Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

A Good Cop’s Perspective

Posted on by under Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry

Last night, I came across an Opinion piece in The Washington Post, written by a police officer that really impressed me.  Halfway through reading the article, I was saying, “Oh yeah … this guy really gets it!”  The officer is Patrick Skinner, working on the police force in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.  Officer Skinner is a former CIA operations officer and served in the United States Coast Guard as well as the U.S. Capitol Police, so he has a broad base of experience in law enforcement.  The man knows of what he speaks …

I’m a cop. The Chauvin verdict is a message for me, and for my colleagues.

Police officers can’t be defensive. We owe it to those we serve to change policing — and slow down.

by Patrick Skinner

I was at work as a police officer when the judge announced the jurors’ verdict Tuesday in a Minneapolis courtroom. I am a violent-crimes detective in my hometown of Savannah, Ga., but like the rest of America, I was worried about the verdict. I was worried that once again, a jury would, despite clear video evidence of guilt, find that it was somehow reasonable for a minor criminal matter to end in the death of an unarmed suspect at the hands of a police officer.

But I was also worried that we would view the outcome as the conclusion of a trial and not the beginning of change. Because as powerful as the murder conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin is, what we do next — as a country in general and as police in particular — will go a long way in determining whether systemic positive police reform is possible. It is in this time immediately after the verdict that several things, which are entirely within my control as a police officer, have to happen.

The first thing is actually something that needs to not happen: Police must not be defensive. We must not circle the wagons. “Not all cops” is exactly the wrong reaction. Even though that is true — of course not all cops are bad — it is irrelevant. Systemic reform is inseparable from individual change. We need both, and they have to feed off each other. There will be a natural desire by police, myself included, to say that the system worked, that Chauvin was found guilty by a jury of his peers and that a bad apple was sent to jail, no longer around to rot the bunch. Again, this is true, but it is also irrelevant. A nation so tense about a single trial, so uncertain about what was going to happen, is a nation in desperate need of much more. And we all have to take a first step. For me, the first step is that I need to take this verdict personally if I am to change professionally: That means I need to empathize more with my neighbors, and if they’re outraged or sad or just weary from police interactions — theirs and others’ — I need to work from that space. It means these outrages aren’t just outrageous to my profession, they’re outrageous to me personally. It means to step out of comfortable anonymity and demand that we change it all.

Here’s the second thing that needs to happen: We police need to fight the destructive reaction we have resorted to before in places like New York, where members of the police union had an unofficial but announced slowdown in 2019 after the dismissal of an officer implicated in the killing of Eric Garner by police in 2014. We have to stop saying, in effect, that if we can’t do our job the way we have always done it, well then, we won’t do our job at all. We might still collect a paycheck, but we will stop a lot of work because of an exaggerated fear of running afoul of the “new rules.” Rules such as “Don’t treat your neighbors like robots of compliance,” “Don’t escalate trivial matters into life-or-death confrontations” and “Treat your neighbors as if they were your neighbors.” That anyone would consider these rules “new” is a problem in itself. Few police officers reading them aloud would take issue with such anodyne statements, but put accountability behind the statements and now they’re an attack, not just on all police but the very foundation of American policing. The truth is that we do not get to tell our neighbors — those whose communities we police — how we will do our job. They tell us.

Faced with criticism that perhaps police should not be turning a traffic stop over an unarmed person’s vehicle registration sticker into something to be resolved at gunpoint, some will say, “What are the police supposed to do, let all criminals just run away?” There is a lot wrong with that reaction. To begin with, let’s slow down on calling someone with registration issues a criminal. And then let’s slow down everything, because we police are rushing to make bad decisions when time is almost always our friend. Tamir Rice most likely would not have been killed for having a toy gun if the Cleveland police officers had not rushed right up to him and shot him. There was no violence going on; the 12-year-old was alone in the middle of a park. Slow down, I tell myself in almost every police encounter. The risk to my neighbors in my rushing to a final judgment in very uncertain and fluid situations far outweighs the risk to myself. I’m often wrong in the initial assessment of chaotic scenes, and so I try to be wrong silently, allowing my judgment to catch up to my reactions, to allow my perception to catch up with my vision. Slow down.

I don’t know the third thing that needs to happen to lay the foundation for sweeping positive change in American policing because I’m so focused on the first two. I’m worried. I’m even scared. Not of big changes but that they might not happen. There is nothing easy or comfortable about any of this. To change policing in America requires confronting issues of race, poverty, inequality, injustice — the very issues too many in America say aren’t even issues anymore, as if history and its terrible weight started today.

I believe I was wrong for some time about not taking this personally. I’ve often told myself to not take well-deserved criticism of police misconduct and crime personally, because while as a police officer I am responsible, I was not personally responsible. I even wrote about this very thing here last year after the murder of George Floyd. I meant that I must not get defensive and to accept responsibility even if I wasn’t to blame. But now I don’t think that’s enough, at least for me. I think I have to take it personally: I have to be offended, I have to be outraged, and I have to act. That means I need to understand the goal of every 911 call, and that the compliance of those I encounter is not a goal; it might be a path to a goal but it’s not the goal. It means putting my neighbors first at every instance. It means often to act slower, to give my neighbors the benefit of the doubt because they are the point of my job.

None of this is abstract, none of this is a metaphor. All of this is senseless death in needlessly life-or-death situations. And all of this is personal.

I was at work when the verdict came in; I’ll be at work tomorrow, taking this verdict personally because my neighbors demand it. And they have always deserved it.

As I said, Officer Skinner is one cop who truly gets it, who understands what his job is, understands who he really works for … We the People, and sincerely wants police officers across the nation to learn from the tragedy of the George Floyd murder.  I give two thumbs up 👍 👍 to Officer Skinner!  The rest of the police need to take their cues from him.

Accountability vs justice

Posted on by under History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

I think most of us breathed a big sigh of relief yesterday afternoon when the verdict in the Derek Chauvin case was announced and Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts. Some said the verdict was ‘justice for George Floyd’. But, as our friend Brosephus reminds us, there is a difference between accountability and justice. Yesterday’s verdict was accountability, holding a former police officer accountable for his actions. We’re still a long way from justice for all in this country.

The Mind of Brosephus

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

“Establish justice”

That was the first order of business for we the people of the United States when the country was founded. In the almost 245 years since the United States was founded, justice has more often been an illusion than reality for the Black community. The illusion is rooted in the constant fight between the Black community and America itself over the most basic sense of equal justice under the law. While we’ve grown from being valued worth three-fifths a single person only for the purpose of appropriating seats for Congress, we still have to fight for…

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Regarding the Derek Chauvin Murder Trial

Posted on by under Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

This afternoon, former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts of murdering George Floyd. I planned to write a post later about it, but meanwhile I read Brendan’s piece, and … well, I couldn’t have said it any better, so I am re-blogging his. Thank you, Brendan.

Blind Injustice

The George Floyd Mural in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Like with many people in the United States, and across the world, my heart was beating at a mile a minute as the judge in the Derek Chauvin Murder Trial read the verdict on all three counts:

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

After I heard the verdict, I was personally relieved. I know many others who feel relieved with the verdict as well, for it meant that George Floyd’s life mattered enough that the police officer who killed him went to prison.

However, in my own humble opinion (humble because I do not have to worry about police on a daily basis like my friends of color do), what we saw today was not justice for George Floyd. Justice would’ve been if George Floyd didn’t get killed at the hands of Derek Chauvin.

Instead, what we got was accountability. Namely, accountability for a chokehold that…

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Freedom Summer Project – those who braved Mississippi burning (a reprise)

Posted on by under History, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Keith has reprised one of his old posts, one that resonates today as much as at any other time. As we wind down Black History Month, this is an important lesson for us to remember. Thanks, Keith!

musingsofanoldfart

The following post is a reprise of one I wrote in the summer of 2014. I felt the story needed a new telling during Black History Month.

Fifty years ago this summer, over 700 students from across the country, joined in the Civil Rights battle in Mississippi, where African-Americans had been demonstratively and, at times, violently denied their basic civil rights, especially the right to vote. These students joined together with the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNNC) under the guidance of Bob Moses, who had been slowly organizing SNNC since 1960. These students, were predominantly white, but included all races and ethnic groups.

The fact that many were white helped bring further attention to the ongoing tragedy going on Mississippi, perpetuated by those in power as the young students lived within the African-American community, taught through Freedom Schools young students about African-American history, literature and rights, items that had been…

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One Man’s Quest To Conquer Hate … One Person At A Time

Posted on by under education, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

This is a post I originally wrote and published in August 2017, and it is one that I think bears repeating today.  Racist incidents, white supremacy and white nationalist groups, have been on the rise of late, fueled by a racist president and religious groups who somehow think their god prefers pale-skinned people.  Episodes of white police murdering unarmed Black people, for no reason, and getting away with it have become frequent events.  It seems to me we are moving in the wrong direction, my friends.  But one man is doing his part to try to bridge the racial divide, to help people understand that we are all the same, that skin colour does not make a person better or worse than any other.  I have added a few things to the original post, including a Ted-x Talks video that I think you’ll find interesting.

This is the post that I originally wrote for this week’s Good People post, but then I had second thoughts. I had quite an internal debate with myself about whether or not this man actually fit the profile.  In past posts to the category, I have highlighted people who gave of their time or money to help people in a more direct sort of way than this person is doing. I have also tried to avoid conflict, controversy and politics in my ‘good people’ posts. This is where my debate came into play.  I nearly scuttled this post altogether, but it kept nagging at me, and an inner voice told me I needed to write it. Mr. Daryl Davis has not adopted special needs kids, he has not set up foundations to help feed the poor, he has not built homes for people in need. What he has done that qualifies him for the designation ‘good people’ is quite different than the norm, yet I find it timely, in light of recent events.  So, I let my instincts lead the way, and while I have not included him in the ‘good people’ category,  I definitely DO consider him to be a good people, and as such, I want to share with you what Mr. Davis has done and is doing. So, please allow me to introduce to you R&B and blues musician, author, actor and bandleader, Mr. Daryl Davis!

Daryl Davis is a talented blues pianist who has played with the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Percy Sledge and many others of Rock ‘n Roll, Jazz, Blues, and even Country music fame.  While it isn’t his music that is the focus of this post, it was music that opened the door for what he has done.  But first, let us go back just a bit to when Daryl was ten years old.

At age 10, Daryl joined a boy scout troop in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was the only black child in the troop, but that didn’t matter to the other kids, for they had not yet begun to see the world in terms of colour.  One day, young Daryl was proudly carrying the flag, with his troop, in a statewide parade to commemorate the ride of Paul Revere when the crowd began throwing rocks and bottles at him. His first thought was that perhaps the crowd did not like boy scouts.  But then he realized he was the only boy being targeted, and he soon found out that it was the colour of his skin that people did not like. This was Daryl’s introduction to racism, and it sparked a lifetime of curiosity about those attitudes, a curiosity that drove Daryl to do what he did, what he does.  And what, you ask, does he do?

The headline for the article in NPR reads:

How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes

For the past 30 years, Davis, a black man, has spent time befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. He says once the friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided. Since Davis started talking with these members, he says 200 Klansmen have given up their robes.

How did it start?  I shall let Mr. Davis explain in his own words:

“I was playing music — it was my first time playing in this particular bar called the Silver Dollar Lounge and this white gentleman approached me and he says, “I really enjoy you all’s music.” I thanked him, shook his hand and he says, “You know this is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.” I was kind of surprised that he did not know the origin of that kind of music and I said, “Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of style?” He’s like, “Well, I don’t know.” I said, “He learned it from the same place I did. Black, blues, and boogie-woogie piano players.” That’s what that rockabilly, rock ‘n roll style came from.” He said, “Oh, no! Jerry Lee invented that. I ain’t ever heard no black man except for you play like that.” So I’m thinking this guy has never heard Fats Domino or Little Richard and then he says, “You know, this is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man?”

Well, now I’m getting curious. I’m trying to figure out, now how is it that in my 25 years on the face of this earth that I have sat down, literally, with thousands of white people, had a beverage, a meal, a conversation or anybody else, and this guy is 15 to 20 years older than me and he’s never sat down with a black guy before and had a drink. I said, “How is that? Why?” At first, he didn’t answer me and he had a friend sitting next to him and he elbowed him and said, “Tell him, tell him, tell him,” and he finally said, “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

I just burst out laughing because I really did not believe him. I thought he was pulling my leg. As I was laughing, he pulled out his wallet, flipped through his credit cards and pictures and produced his Klan card and handed it to me. Immediately, I stopped laughing. I recognized the logo on there, the Klan symbol and I realized this was for real, this guy wasn’t joking. And now I’m wondering, why am I sitting by a Klansman?

But he was very friendly, it was the music that brought us together. He wanted me to call him and let him know anytime I was to return to this bar with this band. The fact that a Klansman and black person could sit down at the same table and enjoy the same music, that was a seed planted. So what do you do when you plant a seed? You nourish it. That was the impetus for me to write a book. I decided to go around the country and sit down with Klan leaders and Klan members to find out: How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”

That encounter happened in 1983, and since then Davis has made it his life’s mission to promote understanding, because as he says, “when two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting”. What he does may not seem like much to some, but in my mind, he is doing his part to change the attitudes of the bigots and haters, one person at a time, using words, music and intellect rather than rocks, bottles, guns and cars as weapons.  Think about it for a minute … what if every one of us who believe people should not be judged by the colour of their skin were able to sit down with just one member of a white supremacist group and, through open, honest dialog, help that person to understand that we are all a part of the human race?

In 1998, Mr. Davis wrote a book, Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan, where he recounts some of his experiences.  For example, the time when one Klansman told Davis that “All black people have a gene in them that makes them violent.”  Davis recalls …

“After a time I said, ‘You know, it’s a fact that all white people have within them a gene that makes them serial killers. Name me three black serial killers.’ He could not do it. I said ‘you have the gene. It’s just latent.’ He said, ‘Well that’s stupid.’ I said, ‘It’s just as stupid as what you said to me.’ He was very quiet after that and I know it was sinking in.”

Before you say what I know you are thinking, no, I am not wearing rose-coloured glasses, am not a Pollyanna.  I realize that the majority of bigots will not be swayed by conversation alone, but I DO think some will.  Often hate and bigotry are based on a lack of understanding, a fear of that which is different.  Mr. Davis has set out to show that people, all people, are really not so different when you get down to the basics. I DO applaud Mr. Davis for the courage to do what he has done, and continues to do.  His approach is the very antithesis of what we see coming out of our own federal government and many of the evangelical churches today.

Mr. Davis was the guest speaker at a Ted-x Talk in 2018, and I’ve included the video here.  Granted, it is a bit lengthy at just over 18 minutes, but I think it is well worth watching … at least please watch the first few minutes.

My initial reason for thinking of Daryl Davis as a good person doing good things still stands … he is doing his part to remove hate from our society, one person at a time.  This is a man whose hand I would like to shake someday.

The Bright Spots in 2020: Yes, There Were Some

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, cartoons, Election 2020, Environmental Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

The year 2020 will likely go down as one of the worst in the history of the United States, however … there were bright spots!  Our friend TokyoSand has spent hours and hours digging for the best stories from the past year, and she has done one fantastic job of it!  Please take a few minutes to read her wonderful post, reminding us that all was not lost in this year of the pandemic.

year-in-review

We are very close to putting 2020 behind us, but before we do, let’s take one last look back. Now if you’re thinking this is going to be a dreary look at everything that went wrong, you would be wrong. This list is all about the bright spots of light that appeared throughout the year, including some entries I received from my Twitter friends, plus a handful of editorial cartoons I liked. Let’s take a look:

January

The Supreme Court affirmed that cities may not criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of experiencing homelessness.

When Trump authorized the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani (which he may not have had the legal authority to do), anti-war protests were held in over 70 cities and calls from activists poured into Congress. Politicians from both parties, notably in the Senate, pushed back against the administration and passed a resolution to limit Trump’s war powers.

Read TokyoSand’s entire post!

A Few Words Found …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Political commentary, Rants

You’ll remember yesterday afternoon when I told you I couldn’t find my words … I think I found some of them, but it seems this batch is smaller than I had on Sunday.  At any rate … I shall see what I can make with the words I do have and perhaps by tomorrow the rest will turn up somewhere.

On a personal note …

My granddaughter Natasha, aka Miss Goose, gave me her Christmas list last week and the very first thing on the list was … a donation to Black Lives Matter.  This kid … she’s 25 now … she just makes me so damn proud of her.  I feel tears welling every time I look at that list.  The next item on the list, of course, is a new computer (that I just ordered, but don’t tell her), followed by a couple of shirts and a long list of books.  But how many people do you know who start their wishlist with a donation to anybody, let alone such a worthy cause?  I just had to give some kudos here to a young woman with a heart of pure gold.

Oil.  Alaska.  Wildlife.  Asshole.

It would appear that Donald Trump plans to leave as his ‘legacy’ a 21st century “scorched earth” policy as he leaves the White House, hopefully forever.  Numerous things have come onto my radar that he and his nasty band of cronies are attempting to enact prior to January 20th.  For starters, the “Trump administration”, aka Donald Trump, announced yesterday that they are planning to rush through the sale of leases to oil companies that would achieve Trump’s long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The Wildlife Refuge … REFUGE, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a place that provides shelter or protection”.  Animals, some on the brink of extinction, would be murdered in order for oil companies to make more profit!  According to Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League …

“This lease sale is one more box the Trump administration is trying to check off for its oil industry allies.  But it is disappointing that this administration until the very end has maintained such low regard for America’s public lands, or the wildlife and Indigenous communities that depend on them.”

Disappointing?  No, it goes well beyond disappointment.  Disappointment is when your favourite restaurant is out of fish ‘n chips … this is infuriating, unconscionable, rage-inducing!

The Arctic refuge is one of the last vast expanses of wilderness in the United States, 19 million acres that for the most part are untouched by people, home instead to wandering herds of caribou, polar bears and migrating waterfowl. It has long been prized, and protected, by environmentalists, but Trump has boasted that opening it to oil development was among the most significant of his efforts to expand domestic fossil fuel production.

We. Don’t. Need. The. Damn. Oil.  Somebody please, turn a few dozen polar bears loose on this moron and let them have him for supper!  Truth is, it isn’t and never was about the U.S. needing that oil – it is and always was about the fossil fuel industry and their profits … men who already sit on billions of dollars of wealth, while some of us struggle to put food on the table.  DAMN you, Donald Trump … just DAMN YOU.

How to make the pandemic even worse … hire Scott Atlas!

In just under a week, the United States went from 10 thousand cases to over 11 thousand, and we are on track to hit 12 thousand within a few days.  Yesterday, we had 162,149 new cases, the day before 146,544.  We lead the world in both coronavirus cases and deaths.

Scott Atlas, who I have mentioned before, is the highly un-qualified senior advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, a position that was once occupied by the very well-qualified Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Whereas Dr. Fauci’s entire career has been dedicated to the study of viruses and immunology, Atlas is a neuroradiologist … nothing to do with communicable diseases. Whereas Dr. Fauci cares about human life, Atlas cares only about licking Trump’s boots.

bootlicker

In the absence of federal guidance, states’ governors are taking the virus seriously and doing what needs to be done to keep the people in their state safe … or as safe as is reasonably possible.  One such governor is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who, concerned by the recent spike in cases announced Sunday a three-week pause on indoor dining, in-person learning and several other activities.  So, what did Scott Atlas do?  Rather than support the governor in her effort to keep people safe, he tweeted …

“The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters #StepUp.”

Freedom matters … indeed it does, but somehow, being free once your dead, or lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a multitude of machines, somehow pales in comparison to being alive.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Monday that Atlas’ call to action represented a “grave concern” and warned that it could provoke violence in the state …

“These public health orders are absolutely necessary to preserve human life.  But once again, here you have members of the Trump administration that are so much more hurtful than they are helpful.”

Atlas, a physician with no expertise in infectious diseases or epidemiology, has won favor in the White House in recent months by advocating against coronavirus restrictions and downplaying the disease’s threat.  He has also publicly attacked Anthony Fauci, accusing the nation’s top infectious disease expert of stoking fears about the pandemic for political purposes ahead of the presidential election earlier this month.  One of Trump’s worst choices, one who did not require Senate confirmation, and one who ought to be stoned in the public square for his hideous disregard of our lives, along with his boss!

Well … puff puff puff … it seems I found enough words to make a post, yes?  And now, I think to soothe my own jangled psyche, I will go find a song for this morning’s music post.

Welcome To 21st Century America

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Take a look at this picture …

cop-boy

Touching, isn’t it?  Well, before you get all teary-eyed, you should know what really happened.  The boy was not wandering around Philadelphia during the protests — protests of the shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr. by Philadelphia police.  This young boy was, in fact, riding in a car driven by his mother, Rickia Young, when she was confronted by Philadelphia police officers. Her ‘crime’?  She was trying to make a U-turn to get away from the area where the violence between protestors and police was occurring.

According to CBS News …

A video of the incident appears to show the boy and his mother being pulled from their vehicle and being separated. The clip then appears to show the woman being assaulted by officers.

Attorneys Riley H. Ross III and Thomas O. Fitzpatrick, who are representing Young in a civil case, both called out the union. Ross tweeted the photo is “a lie.”

“The only thing that could make what they did out there on that night any more reprehensible than what it already was, was how they followed it up by attempting to use it as some type of propaganda and spin it in through some type of positive thing for the police department,” Fitzpatrick told CBS News.

A short clip taken from a nearby building showed officers swarming an SUV and hitting it with weapons. The video shows officers dragging the driver, who Fitzpatrick identified as Young, out of the vehicle and beating her. The boy is also seen carried out of the vehicle.

Young was detained, released without charges, and reunited with her son that same night. According to Fitzpatrick, both Young and her son suffered physical injuries from the attack, though he said the “emotional trauma of it all” would be “a much longer process.”

The Philadelphia Police Department told CBS News in a statement that the incident is currently being investigated by the Internal Affairs Unit.  Don’t hold your breath for justice …

You may remember reading about Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Black boy who was shot and killed by Cleveland police on a playground in 2014.

tamir-riceOn November 22, 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann shot Rice within two seconds of arriving at a park where Rice was playing with a toy gun. When Tamir’s 14-year-old sister rushed to her brother’s side, Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback tackled her to the ground, handcuffed her and put her in their cruiser. Tamir Rice died the next day. Neither officer was indicted or fired over the killing.

Loehmann, who had only been with the department for 8 months at the time of the murder, in his previous job as a police officer in the Cleveland suburb of Independence, had been deemed an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.  He resigned in 2012, knowing that his termination was imminent.  Garmback had been credibly accused of using excessive force against a local woman earlier in 2014 when he “placed her in a chokehold, tackled her to the ground, twisted her wrist and began hitting her body.”  The woman’s crime?  She had called police to report a car blocking her driveway.  Neither of these officers were fit to be law enforcement officers.  And yet, neither one has paid a price for killing a child.

Now, six years later, we find out via a whistleblower that last year the Justice Department led by William Barr quietly rejected career prosecutors’ bid to use a grand jury to investigate the murder.

Although, technically, the civil rights investigation remains open, the decision to forgo a grand jury to compel witness testimony or take other investigative steps essentially puts paid to the case, and with the statute of limitations on one of the charges prosecutors considered most seriously set to run out later this year, there is little, if any, hope that the officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, who murdered young Tamir, will ever be punished.

Justice is a funny thing in this country.  The two above situations are not anomalies, not stand-alone events … they are everyday occurrences here.  If you are white, middle-income or better yet, wealthy, you probably won’t be killed by police … you probably won’t even ever be thrown to the ground or placed in a chokehold by police.  If you happen to be Black, or poor … all bets are off.  If you are white and are seen by police driving a brand-new Cadillac, nothing will happen, but if you are Black and are spotted by police driving a brand-new Cadillac, you will be pulled over, and the first question will be, “Where’d you get the car, boy?”

Justice depends on the colour of your skin and it depends on how much money you have.  Plain and simple.  There is a line in the pledge of allegiance that school children are forced to recite that says, “With liberty and justice for all”.  It’s a lie.

Our New Reality

Posted on by under Election 2020, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I first read the following OpEd by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post last week, and didn’t give any thought to posting it here.  There were other fish to fry, and I really don’t like raising red flags any more than is necessary.  But, for nearly a week now, the article has stuck with me, pops into my mind at odd times, so this morning I re-visited it.  One big thing has happened since the article was first published that has given it even more perspective than it originally had:  the debate on Tuesday night.  And so, today I am sharing Mr. Milbank’s column for your perusal.

This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning.

Dana-MilbankOpinion by

Dana Milbank

Columnist

September 25, 2020 at 2:14 p.m. EDT

America, this is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning.

For five years, my colleagues and I have taken pains to avoid Nazi comparisons. It is usually hyperbolic, and counterproductive, to label the right “fascists” in the way those on the right reflexively label the left “socialists.” But this is no longer a matter of name-calling.

With his repeated refusals this week to accept the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock principle that has sustained American democracy for 228 years — President Trump has put the United States, in some ways, where Germany was in 1933, when Adolf Hitler used the suspicious burning of the German parliament to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state.

Overwrought, you say? Then ask Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a top authority on Nazism and Stalinism. “The Reichstag has been on a slow burn since June,” he told me. “The language Trump uses to talk about Black Lives Matter and the protests is very similar to the language Hitler used — that there’s some vague left-wing conspiracy based in the cities that is destroying the country.”

Trump, as he has done before, has made the villain a minority group. He has sought, once again, to fabricate emergencies to justify greater powers for himself. He has proposed postponing elections. He has refused to commit to honoring the results of the election. And now, he proposes to embrace violence if he doesn’t win.

“It’s important not to talk about this as just an election,” Snyder said. “It’s an election surrounded by the authoritarian language of a coup d’etat. The opposition has to win the election and it has to win the aftermath of the election.”

If not? There won’t be another “normal” election for some time, he said. But that doesn’t have to happen, and Snyder is optimistic it won’t. To avoid it, we voters must turn out in overwhelming numbers to deal Trump a lopsided defeat. The military must hold to its oath. Homeland Security police must not serve as Trump’s brownshirts. And we citizens must take to the streets, peacefully but indefinitely, until the will of the people prevails.

“It’s going to be messy,” Snyder said. “He seems pretty sure he won’t win the election, he doesn’t want to leave office,” and he appears to Snyder to have “an authoritarian’s instinct” that he must stay in power or go to prison.

It’s abundantly clear that Trump plans to fabricate an election “emergency.” First, he claimed mail-in balloting, a tried-and-true system, is fraudulent. Now his supporters are trying to harass in-person voters.

When Virginia’s early voting opened this week, Trump supporters descended on a polling station, waving Trump signs and flags, chanting and forming a gantlet through which voters had to walk. When the New York Times reported that this voter intimidation campaign began at a nearby rally featuring the Republican National Committee co-chairman, the Virginia GOP responded mockingly from its official Twitter account: “Quick! Someone call the waaaambulance!”

Let’s be clear. There is only one political party in American politics embracing violence. There is only one side refusing to denounce all political violence. There is only one side talking about bringing guns to the polls; one side attempting to turn federal law-enforcement officials into an arm of a political party. And Trump is trying to use law enforcement to revive tactics historically used to bully voters of color from voting — tactics not seen in 40 years.

Some of what Trump and his lieutenants have been doing is merely unseemly: using the machinery of government to attack previous and current political opponents, likening pandemic public health restrictions to slavery, or threatening to overrule regulators if they question the safety of vaccines.

But embracing violence to resolve democratic disagreement is another matter. Trump embraced the “very fine people” among the homicidal neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He embraced as “very good people” armed protesters who stormed the Michigan Capitol to intimidate lawmakers. He embraced his supporter who allegedly shot and killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin. He embraced the “GREAT PATRIOTS” who drove into Portland, Ore., hurling paintballs and pepper spray at demonstrators. He embraced officers who kill unarmed African Americans, saying they simply “choke” under pressure.

Now he’s rejecting the peaceful transfer of power. Worse: Most Republican officeholders dare not contradict him. The Times reported that of all 168 Republican National Committee members and 26 Republican governors it asked to comment on Trump’s outrage, only four RNC members and one governor responded.

In Federalist 48, James Madison prophetically warned that tyranny could triumph under “some favorable emergency.” In 1933, Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to do just that. Trump now, it appears, is aiming to do likewise.

America, this is our Reichstag moment. We have the power to stop it. Don’t let democracy burn to the ground.

No Justice for Breonna Taylor

Posted on by under Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

March 13th in Louisville, Kentucky.  Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sound asleep when they woke to the sound of their door being broken down and in the dark, they saw three men with guns pointed at them.  Mr. Walker grabbed his own gun from the nightstand and fired a single shot, hitting one of the men in the leg.  The three men then proceeded to fire no less than 22 shots at Breonna and Kenneth, 8 of which found their target in Ms. Taylor’s body, killing her.

The three men were police officers, men hired to protect the public, but instead they killed a valuable member of the public.

Breonna Taylor was an EMT for the city of Louisville, and she also worked at two local hospitals. Taylor was a full-time ER technician for the University of Louisville Jewish Hospital and she worked as needed for Norton Healthcare.  On her Facebook page, Taylor described her love for helping others …

“Working in health care is so rewarding! It makes me so happy when I know I’ve made a difference in someone else’s life!”

So, why did police murder Ms. Taylor?  They were seeking a man they believed was selling drugs, and who, as it turns out, was already in police custody, who did not even live near Ms. Taylor, and they had no reason to believe they would find him in her apartment.  They had obtained what’s called a “no-knock warrant”, yet later they falsely claimed they had knocked several times, identifying themselves as police, and received no answer.  Breonna Taylor, by the way, was Black.  Take a look at the three officers involved …breonna-officersNotice anything?  Three lily-white officers.  None of the officers were wearing body cams, so there is no video footage to clarify.  Ms. Taylor lived for several minutes after the shooting, but the officers waited five minutes before calling an ambulance and in the interim offered no assistance.

Fast forward to yesterday, September 23rd, when only one of the three officers, Brett Hankison, was indicted on three counts of “wanton endangerment” for firing shots that went into another apartment near Ms. Taylor’s, where a pregnant woman, her husband and their five-year-old child were sleeping. Hankison’s bond was set at a measly $15,000, for which he will only need to cough up $1,500. Not a single one of the officers is to be held accountable for murdering an innocent young woman.  No charges were announced against the other two officers who fired shots, and no one was charged for causing Ms. Taylor’s death.  To add insult to injury, one of the officers, Jonathan Mattingly, stated …

“I know we did the legal, moral and ethical thing that night.”

Say WHAT???  How the Sam Hell does he figure it was “legal, moral and ethical” to murder an innocent young woman? This isn’t the wild west where the motto was “shoot first and ask questions later.”  How different do you think it might have gone if the officers had been Black and the victim a young, white woman?

We the People are sick and tired of this bullshit!  Last night in Louisville, some 100 miles south of my home, there were protests calling for justice for Breonna Taylor.  Unfortunately, two police officers were shot in the melee, and while I am sorry there was violence, sorry the officers were shot, I am not surprised.  Both officers are reported to be in stable condition.

We the People have had just about as much of racist police brutality as we’re going to take without fighting back.  We the People want to see these smug white arseholes held accountable for their actions.  We want to see justice; we want police to be trained in matters of racial tolerance.  Until we make genuine progress, until we can go a year without white cops murdering unarmed, innocent Black people, the protests are going to continue, and some will turn violent no matter how many armed goons Donald Trump sends into a city!

Yesterday, there was no justice for Breonna Taylor, there was only a mockery of justice.  Interim Police Chief Robert Schroeder says he fears for the safety of his officers.  If the three officers who murdered Breonna Taylor had been arrested and charged as they should have been, there would be no protests, no violence, and he would not need to fear for the safety of his officers.  Actions have consequences, as we all learned around the age of three when we put our hand on that hot stove.  But for officers Mattingly, Hankison and Cosgrove, the consequences for murder were nil.  Meanwhile, Breonna Taylor is still dead and the world lost a kind, caring human being.breonna-taylor