11:40 am

    @Patricia Kayden: Well yeah. Nobody I can recall asked me as a white dude to disavow the Sandy Hook or Aurora movie theater shooters. They were just messed up people. No reflection on my skin color. Just like when a terrible African American does this or that doesn’t reflect on an entire race of people either.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    December 22, 2014 at 11:40 am

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Yeah, all unions lead back to teachers.

    Why is that, I wonder?

  77. 77.

    sharl

    December 22, 2014 at 11:40 am

    @Rafer Janders: Ah, thanks; too bad. And how conveeenient that the video was taken from so great a distance that you cannot make out individual faces in that crowd.

  78. 78.

    RaflW

    December 22, 2014 at 11:41 am

    @Tommy:

    My issues with the way some police respond to this or that is I want LESS violence. Not more. So clearly harming a police officer is like the last thing I want. He can’t seem to grasp this basic concept. That is sad.

    It is sad.

    Or, it is cynical political manipulation to “misunderstand” liberals. Or a combo platter.

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne

    December 22, 2014 at 11:41 am

    @gene108:

    But blacks in New York City better know their place, with regards to what police can and cannot do to them.

    Yep. Because even if a crazy guy drives 200 miles from Baltimore to murder two cops, it’s still the fault of protesters in New York, and they’re the ones who are going to pay for standing up for themselves.

  80. 80.

    sharl

    December 22, 2014 at 11:44 am

    @Mnemosyne: Yesterday I linked to an initiative run by attorney Connie Rice on behalf of LAPD that concentrates on one neighborhood (the name of which I forget).

    Are you familiar with that program, and if so, is there any chance of it being expanded city-wide in LA?

  81. 81.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    December 22, 2014 at 11:45 am

    Also, I have to say that I am greatly disappointed in Bill Bratton. He did us a lot of good out here in Los Angeles by getting a culture change started in the LAPD. They still have a long way to go, but our anti-police protests have been mostly peaceful because there have been no overreactions by the police, and most of the arrests have been either vandalism or people who are getting arrested as part of the protest. A huge part of that is because, while Bratton was chief, he didn’t let cops get away with bad behavior like when they beat reporters up at an immigration rally and a lot of commanders were held responsible for letting things get out of hand.

    @Mnemosyne: Yeah. What the fuck happened? He came out here and cleaned the motherfucking Darryl Gates House of Horrors, did a GREAT job, and then goes back to NY and…this? Really?

    I do not understand. At all.

  82. 82.

    Seanly

    December 22, 2014 at 11:51 am

    Peaceful protests asking legitimate questions: anti-police rhetoric
    Right wing crackers who actually are anti-police: too bad about the cops they did kill, isolated instance, move along.

    Here’s whats going to happen:
    Nothing.

    Just as the Salem Witch Trials only ended once the rich & powerful got accused, nothing will change until rich white males are being executed by police. Then it’ll be all sorts of solemn reflections on how those meant to protect us have instead become such an occupying force. Expect lots of hoocodanode & laments about how did we let this occur.
    My money is on the event being the frat boy son of a congressman being gunned down by sheriff’s deputies at a party in about 5 years. Then we’ll have change.

  83. 83.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 22, 2014 at 11:51 am

    @Mandalay:

    How the heck do you end up shooting an unarmed man who was sleeping in the park fourteen times?

    Good question, but I think that’s too late in the process.

    Why should a cop be frisking someone sleeping in a park in the first place? Just about anyone would take offense being frisked by police. Someone sleeping in a park is normally in a bad state to begin with. They’re on-guard at the risk of being robbed or beaten. Why would a cop (apparently) default to an action that is guaranteed to put someone in that position even more on edge?

    It’s the (apparent) lack of empathy and sympathy that the police too-often show toward those they are supposed to “serve and protect” that starts these interactions spinning out of control. That has to be fixed, along with the “respect my authority!” mindset.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    JGabriel

    December 22, 2014 at 11:54 am

    @Mike in dc:

    However, if they are going to posit a causal relationship between “anti-police”(brutality ) protests and anti-police violence (by an incredibly disturbed individual ), it does beg the question as to what cause preceded the protests in question. A question that conservatives will neither ask nor answer.

    Of course they’ll answer it. Conservatives will tell you that protesters are riled up by liberal activists, who should be shot.

    Conservative rhetoric is all about projection. They’ll accuse other people of violent rhetoric without evidence in the first half of a sentence, then threaten them with violence in the second. And they won’t even need to speak out of opposite sides of their mouths to do it.

  85. 85.

    D58826

    December 22, 2014 at 11:54 am

    FSM this fails the smacked ass test big time. The DA in Milwaukee has refused to file charges in the Dontre Hamilton shooting. One of the reasons he gave is that none of the witness could give the correct number of gun shots fired by the cop.

    Now I don’t know about the the rest of the folks on this thread, but I just spend my entire day waiting to count the number of shots fired by the local police (yes SNARK)

  86. 86.

    Howard Beale IV

    December 22, 2014 at 11:56 am

    @Seanly:

    Just as the Salem Witch Trials only ended once the rich & powerful got accused, nothing will change until rich white males are being executed by police.

    And like that will ever happen:

    Your local police belong to us now. We have militarized them into soldiers who treat you like terrorists. If you speak against us, we will ensure that you are tear gassed and beaten and handcuffed and caged into “free speech zones” designed to make you forget that the whole country was supposed to be a free speech zone. But now you have free speech only when and where we say you can have it. Meanwhile, we can say and do pretty much anything we want, to you or anyone else, and get away with it.

    If you happen to figure out our game and talk about it, we will accuse you of Class Warfare, in order to distract anyone from realizing that yes, there was a class war, that it was against you, that the war is over, and we won.

  87. 87.

    Tommy

    December 22, 2014 at 12:00 pm

    @RaflW:

    Or, it is cynical political manipulation to “misunderstand” liberals.

    Yes I would say that is the case. I often talk about my parents here. They are not liberals. I am pretty sure I am the only liberal they know. I have always felt since I am their kid, they have to at least listen to me because they love me. When I explain what I think they are stunned, I am frankly stunned, how often we are on the same page. Or close to the same page.

    A perfect example would be war. They don’t like war. Dad taught at the Army War College. 30+ years in the DoD. He thought invading Iraq was a terrible idea (keep in mind my father taught war strategy for a living). I am like you are with me on this, but yet you vote for people that want to bomb and invade nations. UGH!!!

    I will just say I got mom to vote for Obama. First Democratic vote in her life. I got that going for me.

  88. 88.

    Lurking Canadian

    December 22, 2014 at 12:08 pm

    @Rex Everything: This is probably snark, but honestly, I begin to think that’s the only solution here. Does deBlasio, does *anybody* have the power to just fire the entire damned force and ask the National Guard or the New York State Troopers or somebody to take over policing in New York City? They have made it pretty clear that they do not believe themselves to be under deBlasio’s command, or subject to his authority. If Reagan could fire all the air traffic controllers at once, could the same thing be done to a police force?

  89. 89.

    JGabriel

    December 22, 2014 at 12:08 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    How the heck do you end up shooting an unarmed man who was sleeping in the park fourteen times?

    Obviously they thought he was reaching for his gun when he snored violently and suddenly, without warning, turned over. If the guy didn’t want to get shot, he shouldn’t have turned over in his sleep.

  90. 90.

    Mandalay

    December 22, 2014 at 12:19 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    any officer who allows an unarmed suspect to steal his weapon- or is so terrified of that happening that he needs to grab the weapon and shoot the suspect- is probably not competent to continue serving in the police

    True, but on an even more fundamental level, any cop who shoots an unarmed person fourteen times has just completely lost it, and was probably never competent to serve in the police in the first place.

    It’s worth noting that the cop who murdered Tamir Rice had been forced to resign from his previous job as a cop because of emotional instability. This information was in his personnel file, yet Cleveland Police Department didn’t even look at it:

    Ptl. Loehmann’s inability to perform basic functions as instructed, and his inability to emotionally function because of a personal situation at home with an on and off again girlfriend leads one to believe that he would not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisions, during or resulting from any other stressful situation

    And this:

    Another memo from a sergeant who worked with Loehmann at a shooting range described the officer as “distracted,” “not fit to return” after an emotional outburst and someone who was “not following simple instructions.”

    How many red flags do you need? The folks who gave Tamir’s murderer a job should be facing prosecution.

  91. 91.

    Mandalay

    December 22, 2014 at 12:23 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    Why should a cop be frisking someone sleeping in a park in the first place?

    Ironically, the article states that the cop was performing a “welfare check”.

    If you made this stuff up nobody would find it credible.

  92. 92.

    Roger Moore

    December 22, 2014 at 12:27 pm

    @Mnemosyne:
    You can’t really separate Bratton’s success with LAPD from the overall political environment. He was brought in to clean up a department that was still suffering from the after effects of the Rodney King riots and the Rampart scandal, and he was working in a political environment where he was going to be judged on his success in doing so. He may be an opportunist, but he’s a competent one, so he proceeded to clean up the department in exactly the way the political leaders wanted. In contrast, New York doesn’t seem to have the same kind of unanimity in its desire to clean up the department. de Blasio’s attempts to end stop-and-frisk have been fought tooth and nail. In that environment, Bratton doesn’t have the same kind of clear instructions, so he’s going to go with what keeps the rank-and-file happy.

  93. 93.

    Gravenstone

    December 22, 2014 at 12:29 pm

    @Eric Lindholm: Oh lookie, the good little Aryan jagoff has slithered forth from its hole again.

  94. 94.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    December 22, 2014 at 12:33 pm

    @Eric Lindholm: So where’s the anti-cop rhetoric?

  95. 95.

    D58826

    December 22, 2014 at 12:39 pm

    @Mandalay: It gets better. He is appealing his dismissal from the force and filing a disability claim that since he shot the man and Ferguson he can’t think clearly and has PTSD. Just the kind of guy you want on the street with a badge and a gun

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    December 22, 2014 at 12:44 pm

    @Mandalay:

    True, but on an even more fundamental level, any cop who shoots an unarmed person fourteen times has just completely lost it, and was probably never competent to serve in the police in the first place.

    Sadly, I don’t think the tendency to shoot until the gun goes “click” represents particular incompetence on the part of the cop. As far as I can tell, that’s the way police are being taught to shoot these days; they’re apparently supposed to rapid fire until the target is obviously down rather than to take carefully aimed shots and observe their effect. It’s a terrible way of doing things, but it reflects bad training rather than an individual failing.

  97. 97.

    Tree With Water

    December 22, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    Welcome to Spiro Agnew’s world, Cole. He nearly parlayed his version of the same schtick into the Oval Office. He conducted the musical score that Richard Nixon composed, creating a world in which dirty stinking hippies, women libbers, and effete intellectuals were pilloried as the domestic enemies of America’s silent majority.

  98. 98.

    MomSense

    December 22, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    @Tommy:

    Your parents sound like nice folks. Aside from your mom’s vote for Obama in 2008 or 2012, what would the Republican party have to do to finally lose them? This is what I don’t understand about nice people who vote Republican. The Republicans have proven that they are inferior at managing our economy, response to natural disasters, regulation of financial markets, prosecution of wars they start, basic functioning of government including repairing bridges, etc. I mean WTF do Republicans have to do to lose people who even care about competency?

  99. 99.

    Ruckus

    December 22, 2014 at 1:08 pm

    @Tommy:
    Maybe it depends on your definition of bad police. I know cops who spend decades in service and tell me it isn’t just a few nor is it just those on patrol but the higher ups as well. One told me that to advance you have to toe that thick blue line, absolutely. And he was in a very large state organization with a pretty good reputation. And that organization was not like this 20-30 yrs ago. Look at the NYPD and how they are sniveling about anti-police rhetoric, which if you read or hear what was actually said, it agrees with the police, that this was a horrible thing. I’m not saying it’s a majority, although my belief is that it is, but it is a much larger percentage than you imagine. And yet I had a very nice conversation with a deputy sheriff on Sat, totally unrelated to police activities. But he was on duty, listening to his radio and wearing a 9mm pistol, a tazer and I was very conscious that I was talking to an armed man I don’t know. Not just to a police officer. An armed man that I don’t know what he will do. You trust the cops in your area, that’s pretty nice. I’m an old white dude pretty much in the minority in my urban area and I can’t afford to trust them, even if it isn’t me they are shooting at.

  100. 100.

    Marc

    December 22, 2014 at 1:13 pm

    @Eric Lindholm: Wow, you found two whole statements! One of them completely accurate, and one of them more of a failure to respond to your preferred conspiracy theory with sufficiently heated language.

    That is some pretty damning stuff, there.

  101. 101.

    Bystander

    December 22, 2014 at 1:14 pm

    Alex Douglass is recovering at home. He’s the Pennsylvania Trooper who was wounded by Eric Frein. Bryon Dickson was the officer Frein murdered.

    I wonder if Frein’s defense will be Di Blasio made him do it.

  102. 102.

    Ruckus

    December 22, 2014 at 1:17 pm

    @D58826:
    Yeah that’s bullshit. Most cops can’t tell you the exact number of bullets fired. Even from their own gun. There really are more important things to worry about when in a shooting situation, no matter which side of the barrel you are on. And yes, if properly taught one is supposed to learn to count how many rounds you fire so you won’t be standing there going click, click, click instead of boom, boom, boom.

  103. 103.

    Ruckus

    December 22, 2014 at 1:23 pm

    @Roger Moore:
    That’s the way the military is taught. A field of fire. Of course you can run out of ammo after spraying too many in the general direction of someone and that’s a problem if you have a bunch of people trying to shoot you, as in a war. But in most police shootings it’s one or two people, not an entire crowd. That’s why the armament such as machine guns is so insane for the police, it’s like they are expecting all of us to charge them at once with assault weapons and body armor.

  104. 104.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    December 22, 2014 at 1:29 pm

    @sharl:

    I’m not sure — there are a lot of various LAPD programs and there doesn’t seem to be a transcript of the episode so I can see what Rice’s particular program is called.

    The problem with LA is that people seem to think there must be some kind of one-size-fits-all solution, but the city covers everything from heavily populated urban areas to essentially rural areas, so a solution that works in one part of the city may not work in another.

  105. 105.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 22, 2014 at 1:30 pm

    Fascist shitstains behaving like fascist shitstains.

    Nothing new under the sun.

  106. 106.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 22, 2014 at 1:31 pm

    @Ruckus: If they’re properly accounting for ammunition, they should be able to tell us how many rounds were expended.

    They’re probably not bothering with that though. Gets in the way of their jollies.

  107. 107.

    AndoChronic

    December 22, 2014 at 1:34 pm

    The media is playing a very dangerous game here. There are far more pissed-off and psycho people with guns in America then there are police officers. Keep throwing gas on the fire, what could go wrong?

  108. 108.

    FormerSwingVoter

    December 22, 2014 at 1:35 pm

    If there’s anything that was said by a public figure that led to these shootings, it was the statements from police unions demanding that we thank them for killing unarmed civilians.

    The police in this country can either choose to stop acting as a terrorist organization, or they can choose to watch this sort of shit happen to their friends and coworkers. Those are the options.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    December 22, 2014 at 1:36 pm

    @Marc: Well, he found one statement that is no way “anti-police”, and some blowhard who said that de Blasio didn’t get mad enough about “some” people “chanting” in a classic bit of FoxNews style “journalism”

    I had missed that Fat Timmy Dolan, the Milwaukee Money Launderer, took the the pages of The Daily News, naturally, to say the police were being picked on.

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    December 22, 2014 at 1:44 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    I was more referring to witness reports. Sure after the fact counting the empties and how many rounds left, but that of course is different than counting rounds as they are fired. Eyewitnesses are notoriously bad. That’s probably why the Ferguson prosecutor threw all those witnesses at the grand jury. If he had allowed only Wilson’s testimony and the witnesses actually at the scene there still would have been differences. There always are. But the differences would have been much less than just plain lying.

  111. 111.

    Mnemosyne

    December 22, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    @Marc:

    Remember, kids, DeBlasio’s statements led directly to a crazy guy driving 200 miles from Baltimore to NYC to shoot some cops, but Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” map had absolutely nothing to do with Gabby Giffords’ shooting. Nope. Not a thing.

    (And judging by this morning’s news reports, “crazy guy” seems to fit this guy as well as it did Jared Loughner. Mentally ill, with a history of violence, and his own family was afraid of his rages. But let’s give him a gun and see what happens!)

  112. 112.

    Xenos

    December 22, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    @AndoChronic: what media? How is it dangerous?

  113. 113.

    Eric Lindholm

    December 22, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    As always, it’s great fun coming down to the gutter of the Balloon Juice comment section where your chance of NOT being called a racist is approximately 0.0%.

    You asked “put up or shut up” on anti-police statements, and I delivered. I didn’t attack anybody on here but quoted the mayor and provided the requested links. When the mayor says he’s worried that his mixed-race son isn’t “safe from [the police]” – gosh darn it – some people may view that as anti-police rhetoric.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/04/new-york-mayor-bill-de-blasio-pens-an-open-letter-after-the-eric-garner-decision-there-is-much-more-to-be-done/

    You may now resume calling me a dirtbag and an Aryan and such, thereby testifying to your own moral superiority.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    December 22, 2014 at 1:53 pm

    @Eric Lindholm:

    When the mayor says he’s worried that his mixed-race son isn’t “safe from [the police]” – gosh darn it – some people may view that as anti-police rhetoric.

    So the people who were telling us that Michael Brown and Eric Garner ended up dead because they didn’t obey police orders are using “anti-police rhetoric”?

    You’ve got to make up your mind, son — are people supposed to act in a particular way when they encounter the police lest they be strangled to death on the spot, or is it A-OK for them to reach for their wallet/cell phone/etc and it’s the cop’s fault if they get shot?

    You can’t have it both ways. Either deBlasio is right to advise his son to be cautious when he encounters the police, or the deaths of Brown and Garner were totally unjustified. Pick one.

  115. 115.

    sm*t cl*de

    December 22, 2014 at 1:57 pm

    an atmosphere of permissiveness

    I blame the free love.

    45 years in law enforcement

    Ah, I see. Old man shouting at clouds.

  116. 116.

    Bill

    December 22, 2014 at 2:04 pm

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; the NYC shooting is a natural outcome of the “second amendment remedies” argument I always hear from gun nuts. Over and over they’ve said the second amendment exists to help citizens fight back against an oppressive government. This weekend we saw what that looks like. A man who felt oppressed by his government (if his social media statements are to be believed) fought back by shooting two representatives of the government. This is what “second amendment remedies” look like in the real world. Angry people shooting cops.

    Go ahead NRA, issue a statement supporting this guy’s right to bear arms.

  117. 117.

    AndoChronic

    December 22, 2014 at 2:08 pm

    @Xenos: Really? The media riles up both sides, depending on the source. What happens? Dead cops, more dead black kids and, probably sooner than later, dead protesters. What’s the point and where is the appropriate progress that should be happening in this country? I think it was Zander who noted that none of these people, Mike Brown to the two officers, deserved to die. That is totally correct and what are we doing about it other than digging in deeper on our respective side, aided by the media?

  118. 118.

    Howard Beale IV

    December 22, 2014 at 2:09 pm

    Here’s another thing: If these cops are so pissed about not getting the support from their highers up, nothing is stopping them from turning in their badges and firearms and finding another line of work.

  119. 119.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 22, 2014 at 2:10 pm

    @Eric Lindholm:

    here’s Mayor de Blasio calling the NYPD a bunch of racists:

    A friend of mine was on the force about 10 years ago. Was. He’s not wrong.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    December 22, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    @AndoChronic:

    There have been at least two incidents of people driving cars into groups of protesters: one in Minneapolis and one in Riverside (CA). Are people supposed to stop peacefully protesting because it’s inspiring other people to run them over?

  121. 121.

    Bmore

    December 22, 2014 at 2:19 pm

    So this happened.

    http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/bcp-fox45-misquotes-tyrone-wests-sister-saying-kill-a-cop-20141222,0,6685861.story

  122. 122.

    SRW1

    December 22, 2014 at 2:20 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Actually, Great Britain is more of an exception in Europe rather than the other way round. Police officers in most European countries are equipped with guns. The difference appears to be more in the training and the circumstances under which police officers are authorized to use their guns.

    I have linked to this report out of Finland in a thread a day or two ago, but that thread was probably already dead by then, so it might be worthwhile to do so again: The entire police force of that country fired a grand total of six shots while on duty during 2013. Compare and contrast that number to Darrel Wilson alone or the off duty cop in the incidence Mandalay quoted in comment 57.

  123. 123.

    jl

    December 22, 2014 at 2:23 pm

    Heard a former Boston police official this morning say that Sharpton needs to condemn murder and assassination of cops, and violent demonstrations. Of course, Sharpton has done that repeatedly.

    So, I am not a big fan of Sharpton, but a certain class of Whites seem to be deaf.

    And we see from a certain troll above what weak sauce and sound advice counts as racist if you are not White. I guess a huge majority of Hispanic and Black parents who give their kids ‘the talk’ are all the real racists too, right?

    Thing that strikes me is that police officials started accusing protesters of engaging in inflammatory anti-police rhetoric right out of the gate, long before the two cops were murdered in cold blood. The police work for the people, right?

    Suspend the cops who turned their backs on the NYC mayor.

    Glad that the wife of one of the murdered cops has invited diBlasio to the funeral and said he is welcome. She seems to have better sense and perspective than many city police officials.

    Edit: rates of white and black drug use about the same, but blacks three times as likely to be arrested. Rate of police killings of black males is something like 20 times that of white males. You a parent of a black or Hispanci, or in some areas poor SE Asian, or mixed race kid, you would not give him or her ‘the talk’?. And if you do, you are the real racist? Really?

  124. 124.

    JenJen

    December 22, 2014 at 2:24 pm

    Throw Joe Scarborough (he was in Congress, you know, and if you don’t, he’ll remind you) on the pile, as he says the shooter was “fueled by an avalanche of hate speech.” He purports to know the exact motivations of a dead gangbanger cop killer.

    Miss Cleo wants her schtick back.

  125. 125.

    jnfr

    December 22, 2014 at 2:28 pm

    This is from Gawker, John.

    Slimy Baltimore FOX Affiliate Caught Faking “Kill a Cop” Protest Chant

  126. 126.

    Roger Moore

    December 22, 2014 at 2:29 pm

    @jl:

    So, I am not a big fan of Sharpton, but a certain class of Whites seem to be deaf.

    It’s not actual deafness, just a refusal to listen to what people are actually saying. They’re so sure they know what Sharpton, et. al. are saying that they see no reason to bother listening to them, and they certainly know that their target audience is never going to listen to anyone like Sharpton that they’re never going to be called on it.

  127. 127.

    Joel

    December 22, 2014 at 2:31 pm

    “anti-police rhetoric” :: criticism

    same as it always was.

  128. 128.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    December 22, 2014 at 2:33 pm

    Aside from your mom’s vote for Obama in 2008 or 2012, what would the Republican party have to do to finally lose them? This is what I don’t understand about nice people who vote Republican. The Republicans have proven that they are inferior at managing our economy, response to natural disasters, regulation of financial markets, prosecution of wars they start, basic functioning of government including repairing bridges, etc. I mean WTF do Republicans have to do to lose people who even care about competency?

    @MomSense: Support the right of black people to live as an equal part of this society.

    It’s the dividing line of every Republican I know. Most of whom tend to be nice people.

  129. 129.

    Mandalay

    December 22, 2014 at 2:35 pm

    @Howard Beale IV:

    Here’s another thing: If these cops are so pissed about not getting the support from their highers up, nothing is stopping them from turning in their badges and firearms and finding another line of work.

    Not to defend the conduct of the police, but wingnuts invoke exactly your line of reasoning when workers protest about employers cutting their benefits: “If you don’t like it then leave and get a better job somewhere else”. Same shit when people were protesting Dubya’s invasion of Iraq: “If you don’t like it then go live in another country”. Same shit here sometimes when a poster criticizes an OP: “Why are you even posting here?”.

    It’s all pretty weak sauce.

  130. 130.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    December 22, 2014 at 2:38 pm

    Slimy Baltimore FOX Affiliate Caught Faking “Kill a Cop” Protest Chant

    @jnfr: Of course they did. With the exception of one mentally disabled poster on this thread, everyone knew that was a Fox-manufactured bullshit meme.

  131. 131.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 22, 2014 at 2:42 pm

    @SRW1:

    The difference appears to be more in the training and the circumstances under which police officers are authorized to use their guns.

    Yup.

    I’ve mentioned before that I was shocked flying into the airport in Athens in the early ’90s and seeing a policeman walking around through the airport with a machine gun.

    Yet police shootings are rare enough that the 6th anniversary of one can still cause riots.

    At least 5,000 demonstrators marched in Athens on Saturday. Some attacked shops and hurled petrol bombs at riot police.

    Police officers used tear gas and a water cannon to disperse protesters.

    The demonstrators had been marking the anniversary of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos’ death. He was shot by an officer who has since been jailed.

    Mr Grigoropoulos’ killing on 6 December 2008 sparked violent riots across Greece, with cars being set alight and shops looted in a number of cities.

    Clashes have also broken out on previous anniversaries of his death.

    Ultimately, the police have to be seen as a legitimate force by the public. If not, for whatever reasons (legitimate or not), then we’re all in danger.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  132. 132.

    AndoChronic

    December 22, 2014 at 2:44 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): There was also another in D.C. I’m well aware of them and am totally sympathetic to those who get hurt while practices their rights, and no people should not stop protesting because of it. What I am saying is that I do not know if the “professional entertainers” in the media, which seems like the majority in the MSM, understand that this circumstance has a very high potential to get 100X worse for both sides, and for what? Ad revenue? Despite stupid things people say, like the NYC police Chief blaming the protesters or people wanting to “fuck shit up” because they feel they have been given no other option, the media needs to start using a clear head. It’s my opinion that they have the power to tamp the flames rather than continue to roil them even if our leaders refuse to do so. Clearly I am putting the onus on the media at this point because I’ve lost complete hope in our leadership, but maybe that too is a false economy.

  133. 133.

    Mandalay

    December 22, 2014 at 2:46 pm

    @jnfr:

    Slimy Baltimore FOX Affiliate Caught Faking “Kill a Cop” Protest Chant

    This is a golden opportunity for the FCC to demonstrate yet again how spineless and worthless they are: no wardrobe malfunction – no foul.

  134. 134.

    Calouste

    December 22, 2014 at 2:55 pm

    @SRW1: European police also gets trained in unarmed combat, judo, karate, wrestling, etc. Most American cops just look to unfit to do that kind of stuff, or maybe they could try sumo wrestling.

  135. 135.

    Roger Moore

    December 22, 2014 at 2:55 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    Ultimately, the police have to be seen as a legitimate force by the public. If not, for whatever reasons (legitimate or not), then we’re all in danger.

    Sure, but what happens when they’re seen as legitimate by one part of the population but not another? Because that’s the situation we’re faced with; the police are widely seen as legitimate and pursuing logical policies by whites but as illegitimate and enforcing racism by minorities.

  136. 136.

    Calouste

    December 22, 2014 at 3:02 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: It’s not uncommon to see policemen with machine guns at the major airports in Europe. In most countries there security of the airports is the responsibility of gendarmerie-style forces, basically para-military police.

  137. 137.

    Marc

    December 22, 2014 at 3:04 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    The demonstrators had been marking the anniversary of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos’ death. He was shot by an officer who has since been jailed.

    Those foreigners sure do things funny.

  138. 138.

    JenJen

    December 22, 2014 at 3:05 pm

    @Seanly: I’m pretty much where you are. I was once naive enough to believe Newtown was the gun control tipping point and that the nation would not tolerate the mass murder of schoolchildren.

    Silly me. I know better now.

  139. 139.

    ruemara

    December 22, 2014 at 3:10 pm

    @Eric Lindholm: How is he not wrong about his mixed race, sky high ‘fro, looking deep dark and dangerously black male, son, not being in danger from the police. When the constant story is even the most banal interactions turn into a violent death at the hands of the cop who was in danger from the dangerous, mutant black male demon with galactic level anger powers, how is the Mayor wrong?

  140. 140.

    AndoChronic

    December 22, 2014 at 3:13 pm

    @Roger Moore: How about this? Who is actually legitimate anymore?

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

  141. 141.

    lucslawyer

    December 22, 2014 at 3:16 pm

    I’ll bet that quite a few, if not most, of those proclaiming their support of the police are the same ones who are first to complain when the police unions try to bargain for higher pay for their members.

  142. 142.

    grandpa john

    December 22, 2014 at 3:23 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
    mThis was my first reaction also, If this was supposedly a welfare concern check , why was he being frisked? It appears that welfare was a rather minor consideration, and 14 Shots, what the fuck In other words he kept shooting until the gun was empty.which shows to me panic and lack of emotional control . hardly attributes of recommendation as a competent police officer.

  143. 143.

    Mr. Twister

    December 22, 2014 at 3:25 pm

    @Bill: This is correct.

  144. 144.

    lucslawyer

    December 22, 2014 at 3:32 pm

    Well, the cops are really in a tough position. Since the end of slavery, the police departments in this country have been charged with one basic, though unspoken (for the most part), task – keep the problems of the blacks (and Hispanics and all of the other non-whites) in their own areas, be it the ghetto, barrio, or whatever they were called, and out of our white enclaves. Do whatever you have to do, just make sure we whites aren’t bothered. But when we are, bring the hammer down. The police have become accustomed to this particular style of operation, but now that media is so pervasive, they can no longer act out of view as they historically have. The problem for the cops is obvious – how do they carry out their mandate to keep whites safe without the tactics to which they became accustomed?

  145. 145.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    December 22, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    @AndoChronic:

    Ah, okay, I was a little confused by your initial comment. Still, I think the right-wing media (Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc) are more culpable than the few people on the left talking about this. I know that Al Sharpton is the go-to guy to blame on the liberal side, but I honestly doubt that he had much influence on this guy.

  146. 146.

    jl

    December 22, 2014 at 4:04 pm

    No offense to this miserable lefty blog, but what kind of sad sack information outlet of any kind links here?
    I could understand for pet pix, gardening and cooking… (edit: and health policy)

    Anyway, whatever it is, I like the implied equivalence of thousands of civilian protesters all around the country, the vast majority of whom are law abiding, make reasonable requests and the vast majority of whom do NOT call for murdering police, with the reactionary calls for revolutionary violence which dominate the recent reading of many of the wingnuts who have shot up places.

    Edit: personally, I think mental illness plays a big role in many, maybe most (though not all) of these shooters. I don’t think it is a good idea to try to politicize ever aspect of these tragedies and crimes, from whatever part of society or the supposed political leanings. Ii think some of the supposed reactionary shooters were so messed up and confused, it is difficult to decipher what they believed. May be the same for the guy who murdered/assassinated the two cops in NYC. For one things, waiting to hear why he decided to shoot the woman and display the bloodstains of that crime on the internet.

  147. 147.

    AndoChronic

    December 22, 2014 at 4:24 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): The RW media alone can surely rile up both sides equally, and they do. While not MSM, popular Twitter and fb feeds that have readerships in the 1Ks or 10Ks have a good impact too. Some of the posts on some, from both sides again, are straight-up terroristic and should not be condoned by people, yet many do.

  148. 148.

    Diana

    December 22, 2014 at 4:50 pm

    well, I live in NYC, so I will rise to the bait.
    I saw one of the marches — the first; after that I stayed home. The marchers were unpermitted, clearly planning to block traffic, and yelling, “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “no justice, no peace,” so I told the friend I was with, “I don’t think the people yelling no justice no peace understand that war is the health of the state” and thereafter stayed home.

    what I can say is that while the marchers were fewer than they claimed, appeared to be more occupied with stopping traffic than educating anyone, and seemed mostly to be used to justify police overtime (I never heard so many police helicopters in my life) we all thought it was completely harmless. In fact, us liberls here in downtown NYC thought the protests might even be useful, in that the AG’s office was weighing whether they could go in for asking for a special prosecutor for police misconduct, even though I never heard of any such specific demands by any of the protestors.

    The shooting of the cops has changed all that.

    Now the NYPD have announced that they going to double up on any police calls, which cuts any response in half, and I deeply fear means that many non-threatening police calls may go unanswered. I volunteer for housing court, and right now landlords in gentrifying neighborhoods do not fear locking out rent-stabilized tenants. The only way to stop them is to go to court to get a court order allowing the tenant back in, and the tenant has the right to call the police to watch their locksmith change the locks back. What’s going to happen if the police will not come to keep the peace after a tenant gets a court order requiring him or her to get a locksmith back in? The locksmith won’t come, that’s what — I had the situation, the locksmith ran away. We found another locksmith and did not call him until the police came to watch. If they don’t come, then the tenant is on the street, and the court order is a worthless piece of paper.

    That bozo who shot the cops could not have served the right wing better than if he had planned to do so. So much so, that when I first heard about his instagrams, I wondering if they were fake. Unfortunately we are not so lucky.

  149. 149.

    different-church-lady

    December 22, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    No one, however, provides any examples of this so-called anti-police rhetoric.

    Well, to be fair, hardly anyone knows who you are, Cole.

  150. 150.

    different-church-lady

    December 22, 2014 at 6:33 pm

    @beth:

    I thought at first that it was an NBC video but it looks like it was just a video posted on YouTube by a winger that the news stations picked up on without verifying its authenticity.

    Verifying authenticity? What a quaint 20th century notion!

    Other than that, we know how this works: a small handful of assholes say something outrageous and stupid, and then another handful of assholes try to convince us that the first assholes represent a huge number of people and eventually Wolf Blitzer is on your TV screen telling us it’s a war of all against all.

  151. 151.

    Tree With Water

    December 22, 2014 at 6:41 pm

    @Diana: Forgive my two cents. It seems to me the NYPD is declaring war. Maybe its time to think in terms of making a concerted effort to retire most, and re-train another force. I mean in a manner the current police would deem fair and equitable, with public safety uppermost in mind (seemingly for a change, for my vantage point a continent away). As John Lennon once noted, New York is America’s ancient Rome. I believe that, which is why it’s so sad to see what’s happening happen. I wish the best to all, except that rabid little piece of shit, NYPD union honcho Lynch. He’s a disgrace to the city and its police force.

  152. 152.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    December 22, 2014 at 6:49 pm

    @Diana:

    Note that it was an out-of-towner — a guy from Baltimore — who did it. Not someone from NYC. Be careful not to follow the lead of the cops and blame the local NYC protesters for the actions of a guy who didn’t even live in the same state.

  153. 153.

    Mike Furlan

    December 22, 2014 at 7:11 pm

    After unfriending another guy I’ve known for 40 years after he came out as a white supremicist kook over this latest shooting I’ve decided to uninstall Facebook on my phone and take a break from it. I don’t want to know which of my rich white well educated friends is going to come out as an uptown klansman next.

  154. 154.

    Tree With Water

    December 22, 2014 at 7:42 pm

    “..which of my rich white well educated friends is going to come out as an uptown klansman next”.

    You can rest assured they will not be ‘educated’ people, not in any worthwhile sense of the word, and never were.

  155. 155.

    Plantsmantx

    December 22, 2014 at 8:30 pm

    @dan:
    Aside from that, there are so few people in the demonstration, you can probably freeze the video and count them

  156. 156.

    Diana

    December 22, 2014 at 8:39 pm

    @Tree With Water: doesn’t matter, just as it doesn’t matter that the shooter was a drifter from Baltimore. And what’s most frustrating is that it won’t affect the violent crime so much as all the other civilian matters in which the police are useful.

  157. 157.

    Plantsmantx

    December 22, 2014 at 9:05 pm

    @Eric Lindholm:

    “With Dante, very early on, we said, ‘Look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do. Don’t move suddenly. Don’t reach for your cellphone,’” said deBlasio. “Because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.”

    Yes, but:

    State senator Eric Adams, who retired from the NYPD after rising to the rank of captain during a 22-year career, said commissioner Ray Kelly described his views on stop and frisk during a July 2010 meeting in the office of then-governor David Patterson.

    Adams had traveled to Albany for a meeting on 10 July 2010 with the governor to give his support for a bill that would prohibit the NYPD from maintaining a database that would include the personal information of individuals stopped by the police but released without a charge or summons. In discussing the bill, which ultimately passed, Adams said he raised the issue of police stops disproportionately targeting young African American and Latino men.

    “[Kelly] stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police,” Adams testified.

    By the way, here is what Kelly weighed in with yesterday:

    ”I think when the mayor made statements about that he had to train his son to be — his son who is biracial — to be careful when he’s dealing with the police, I think that set off this latest firestorm,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

  158. 158.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    December 22, 2014 at 9:11 pm

    I watched Carlson, et al., doing their thing at the link. I can’t for the life of me understand how somebody could go on television, lie like that, and then live with themselves. How do they sleep at night?

  159. 159.

    Tree With Water

    December 22, 2014 at 9:34 pm

    @Diana: Doesn’t matter? I don’t think I understand your point. In fact, I know I don’t.

    Charles Pierce addressed the NYPD legal insurrection in particular, and institutional dysfunction in general, in the politics blog at Esquire.com. this afternoon. He gets it. Better yet, he can explain it. If it comes to a showdown, the cops have to go (that’s me talking, not Pierce). A structured buyout/retirement plan would afford everyone a way out of the hash the cops have made of their responsibilities. The leadership of the NYPD’s union is serving its membership as well as Ritchie Phillips served the umpires union not long ago. Baseball was better off for its purge, and so will NYC– if push comes to shove.

  160. 160.

    AxelFoley

    December 22, 2014 at 9:42 pm

    @Eric Lindholm:

    New troll here, I see.

  161. 161.

    g

    December 22, 2014 at 9:52 pm

    @Eric Lindholm: Oh for fucks sake. If politicians had to rebut every vile thing anonymous unimportant people said, whether in the streets or online, we’d never have a moment of quiet.

    Do Republicans denounce every lunatic Teabagger rally? How many Republicans denounce Ted Nugent?

  162. 162.

    g

    December 22, 2014 at 9:57 pm

    @Rafer Janders: Many cities’ permitting processes have an exception that allows for spontaneous protests based on current events, for First Amendment reasons, or else have an expedited process that allows for permits to be issued at the last minute.

  163. 163.

    g

    December 22, 2014 at 10:03 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    When the mayor says he’s worried that his mixed-race son isn’t “safe from [the police]” – gosh darn it – some people may view that as anti-police rhetoric.

    Some people who are biased might. Most sane, well-adjusted people would recognize it as a father’s very real concern for the safety of his son.

    On edit – the quote is Eric Lindholms. The reply was to Mnemosyne’s comment.

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