A Philadelphia Fire Department paramedic is under fire for posting this picture with the caption: “Our real enemy.” The caption also said “Need 2 stop pointing guns at each other & at the ones that’s legally killing innocents.” Marcell Salters has also published highly antagonistic language toward police officers. He has since apologized but some have called for his punishment or termination. In the meantime, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is under attack after Ismaaiyl Brinsley effectively executed two police officers over his anger with the recent decisions by grand juries in Missouri and New York. police have been protesting what they view as de Blasio’s unfair portrayals of police after the decision, including turning their backs on the mayor when he came to give a press conference on the murders.
Salters
Marcell Salters has been denounced for his attack on officers who often protect paramedics at accident and crime scenes. In now deleted comments, Salters said that he “never did or will like police” and “[b]ecause of what i do i have to work with them but dont have to like them . . . There are numerous crooked & corrupted cops (mostly white) & mostly they harass, beat, or kill innocents (mostly blks).”
He has since apologized and posted the following: “I would like to deeply apologize to anyone i have offended. That post was out of anger of what is going on around the world (mike brown, eric garner & etc) & past experiences that i have had with the police. . . My intentions was not to slander or hurt anyone or my brothers in blue. Again i am sorry.”
I have previously written about concerns that public employees are increasingly being disciplined for actions in their private lives or views or associations outside of work. We have previously seen teachers (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here), here, here, students (here and here) and other public employees (here and here and here) fired for their private speech or conduct, including school employees fired for posing in magazines (here), appearing on television shows in bikinis (here), or having a career in the adult entertainment industry (here).
One different wrinkle is that Joseph Schulle, head of the firefighters’ union Local 22, said that Salters could be disciplined because he allegedly made a comment about the post while on duty. That creates a different context than many of the prior cases above where comments or postings were made entirely during off-hours or outside of public jobs. It is not clear what the comment was that is being isolated as a possible basis for discipline however.
I tend to view these cases from a first amendment perspective. I find Salters’ comments to be highly offensive and wrong. However, I do believe that he has a right to say them just as others have a right to denounced them. While such comments obviously make for tense working conditions, some of us believe that free speech requires bright-line rules of protection even for hateful speech like that of Marcell Salters.
The uproar of police in Philadelphia has joined an equal if not greater outcry of officers in New York.
Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, the killer of officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, had a history of violence and mental instability. He shot the officers as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn on Saturday before he ran to a subway station and shot himself. Only hours earlier, he shot and wounded his 29-year-old ex-girlfriend, Shaneka Thompson, at her home in Baltimore, Maryland. After shooting Thompson, Brinsley threatened on Instagram to kill police officers while referencing the New York and Missouri grand jury decisions: “They Take 1 of Ours… Let’s Take 2 of Theirs #ShootThePolice #RIPEricGarner #RIPMike Brown. This May Be My Final Post.”
Before the murders, Brinsley reportedly struck up a conversation with two men. According to the police, he asked the men “for their gang affiliation; he asked them to follow him on Instagram; and then he says: ‘Watch what I’m going to do.'” That is when he walked past the patrol car, circled it and then crossed the street to come up behind the car. That is when he fired four bullets through the front passenger window, killing the officers.
Police directed their anger in part at de Blasio who has been viewed as supporting the protests against police after the decision of the New York grand jury. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association even went as far as having officers to sign a petition calling for Mr de Blasio to be barred from attending their funerals if they were killed in the line of duty. There is also a growing racial rift over de Blasio’s policies. A poll last week found seventy percent of black people approved of the mayor’s performance while only 32 percent of white people supported him. Yet, he had received good polling numbers over his handling of protests following the decisions in New York and Missouri.
DBQ your response is a perfect example of what we keep seeing. Facts are wrong and the response “Whatever”. Because I guess that is better then acknowledging negative sentiments about this president may be based on a lack of facts.
President Obama has never threatened to shut down the government, The repubs did it once and threatened to do it again within the last 2 weeks
WhatEVER (shrug). Who cares. Shut it down. We might just then be able to realize how much of the government we do NOT actually need.
That is probably what they are afraid of. We don’t need all of it. Most of it is waste and duplication.
Thanks for that, Lee.
The NY Police Union’s Vile War with Mayor De Blasio
To criticize the mayor for telling his black son what every other father of a black youth must say is divisive and fails to see what’s wrong in America.
I covered New York politics for 15 years, and I saw some awfully tense moments between the police and Democratic politicians. But there has never been anything remotely like the war the cops are waging right now against Mayor Bill de Blasio for the thought crime of saying something that was completely unremarkable and so obviously true that in other contexts we don’t even bat an eye when someone says it. And for that, the mayor has blood on his hands, as Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association head Pat Lynch said Saturday evening after the hideous assassinations of two NYPD officers?
Let’s rewind the tape here. On Dec. 3, in the wake of the Staten Island grand jury’s refusal to indict in the case of the police homicide of Eric Garner, de Blasio gave a press conference at a Staten Island church. He spoke of the need to heal and so on, the usual politician’s rhetoric, and then he uttered these words:
This is profoundly personal for me. I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he said that Dante reminded him of what he looked like as a teenager. And he said, I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens. I said to him I did. Because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years, about the dangers he may face. A good young man, a law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong, and yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face—we’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.
Dante de Blasio, as you surely know, is a mixed-race young man of 16 who looks black and sports a large, ’70s-style afro. Does anyone seriously think that his father should not have told him what he did? Come on. We all know the odds (actually, we don’t, more on which later). We hear every prominent black man in America who has a son and who decides to talk about this publicly—football players and actors and others—say exactly the same thing. We’ve heard it hundreds of times. Are these men lying? Are they paranoid weirdos? Of course they aren’t. They are fathers, describing to the rest of us what I thought was a widely acknowledged reality.
Lynch is actively trying to make the people who follow him not only despise de Blasio but despise and oppose any acknowledgement that police can be faulted in any way.
Is it somehow jarring to some people that the father who spoke these words is not black but white? I bet that has something to do with it. Do we accept black fathers saying this, because we grant them the presumption of speaking from experience, which we don’t grant the white de Blasio? This may be how human brains, or some of them, are wired. But it makes no sense. All you have to do is look at the kid and you’ll see what Hizzoner means.
Or is it that it’s fine for de Blasio to talk however he wishes to his son, but that because he is the mayor and the leader of the police he should not have said so publicly, especially at a tense moment? All right, this is slightly more understandable. But only slightly. Certainly, this response would be understandable and even justified if de Blasio had in fact attacked the police. But he did no such thing. He said he’s trained his son to “take special care” in dealing with the police—who, he added, “are there to protect him.” Where Pat Lynch and Rudy Giuliani heard a slur, millions of his constituents—black, brown, and even a few white like him—heard him representing, in terms that were, from their point of view, sadly their reality.
Not long ago, ProPublica, the website that does hard-nosed, empirical investigative journalism, undertook an extensive study of federally collected crime data on 12,000 police homicides over 22 years. The site found that young black males are far more likely to be shot by cops than young white males. Four times more likely, or eight times, or 10 times? Try 21 times more likely—31 per million as opposed to 1.5 per million for whites. This isn’t some liberal conspiracy. These are the numbers as reported to the government by police departments themselves.
And now we can’t even acknowledge this plain truth? Astonishingly, it appears we can’t agree on it. Right around the time de Blasio spoke, Marist was in the field with a poll asking people whether they think police treat whites and blacks differently. Here are some answers. In each case, the “yes, differently” number comes first.
Overall: 47-44
Whites: 39-51
Blacks: 82-14
Latinos: 53-38
Democrats: 64-29
Independents: 44-48
Republicans: 26-64
So two decades’ worth of statistics tell us that black men are killed by police at 21 times the rate white men are, and yet half the public has persuaded itself that police treat blacks and whites no differently. And it’s controversial for a mayor with a black 16-year-old son to say something so obvious—indeed, what every parent of a black son has to say.
And that’s dividing the city? And Pat Lynch, by speaking of officers’ blood on the steps of City Hall and urging his cops to sign an online petition that de Blasio not attend their funerals should they be killed in the line of duty, is doing… what? His behavior is divisive to the point of savagery. He is actively trying to make the people who follow him not only despise de Blasio but despise and oppose any acknowledgement that police can be faulted in any way, that black fear of police has any basis in reality. If Al Sharpton did the same with regard to police departments tout suite, which he does not anymore—he denounced the murder of the two cops immediately—he’d be drummed out of society.
Still, de Blasio should find ways to rise above all this. That’s part of the responsibility that comes with being mayor. But he should not back down from what he said. We always insist, after all, that we don’t want our politicians to lie.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/21/the-ny-police-union-s-vile-war-with-mayor-de-blasio.html
Aridog:
Heck no, I’d shut them off with stiffer penalties than ordinary folks. Who do you think runs that city water department here? How many of those who couldn’t pay suddenly could pay when they had to do so? Have you calculated that? That may be solved now that the water operation will operated by a regional authority. That said, just tell me what you think the source of poverty is in a city like Detroit?
—————————
Ari, that’s what you would do, however that isn’t what the people in charge did. The poor got their water shut off while the superfluous, the golf course and stadium were not pursued. My point against the system. How does one squeeze blood from a rock? The essence of poverty is inability to handle much of a financial burden. Threatening to shut water off is not the solution, nor is to actually do it, most had their water shut off for being unable to pay, not for wanting to cheat the system.
Ari says:
And apparently you are now unwilling to deal with the reality none-the-less. You seem focused on the result of poor practices in the past, not on improvements made. You assert that because you are black, if you are black, you have cause to fear police, even if you are doing nothing wrong, even if those police are black. Maybe 35 years ago. Now, that is just a self-fulfilling prophecy in my opinion.
——————–
How am I not dealing with the reality?
I say most cops are good, many cops are bad, but it is less individual cops and more the system that causes good cops to continue the centuries long policies that demeaned and oppressed blacks and for bad cops to indulge their ill feelings.
How is that not dealing with reality?
And how is something an improvement when blacks are still being killed disproportionately by cops?
When the institution of stop and frisk is the continuation of many policies of old against black people?
When the judicial system is merely the tool by which more and more blacks are herded into a correctional system that will insure that there is a great many black men on the margin of society?
Why would just decide to make it my self-fulfilling prophecy to be uncomfortable around cops? When I have friends who are cops? When I am a law-abiding citizen? Could it be that because of past experiences I have reasons to be wary?
Look, I do not excuse many of the ills of the black community by giving them a pass, but to frame everything as matter of will and not taking in consideration both history and current issues is to be mighty unfair.
Ari says:
I am watching us fall down the same well we climbed out of …repeating that same old tropes. When I say “we” I mean all of us.
_ I agree with you there.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/23/giulianis-claim-that-obama-launched-anti-police-propaganda/
Given 4 pinocchios by Washington Post fact check
…So we checked what Obama said on the deaths of Brown and Garner, with a focus on his statements from August, immediately after Brown’s death. This would have been the beginning of Giuliani’s calculation of four months.
It turns out that none of Obama’s statements speak any ill of police officers or condone violence among those reacting to the deaths.
During a speech in Massachusetts on Thursday, President Obama addressed the continued protests and clashes in Ferguson, Mo., following the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. (The Associated Press)
In Obama’s initial statement three days after the shooting, he urged the public against violence. Violence and unrest nonetheless erupted in Ferguson. Protesters took to the streets, lighting structures on fire and looting stores. Police officers responded with machine guns and other military-style equipment.
Obama gave an update two days later, speaking directly to the violence in Ferguson. He said he expressed concern about the violence to Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D). “There is never an excuse for violence against police, or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. There’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests, or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights,” Obama said in his statement.
Four days later, Obama spoke again about Ferguson. He announced Holder’s plan to travel to Ferguson to meet with FBI agents, Justice Department personnel conducting the federal criminal investigation into the shooting, and community leaders “whose support is so critical to bringing about peace and calm in Ferguson.” He added: “Giving into anger by looting or carrying guns and even attacking the police only serves to raise tensions and stir chaos. It undermines rather than advancing justice.”
One statement from this briefing seems to directly contradict claims that Obama immediately took the side of the protesters, thereby launching “anti-police rhetoric”: “I have to be very careful about not prejudging these events before investigations are completed because, although these are issues of local jurisdiction, the DOJ works for me, and when they’re conducting an investigation, I’ve got to make sure that I don’t look like I’m putting my thumb on the scales one way or the other.”
Holder quickly became the face of the administration responding to Ferguson. He repeatedly talked about reducing tensions between law enforcement and the community it serves. He and Obama have spoken on the mistrust toward law enforcement in minority communities, and their personal experiences as men of African American descent. But neither has criticized police officers of systemic racism, or called on the public to be outraged at police officers.
Obama offered one of his most pointed criticisms about police training and practices after Ferguson during his December interview on BET, but it’s a stretch to characterize that as “propaganda” for everyone to “hate the police”:
“The vast majority of law enforcement officers are doing a really tough job, and most of them are doing it well and are trying to do the right thing. But a combination of bad training, in some cases; a combination in some cases of departments that really are not trying to root out biases, or tolerate sloppy police work; a combination in some cases of folks just not knowing any better, and in a lot of cases, subconscious fear of folks who look different — all of this contributes to a national problem that’s going to require a national solution.”
Those who have wanted Obama to take a stronger stance on racial issues have criticized him for what they view as a toe-the-line stance. He also has been criticized by those who perceive him as out of touch with minority communities. (Recall the split-screen moment from November, with Obama on one side urging Ferguson residents against violence, juxtaposed with scenes of smoke and fire from Ferguson.)
After a grand jury decided not to indict officials in the case of Garner’s death, Obama said “law enforcement has an incredibly difficult job … there’s real crime out there that they’ve got to tackle day in and day out — but that they’re only going to be able to do their job effectively if everybody has confidence in the system. And right now, unfortunately, we are seeing too many instances where people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly.” He added that it was his job as president to solve the problem of people not being treated equally under the law.
Giuliani said leaders like Obama, Holder and de Blasio are perpetuating a myth that there is systemic police brutality. We have not found evidence that Obama and Holder believe police brutality is a systemic problem. However, Obama and Holder have spoken about systemic mistrust among minorities about how they are treated by police.
This is not to minimize the amount of anger toward police officers, as portrayed through protests, social media and mainstream media. As Giuliani and other critics have pointed out, some protesters are, indeed, outwardly anti-police. One protest group, Million Marchers, walked through New York City calling for “dead cops.” Another unsettling video shows a protester shouting for “pigs in a blanket” — the same phrase used by the alleged killer of the two NYPD officers. Hashtags like #CopzDontMatter and #killercop are spreading on Twitter and Facebook.
Ironically, Giuliani himself was once accused of fostering an atmosphere of police violence. A Haitian immigrant who was sodomized by New York City police officers claimed — then recanted — that the officers invoked Giuliani’s name (“It’s Giuliani time!”) during the assault. So the former mayor should be especially wary of making broad-brush claims that the rhetoric of senior officials is to blame for the actions of individuals.
The Pinocchio Test
Giuliani has a point that there is growing animosity among protesters toward police officers. That may have contributed to the actions of individuals such as Brinsley. But the burden of proof rests with the speaker. We combed through Obama’s speeches and can find no evidence of “propaganda” that “everybody should hate the police.”
Perhaps one could fault the president, as some conservatives do, for failing to more forcefully rebut violent demonstrations against police. But that’s an absence of rhetoric. Instead, Giuliani suggested that the president actively launched and promoted anti-police rhetoric — and that is simply Four-Pinocchio false. We would have liked Giuliani’s direct response and will update this column if he responds to our request for an interview.
Four Pinocchios
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/23/giulianis-claim-that-obama-launched-anti-police-propaganda/
leejcaroll – these are the same people that gave four Pinocchios to a statement that was true. To say that the Washington Post was in the bag for the Obama administration would be to understate it.
http://www.app.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/12/22/robinson-blame-de-blasio-murder-two-policemen/20777323/
Asbury Park Press
ROBINSON: Don’t blame de Blasio for murder of two policemen
4:38 p.m. EST December 22, 2014
WASHINGTON – It is absurd to have to say this, but New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, activist Al Sharpton and President Obama are in no way responsible for the coldblooded assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn on Saturday. Nor do the tens of thousands of Americans who have demonstrated against police brutality in recent weeks bear any measure of blame.
A disturbed career criminal named Ismaaiyl Brinsley committed this unspeakable atrocity by himself, amid a spree of insane mayhem: Earlier in the day, he shot and critically wounded a woman he had been seeing; later, on a subway platform, he shot and killed himself.
Brinsley’s reported claim to be acting in some warped sense of revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner was delusional and illegitimate. Reasonable people understand this, of course. But we live in unreasonable times.
Not for the first time, one of the loudest and least temperate voices has been that of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “We’ve had four months of propaganda, starting with the president, that everybody should hate the police,” Giuliani said on Fox News. “I don’t care how you want to describe it, that’s what those protests are all about.”
No, no, no. The demonstrations sparked by the exoneration of the officers who killed Brown and Garner were pro-accountability, not anti-police. As I’ve pointed out many times, no one better appreciates the need for an active, engaged police presence than residents of high-crime neighborhoods. But nobody should be expected to welcome policing that treats whole communities as guilty until proved innocent — or a justice system that considers black and brown lives disposable.
New York police officials and union leaders should explain this to the officers who bitterly turned their backs on de Blasio — their commander in chief — as he arrived to pay his respects to slain policemen Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
Yet Ed Mullins, president of the police sergeants’ union, made this inflammatory charge: “Mayor de Blasio, the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands.” And Ray Kelly, a former New York police commissioner, accused de Blasio of running an “anti-police” mayoral campaign and said there was a “firestorm” of anger within the department over remarks de Blasio made regarding Garner’s death.
What did the mayor do to provoke such ire? During the campaign, he spoke out against the city’s stop-and-frisk policy — a stance validated by a federal judge who found the practice discriminatory against African-Americans and Hispanics. And more recently, in talking about the Garner case, de Blasio told of how he had counseled his biracial son to be especially cautious and deferential in any encounter with police.
Those protest rallies were timely and necessary, however, as most police officials across the country seemed to understand. In New York, peaceful demonstrators marched while phalanxes of NYPD officers cleared the way.
In Brooklyn, Brinsley walked up and coldly shot Liu and Ramos as they sat in their police cruiser. Neither had the chance to unholster his weapon.
I don’t know the right way to make sense of such depravity. But I am certain that the way not to make sense of it is to blame nonviolent protesters, exercising their constitutional rights of assembly and speech, for the acts of a deranged killer.
Brinsley had somehow arrived at a day of personal apocalypse. He was beyond any rational search for reasons to commit a string of heinous acts. He needed only to give himself an excuse.
Eugene Robinson is a nationally syndicated columnist.
(and I add to this: and the politicians and union used this atrocity to press their political agenda.)
New York Police Union Has Attacked Mayors of Both Parties, Including Giuliani
“De Blasio has said recently that New York’s officers need to improve their relationships with the communities they serve, though he has (needless to say) not called for violence against police. (He also condemned the murders of Liu and Ramos as an attack upon “the very foundation of our society.”) De Blasio is probably not surprised by Lynch’s comments, though: the union has attacked at least the last four New York mayors, including law-and-order Republican Rudy Giuliani, in similarly aggressive fashion. Former New York Times reporter David Firestone highlighted the PBA’s history in a series of tweets today:”…
The past Times pieces Firestone links to describe:
•Off-duty officers attending a 1992 rally against Democrat David Dinkins who were seen “jumping barricades,” “tramping on automobiles,” and stopping traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
•The 1997 circulation of a flier (which was not officially union-endorsed) that officers could sign to request that Giuliani not attend their funerals if they were killed in the line of duty. The mayor was engaged in a contract disupte with police and some union leaders had been indicted for racketeering by federal prosecutors; the Times wrote that “many police officers” believed Giuliani orchestrated the indictments. In 1996, the union’s leader at the time had said the mayor “certainly doesn’t enjoy the support of the PBA.” (In 2007, when Giuliani was running for president, Patrick Lynch said the PBA “could never support Rudy Giuliani for any elected office.”)
•Officers picketing Republican Michael Bloomberg’s home at 1 a.m. in what the Times described as a “noisy” protest and Bloomberg described as “yelling and screaming.”
The inflammatory rhetoric directed at de Blasio by Lynch, it seems, is part of a long tradition—one that we should expect to continue even if de Blasio is eventually replaced by a politician of a different ideological disposition. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/12/22/new_york_police_union_past_mayors_attacks_on_all_parties.html
(But the last sentence is nonsensical since the PBA has been against Mayors of both parties and is just their knee jerk response.)
http://qz.com/317338/the-nyc-police-union-has-a-long-history-of-bullying-city-hall/
In June of 1966, when complaints of increasing police brutality against minorities prompted Mayor John Lindsay to propose a civilian review board, an unauthorized voice came over the police radio: “Everybody to City Hall!” More than 5,000 off-duty cops mustered outside the building, the largest police gathering up to that time, to protest the possibility of outside scrutiny into the way officers conducted business.
“I am sick and tired of giving in to minority groups, with their whims and their gripes and shouting,” said John Cassese, then president of the P.B.A. “Any review board with civilians on it is detrimental to the operations of the police department.”
The lowest moment for the police unions occurred in 1992, when the P.B.A. organized another City Hall rally to protest the strengthening of the review board by Mayor David Dinkins. This time the crowd surged to 10,000 officers, with union members hurtling barricades, jumping on cars, blocking the Brooklyn Bridge, and kicking reporters. Some members carried signs showing Dinkins with a bushy Afro haircut and swollen lips, with slogans that ridiculed him as a “washroom attendant.”
Rudolph Giuliani, who would run for mayor the next year on a crime-fighting platform, was present throughout the rally and led the crowd in denouncing Dinkins. But though he eventually became the mayor most closely identified with a stronger police force, he lost the union’s favor within a few years by refusing to agree to demands for a police contract far more generous than the ones reached with other municipal unions. By 1997, union members distributed a flier demanding that Giuliani be excluded from their funerals because his attendance “would only bring disgrace to my memory.” That’s almost exactly the same language now being used by P.B.A. members against de Blasio, who is also threatened with exclusion from their funerals.
In pursuit of higher raises, the P.B.A. also held noisy protests outside the townhouse of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and threatened to go on strike during the 2004 Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.
Critics of public-sector unions say they all use their implicit power to shut down vital services in order to win their demands. But the police unions are in a different category. While a subway or a garbage strike can create intense inconvenience, the threat of a slowdown by the police — or the sight of 10,000 out-of-control officers shouting racist slogans — creates a much more deep-seated fear. The members of no other union carry guns in public, or are responsible for public safety. Police unions carry a special burden to act in the highest interest of the city, but over many decades, no other union has acted less responsibly
The PBA cares more about the union then reality. cares more about making waves then the officers killed.
Po….
White privilege speaking, Ari. Leaving the country is an option for you…
Not really, it is rhetorical (and it was careless of me to use that meme)…I do not have the means anymore than the rest of the majority of the city. Interesting you see “white privilege” where it does not exist. White privilege (yes, it is easier to be born white) has become an excuse. Tell me how asserting it helps anything? Never the less my remark is an expression of optimism that the country will improve…I can’t leave so I have to make a choice. The only “Detroiter” I know who left the country, literally, is a black man & his wife, who left for reasons of disgust with their neighbors, not the police….emigrated to Canada around Tillbury.
You can afford to be magnanimous because your relation with the black cops who stop you does not define your being.You can afford to laugh it off. What is the worse that may come out of it? That they apologize, explain to you exactly why they stopped you and wave you away?
If you are doing nothing wrong, what is wrong with magnanimity? I’ve conducted my self in places half a world away where there was no “white privilege” in fact, the opposite…with the same attitude. Poverty and despair doesn’t have a “color” except in America apparently. Seems like it has become a business in fact.
How do you do that? By giving them the opportunity for something different of by sheer urging…
Of course not. There must be education, jobs, and opportunity and Detroit is trying to achieve that…it is slow, 35 years now since the depths of despair here. At that time the vaunted leadership, very much like De Blasio, depended upon the despair and tore the city apart in the process. If by chance you live here or near here you should know that, unless maybe you are under 40 or so.
… letting the golf course and stadium behind by millions keep operating within nary a threat of shutoff?
Heck no, I’d shut them off with stiffer penalties than ordinary folks. Who do you think runs that city water department here? How many of those who couldn’t pay suddenly could pay when they had to do so? Have you calculated that? That may be solved now that the water operation will operated by a regional authority. That said, just tell me what you think the source of poverty is in a city like Detroit?
I did not become a cop because I feared to lose my humanity facing the evil people do to one another. Most people respect cops. Holding them to a higher standard …
And apparently you are now unwilling to deal with the reality none-the-less. You seem focused on the result of poor practices in the past, not on improvements made. You assert that because you are black, if you are black, you have cause to fear police, even if you are doing nothing wrong, even if those police are black. Maybe 35 years ago. Now, that is just a self-fulfilling prophecy in my opinion.
I never considered being a cop because here it was a crappy job below the rank of Commander, and paid very little. I enlisted in the Army instead.
…one cannot point the finger at bad cops without all the cops along with people pointing the finger back at you to blame you for something you never said ( case in point, de Biaso.)
De Blasio didn’t cause the mobs in New York, he merely failed to speak out when it became a “kill cops” message the mobs were screaming. De Blasio’s failure was an act of omission…he satisfied himself and what he perceives as his base. In error IMO. Frankly, I do not understand how he got elected…unless way too many people just stayed home. He didn’t arrive in the midst of strife, as Coleman Young did in Detroit. What is his excuse?
You are right about one thing…I do NOT “get it” today. I am watching us fall down the same well we climbed out of …repeating that same old tropes. When I say “we” I mean all of us.
cops are our last line of defense against the evil ones among us.
let me take my chances with the bad guy. At least with him I have the option to fight back.
Something that we both agree on. I respect the police and people who are in the first responder/safety field. They are by and large good people who are dealing with some very bad situations. They are braver than most people. Certainly braver than me. I don’t think that the bad cops should be allowed to taint the entire police force and people need to realize that there are mostly decent and well meaning humans on the police forces.
Cops are the last line of defense, especially in areas that are high crime or in my case very rural. If you aren’t prepared to defend yourself, until or IF the police or sheriff arrives, then be prepared to be harmed or dead.
We had a small incident a few days ago where my husband is responsible for some absentee properties. The incident required a deputy be dispatched, at 5am. The dispatcher had to call him at home because there is not a central substation or a manned station of any kind. It took 2 1/2 hours to respond. Not his fault as he is the only one on call at night and had to drive over 75 miles from his location to ours. 2 1/2 hours response time!! Fortunately there was no danger. However, we are used to this lack coverage. A really fast response time is about 40 minutes! That’s what we get for living in a rural area. The trade offs in rural living greatly outweigh the negatives of low police coverage and other lack of services. Ho hum. Such is life.
Is it any wonder that we are ALL armed and refuse to give up our weapons? WE are our first line of defense. Is it any surprise that when the Obama Administration threatens to shut down the government that we really don’t give a rip? How would we even NOTICE if it was shut down? Why would we even care?
We are on our own. Get used to it.
When I lived in the SF area in the 70’s, a policeman that I knew just told us, flat out, that they would not be responding to our area unless there were shots fired, or someone was bleeding….and maybe not even then. Expect this to be the case from now on in NYC and other urban areas.
DBQ President Obama has never threatened to shut down the government, The repubs did it once and threatened to do it again within the last 2 weeks
Mayor Bill De Blasio has doubled down on stupid.
When he examined the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner he was proud to announce that he told his son to be afraid of cops. To walk softly and be afraid that at any moment they might beat, arrest even kill him. Every cop. Not just a bad apple. To walk in fear of the police.
When he was asked if his incendiary rhetoric and his warm embrace of protestors who shouted “Kill the Police”……Mayor De Blasio blamed the press:
Reporter:”Mr. Mayor, you were referring to protesters as people who are working to advance justice in society. The chants that we were hearing at the protests, ”NYPD-KKK. How do you spell racist? KKK.’ Would you be comfort able with your young adults in your household chanting like this at the protests, and we’re hearing virtually every protest?”
Mayor de Blasio: “Of course not,” de Blasio responded. “We’ve talk about this so many times and I’m not going to talk about it again. And now the question now is, what are you guys going to do? What are you guys going to do? Are you going to keep dividing us?”
“I am telling you over again again, that’s how you want to portray the world but we know a different reality. There are people who do that. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. They shouldn’t do that. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, it’s nasty, it’s negative. They should not do that but they, my friend, are not the majority. Stop portraying them as the majority.”
Of course he never said that at the time of the relentless attacks on all policemen. Then every policemen was a potential murderer of his son. He warmly embraced the protests and did not speak out against them blocked traffic and disrupt the city day after day. He was quick to condemn every police officer who might come into contact with his son as a potential danger…as someone who would beat or kill him. But as far as the violence and destruction of the protestors……crickets. Just as President Obama and Attorney General Holder have done repeatedly. They are too far gone. There is no hope for any evenhanded response from them. That ship has sailed.
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Mayor de Blasio surrounds himself with cop haters such as Al Sharpton and Rachel Noerdlinger. As noted by former Commissioner Ray Kelly the Mayor ran on an anti-police platform promising to tie their hands. Which he did as soon as he came into office and ended stop and frisk. Now he likes to pretend that he supports and respects the police and the job that they do protecting us from people like Ismaaiyl Brinsley. That is a bald faced lie.
So to recap none of his actions or words did anything to stoke the fire of this deranged criminal who was in fact one of the protestors. There is video of this scumbag at a demonstration as he soaked up the hate and stoked his rage.
You see it is the fault of the press. Pontius de Blasio is just washing his hands and saying none of this has anything to do with him.
De Blasio must go.
Aridog:
When the sight of a uniform, police or military, makes me sweat, I will leave the country. Here, the man in that uniform is quite likely to be black, and the uniform is not what makes the problem..the conduct of a minority of the population do that. Then you pay the price. So to speak.
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White privilege speaking, Ari. Leaving the country is an option for you, is it for the masses in Detroit with water shutoff, and one meal a day?
Do you really think that being stopped by black cops in Detroit provides you with the same experience than black people everywhere else get when stopped by white cops? You can afford to be magnanimous because your relation with the black cops who stop you does not define your being.
You can afford to laugh it off. What is the worse that may come out of it? That they apologize, explain to you exactly why they stopped you and wave you away?
I did think you got it, until you said ” Work on the population to make it different overall. Don’t sit there and agree that cops are bad…cops are what separate us from the truly evil schmucks among us. ”
How do you do that? By giving them the opportunity for something different of by sheer urging them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
By shutting off the water of poor Detroit residents who are behind in their payment but letting the golf course and stadium behind by millions keep operating within nary a threat of shutoff?
Also, where have I said that cops are bad? I do not generally speak in absolute terms, especially when it comes to cops. I did not become a cop because I feared to lose my humanity facing the evil people do to one another. Most people respect cops. Holding them to a higher standard and demanding they be held to that standard institutionally is both normal and necessary.
No one here, again, is blaming cops wholesale. The issue is about the system (and my idea of the system is not informed by corporate media, which I do not follow), it is also about the fact that one cannot point the finger at bad cops without all the cops along with people pointing the finger back at you to blame you for something you never said ( case in point, de Biaso.)
Some of the most stringent conservatives here are the ones eager to throw away our individual rights not be be abused of killed for the sake of the idea that cops are our last line of defense against the evil ones among us. Yes, I’ll protect you from the bad guys even if I must kill you in the process!)
I tell you, let me take my chances with the bad guy. At least with him I have the option to fight back.
Po…I was clear as I could given the limitations of language, that “I get it.” I’ve lived here my whole life and know as many black folks as you do, I assure you. Very hard not to given the demographics of Detroit. If you are stopped regularly, there is a reason…and that’s just the truth. Try not acting “hinky” and see how that goes…even just a smile can make the difference.
When the sight of a uniform, police or military, makes me sweat, I will leave the country. Here, the man in that uniform is quite likely to be black, and the uniform is not what makes the problem..the conduct of a minority of the population do that. Then you pay the price. So to speak.
Work on the population to make it different overall. Don’t sit there and agree that cops are bad…cops are what separate us from the truly evil schmucks among us. You needn’t lecture me on PTSD, BTW…I am very familiar with it. It is a result not a cause.
The “system” is not what you apparently think it is…but the media will never let you believe that. I am actually sorry you feel the way you do. There is no escape until you consider alternatives.
About what?
Nick Spinelli
po, I doubt you would end up Mike Browned. That said, I do understand, on a profound level, we have 2 different realities.
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Exactly, Nick, Aridog, that’s all I am saying. WHen two citizens have different realities in how they relate to their country, there is a problem. WE can ignore the causes and just say get over it, or we may pause and try to give them the right to their offense.
Also, Ari, imagine if your were stopped like that twice a week…imagine if the representatives of law and order subjected you to that routine even once a year…how long would it take until it starts affecting you emotionally…then psychologically?
How long would it take until the mere sight of a uniform makes your heart race and bead of sweats show?
How long would it take until you start looking shifty and guilty at the sight of a cop?
How long would it take until your choice of a car and your choice of housing started being affected by the likelihood both would cause you to be confronted again?
How long would it take until you develop that rage in you that is sure to explode someday and expose the system for what it is?
I can tell you that most black people in this country deal with some form of PTSD, and as we know, PTSD affects people differently, but more often than not, it results with violence to self and to others.
Adding to that, our veterans suffer from PTSD, our native people too, women are under attack by the media that denudes them, their classmates who rape them, their partners who kill them…. and they are being told not to go out at night, not to have a drink, to just say no, not to wear that dress…
Until one experiences that on an ongoing basis, based on something they can never change, the color of their skin or their gender, it is beneficial to us all as a nation that we slow the torrent of judgement and instead learn to listen to people’s grievances and try to help them deal with it according to their wishes.
po@minutebol said …
I would not take my family to NYC because I know that if we are subjected to stop and frisk, I would take huge offense to it …
Po, why does stop & frisk bother you? (Actually I do understand it, the question is rhetorical to prompt thought) I’ve mentioned here, previously, about being stopped (in Detroit no less) for “Driving While White” and thought nothing of it (the uniformed officers admitted the reason for the stop)…in fact we both, the cops and me, made light of it…I understood their reasons, even if not exactly good probable cause, and found no reason to be offended. Overall, those cops were working hard to improve a very ghetto neighborhood (a generally dangerous one, no doubt about that) …a white dude driving through at 0300 was “suspicious” and for reasons that relate to their purpose in general. I got it then and get it now. IOW…frisk away an ask any question you want.
BTW…my understanding is that “stop & frisk” has been ceased in NYC. I think that is a mistake, but my experiences are different than yours, for several reasons. You’ve cited them on occasion previously and I get it. I’ve been traveling, on official US Army business, with black persons of equal, or higher, rank to me and noticed their apprehension…especially in notably “white” areas where Christian protestant reform types are prevalent. Right or wrong, I understand their hesitancy. I very likely would do the same under similar circumstances. We are still a long ways from full equanimity but fearing being “frisked ” is the least of the concerns, in my opinion. Maybe I an naive’, but I suspect I am only mirroring what I find in Detroit.
Detroiters take a beating in the press and in general, but they don’t deserve it today. It is no secret that some press outlets refer to suspects in a crime as “Detroiters” (it is a code) as if that makes it clear. It doesn’t…current truth is that the majority have finally decided to vote for success, black or white. Dave Bing (black) and Mike Duggan(white) are examples of that perception.
Yee f’ing G-d, I do hope we can all get past this miasma one of these days.
po, I doubt you would end up Mike Browned. That said, I do understand, on a profound level, we have 2 different realities. My black buddies talk about that we me. I get it. But, they are not as political as you.
Funny, Nick, because now I would not take my family to NYC because I know that if we are subjected to stop and frisk, I would take huge offense to it and may end up Mike Browned!
po, Freakonomics proves much of the nationwide drop in crime has much to do w/ demographics and birth rates. Young males, OF ALL COLORS are always responsible for the majority of crime, and there are just less young males. That said, the drop nationwide is not nearly as precipitous as 2200 to 300. NYPD tactics also had a role in that. Po, I grew up ~80 miles from NYC. We would be home visiting family annually. I am not a worry wart. We have taken our kids to many major cities often. We LOVE cities. Kids LOVE cities. Back in the 90’s, I would not take my family to NYC. I now take them[albeit older], w/ no trepidations.
Nick, thanks for the nice words.
There is, however, a continuously steady nationwide drop in crime, not just NYC.
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Thomas Estopare
Paul Schulte: Great point. I’m pointing out what I find to be somewhat of an inconsistency. The rule of law seems to only be important when it’s not applied, but not when it is used as a tool for oppression.
Thomas is right, that is my frustration with this blog, the focus on a very narrow expression of the rule of law. It focuses on Obama administration issues, first amendment issues, international issues… but is mute on the systematic issues that confront us and that are sure to sink this country altogether.
There is a selectiveness to, not really the topics, but what is demanded be done about it, that belies much of what this blog seemed to me at first.
When people can spend 42 years in solitary confinement and nary a word about it, children can be housed in adult prison populations, in solitary confinement, when civilians are killed in the 1000 and WE DO NO KNOW HOW MANY, and our culture of might and war is burning the world down and us along with it, those focused on making this a liberal vs conservative issue, a black vs white issue, an urban vs suburban issue and hard workers vs lazy bums issue and an us vs them issue are blinding and fooling themselves, playing into the hands of those whose interests are established only when we do just that.
Fox News is not a source of news, nor is MSNBC, nor is CNN, all of those are corporate dogs, intent on selling us the message of their masters through relentless fearmongering and finger pointing.
It does not matter who you are, when the system wishes to sacrifice you at the altar of its might, you’ll find that it matters little whether you are not black, not urban, not lazy, not a taker, not a terrorist, not a non-Christian, not liberal…your sole hope resides in the people…that they will take up your cause and fight for it against the system… as they are doing right now for those whom the system trampled.
Paul, I am asking. Please share.
po – what is the source of your information?