Birds of a feather stick together.
It's got me Befudled why Whitey is policing black areas.
Let me guess. A superiority complex? Backs cannot police themselves? (wrong!) Why do black politicians use Whitey to do their dirty work? (Muggins) Smells fishy.
An artificial social construct that there are no races? The empirical evidence is that race is an issue. And why? Experiment has shown that humans notice first sex then race. Why? Probably due to past cannibalism. Is it a mate, or is it food/predator? (sorry-link lost in the dim past). Decisions must be snap. No time for philosophical cogitation.
Recall that the population of Ferguson is about 21,000 people. "According to the court’s own figures, as of December 2014, over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants ...."
Almost EVERYONE in Ferguson has an arrest warrant! This means that any contact with law enforcement will result in their being arrested.
Another horror story from the DOJ report about a poor woman with one parking ticket:
We spoke... with an African-American woman who has a still-pending case stemming from 2007, when, on a single occasion, she parked her car illegally. She received two citations and a $151 fine, plus fees. The woman, who experienced financial difficulties and periods of homelessness over several years, was charged with seven Failure to Appear offenses for missing court dates or fine payments on her parking tickets between 2007 and 2010. For each Failure to Appear, the court issued an arrest warrant and imposed new fines and fees. From 2007 to 2014, the woman was arrested twice, spent six days in jail, and paid $550 to the court for the events stemming from this single instance of illegal parking. Court records show that she twice attempted to make partial payments of $25 and $50, but the court returned those payments, refusing to accept anything less than payment in full. One of those payments was later accepted, but only after the court’s letter rejecting payment by money order was returned as undeliverable. This woman is now making regular payments on the fine. As of December 2014, over seven years later, despite initially owing a $151 fine and having already paid $550, she still owed $541.
All over a single parking ticket given to a very poor woman.
Glenn Greenwald had a statement on this that really hits the nail on the head.
When the law is applied only to the powerless, it ceases to be a safeguard for justice and becomes the primary tool for oppression.
To me, this type of application of "the law" looks like a major tool of repression. No wonder the rage.
Jason, I could not agree more. Each side has to look in the mirror.
When they do, and if it's being done honestly, we'll see two sides looking back at each other, victim and perpetrator.
You cannot really have one without the other. It is a dance.
Each side seems to have unconsciously slipped into their roles and the events of late have only served as a (possible) wake up call, an invitation to look in the mirror and engage in some tough, but necessary, self-reflection.
Each side can make the first move, but neither knows how or, being honest in some cases, does not even want to. There is a form of power and comfort in either/both roles. Victims have a form of power, and so do perpetrators.
Not every place, of course, exists in this condition, but I'd be willing to wager that the poorer the district, the better the chance you'd find victim-perpetrator dynamics.
The beauty of a situation is that the more intense it is, the greater the clues to follow to find the path to real transformation. The situations in Ferguson, Baltimore and a dozen other places not yet named in the public consciousness, are certainly intense and they offer the chance of real change brought about by honest introspection.
Or not.
But if they don't then the lucky participants get to experience the same things all over again until they are ready to engage and work through their respective inner issues. Such is life.
Has this web page been hacked? I've tried a dozen times to read this column, but it keeps popping back to the top of the web page. Can't get past the first dozen or so paragraphs without running into this.
I'm impressed by the State's Attorney for her clarity and fact based presentation. Seems like a step in the right direction for our justice system. Although this is said with the caveat that she probably should recuse herself for numerous reasons.
The perhaps bigger question here is will justice be equally meted out for those who burned Baltimore; assaulted shop keepers; looted and otherwise clearly broke the law.
If the State's Attorney has the courage to dispense justice equally it would be a great day in the USA.
Oog…Please clarify…are you referring to the bankers, corporate interests and Congress that conspired to loot the American Dream leaving Baltimore, et al., depleted wastelands?
I'll let the Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos make the case (always worth repeating here because it is 100% spot on):
We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don't have jobs and are losing economic, civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.
My greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle-class and working-class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American's civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
BALTIMORE – A Baltimore police sergeant informed his Eastern District superiors Friday afternoon that officers “are now being challenged on the street.” The sergeant sent the letter following the announcement that State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby was indicting six officers on felony charges associated with the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old who suffered a fatal spinal injury while in Baltimore police custody on April 12.
The letter, provided to BuzzFeed News from an anonymous source, warned of heightening tensions between police and residents on a day when many locals have taken to the streets to celebrate.
Sgt. Lennardo Bailey told the “Eastern Command Staff” [sic’d]:
“I have been to five calls today and three of those five calls for service; I have been challenged to a fight. Some of them I blew off but one of them almost got ugly. I don’t want anybody to say that I did not tell them what is going on. This is no intel this is really what’s going on the street. This is my formal notification. It is about to get ugly.”
BuzzFeed News has also learned that the Baltimore Police Department’s chief of patrol sent out a text message to all commanders ordering officers to take added caution: “2 OFFICERS PER CAR.. DOUBLE UP ALL PATROL CARS,” the order read.
(And to get a feel for where people are, you'll find it revealing to read the comments at the end of the article.)
I don't know, but it seems there's a significant portion of the community (every community) who think all cops are bad all the time. This thereby justifies picking one at random to kill, injure or taunt. Well isn't that what cops are being accused of regarding minorities (they're all bad all the time thereby it's open season on them)?
I've been in riot/civil disturbance training Wed - today (we're prepping for two future major events), but tomorrow I'm back on the street. Saturday nights are, as you might imagine, very busy and violent. I haven't settled on a personal strategy, but I'm leaning toward playing it safe. I'm wondering what my officers are feeling and thinking, but I'm pretty certain I can predict it.
Genetic adventures in Iceland and elsewhere indicate a more nuanced approach to inbreeding.
After all would a pig/ape hybrid not be an abomination? That would be an example of extreme outbreeding, would it not?
The Encyclopedia Brittanica offered the hypothesis that inbreeding caused the normally hidden recessive and lethal genes to be expressed and so long as the unfit were exterminated ruthlessly at birth, inbreeding was of great benefit to the population. It eliminated lethal recessive genes.
These conditions were common in our malnourished and immobile past.
A better understanding of human genetics can be found here.
Yes…Good Point… they should be prosecuted as well, for crimes that have a more far-reaching effect. It's a sad state of affairs.
Were I was coming from was that this "ballsy" State's Attorney has the attention of the Nation right now. If she makes courageous, ethical, unbiased decisions it could make a huge difference in how people regard and respect our judicial and legal system. This is kinda like a real time civics class for many folks.
I question the plausibility of multiple cervical fractures with dislocationsand acrushed larynx being produced during a normal drive through city traffic without any collisions. Was this really "murder through failure to apply a seatbelt" to a handcuffed person? This seems very implausible to me – to the point of being ludicrous.
Mr Gray did not have minor injuries such as an isolated non-displaced cervical fracture which is rare, but possible, via a simple ground level fall on an unprotected head. He had major injurieswhich required major forces.
Blunt motor vehicle trauma injuries typically occur in constellations-- injuries that cluster together. With this severity of C-Spine injuries, we would expect major crush fractures to the skull, facial bones, teeth and jaw, and major brain injury which would be visible on the post-mortem x-ray and CT. Major chest and intra-abdominal injuries with multiple fractures of the upper and lower extremities are usually associated. When the autopsy report is released, look for the presence of multiple rib fractures, intra-abdominal bleeding from ruptured liver and spleen requiring emergency abdominal surgery and multiple fractures of both upper and lower extremities. These would be expected in a motor vehicle accident of such great severity that multiple cervical fractures / dislocations were produced.
Also, accidents producing this magnitude of passenger injury also heavily damage the vehicle itself in common patterns. Was the van crushed, the frame bent, the top caved in (due to a roll-over)? Was the van still driveable afterwards? Could the doors be open. Did the airbags deploy?
If these autopsy and vehicular damages commonly associated with severity of cervical fracture / dislocations are not present, then I would be much more suspicious of a martial arts move designed to dislocate and fracture the cervical spine by bending and twisting it directly.
From a judo page:
I am afraid that the "murder by failure to apply a seatbelt" story rates in my mind right up there with other classic tales:
The husband who explained that the knife stab wounds in his wife's heart were due to her slipping and falling on the knife. Twice.
The person who commits suicide by hanging themselves with their hands tied behind their back.
I don't know about other places, but I can tell you with complete certainty that in my city police brutality has gone down precipitously since it's peak in about the mid-70's. We're still overcoming attitudes and police culture from those "good old days," but things are still much improved. Technology does make what's left more visible.
In my city police aren't pressured to produce arrests and tickets that generate revenue for the City. That's a battle the union won a long time ago. I marvel how much pressure cops are under for that kind of thing in Ferguson, NYC, Baltimore, etc.
Sometimes I feel like a black male trying to convince a white society that not all black males are criminals and drug addicts. And usually I feel like many black males do when trying to do that: like I'll never succeed no matter how many positive examples I can cite. I got to work tonight and two of my rookies were basking in their 15 minutes of fame. They were on a block where they were getting help for a man who had locked his keys in his car. Once they were done, but before they could slip away, all the kids on the block mobbed them for attention. Playing with neighborhood kids is something they do regularly as time permits. In this case, one of the officers is letting some of the kids play in their patrol car and his partner is throwing a football with others. This isn't remarkable to me (though it might be to some). What is remarkable to me is that all the residents of that block are black, and one of them went to the trouble of recording two white Philly police officers playing with black kids and then posted on Twitter with the caption, "For those who think all cops are bad." The 30 second recording has had 1.2 million views. You'll never see that person at a rally in support of the police, but s/he is very appreciative along with hundreds of thousands of others.
I posted this Baltimore Police recruiting video on PP.com before. It looks and feels different now in light of the events in Baltimore in the last two weeks. I wouldn't want to be in the BPD's recruiting unit now.
My new favorite line in that video is the last line, "How'd you like it if we quit?" Decent people go to work, put on the uniform, and go out to give serving the public their best effort, in spite of everything that's going on.
A limitation on the ability to film wrong-doing on your smart phone is that the evidence is right there in the middle of the wrong-doing and the wrong doer knows you have just filmed him. (This Includes both police wrong doing and muggings/burglaries, etc). This app, "Mobile Justice" uploads the video record to the ACLU website so that even if the phone is captured and smashed, the video is preserved. Sounds to me like a very effective non-violent way to communicate the expectation of proper behavior. It simply gathers a record of what is happening. The app is called "Mobile Justice." I'm going to gather more info on this.
Two opposite perspectives on the raw data of life on the streets of Philadelphia.
Starting in late summer 2014, a protest movement known as Black Lives Matter convulsed the country. Triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, the movement claimed that blacks are still oppressed by widespread racism, especially within law enforcement. The police subject black communities to a gratuitous regime of stops and arrests, resulting in the frequent use of lethal force against black men, according to the activists and their media and academic allies. Indeed, America’s police are the greatest threat facing young black men today, the protesters charged. New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio announced in December that he worries “every night” about the “dangers” his biracial son may face from “officers who are paid to protect him.” Less than three weeks later, a thug from Brooklyn, inspired by the nationwide anti-cop agitation, assassinated two New York police officers.
The protest movement’s indictment of law enforcement took place without any notice of the actual facts regarding policing and crime. One could easily have concluded from the agitation that black and white crime rates are identical. Why the police focus on certain neighborhoods and what the conditions are on the ground were questions left unasked.
The year 2014 also saw the publication of a book that addressed precisely the questions that the Black Lives Matter movement ignored. Alice Goffman, daughter of the influential sociologist Erving Goffman, lived in an inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood from 2002 to 2008, integrating herself into the lives of a group of young crack dealers. Her resulting book, On the Run, offers a detailed and startling ethnography of a world usually kept far from public awareness and discourse. It has been widely acclaimed; a film or TV adaptation may be on the way. But On the Run is an equally startling—if unintentional—portrait of the liberal elite mind-set. Goffman draws a devastating picture of cultural breakdown within the black underclass, but she is incapable of acknowledging the truth in front of her eyes, instead deeming her subjects the helpless pawns of a criminal-justice system run amok.
Tom,
I would like to commend you on writing a very thoughtful, informative, and very articulate reply/comment. My brother is a policeman. His circumstances are similar to yours in nearly every aspect, down to the nitty gritty of when to leave the force. … as the streets are becoming appreciably wilder.
Please know that the VAST majority of people I speak with, respect policemen and know you try to do your best every single day, serving the public through adversity and under the worst of circumstances. While some citizens focus only on actions incurred by a tiny percentage of "bad" policemen (and paint the rest of the police force with the same brush), MOST of us understand that your job is not a cake walk, that you try your darndest to enforce and uphold the law as peaceably as circumstances allow, while at the same time making it your business to protect those who need protecting.
You have my utmost respect, for you have one of the hardest jobs there is. … and, yet, every day you manage to ready yourself for another day filled with adversity, and another day of a bullet-proof vest.
My hat's off to you, Officer Tom!
And to the rest of the detractors commenting here: For your own safety do not go to the Yahoo news comments section and wale on policemen. They aren't as "civilized" there as they are here. They will eat you alive.
I have no problems with policemen. Neither do my friends. Neither do my extended family. We are all grateful for their presence. If policemen could go on a nationwide strike for, say, 3 weeks, ... I think their detractors would gain a new outlook, a wizened perspective, ... shall we call it a lightbulb moment?
