Dallas slaughter of five officers greatest loss of life for police since 9/11
Shots fired in Dallas! Again.
Fifty three years ago, an ambush on a slow moving Presidential motorcade sent our nation into a prolonged period of shock and grief. Dallas would become branded as the "City of Hate".
Last night that hate manifested itself once again in a cold hearted, calculated attack on men and women in blue just doing their job, killing five.
Ironically those officers were originally on scene to oversee a citizen protest of two horrific police involved shootings of black men.
And even as officers tried desperately to tend to their own fallen comrades others risked their lives to ensure the safety of those citizens who had gathered to protest them in the first place. Because that's the nature of their calling.
At the height of the Vietnam war demonstrators used the catchphrase, "Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity." Indeed.
Peacekeepers killing innocent civilians is wrong, as is ambushing peacekeepers just doing their job. Or as my Irish mother used to say, "Two wrongs don't make a right."
To peacefully gather and petition our government for a "redress of grievances" is one of the most sacred rights we have as Americans.
This outbreak of senseless violence threatens to bring about the exact opposite: martial law.
A sad state affairs, here in the "land of the free."
23 comments:
I wonder if Amherst will be raising the BLM banner over the town center again any time soon. Be clear, whatever the genuine inspiration for its forming it is a racist, divisive, and violent movement.
By the way when 0bama recognizes, in words, that cop's lives matters too is he any less racist than when I say "all lives matter" or is that charge reserved only for whitey?
Bill R
This morning I have no answers.
All I know is this has to stop.
Larry, martial law already exists: http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/falcon-heights-minnesota-police-shooting-lavish-reynolds-facebook-live-video-watch-uncensored-shooting-youtube-shot-by-police/
Police officers (and everyone else) know they can do whatever they damn well please with impunity -- not unlike Maria G -- and this is the inevitable consequence of THAT.
I say this in the same sense that WW-II was the inevitable consequence of WW-I
We need to hire police officers on the basis that the Army hires drill Sergeants for boot camp -- we need cops who don't want to be cops, but are doing it because they've been asked to. We need to get rid of the bullies & thugs, we need to fire the people who were in fights in high school and instead hire the people who broke up the fights. The peacekeepers.
We need to hire police officers, not Marines. Or better, Marines who saw all the violence they ever want to see in Iraq and don't need to prove anything to anyone.
12 police officers (in the South) shot at random, at night and (I presume) at rifle range -- it's statistically likely that at least one was Black.
Obama calls Dallas killings a 'vicious, calculated and despicable attack'
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/07/obama_calls_dallas_killings_a.html
One other thing -- Note how this occurred in the vicinity of a college.
Larry, I'm implying that I strongly suspect three things here, two of which are unrelated to BLM, the third being what we saw with the Vassell farce.
Our police leave their families everyday to go to work to do the thankless job of dealing with society's problems. Most police strive to protect us. They are not highly paid. They are service workers for the general good and well-being of our republic. In their attempts to enforce the law, they often face challenges that many of us can not even imagine. They are even called on to make life and death decisions. So often, they save lives in the worst of circumstances.
It is not too surprising to me, that so much disrespect is being shown to our police. Groups like Black Lives Matter and the Obama Administration do little to encourage cooperation and respect between races, especially between Blacks and the police. Rioting and name calling do not work well to achieve understanding. Encouraging people to be fearful of the police does not work well. Remarks from some groups about our police are often shameful and degrading. The mainstream media does little to support the police, but much to show their failings.
There will always be instances where the wrong call is made. Remember, police are human. I believe most officers do their best to be helpful and fair. Can they do more? Maybe. But, not without the respect, appreciation and understanding of all the people they serve.
Ed please be quiet today...
A Presidential Commission, like the Warren Commission or the 9/11 Commission, is in order, to study what is happening and make sweeping recommendations.
Rich Morse
It's so awful that a a few bad apples can take advantage of a situation that was peaceful to ambush police officers. There are always people in every group on both sides of the spectrum. Not everyone's in the middle and not everyone makes the right decision in stressful situations.Alot of people make bad decisions. So there are some that believe the men in blue aren't doing their job properly but not all of our police, most of our police are out there to protect everyone of us. Even those people that actively, aggressively and openly don't support our police departments. Every day the still get still get dressed and leave thier families to protect us. The Violence has to stop we have to find a way to come together as a country. We have enough external enemies that we don't need to be hurting each other.
There are over a million police in the US and few if any planned to kill anyone. These snipers planned this. Some people don't have the constitution to be police and we/they find out the hard way. There are some racist criminals but even they know shooting a black man will bankrupt them, destroy their own families and ruin the rest of their lives.A lot of cops are scared and it is only going to get worse now!
There is nothing new under the sun. Suspects have been killed unintentionally since the first cop walked a beat, and nothing is going to change that in the future. People can blame racism for the current array of deaths broadcast in almost real time on outlets such as Youtube and Facebook, but to consider that charge as anything other than assumption is a mistake, a mistake that is at least part of the reason police have been ambushed and murdered in New York and now in Dallas.
The suspects who have been killed by police, with a very few exceptions, were killed because they were engaged in criminal activity. Criminals know the crime paradigm, they know that they are operating in a system that may result in being shot for many reasons, the two main reasons being the officer acting in self defense, the second is by accident. Non-law enforcement people simply do not know or do not accept the psychology of police/criminal engagement. An officer must enter every interaction with a mindset that takes into account many factors, one being that he may die, and one can armchair quarterback the decisions that some of the officers in the news have made, but in all but one or two that I have seen, the police did what they did out of a belief that their own lives were in danger, which happens to be the legal threshold. The ones who acted outside of a reasonable belief that they were in danger have been indicted, tried, and some convicted. The majority who have been cleared by grand juries or federal investigators were acting in a way that anyone could be expected to act in a similar circumstance. That the families of the deceased and community groups, and nationwide groups like BLM, disagree is to be expected in today's video culture, where even a justified shooting looks like a murder when seen out of context, but that does not make it so.
Ingrained racism exists, probably in everyone over the age of 6 months. Expecting cops to be exempt when you are not is an exercise in hypocrisy, assuming that it is the motivation for these shootings is irresponsible, and is costing innocent law enforcement officers their lives.
Richard Marsh
The suspects who have been killed by police, with a very few exceptions, were killed because they were engaged in criminal activity.
Bullshite.
Well, driving with a burnt out taillight technically is a criminal activity, but...
1: There is no statistical study I'm aware of that even hints to this. Coincidence is not causation.
2: This even though the only version of most shootings is that of the police.
Notice how many of these stories fall apart when video appears.
3: A commission would be good, but the FBI tracking police shootings statistically would be nice. We don't even have FBI stats to look at -- how many Black cops shoot unarmed White males?
Reality is that police largely have absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
3:
Tonight's news update is that one person acted alone in Dallas.
The video of the traffic stop in Minnesota is unbelievable. The woman (and her 4 year old daughter) had to maintain composure/ stay in place/ keep hands up after her fiance had been shot by police. Heartbreaking!
Ed be sure to get that short crab company working on these issues!
The video of the traffic stop in Minnesota is unbelievable. The woman (and her 4 year old daughter) had to maintain composure/ stay in place/ keep hands up after her fiance had been shot by police.
+Something's not right there, something I can't identify is telling me that we are not seeing what we think we are seeing. Part of it is where she pauses to tell her friends that she will need a ride home, but it's only part of something bigger.
If I were in that situation, I'd have been asking people to be making telephone calls for me, to call for an ambulance, the governor, the media, etc.
She might have been in shock, likely was.
Or this was a "dark op" and the boyfriend a pawn whom she wanted the police to shoot/kill. While I'm not saying that's what happened, there are a lot of things that would be consistent with it, including what we see of the officer's conduct.
All I know is that something isn't right there.
:Or this was a "dark op" and the boyfriend a pawn whom she wanted the police to shoot/kill. While I'm not saying that's what happened,"
Ed, that is truly sick. And you are not saying it? You just said it.
Something isn't right with you ed! We are still waiting on a ĺink to your company the TSLC.
This is a tragic situation. I don't see how bashing Ed is relevant.
Anon 2:37 did you read eddie's comment about a dark op?
I was merely asking the question that should have beeb asked about Charles Stewart -- AND WASAN'T!
OK, it was 27 years ago and somewhat overshadowed by the Rodney King beating, trial & riots of a couple years later, but it happened in Boston and was a true injustice.
The super-short version from memory -- and this was in 1989, the tail end of the YUPPIE era. Charles Stewart was a furrier, he and his pregnant wife had attended some sort of pre-birth thing at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Only the rich had cell phones back then -- they cost over $1/minute -- but the Stewarts were a wealthy White couple who lived in a tony suburb (Reading). The Mission Hill neighborhood, largely Black, was adjacent to the hospital, kinda like driving through UMass to get to North Amherst.
Stewart makes 911 call reporting that some Black Male shot both he and his wife, she dies, child dies next week -- incredibly tragic story combined with heroism of quick-thinking MSP dispatcher who vectors cops in by whose siren he can hear best. Somehow a TV crew was also there, Willie Horton was fresh in people's memories from the '88 election, this mde national news.
Cops spend 5 months tearing apart Mission Hill, arresting LOTS of young Black Males and eventually arrest one for this crime. Except that he had& wife;s jewelry.
Around 3AM the next morning, Charles takes a swan dive off the Tobin Bridge.
This actually happened.
Hence had someone looked at the Stewart's finances and what the loss of the wife's lawyer's salary would do (she didn't intend to return to work), or what he did with her life insurance payout, or asked if he was having an affair with a coworker (which the media quickly discovered after his death), a lot of bad things wouldn't have happened to lots of young Black men.
We have neither seen the officers' reports nor their dashcam video.
ANYTHING is possible, and there is something warning me about that video.
Don't know what happened, Stewart himself was shooter, had younger brother dispose of gun & jewles to make look like robbery.
Brother confesses, Charles suicide before cops can find him.
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