I suppose it was inevitable. When a large and vocal group of people know what they know, there's always the chance one member of that group will decide to act on that knowledge. Remember: You don't have to be right; you just have to think you are.
Since "Black Lives Matter," a message proclaimed on signs carried by protesters, it was only a matter of time before someone would seek to even the score for those lives lost to marauding cops across this nation.
The alleged gunman (Ismaaiyl Brinsley) took out two NYC cops to avenge the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. That's what we're led to believe, anyway, based on his contributions to social media.
"Putting wings on pigs," he said.
An act of desperation designed to place the cherry atop a failed life. He apparently shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore, then hopped a bus for the Big Apple, where he went looking for targets.
He probably could have picked better to answer the actions of white cops. The dead officers were Asian and Hispanic. Close enough, I guess. At least they were cops and not Salvation Army bell ringers in uniform.
The gunman then entered a subway station where he apparently shot himself in the head.
Members of his family say he was suicidal.
If so, he again failed to maximize the effect. He should have tossed the weapon away and made a suspicious move in front of the police, forcing them to take his life.
Preferably on camera.
Keep the spiral of violence in motion, see? And widening as it goes. Word of potential copycat shooters has already surfaced. Police forces across the country are on alert.
As long as folks know what they know, some will take action. As long as everything they see proves them right, the closer they are to pulling the trigger. The more this perfect knowledge spreads, the more dangerous the world becomes.
But hey, it's what we do here.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Thursday, December 18, 2014
NATIONAL DIALOGUE ON RACE
In an interview in People magazine entitled "We Can Still Make a Difference" (and reported on the CBS Evening News), Barack Obama and his wife Michelle had some things to say about race in America.
Michelle says she was once mistaken for a school employee. At a black tie affair, the President was mistaken for a waiter.
I'm not sure I'm grasping the problem here. Is it that white folks are apt to think black folks may be employed in some capacity? That doesn't seem so bad.
Is it that the President and the First Lady were not recognized by (presumably) white people as the President and First Lady?
I have a problem with that, too. If you're at some school function, isn't it a lot more likely a given black lady is an employee there and not the First Lady of the most powerful country on the planet? I mean, you might think she looks familiar. You might even think the woman looks just like Michelle Obama. (OMG!) It's still way more likely she's not.
Is that racism? If you're white and you think all black women look like every other black woman, that's not necessarily racism. If you think all black women are skanks and you're not going to take the trouble to try to distinguish one from another, then you're a racist.
Same for the President. I'd need a lot more information about his mistaken-for-a-waiter incident before I'd be willing to call it racism. Sounds more like a merry mix-up, something you'd see on a TV sitcom.
The President says: "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their keys."
Okay, here's the scene: An older black man in a suit stands alone at the curb in an otherwise empty restaurant loading zone, looking up the street, waiting for a car. Some jerk pulls up, sees nobody in a red vest around, and makes an assumption about the only guy there.
That's pretty stupid, but for it to be racism the white guy would have to be thinking along these lines: Oh, look, there's a black fellow standing in front of my favorite restaurant. Since no black man would ever be able to afford to eat here (and they wouldn't let him in even if he had the dough), he must be the parking valet. I wonder what happened to his red vest? Probably sold it for crack.
Some of that is racist on the part of somebody.
Michelle Obama says: "When you're raising black kids you have to talk about these issues, because they're real."
If what was reported by CBS typical of the issues she's talking to her kids about, the problems of race in this country seem pretty trivial.
Contrast them with the issue folks are out in the streets of our cities protesting: Racist white cops murdering the black youth of the nation. Over and over, with no relief in sight.
The President has commented, saying recent events (Grand Jury decisions) should prompt a national dialogue on race.
Sounds good, needs to be done.
Hey, take this fun quiz:
1. The shooting of Michael Brown by a white cop and the decision not to prosecute.
2. The death-in-custody of Eric Garner presided over by white cops and the decision not the prosecute.
3. The shooting of the twelve-year-old kid with the pellet gun by a white cop.
4. Protesters in the streets, calling for justice.
Question: Which of these four items is a demonstration of racism?
Answer: No. 4.
In the first three there is no evidence of either racism or police brutality. The fact the protesters don't see that can only be ascribed to the racist position that white cops kill black kids for no reason.
(Folks know what they know and everything they see proves them right.)
Will the President and First Lady be adding this item to their dialogue on race in America? They should.
Michelle says she was once mistaken for a school employee. At a black tie affair, the President was mistaken for a waiter.
I'm not sure I'm grasping the problem here. Is it that white folks are apt to think black folks may be employed in some capacity? That doesn't seem so bad.
Is it that the President and the First Lady were not recognized by (presumably) white people as the President and First Lady?
I have a problem with that, too. If you're at some school function, isn't it a lot more likely a given black lady is an employee there and not the First Lady of the most powerful country on the planet? I mean, you might think she looks familiar. You might even think the woman looks just like Michelle Obama. (OMG!) It's still way more likely she's not.
Is that racism? If you're white and you think all black women look like every other black woman, that's not necessarily racism. If you think all black women are skanks and you're not going to take the trouble to try to distinguish one from another, then you're a racist.
Same for the President. I'd need a lot more information about his mistaken-for-a-waiter incident before I'd be willing to call it racism. Sounds more like a merry mix-up, something you'd see on a TV sitcom.
The President says: "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their keys."
Okay, here's the scene: An older black man in a suit stands alone at the curb in an otherwise empty restaurant loading zone, looking up the street, waiting for a car. Some jerk pulls up, sees nobody in a red vest around, and makes an assumption about the only guy there.
That's pretty stupid, but for it to be racism the white guy would have to be thinking along these lines: Oh, look, there's a black fellow standing in front of my favorite restaurant. Since no black man would ever be able to afford to eat here (and they wouldn't let him in even if he had the dough), he must be the parking valet. I wonder what happened to his red vest? Probably sold it for crack.
Some of that is racist on the part of somebody.
Michelle Obama says: "When you're raising black kids you have to talk about these issues, because they're real."
If what was reported by CBS typical of the issues she's talking to her kids about, the problems of race in this country seem pretty trivial.
Contrast them with the issue folks are out in the streets of our cities protesting: Racist white cops murdering the black youth of the nation. Over and over, with no relief in sight.
The President has commented, saying recent events (Grand Jury decisions) should prompt a national dialogue on race.
Sounds good, needs to be done.
Hey, take this fun quiz:
1. The shooting of Michael Brown by a white cop and the decision not to prosecute.
2. The death-in-custody of Eric Garner presided over by white cops and the decision not the prosecute.
3. The shooting of the twelve-year-old kid with the pellet gun by a white cop.
4. Protesters in the streets, calling for justice.
Question: Which of these four items is a demonstration of racism?
Answer: No. 4.
In the first three there is no evidence of either racism or police brutality. The fact the protesters don't see that can only be ascribed to the racist position that white cops kill black kids for no reason.
(Folks know what they know and everything they see proves them right.)
Will the President and First Lady be adding this item to their dialogue on race in America? They should.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
RESISTING ARREST
It would be my guess the average citizen thinks "resisting arrest" means fighting the cops. I probably thought so myself, at some point. (Who can remember?)
In fact, depending on where you live, you could be guilty of this crime by doing anything to hinder or delay a police officer in the lawful performance of his duties. That goes for EMTs as well.
If a cop tells you to turn around and put your hands behind your back, don't just stand there and say: "Why?"
That's a crime. Turn around and put your hands behind your back before you demand to know why he's arresting you. Could make all the difference.
If you're walking along the street and an ambulance screeches to a stop beside you and the driver asks where he can find some street—and you deliberately point him in the wrong direction—it's possible you've committed the crime of "resisting arrest." (As odd as that sounds.)
That big guy in NYC who was accused of selling loose cigarettes was guilty of resisting arrest because he failed to cooperate with the police. It doesn't matter if he's guilty of the crime of selling loose cigarettes or not.
(It also doesn't matter if in your opinion the selling of loose cigarettes ought not be a crime.)
The guy told the cops to leave him alone. He evaded their hands when they tried to grab of him. His fate was sealed by his own decision. And by "fate" I don't mean his death; I mean what happened next: the take down and arrest. I believe the death to be accidental.
Once you defy the police they will take you into custody in only one posture: on your belly with your hands behind your back.
There are a number of tools and techniques that can be used by cops to get an arrestee into the desired position:
(1) Use a Taser to drop the fellow to the ground, then land on him and wrestle him into position.
(2) Hit him repeatedly with batons until the suspect voluntarily places himself in the approved posture (Rodney King's police adventure—though King was also Tased).
(3) Jump on the guy with multiple personnel and force him into position, pressing him into the pavement to keep him from moving during the cuffing process. The cops call it "swarming."
The third method was used on Eric Garner, the big guy in NYC. During the take down, one of the cops grabbed the man around the neck. It's widely been labeled a "chokehold," but if that's what it was, it was a poor example of one. Garner would've been unconscious at the end of a combat chokehold, and that didn't happen.
Most likely, Garner's breathing problems (aside from his reported asthma) came from lying belly-down on the sidewalk and having a crapload of cops lean their combined weight on him—added to his own obvious bulk. It was brutal, but not illegal. And it all happened because he refused to allow himself to be arrested.
So what's the solution? A rule that says fat guys are not to be arrested for petty crimes because they might not survive the take-down process?
I think people need to learn that arguing with a cop who wants to arrest you is an offense called resisting arrest. That jerking your hands away when cops try to grab you is right on the edge of fighting the police. That once you get this far your arrest is now assured, and it's only a question of how hard they're going to land on you when they put you into position to be cuffed.
And yes, cops do this to white guys, too.
Now folks are in the street protesting a Grand Jury's decision not the indict the cop whose arm was around Garner's neck. The verdict would barely be controversial, except for the fact Garner is black and everybody "knows" white cops murdered him for the crime of being black.
Folks are also angry the Grand Jury did not release the complete evidence in the case. Why would that make any difference? Folks got all the facts from the Michael Brown case—did nothing to change the minds of the folks in the streets.
Facts are useless when you know in your heart what really happened. Knowing stuff without—or in the teeth of—the evidence is what we do here on planet earth.
Hasn't been a problem so far, right?
In fact, depending on where you live, you could be guilty of this crime by doing anything to hinder or delay a police officer in the lawful performance of his duties. That goes for EMTs as well.
If a cop tells you to turn around and put your hands behind your back, don't just stand there and say: "Why?"
That's a crime. Turn around and put your hands behind your back before you demand to know why he's arresting you. Could make all the difference.
If you're walking along the street and an ambulance screeches to a stop beside you and the driver asks where he can find some street—and you deliberately point him in the wrong direction—it's possible you've committed the crime of "resisting arrest." (As odd as that sounds.)
That big guy in NYC who was accused of selling loose cigarettes was guilty of resisting arrest because he failed to cooperate with the police. It doesn't matter if he's guilty of the crime of selling loose cigarettes or not.
(It also doesn't matter if in your opinion the selling of loose cigarettes ought not be a crime.)
The guy told the cops to leave him alone. He evaded their hands when they tried to grab of him. His fate was sealed by his own decision. And by "fate" I don't mean his death; I mean what happened next: the take down and arrest. I believe the death to be accidental.
Once you defy the police they will take you into custody in only one posture: on your belly with your hands behind your back.
There are a number of tools and techniques that can be used by cops to get an arrestee into the desired position:
(1) Use a Taser to drop the fellow to the ground, then land on him and wrestle him into position.
(2) Hit him repeatedly with batons until the suspect voluntarily places himself in the approved posture (Rodney King's police adventure—though King was also Tased).
(3) Jump on the guy with multiple personnel and force him into position, pressing him into the pavement to keep him from moving during the cuffing process. The cops call it "swarming."
The third method was used on Eric Garner, the big guy in NYC. During the take down, one of the cops grabbed the man around the neck. It's widely been labeled a "chokehold," but if that's what it was, it was a poor example of one. Garner would've been unconscious at the end of a combat chokehold, and that didn't happen.
Most likely, Garner's breathing problems (aside from his reported asthma) came from lying belly-down on the sidewalk and having a crapload of cops lean their combined weight on him—added to his own obvious bulk. It was brutal, but not illegal. And it all happened because he refused to allow himself to be arrested.
So what's the solution? A rule that says fat guys are not to be arrested for petty crimes because they might not survive the take-down process?
I think people need to learn that arguing with a cop who wants to arrest you is an offense called resisting arrest. That jerking your hands away when cops try to grab you is right on the edge of fighting the police. That once you get this far your arrest is now assured, and it's only a question of how hard they're going to land on you when they put you into position to be cuffed.
And yes, cops do this to white guys, too.
Now folks are in the street protesting a Grand Jury's decision not the indict the cop whose arm was around Garner's neck. The verdict would barely be controversial, except for the fact Garner is black and everybody "knows" white cops murdered him for the crime of being black.
Folks are also angry the Grand Jury did not release the complete evidence in the case. Why would that make any difference? Folks got all the facts from the Michael Brown case—did nothing to change the minds of the folks in the streets.
Facts are useless when you know in your heart what really happened. Knowing stuff without—or in the teeth of—the evidence is what we do here on planet earth.
Hasn't been a problem so far, right?
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