The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    NYC Cop Shootings: What We Won't Hear

    By NCD on Sat, 12/20/2014 - 9:02pm |

    Two NYC cops, and their killer, joined an average of 82 Americans killed today, and every day, by guns. Brinsley apparently also shot his girlfriend before departing Baltimore for NYC. She survived. If you have seen some web comments you have probably seen the wingnuts of the right are out in force. In interviews on TV they are implying and/or blaming this tragic crime on, Obama, Al Sharpton, Democrat Mayor deBlasio, blacks in general, and of course 'liberals'.

    Anyone who wants to decrease violence and allow police to do their jobs safely and with cooperation of the public condemns this heinous murder of these two cops in NYC.

    Perhaps the worst post-cop brutality riots in US history occurred in 1992 over acquittal of 4 cops in the beating of the late Rodney King, who suffered 11 cranial fractures, kidney and brain damage in his arrest in 1991. 53 deaths resulted from the post-trial riots that caused a billion dollars in damage. They were never blamed on Republican President George H. W. Bush.

    What you will not hear:

    • You will not hear much about how easy it was for the shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, to get a gun, legally or illegally.
    • You will not hear that absolutely anyone in America can legally buy a gun without any background check whatsoever, and that Congress failed to close this loophole in 2013.
    • If Brinsley had a history of mental illness, you will not hear how there was no way for him to receive treatment or get follow-up if he did at one time receive treatment.
    • You will also not hear that if he had been in court and adjudicated mentally ill, he could still buy a gun at a licensed firearms shop: by not checking the 'no' box on the federal ATF form that asks "have you ever been adjudicated mentally ill".

    It will also be forgotten that Eric Garner, the NYC resident who was choked to death by cops and died in July, 2014, and that demonstrators did not take to the streets in force until the December 3rd ruling by the local Staten Island DA that the secret grand jury had decided that no crime had been committed in Garner's death, and no public trial would ever be held.

    The details of that secret proceeding had such a suspicion of prejudice in favor of granting immunity to the 4 cops involved in killing the Garner, that the Attorney General of New York requested, on Dec. 8, that he be granted jurisdiction over all cases where police kill unarmed persons in New York State. This would help avoid the real, or appearance of, bias by local DA's who work with the same cops who they run grand juries on. Governor Cuomo has not replied to that request.

    Comments

    "Anyone who wants to decrease violence and allow police to do their jobs safely and with cooperation of the public condemns this heinous murder of these two cops in NYC."

    They also encourage reasonable gun control.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 12/20/2014 - 9:45pm

    There's a incongruity problem with your blog:

    NYPD is one of the nation's toughest on gun control. Um, gun control tis the reason for stop and frisk! Was created to: find the guns, take them away, reduce the number in circulation, especially in high crime neighborhoods!

    Bloomberg got his cri de coeur on gun control from the NYPD, not the other way around. They have long had special details on tracing where guns come from outside of state and working on solving the "incoming" problem any way they can, as well, lobbying attorney general, legislators,working with FBI, out of state law enforcement, etc. But as long as other states have different laws on buying guns,they are playing a constantly changing game and the NYPD is going to also want stop and frisk and going to yammer about "liberals" taking that tool away from them in bad neighborhoods.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 12/20/2014 - 10:29pm

    About the neighborhood where the cops were killed. Judge for yourself after reading the whole thing. It's idea for stop and frisk, a famously crime-ridden black neighborhood, been one of the toughest challenges to improve for decades, always one of the worst on the crime stats in the past. Now it's finally being eyed for gentrification by the popularity of the surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods.What is preferred: let the crime, guns and poverty stay so tourists can see a bit of old 1980's New York from the safety of a bus? (They certainly can't see that by touring Harlem anymore! It's been moving quickly to upper middle class and higher.) Or keep harassing suspicious young men so that more middle class people are not afraid to buy there?

    Poverty-striken neighborhoods and illegal concealed guns are a real nasty combination, causes a death spiral, figuratively and literally. See Chicago.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 12/20/2014 - 10:53pm

    That's why we need reasonable national gun control laws, you can't draw a line around a neighborhood, a city or a state, and implement anything-frisk etc, and expect to stop gun crime. 

    A guy can get a gun anywhere USA in couple hours drive in and shoot up the place. The US is the only western nation that has 50, 100 or 1000 different gun laws in jurisdictions from states, cities, counties etc.


    by NCD on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 12:00am

    What is amazing about Chicago is that the homicide rate is decreasing

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/19/the-truth-about-chicagos-falling...

    It is also true that there is no evidence that Stop and Frisk decreased crime.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/stop-and-frisk-didnt...


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 12:16am

    From 

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/20/new-york-police-union-mayor_n_6...

     

    The PBA has been highly critical of the mayor's stance on police tactics and his support forprotests about police brutality. The union has also asked its members to ban the mayor from attending officer's funerals.

    Saturday night, the rank and file joined in when police officers deliberately turned their backs on de Blasio as he walked past after visiting with Liu and Ramos' grieving families.


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 12:38am

    That kind of behavior will backfire.  


    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 2:15am

    Fuck the union!  The city attorney should file a grievance with the NLRB against the union for enabling insubordination, viz, the refusal of the rank and file to follow the injunction against using the choke hold and their continued manufacture of misdemeanor marijuana arrests out of citable conduct. (see, eg: http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/cops-gone-wild-13924


    by jollyroger on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 2:53am

    Thanks for the links rmrd.

    Jolly, I recently posted the Citizen Complaint Review Boards most recent report (50+pages) done this summer after the Garner death. It was solely on the use of the chokehold.  They found the 20 year banned chokehold was still used almost every other day by a cop in NYC.

    Of course, cops killing minor suspects within minutes using dangerous procedures banned for 20 years has nothing to do with it all, nor does the fact that any nutcase can easily get access to a gun to shoot anyone they feel like shooting in America.


    by NCD on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 11:47am

    I have to admit, I was totally unprepared for how the actions of one clearly deranged criminal would be used as rhetoric against people who have legitimate grievances with the police.  Not surprised so much by the union rhetoric but by how the local news here is buying into it with all of this "assassination" crap.  They've combined the story with that of a scuffle between cops and protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge last week that they're portraying as an "attack."


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 9:39am

    We realize that prosecutors are biased towards police and slant Grand Juries, we have to note that newspaper reporters also work closely with police. The NYPD Union chief called the choke hold cop a "model" officer despite a history of strip searching two suspects in public. The two men won a ?30K against the NYPD

    When Tamir Rice was gunned down in Cleveland, the initial reaction of one local news outlet was to dig up dirt on the child's parents. Many wondered what that had to do with the death of a child 2-3 seconds after the police arrived. The public only later found out about the erratic behavior of the Clevelend officer involved in the shooting.


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 10:37am

    NYT: "..Part of the investigation, Mr. Bratton said, would be focused on his recent activities, including whether he had taken part in any of the protests.."

    I get the feeling the NYC cop leadership would like some, any, extraneous weak evidence to give to the DA on how anti-police brutality protesters were "co-conspirator assassination accomplices".

    The new suspects could then be arrested and locked up at Rikers for a while (until the case is eventually thrown out in 9-12 months).

    It would play well for the cops on TeeVee News painting protesters as murdering scum, while also intimidating the public from complaining about cop behavior. No one would remember or even know those involved were completely exonerated as it would be on the back pages, if reported at all on TeeVee.


    by NCD on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 11:49am

    If seems to me after reading the whole NYT article this morning that this particular reporter would probably not be buying into such a scenario, as he already clearly demarcates Bratton and De Blasio terminology as not factual but supposition:

    His recent arrest history, mostly in Georgia and Ohio, depicted a man familiar with the criminal use of firearms — but without any apparent acts of serious violence that would have anticipated the sort of premeditated killing of police officers that Mr. Bratton called an “assassination” and that Mayor Bill de Blasio said had been done “execution-style.”

    Mr. Brinsley was arrested on robbery charges in Ohio in 2009 and weapons possession in Georgia, court records showed. Investigators in New York believe he had been in the city as recently as 2011 when he was a suspect in a harassment case.

    Later that year, he was convicted of felony gun possession in Georgia, and sentenced to two years in prison. It was not immediately clear when he was released from custody.

    Followed up with

    Yet even as Mr. Brinsley “indicated” on the account that he was going to attack the police, Mr. Bratton told reporters on Saturday night that the motive for the shooting remained unclear.

    The way quotation marks are used here is with extreme skepticism.

    What the reporter also does seem to be doing is setting up a story line about how it's too easy for hotheads who have already been convicted of weapons charges to get guns.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 12:32pm

    Lost in the discussion is the fact that the gunman attempted to kill his girlfriend before he left Baltimore. this was a man wanting to do harm


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 12:52pm

    CBS: Police Unions, Others Blast De Blasio After Shooting Deaths Of Two NYPD Cops

    How about the girlfriend who got shot first? DeBlasio at fault there too?

    Or just routine 2nd Amendment collateral damage?

    As expected, I have not seen one sentence like "this shows how easy availability of guns to literally anyone, endangers all Americans, even armed and trained cops".

    It's also coming out the shooter had mental health issues.

     


    by NCD on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 1:44pm

    AA I'm not looking at what the reporter is 'buying into'.

    I'm looking at the apparent fact that the NYC cops are champing at the bit to tie this tragedy to the cop protesters.

    Any cop protesters anywhere, in anyway that they can do it, so they can use the 'connection' to deflect all criticism of police, and heap blame for this crime solely on deBlasio.  Thereby suffocating any call by any politician anywhere for examination of cop procedures, cop actions and cop use of force.


    by NCD on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 1:45pm

    Well, my local local news (News 12 The Bronx, there's one for each borough, not the just local NY1) just did a long on-the-street segment talking to people in the Bronx and in Bed Stuy. All people of color, all expressing their sadness, all saying stuff like "cops have families too, right before Christmas, so sad" and from a guy who lives in the project the cops worked on: "this is not good, we don't want those days back." From the coverage I've seen so far, I really wonder whether there is much animosity between the residents of Bed-Stuy and their cops at all, whether they may not feel that the Eric Gardner story of Staten Island has much to do with them (like a far-off foreign country?)

    I noted similar in the main NYTimes report for today's paper, my underlining

    The intersection where the shooting occurred, which is dominated by the Tompkins housing project across the street, is a spot where residents often see police keeping watch. The officers had been assigned to patrol the Tompkins Houses in response to an uptick in violence there this year, Mr. Bratton said.

    The increased police presence had improved the neighborhood, some said. “It’s changed and gotten better through the years,” said Felix Camacho, 40, an airport ramp agent who has lived for eight years on the block where the shooting happened. But other residents worried that the episode on Saturday would inflame relations.

    And in looking that up, I see the Times followed that up this piece for tomorrow:

    Officers’ Deaths Acutely Felt in Brooklyn

    with this photo that expressing similar to what I saw on the TV news covering the daytime, including people leaving flowers at various related places:


    caption: Bernice Cruz, center, and her nephew Steven Delgado took part in a candlelight vigil on Sunday outside of the childhood home of Officer Rafael Ramos in Brooklyn. He and Officer Wenjian Liu were fatally shot on Saturday

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 7:23pm

    Also as reports on the two cops themselves come out, it appears these are not the Dagblog/blogosphere/Ferguson stereotype brutal or hothead or arrogant cops (yes, I plead guilty myself) especially Ramos; my underlining:

    Ramos Was to Graduate as Church Chaplain; Liu Was Married Two Months Ago

    ...New York City police Officer Rafael Ramos was to graduate as a church chaplain this weekend before he was killed by a gunman on Saturday.

    On Sunday, he was mourned by follow congregants at Christ Tabernacle, a red-brick Evangelical Christian church in Queens.

    “He was trying to make a change,” said Jose Ortiz, the 59-year-old head of church’s security, who identified himself as a retired police officer. “He wasn’t just a uniform.”

    Officer Ramos, 40 years old, was described by friends and family Sunday as a devoted father of two sons. Members of his church said he was also a pious man.

    A Facebook page apparently belonging to Officer Ramos was adorned with the quote: “If your way isn’t working, try God’s way,” and said he had studied at a seminary before joining the New York Police Department....

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 7:59pm

    Nice post, NCD. Some sane national gun control would keep every cop safer.

    I am so angry that I could barely get my own blog post about the shootings together. The provocative and crazed statements by the PBA, and now by Giuliani, have me so angry that I need to hold my tongue for a bit until I can be civil. Although clearly, they have no rule like that.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 3:14pm

    COPS LIVES MATTER TOO. WHEN DOES THE PROTEST START?  


    by Resistance on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 4:56pm

    The perpetrator killed himself.

    The ex-girlfriend alerted Baltimore police to the perpetrator's threats.

    The ex-girlfriend was shot by the perpetrator

    The Baltimore police tried to alert the NYPD 

    The warning fax arrived at the time when the shootings occurred 

    The local community is lying tribute at the site of the shooting

    What protest would you like to see?


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 10:09pm

    The violence against the Police was stirred up 

    "No justice, no peace. No racist police!" and "I can't breathe!"

    One only has to look back at your writings and determine; You kept spreading the mistrust of the police  even as you ignored Michael Brown was not a Saint and did attack Officer Wilson and then watch the mayhem ensue, when inflammatory speech was heard  "Burn the B...Down"  .

    You and others did attack the officers in both the Brown and Garner events; even attacking the Grand Jury process.

    Although you didn't use the words PIG, you tried to convince others as you demonized the Officers and Grand jury members because you all felt there was no justice.  

    I wrote and warned about what could happen and was rebuffed by you and others

    When you promote mistrust of THE AUTHORITY, people like  Ismaaiyl Brinsley, get agitated and TAKE YOUR WORDS one step further than peaceful protests.

    Convinced by yours and others words  who chant,  "No justice, no peace. No racist police!" and "I can't breathe!" 

    The cop killer delivered the Justice you and the other protesters felt they couldn't get.  

    Two NYPD cops 'assassinated' in Brooklyn 'revenge' killing ...

    The protestors may not have put the gun in the killers hand, but they encouraged vigilante justice. 


    by Resistance on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 5:43am

    What protest would you like to see?

    Protests by the good citizens, against those who abuse their right to assembly.

    Protests by the good citizens, leading to laws, to control protestors who talk out of both sides of their mouths about only seeking peace, but in actuality, they promote mistrust and bad mouth authority. Leading to anarchy and Cop killers.


    by Resistance on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 5:52am

    You want people to assemble to protest the right of other people to assemble?

    Just as you had no clue of the meaning of "Render unto Caesar", you don't understand the role of Christians to authority. Your confusion about bowing to authority leads you to argue in favor of    agreeing with all authorities. Christians were not bound to agree with the slavery practiced in the United States because there was nothing in the Bible supporting the vicious form of bondage noted on our soil. Christians in Germany were not obligated to agree with the edicts of Hitler. American Christians were not obligated to obey Jim Crow..Christians are not obligated to agree with the killing of unarmed men by police acting in their name.

    Paul himself disobeyed Roman Authority. 

    Your knowledge of the meaning of obeying Authority is flawed.

     


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 11:09am

    Your rants together with others; against authority, contributed to the deaths of two officers.

    In every discussion you want to dredge up other arguments, other than the one I presented. 


    by Resistance on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 12:59pm

    Resistance, you brought up submission to Authority. I bring up examples of where it falls apart. I also note Paul's defying Authority.

    Several months ago a lone wolf who happening to be White shot two PA State Police officers. Now a lone wolf who happens to be Black kills two NYPD officers. The protests against police shooting unarmed men is not the fault of the protesters, de Blasio, or me. You on the other hand are OK with the Authority killings. Brown should not have died. The prosecutor allowed the Grand a Jury to here testimony from a racist woman who was not at the scene. Garner should not have died. A banned choke hold was applied.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 1:19pm

    Submission to authority is RESPECT

    You don't have to like the officer but you better well Respect the Authority granted to the officer  

    Brown should not have died.

    He wouldn't have died either had he RESPECTED the Law.  He may have been arested but not dead.

    Many in the community are not about to excuse the criminal nature of some, because of their skin color and claims of police bias. Obey the Laws, 

    who happens to be Black 

    You write this as though it is a rare event that a Black kills another?.  

    Your last comment was so full of bitterness.

    Slavery? When does your hatred end. for the sins of the past?  More people must atone until you are satisfied? 

    As I wrote earlier I am afraid justice is not what many seek; but vengeance and this cop killer just executed two police officers in the name of vengeance and I am not surprised to what lengths many will go to excuse this as a lone wolf incident.

    As for the matter of Paul' letter about Authority, Your thoughts are not backed up by supporting evidence.


    by Resistance on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 4:45pm


    by Michael Maiello on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 5:29pm

    Paul defied Authority

    You are afraid that justice is not what people seek. We cannot use you as a standard because you are always afraid. The colonists defied the Authority of the King of England when they rebelled, were they in error? 

    It is being called a lone wolf incident because it is. Do you have any evidence that the shooter was part of a group?

    The police unions defy authority by challenging the dismissal of bad cops from police forces. The police unions want the bad cops on the street. The unions are complicit in abuse by police. 


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 5:55pm


    What else we won't hear . . .

    Why were these two unfortunate souls NOT on heightened awareness of their surroundings when sitting in their patrol car when "ambushed". This question is in light of the Associated Press report that the two officers "...were on special patrol doing crime reduction work in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn."

    And yes, I realize that sounds quite crass, but... there is not one cop I know personally who hasn't said that they realize they have a target on their back every moment of their lives.

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 5:44pm

    In what way would "heightened awareness" have saved their lives?


    by barefooted on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 6:00pm

     Please... Don't take this personally . . .

    If you must ask such a question then you would obviously not make a very good candidate for a position as a street cop. You see, constant heightened awareness is the bedrock to what's commonly referred to in training as situation awareness. The following comes from Wikipedia, because I'm lazy.

    In the law enforcement context, situation awareness involves keeping eyes and ears open and evaluating what is happening on the way to a specific task, remaining fully aware of one's surroundings during the commission of a task, and retaining one's awareness when exiting a specific task. Situational awareness in a law enforcement setting seeks to ensure that a police officer does not become focused and engrossed on a specific task or problem to the exclusion of being aware of approaching potential hazards or to the exclusion of being aware of other tasks of higher priority. Situational awareness is a 24/7 process and policy laid down in Officer training.

    There is no guarantee that these two officers that were brutally murdered would have survived this attack. Although, from all reports I've read, they we're shot through the passenger side window and they never even knew what hit them and they returned no fire.

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 7:58pm

    As for my not being a good candidate for a career in law enforcement, my CSI brother-in-law and former police lieutenant ex-husband would likely agree with you.

    Perhaps you misunderstood me. I was not questioning the need for, nor definition of, heightened awareness. I merely asked how you thought it would have specifically helped these specific officers. Because, in my untrained opinion, no amount of situational awareness could have saved them from four sudden gunshots through a window on an otherwise normal afternoon.


    by barefooted on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 8:53pm

    Heightened Awareness?  20 year old, Black male 

    Why are the cops always picking on us?

    Some people would rather have Officer Friendly, stand down from his "heightened awareness"


    by Resistance on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 6:04am

    Bed Stuy is not what it was when Spike Lee made Do The Right Thing.  It's not really a bad neighborhood anymore.  Most of what I've seen there, and I almost rented an apartment there in 2002, has been really nice brownstones and expensive cars parked on the street.  It's gentrified.


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 6:07pm

     Something else to keep an eye on . . .

    This is the Timeline I found from the New York Times...

    By AP -  DEC. 21, 2014

    Timeline of Events Before and After NY Cop Deaths

    (my underline)

    2:10 p.m. - Police in Baltimore call the 70th precinct in New York, advising the NYPD that the phone of a suspect in the Owings Mills shooting is pinging in Brooklyn. The two police departments discuss the Instagram posts during the call, and a wanted poster of Brinsley is faxed to the NYPD with information about Brinsley.

    2:45 p.m. - Brinsley walks up to two people on the street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, asks them to follow him on Instagram and tells them, "Watch what I'm going to do."

    2:47 p.m. - Brinsley approaches the passenger window of a marked police car and opens fire, striking Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in the head, killing them. He takes off running as officers pursue him to a nearby subway station, where he shoots himself in the head.

    2:50 p.m. - The Baltimore Police Department sends a teletype with the same information contained on the wanted poster to the NYPD's real-crime center at police headquarters.

    http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2014/images/12/21/brinsley-poster.jpg

     

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 9:02pm

    On the police in Baltimore being tipped off to Brinsley's anti-cop threats:

    It was one of Thompson's friends, Baltimore County Police said, who alerted them Saturday afternoon to troubling Instagram posts the friend believed came from Brinsley.

    Thompson, was of course, Shaneka Thompson, the former girlfriend Brinsley had just shot in Baltimore, and from whom he stole her phone.

    Seems like 'the black (Shaneka and friend?) community' was trying to help cops stop him before he shot someone else.  Brinsley, with a history of mental illness, an arrest record as long as your arm, and a gun.


    by NCD on Sun, 12/21/2014 - 9:22pm

     Yes... Very good point . . .

    I've read that CNN report since posting my timeline post above. And that is a fine point you've brought up.

    My point here about the timeline has to do with the question that if the 70th Precinct in New York was contacted by phone and was also sent a FAX of the above wanted poster a full 35 minutes before the shooting, DID the precinct put out a radio call to all the cops on the beat?

    The CNN article does say this:

    While New York Police Department notifications about the warning were going out, Boyce said, Brinsley ambushed two officers in their patrol car, shooting them dead.

     

    How do these notifications actually get disseminated, by smoke signals?

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 1:00am

    This shooting in NYC has been a major topic of discussion amongst my family this Xmas.  While I can see reasonable complaints on both sides, the one issue I find to be integral to inspiring the protests, is the determined stonewall put up by the police to never question the actions of one of their members, even in the most blatant cases of abuse.   I understand the PBA is there to support their members, bur I think a large part of people's frustration is the way they use a full PR assault to always immediately assert that the police have acted appropriately.   If the police didn't always insist that their members are always justified in their actions, maybe the public would be a little more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in difficult situations.   It's the insistence that they are always right, and that any questioning of their tactics makes you anti-police that makes people angry and frustrated and fuels people's emotions. 


    by MrSmith1 on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 8:35am

    I guess everyone has their take on what happened here.  The men and women of the NYPD are represented by some very tough unions.  These are unions, I submit, that enjoy widespread support among the membership.  These are unions that are representing police officers who, rightly or wrongly, are angry, and really angry.

    Bad things were said about the Mayor.  Unfair and terrible things.  Cry me a river.  He's a politician--that's his job to take shit.

    I like unions that represent their members, even when I don't condone all of their tactics.  And, as stated by others, these are unions that oppose the proliferation of guns more than any of us.

     


    by Bruce Levine on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 9:12am

    I understand that, and that, it seems to me is the conundrum.  The unions are there to represent their members and they do it aggressively.  But unlike most unions, what they are pressing for most strongly, it seems to me, is not simply a demand for better working conditions or higher salaries, but a demand for infallibility, which in cases of life and death and dangerous, threatening situations where decisions have to be made in the blink of an eye, seems like a very unreasonable request.  I think most people can respect the idea that the Police are only human and that they have a very difficult job to do.   They make huge sacrifices and perform heroic acts in very difficult situations ... but they can also make mistakes.  It's the attitude that if you question our authority, you don't care about the lives of the police that makes me squeamish.  That's unfair and encourages people to be suspicious of all the actions of the police.   Of course I want the Police to be there to maintain law and order, but when mistakes are made, or they do bad things, I don't want it swept under the rug and be accused of hating the cops and wanting anarchy and the rule of the mob simply for asking for some accountability.    My feeling is, the union needs to lower their rhetoric and stop framing all criticism of their members' actions as coming from some kind of radical anti-police bias. 

     


    by MrSmith1 on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 10:03am

    At the risk of receiving Bruce's ire, it seems to me that many unions seek something similar to the "demand for infallibility" that you mention. I remember in particular being disappointed with the teachers' union (when I was a teacher) that they made it so hard to fire bad teachers. I didn't like it with teachers, and I hate it even more for cops. I'm hoping that many other good cops feel the same way that I did, but if they do the vast majority of them appear to be silent. (That said, I wasn't exactly raising a ruckus myself.)


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 12:28pm

    Wouldn't you say that Infallibility in regards to teachers is a  bit different than with the police?  In how many split second life and death situations do teachers find themselves in the course of their teaching careers?


    by MrSmith1 on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 12:44pm

    I would absolutely agree with you that there is a difference. With police, mistakes can take someone's life in a second. With teachers, mistakes at worst usually operate over the course of months and can decrease quality of life, but are very unlikely to be fatal. (Even the teachers' unions aren't typically going to defend the most egregious mistakes, whether sexual or violent in nature - which might be another difference.)


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 2:49pm

    The problem is that police unions argue for the retention of officers found to be operating below department stand by the local police department. The officer applying the banned choke hold was described as a model officer despite payout for strip searching two men. The public has no reason to trust police unions.


    by Iphonermrd (not verified) on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 3:17pm

    Mr. Lynch and the police union are 'giving de Blasio shit', and throwing cop blood on him, to make an example out of him. This is not a union action over pay, benefits, or overtime rules.

    The goal here is to intimidate politicians across the nation from asking questions and seeking improvements in cop training, cop procedures, cop use of force, and as the NY state DA has said, examining and changing who investigates a cop killing of the unarmed.

    The Lynch method is not one that would be used by anyone who believes in justice or the law. It is not a way to improve relations and trust between cops and the public.

    Lynch, whose career and public employment is in law and justice, describes a police force that believes they are not to be held accountable by anyone.


    by NCD on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 10:17am

    Well, NCD, if you say so that must be precisely what Mr. Lynch is giving deBlasio shit for.  So glad you told me that.  Shut my mouth.


    by Bruce Levine on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 10:28am

    The lynching movement is the plan.

    The goal here is to intimidate politicians across the nation

    Intimidate Government to meet the demands of the protestors or else all hell will be unleashed.

    Inexcusable: Even though M Brown did rob the store owner, and did try to get the gun away from the officer, everyone but the protesters, rioters and looters, got it wrong.  

    To some; Officer Wilson should have just let Brown kill him and there would be no civil unrest.

    The message? Change the laws to exclude Blacks from investigations, because everyone knows Blacks have been abused since the days of slavery. 

    The Lynch method is not one that would be used by anyone who believes in justice or the law. It is not a way to improve relations and trust between cops and the public.

    You can say that again, It's all about vengeance.  

    Lynch Method

    Agitators: We don't need no stinkin Grand Juries, 

    No Justice No peace 

    Last days ...... Genocide ?

    I would show a rope, but civilized folks might find it offensive.

    If  the Authority doesn't withstand this assault, the threat of vigilante justice overwhelming the police; as was displayed in Ferguson is real  

    What side are you on Mr. Politician? Throw a few policeman under the bus to restore calm in the vigilante community? 


    by Resistance on Mon, 12/22/2014 - 5:31pm