In response to the post about the mainstream news media still presenting the deaths of Freddie Gray and Mike Brown as “murders” despite all evidence and judicial law enforcement determinations to the contrary, Matthew B raised some interesting questions that I’ve pondered myself.
Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “If The News Media Won’t Resist Publicizing Big Lies, What Hope Is There?:
I don’t understand why the Black Lives Matters focuses in on the cases that don’t make their point. They should be using Philando Castile as a rallying cry, not Freddie Gray.
I also don’t get what is wrong with most white people. How can we have shootings like Daniel Shaver and think there is nothing wrong? We’ve got a police training issue where an unreasonable level of fear pervades contact with the public and a criminal justice problem where officers are given the King’s pass because too many people view police officers as the good guys no matter what. The BLM crowd is unethical in its conduct in trying to make their point. We’ve got the other side who’s unethically blind and want to ignore that the problem exists.
Ethics Alarms 
Being a police officer involves making split second decisions whether you or an innocent bystander is at risk. Working in a department where one of your fellow officers has been shot or killed might be stressful enough for you to decide to use lethal force when in hindsight, things could have been handled differently. Police often come in contact with possible perpetrators who may have a history of violence or may have impaired judgement due to street drug use or mental illness. It’s easy to second guess cops who are unfortunate enough to get involved in these situations as an outsider: But even if there’s a body cam on the officer, you really don’t know all the circumstances. That’s why when a gun is discharged, there is always an investigation.
Hard to excuse the Mesa fiasco, though, don’t you think?
One of the big problems with bad cops is the police unions. The good officers know who the bad officers are. They are also powerless to stop them. The police union protects the bad cops. You might ask why the good cops don’t elect union leaders who will get rid of the bad cops? Well, union elections tend to work like Democratic Party Primaries. They are all for show and the union leaders have complete control.
I had the misfortune of meeting one of the bad cops in my town. Later, it became apparent everyone else knew he was a bad cop. You know the department knows he is a bad cop by what he is driving. Most of the other police officers are driving newish Tahoes. A few rookies are driving the last of the Crown Vics (the ones still in good shape). This guy is driving a Crown Vic that looks like it should have been sold off years ago. It has big chunks of paint missing and those parts are covered in rust. The lights on the light bar are faded, foggy, and have chunks of plastic missing. I thought it was a fake police car until I saw who was driving it. So, the department knows he is a bad cop, the other cops know he is a bad cop, the department is ‘hazing’ him to trying to make him quit. But the department can’t fire him even in a ‘fire at will’ state.
We won’t be able to clean up the police forces until we get rid of the police unions.
The problem is, by using Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown as a rallying cry, they killed their own credibility. Martin and Brown were both killed by people they assaulted. Furthermore, anyone who didn’t go along with the BLM narrative – a narrative that most reasonable people concluded was BS – was viewed as racist.
If someone falsely calls me a racist after I call out what I believe to be BS, I am not inclined to believe them on other matters. Simple as that.
Castile and Shaver paid the price for the decision to make Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown the faces of BLM.
Of course the police are the good guys no matter what. Read this.
http://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658028/massachusetts-gun-control-laws-licenses
Would the police have this kind of discretion if they were not always the good guys?
This is exactly what the 1968 Gun Control Act intended. You can make it so that only the RIGHT kind of people can own guns. You can’t allow the WRONG kind of people to have guns, now. wink, wink
Because at it’s heart BLM is just a front for Leftist agitation. Alot of the legitimate arguments BLM could make ought to find natural allies in conservative groups like the NRA. But, as it’s just a Leftist agitation group to keep the African American population angry but never appeased (as most Leftist action is designed to do), BLM will never be guided to latching onto real arguments.
Thanks Jack!
Well done on the COTD
Matthew B wrote, “I don’t understand why the Black Lives Matters focuses in on the cases that don’t make their point. They should be using Philando Castile as a rallying cry, not Freddie Gray.”
The reason they are using shootings other than Castile is because Castile actually had a firearm and therefore doesn’t fit their profile. It’s simple, the rallying outcry is that completely innocent unarmed black people are being shot because they are black victims and even though Castile was black and a victim of mistaken intent he was actually armed with a firearm and as such it doesn’t fit the profile of being a black person shot while unarmed.
It’s easy for Black Lives Maters to gin up massive amounts of emotional anti-police or anti-white hate when an “unarmed” black person is shot because the mindset of Black Lives Maters is that any unarmed black person is 100% innocent therefore the police are automatically wrong regardless of the circumstances.
Matthew B wrote, “We’ve got a police training issue where an unreasonable level of fear pervades contact with the public…”
That’s WAY too generalized.
1. There are thousands and thousands of police officers in the United States that deal with the public including armed and unarmed suspects every single day and they don’t just start shooting. I don’t think there is a general training problem, I think there are a few police that don’t react as the untrained civilian population might expect. If there were a wide-spread serious training problem in police forces across the United States members of the public would be dropping from bullet wounds all around us from the hoards of flying police bullets.
2. There is not “an unreasonable level of fear pervades contact with the public”, that’s an assumption that’s actually false. I have friends that are police officers and I can tell you that that assumption is just plain wrong. There is a reasonable level of procedural caution when the police have contact with the general public but unreasonable level of fear pervading the police, nope.
3. When the police are dealing with a person that’s suspected of being armed or known to be armed they become acutely aware of small things that can be perceived as reaching for a firearm. Reaching for a firearm is definitely considered threatening especially when it’s known that firearm(s) are present.
I’ll let a professional writer express this far more eloquently than I can.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/stephon-clark-shooting-police-should-show-more-discipline-restraint/
Where is David French’s analysis wrong? His piece certainly had me thinking hard and swayed me.
For the record Matthew I’m glad Mr. French got you and others to think but we all have to follow through with critical thinking and not stop thinking at the end of the article.
I for one don’t promote any author, including David French, that makes assumed statements like this when talking about police training “But rather than emphasizing odds, probabilities, and patterns, training sometimes fills cops’ minds with ideas like, “The worst can always happen” or, “Any encounter can go bad.” They’re not the same thing as saying, “Every encounter is equally likely to go bad.” “. Then later Mr. French goes on to fill the minds of readers with completely outrageous hyperbolic statements like this one, “One of the reasons Janez was afraid was that he thought Castile had disregarded the life of a five-year-old by “giving her secondhand smoke.” So naturally, he then decided to fire his gun into a car containing that very same five-year-old.”. No Mr. French you pompous asshole that’s not the deciding factor for shooting the known armed individual that apparently wasn’t following instructions regarding a known firearm it was just another relevant observation, a relevant piece of the assessment pie. Also Mr French immediately followed that statement up with “In reality, Janez panicked, and while that is understandable, it is not a justification for shooting Castile.” I find it interesting that Mr. French made his point about justification based on his previous hyperbolic bull shit and completely failed to tell his readers that Yanez was actually acquitted on all charges.
It was obvious to me that David French had an agenda when he wrote that piece.
I’m not buying the comparison between soldiers in a combat zone to police on the streets and his story about the unknown group of persons lying prone in a ditch is not a reasonable comparison to a perceived active threat. Those soldiers did the right thing to investigate what didn’t immediately appear to be an active threat. I’m x-Army and if an unknown person in a combat zone that I knew to be armed with a concealed firearm was apparently reaching for that firearm and not following instructions to stop pulling something from an unseen area especially after I tried to stop him pulling out with my non-shooting hand, similar to the Castile engagement, that person would be perceived as an immediate threat to me and my unit and that person would be promptly dealt with with extreme prejudice.
Lastly; no one is claiming that police are perfect – no one is; however, when people don’t appear to be following instructions from a police officer regarding a known firearm and the police perceive that firearm as a direct threat there are consequences. After Castile told the officer he had a firearm he should have had both of his hands clearly visible at all times and he should have asked what the officer how to proceed. Castile’s actions were not logical and definitely not safe. People that conceal carry should carry their wallet with their ID and concealed carry permit in their left shirt pocket, have their ID and CC permit pulled out waiting for the officer, toss their wallet on the dashboard, and keep their hands on the steering wheel so everything is clearly visible when the officer approaches and don’t reach to any non visible areas so the officer doesn’t perceive a possible threatening situation.
I find it interesting that Mr. French made his point about justification based on his previous hyperbolic bull shit and completely failed to tell his readers that Yanez was actually acquitted on all charges.
Now we go full circle right back to my original point: We’re going to have a massive gulf between black and white America while that’s true – that Yanez should be in prison and he’s not. (Yeah, I acknowledge that’s my opinion and nothing more than an opinion.) I see a huge problem and you don’t think anything is wrong. It does make me curious, you state you were in the Army; are you a LEO too?
I’ll throw out a very hyperbolic statement: Timothy McVeigh was a highly successful terrorist. His grievance was that the federal government was violating the civil rights of right wing wackos. He cited two events specifically, one where law enforcement shot first and lied about it, and another where a gross over-reaction killed many needlessly. He committed a heinous terrorist act killing 168 federal employees. How did the government react? Calmer heads prevailed, realizing that there were more like McVeigh and the best way to stop those inclined to emulate them, was stop violating people’s civil rights, even the fring wackos. McVeigh’s chilling statement when executed was “They treat me like a trophy, like they got me, their gonna kill me, and we won. They didn’t win. In the crudest terms, 168 to 1.”
I see a parallel to BLM. Police officers are questioning “Why are people willing to die trying to kill us?” But they don’t want the answer because they don’t want the self introspection that admits any level of fault on their side. I hope somebody wakes up and figures this out, because so far those in law enforcement aren’t getting it.
No Matthew, I’m not a law enforcement officer. Why do you ask?
More tomorrow when Ihave more time.
Matthew wrote, “Now we go full circle right back to my original point: We’re going to have a massive gulf between black and white America…”
I’m not sure where you made that point before? I comprehended your point as being “We’ve got a police training issue where an unreasonable level of fear pervades contact with the public…”.
By the way Matthew, we’re not going to have, we already have a massive gulf between black and white America, I’ve seen it up close and personal. The gulf is created when the whole of any group is condemned based on the perceived actions of a few and it’s evidence of moral bankruptcy that’s supported only by ignorance, bigotry, and prejudice.
I have no problem with you having the opinion that Yanez should be in prison, my response to that opinion is to ask you to support your opinion by explaining in your own words why he should be in prison?
Matthew wrote, “I see a huge problem and you don’t think anything is wrong.”
Yes you pretty clearly stated that you think the problem is “a police training issue where an unreasonable level of fear pervades contact with the public” and I think you are engaging in condemning of the whole based on the perceived actions of a few. In addition, I never said that nothing is wrong, in fact I clearly stated that “no one is claiming that police are perfect – no one is”. The problem with condemning the whole based on the perceived actions of a few is that the evidence of the whole simple does not support the condemnation of the whole and that includes the condemnation of how the whole is trained.
Anyone who has ever been directly involved in training knows that training is an evolving thing; if there is clear evidence that training is ineffective in a particular area then it is the moral and ethical obligation of the trainers to adjust their method of training to be reasonably effective across the board. I read somewhere that there’s roughly 800,000 police officers in the United States, that’s the non Administrative ones that have direct contact with the public and make arrests, now you do the math (seriously do the math) and figure out what the percentages of the whole are police officers that are violating the civil rights of innocent civilians by gunning them down because the police officer(s) have an unreasonable level of fear pervading contact with the public.
Here is the most accurate parallel between McVeigh and BLM; both base their ends justifies the means immoral and unethical actions on condemning the whole based on the perceived actions of a few. The big difference between McVeigh and BLM is that BLM, as a group, hasn’t openly endorsed murder although their hateful rhetoric can easily be interpreted as indirectly inspiring the 1st degree intentional murder of some individual police officers.
Matthew wrote, “Police officers are questioning “Why are people willing to die trying to kill us?” But they don’t want the answer because they don’t want the self introspection that admits any level of fault on their side.” (my bold)
What I put in boldface is quite an assumption. What are you basing that assumption on?
In conclusion; it’s become clear to me that you may have some level of animosity towards law enforcement. It’s not important to me why that animosity exists, what is important is that having animosity towards law enforcement instead of respect for law enforcement can lead to additional conflict when there is direct contact with law enforcement.
By the way, I completely forgot to congratulate you on your comment of the day; congratulations Matthew, your comment has inspired some interesting conversations.
Mr. French appears to have no practical experience in urban policing. Being a JAG officer is not equivalent.
There may be some training upgrades needed in the police world, but claiming it is a pervasive,nationwide need is incorrect. As Z states, there are thousands of officer to citizen contacts made daily in hundreds of departments across the nation. The discharge of a firearm is rare, actually hitting and killing some even more so, and that includes the accidental (negligent) discharges. If the public had any idea of how many people were not shot by the police in situations where even people like Matthew or David French would clearly see legality and justification, they would be amazed.
The underlying issue in all the cited events is that someone was doing illegal things and when engaged by the police they chose not to comply as required by both law and good sense. They initiated a cascade of actions that have a very predictable result.
Note to Michael R: If your description of your town’s PD is accurate, they are a very unprofessional operation and need to be drydocked and refit. Just letting that Crown Vic you described out on the street is a disgrace. Proper leadership can cure things like that.
Another Mike wrote, “The underlying issue in all the cited events is that someone was doing illegal things…”
That’s actually not true in the Castile event, he was pulled over for a broken tail light.
Another Mike wrote, “…when engaged by the police they chose not to comply as required by both law and good sense.”
This is almost always the case, including the Castile event. If Castile had used more common sense and followed instructions he wouldn’t have been shot, Castile’s physical actions created a situation that was perceived as threatening, his words meant nothing when his physical actions implied otherwise and he wasn’t following instructions. My perspective comes from; many years ago a police officer brother-in-law of mine from a previous marriage was in a one-on-one situation (not a traffic stop) where the words coming out of the mouth of the person didn’t necessarily match the physical actions and the person was not following instructions, and low and behold when the person’s had became visible he had a loaded revolver in it – the person intentionally lied about what he was doing. It didn’t result in any shots being fired, the person was taken down and disarmed.
And congratulations!