U.S. Department of Justice - Resorting to veiled threats...against the Kremlin?
Instead of resort to preventative measures
In light of the recent political hacks here in the U.S. today, 9/14/16, the Justice Department dropped a couple of hints that they do in fact, plan to hold Russia accountable for what is suspected to be a broad hacking campaign that has targeted U.S. political organizations and election databases.
Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said “You’ve seen us use it time and again, the message is clear: You are not safe because you are doing it under another nation’s flag. We can figure out who did it ... and when we do, we’re committed to holding people accountable.”
True enough, we have seen it and heard it, over and over again. What we are more interested in seeing are preventative measures. Something along the lines of being proactive rather than reactive.
Both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Assistant Attorney General John Carlin fell short of actually coming right out and saying they in fact knew that Russia was behind the recent hacks in today’s announcement.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch had this to say: “Whether you are a rogue hacker or a uniformed soldier, the shadowy corners of the internet will not provide respite for long. The light of our efforts is bright, the reach of our resolve is long. There literally is no hiding place.”
Yet, whomever these hackers are, they have still managed to be hiding, they are unnamed, they have no face for us to look upon, we don’t even really know where they reside, for all we know, the hacks could have all been inside jobs.
Information and access can both be bought and sold for a fairly reasonable price these days...
Assistant Attorney General John Carlin named Russia as one of the 4 main actors that have been involved in supporting hackers targeting the U.S., the other 3 are North Korea, Iran and China.
While it’s true that the U.S. has taken action against hackers with regards to hacks against Sony Pictures, financial institutions and U.S. companies. The action taken so far was against North Korea, Iran and China, nothing for Russia.
Russia has been suspected of the Democratic Party hacks, as well as for hacks into election systems in both Arizona and Illinois. The word on the street is, they did it in an effort to disrupt the November elections.
Forbes reported that Edward Snowden suspected Russia as being behind the leak over at the NSA last month, something I am personally convinced is part of an inside job, rather than Russia kicking down the air-gapped network doors of the NSA.
Right now Russia is also being accused of hacking the medical records of Olympic Athletes...
President Obama has not acknowledged that he believes Russia is behind the hacks either. At least not publicly.
In Fact, so far most Government officials have hesitated at pointing the blame to Russia and Russia has denied any involvement in the recent hacks.
All save for...
Senator John McCain-R Arizona who today subtly suggested that “Russia is conducting cyber-attacks to undermine American interests at every turn.”
It’s one thing to have irrefutable evidence against someone, it’s an entirely different thing to blame someone for something you cannot prove they did.
It’s unforgivable to place blame on a very public level…When you lack THE EVIDENCE to support that!
What’s that thing we tell all criminals in this country...oh help me out here, isn’t it something along the lines of, being innocent until proven guilty…
Don’t we also allow for defendants to ask for and receive a change of venue if they feel they will not get a fair trial where they were charged because so much media attention was placed on the case that they feel the public, their jury would not give them a fair shot?
Way to practice that public persecution thing here, we are publicly persecuting another country who the U.S. Government hasn’t proven did anything.
I keep seeing headlines suggesting what the U.S. might do should they discover Russia was behind the recent hacks.
What I am not seeing is what the U.S. plans to do if they learn that Russia in fact, had absolutely nothing to do with the recent hacks?
It matters not right now who is behind the hacks as far as the public is concerned, what matters is that our Government is taking steps to prevent future hacks while at the same time investigates what did happen without and this is important, casting blame on another country.
For a country that wants to be a world leader, be seen and known as a world leader, this blame game is not the move a progressive, forward thinking world leading country, would make.
Whether or not someone is hacking for the Russian Government, or it’s a lone hacker if it were me, I’d hold off on blaming anyone outright until I did have irrefutable proof.
While we are all focused on who did it, we are failing to see and realize these hacks clearly illustrate our inability as a nation to prevent cyber attacks.
These hacks illustrate our weakness when it comes to the cyber world.
Because of that, I wouldn’t want to risk rocking the boat without having proof to back up my accusations because until anyone can prove anything...we are still pretty vulnerable to yet another hack and/or cyber attack.
From a still unknown and unnamed hacker or group of hackers.
Just Released the Top 100 Police Departments in the United States
We have a top 10 or 50, or 100 list for just about everything, lists that rank everything from hospitals to best restaurants, pet adoption, day care, grocery stores, retail shops, salons, bars, local TV newscast, news anchor, the products we use daily, cities or states we plan to move to or visit, everything has a top list.
I searched high and low and couldn’t seem to find an all inclusive list of top rated police departments throughout the United States.
I even checked CALEA, where police departments can obtain accreditation and awards for excellence and could not find a list of the top 100 let alone top 50 police departments within the United States.
I started to wonder why?
I really want to know which police departments within the United States are ranked the highest to the lowest and why. What parameters were used to rank them and where they are.
So that I could better determine if we really have a cop issue or a citizen issue in the US or are these issues a lot more isolated than the media, the Black Lives Matter Movement and other groups make them out to be.
As I searched, I started seeing lists that were geared towards police work. They offered, helpful information such as, where I could find the best police department to work for, those that paid the highest wages, best cities to be a cop in and a top 10 of the most stable departments to work for.
To put it into perspective...
We are inundated daily with stories of police bias and brutality, officer involved shootings that were perceived as wrongful, stories about police misconduct and abuse at the hands of police.
When you take a step back and think about it, we do not take the time to appropriately or fairly praise or appreciate departments and the police who work in them for doing an outstanding job of serving the communities they work in.
We ignore the sacrifices these men and women make every working day and focus on the bad. It’s amazing how a handful of cops or departments can take the limelight from those that truly do shine brighter.
We tend to only see the the best of the best, the brightest lights once we are wearing the darkest pair of shades so do not truly see how bright the light is.
The only list I could find easily was a list that ranked the top 10 police forces in the world.
The police forces were ranked by things like resources and efficiency, public protection, how well they did at protecting vulnerable people, ability to tackle crime, implementation of neighborhood policing, fewest citizens beaten and/or shot, fairness, shots fired by the police on the force per year, and local priorities.
I’m sure I missed a few on the list that was used to rank Police Forces, but only two in the United States made the list made by infotainworld.
The California Highway Patrol and the NYPD were on the list, they were the only two departments from the US that made the list.
It is fair to say the those who created the list did not look nationwide here in the US at all of the departments within our country.
If they had, the list could have been a comprehensive study and a true comparative analysis of all police forces in the US the picture would have been different.
Sadly it still did very little to explain why no such list truly exists in the US. If it did, we’d get a much more clear idea of how widespread police misconduct really is.
The ability to have a list of top police departments in each county and state within the United States would show us that comparatively, all of the news stories about police misconduct really are just a handful of police and departments once you see the bigger picture.
The bigger picture being all of the departments, all of the police that we are not seeing splashed all over the news for getting it right.
That list would be crucial for those that are both for or against police reform. If you look at departments who do well, don't have issues, wouldn't you want to model your problem department after those that are being ranked much higher than yours?
Would it not help the Justice Department when it makes a recommendation that may or may not work for instance like in Oakland?
The issue that you have with the DOJ overseeing police reform is that they are not the cops on the street, they are not the departments that have a stellar track record within the communities they serve.
They simply cannot know how to tackle some of the problem departments and when they try, it costs the taxpayers way too much and the recommendations more often than not, end up failing in the long run.
In truth, at the end of the day instead of the DOJ running oversight and starting new programs so they can go in and help departments who feel they need help, these departments should be looking at the one’s who are doing it right.
The police and departments who are doing it right have already set the standard for how it should be done and the DOJ can’t top that let alone replicate it.
But walking is good for your mental and physical health...right?
Earlier this week news broke that two Commerce City, Colorado police officers are now facing discipline for well, playing Pokémon Go instead of actually working.
The officers were caught by one of their supervisors in unusual places and it was quickly determined they were chasing cartoon characters and not any actual criminals.
This announcement comes just after last week’s announcement that the Department of Justice has agreed to look at the departments police practices. The department decided to participate in the DOJ’s new program aimed at police reform.
The Commerce City, Colorado police department has faced years of complaints from the union, officers and citizens. They have recently dealt with officer misconduct and in 2011 the police union for the department presented the department with some concerns, two of which were poor management and cover-ups.
The city brought in an investigator to look into the union’s claims but that didn’t go so well because as it turned out that particular investigator was accused of having a conflict of interest and long story short is, since then the city has face several lawsuits, which of course they settled them rather than go to court.
It’s also worth a mention that union chief Tom Boskovich says turnover among officers in Commerce City is pretty much off the charts.
The Justice Department’s Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance which is volunteer by the way, works to analyze a police department’s policies, training and practices.
The DOJ claims that the program keeps an eye toward finding the specific problems that are causing it trouble in the community.
Quite frankly, since the program is new only time will tell so we'll have to wait and see if the DOJ can handle what’s coming for them with the recent findings in Boston, Oakland is still a mess, Cleveland, Portland is trying to take a step in the right direction but who knows.
Then look at Chicago, which granted has a huge number of shootings, they also have an equally large number of issues with regards to police misconduct, New York had a cop who was also a pimp, in Texas a cop was also a member of the Mexican Mafia in uniform...that’s just the tip of the iceberg considering stories are becoming more readily available. Daily.
In looking at some of the DOJ’s past history with investigating some of these departments and the outcome of those investigations, not only were some of the departments (like Oakland) still a problem, the investigations took forever but it also, ended up costing taxpayers a lot of money.
I just have this one nagging question...
Will the Justice Department’s Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance prevent cops from playing Playing Pokémon Go while on duty or does that not fall within the scope of "problems that are trouble in the community?"
Time and time again as with the Freddi Gray case, we blame in terms of how we see how things played out and we choose to ignore the realities of how it really did play out.
We are missing a key piece, we see it how we want to see it, we put our personal expectations onto police, through that we determine how cops should behave, how they could have reacted differently. We interject our personal beliefs and feelings into the situation which causes it to become clouded.
So why is it so hard to prosecute a cop?
First, we have to determine whether or not they actually broke any laws and in our most recent case on the books the answer was no. They didn’t even violate any civil rights. Things become so blurry to us because we are truly seeing them differently than a cop does.
Police are trained to view things differently than we do. They are trained to go into certain situations with a preconceived notion or to be on heightened alert. Domestic Violence calls are the best example. They roll to a domestic violence call already on heightened alert not knowing what to expect.
Most of the time they roll up to such calls prepared to mediate, care of the injured and/or take a man into custody because in general it is the man committing the crime. I believe most of you would agree.
And if most of you did agree with that, you just did what everyone assumes cops do all of the time the thing we are constantly condemning them for. It’s easy to do. We all assume that men are the aggressors, which by the way is not always true. But that is a preconceived notion or idea as to what to expect.
Doesn’t matter if the guy is white or black, in general whenever someone says the words Domestic Violence, we associate men to be the aggressors. We have a mental image of a man being the aggressor.
We all judge others based off of our own beliefs and how we feel that we would personally handle a situation. IF you want to police the police we need to stop blaming, criticizing and pay attention.
Recently, I made an honest attempt to read the book “ Why it’s so tough to prosecute cops” by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who I like and respect but honestly I laughed while trying to get through the book. I literally thought the book was a joke until a friend of mine pointed out it was supposed to be taken seriously.
The gist was that a lot of blame was going around from Police Unions being at fault, to white cops, cops protecting each other, a judicial system that protects bad cops and cops are always saying that they feared for their lives.
Yet at least as far as I read into it, no mention was made that in two of the cases that the book went over, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, the men were not innocent. THEY WERE BREAKING THE LAW WHEN THEY WERE CONFRONTED BY POLICE!
And Grey wasn’t murdered, shot, run over, shot with a taser, he died in a freak accident. No one meant to cause him harm.
The reason it’s hard for some to take things like cops being racist seriously are that the cases used as examples are jokes. Bring us a case that shows clear racial bias on the part of the cops for instance, white cop always pulls over only African American men, or 3 out of 5 arrests are African American’s while the other 2 are other races or white. Things like that show a pattern of racial bias.
So it is hard to prosecute a cop because while we all feel entitled to be able to point out how the cops actions were not appropriate we were never in the that cops shoes at the time the incident occurred, not to the mention the crucial key is whether or not a cop broke any laws. Not civil rights but laws.
Take the shooting in Miami a few weeks ago, yes you all know the one. The cop who shot an unarmed therapist who was lying on the ground with his hands up?
The issue I have with it, we only see part of the video, part of the story. So it’s more convenient for us to sit around and say that he never should have fired his weapon. We too often judge others based off of how we ourselves would have handled things, you know in the perfect world.
The video doesn’t actually show the therapist being shot. The officer who shot the therapist has since then come out and admitted that it was an accident and according to one media outlet also made a statement that he did what he had to do. His union if that is true, should have walked away and left him in the dog house over that.
Still the same, proving that he broke any laws will be difficult because he most likely didn’t break any laws whatsoever. Did he have to shoot someone? We don’t know that answer, we’d like to say that he shouldn't have shot anyone but we would be basing that off of our own personal beliefs.
Those beliefs do not mean that any laws were broken. Cops are trained to handle situations differently than you or I. We might pause in a situation because we want to better think it through where cops are not really afforded that opportunity, that pause could mean the cop ends up hurt or worse, dead.
Cops are trained to think and make a judgment call sometimes within the blink of an eye, if you or I were in the same situation we might be badly injured or dead ourselves because we handled the situation the way we normally would.
Prosecuting cops isn’t easy because it’s not meant to be. So in order to change that, we would have to lobby for changes in policing and policing policies. We’d have to lobby for change in how the judicial system is setup to hear cases involving police but well before that, you would have to lobby for changes in terms of who oversees police misconduct within the communities you want to see change in.
Some of what’s out and about throughout the US isn’t working, Oakland, CA and Portland, OR are two examples of oversight already not working, not to mention that when the DOJ becomes involved and departments are ordered to change and bring in oversight, it’s costly for the taxpayer who have to pay for the misdeeds of that department.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, lobby to have grants cut from police departments who are not playing well with the citizens of the community and you’ll see change a hell of a lot faster than you will if you are waiting on the Feds.
Cut the funding and you might just see a change in how police react to everyone’s cries for police reform.
We just have to be able to meet them halfway and work together for the changes everyone seeks.
Department of Justice enacting national policing reforms
Is that the answer we need?
Some are asking for it, some say we don’t need and somewhere in the middle of the argument is the DOJ.
It is not as easy or timely as one might think. We live in an age where we want instant gratification and when we sit back and look at cases of police misconduct we tend to become frustrated that the process is taking too long.
In the wake of officer Brendan O’Brien’s suicide, the Oakland, CA Police Bureau has been rocked by a scandal involving Brendan and several of its officers as well as neighboring police agencies.
Oakland by the way is currently and has been under a consent to decree for 13 years which is costly, but it imposes court oversight of reforms. Oakland was once considered one of the most corrupt police departments in the country.
The city of Oakland, CA has spent more than $13 million to pay for officer monitoring, equipment like body cameras, court fee’s, auditors and training.
Yes you read that right the city paid for it, meaning it was paid for by taxpayer dollars.
It works and then it doesn’t work as Oakland has shown us with it’s most recent scandal. While policing in the city has improved, for instance use of force has dropped significantly, clearly sexual misconduct somehow slipped through the cracks. Still however, according to some the reforms flopped.
If we look at Chicago, over 100 people showed up at Truman College on Tuesday to share stories of shootings, beatings and even robberies by officers of the Chicago Police Department. The are begging the Justice Department to do something about the abuse by the Chicago Police.
Some of the people asking for help would describe the police in Chicago as ruthless killers, mobsters and predators.
Yet when we look at Chicago as a whole, it is riddled with crime that seems to run out of control at times. In some cases it is easy to understand why the police might overreact and shoot someone, however when you hear stories like Theodore Daffin’s you wonder.
Theodore's run in with police left him with a deep scar in the shape of a vagina that was cut into his belly, by police.
Other stories reveal that people were shot and killed simply for opening the door to police.
But investigations like these that are conducted by the DOJ could take months if not years to conclude, then if the DOJ has enough evidence to prove systematic civil rights violations to take the Chicago Police Department to court, well it would take even more time in terms of years before anyone saw any type of reform within the police department.
Again, it would be costly as well.
So that begs the question, should the DOJ enact national police reforms which would affect all of our nation’s police departments?
IF you said yes, riddle me this, is the DOJ even capable of doing that?
Right now it takes years just for the DOJ to do it’s job and that is simply just not good enough.
The other part of that when I look at places like Chicago, I have to stop and wonder, why did it take the DOJ this long to get involved? Seeing over 100 people who managed to travel in sweltering heat to show up and tell stories of abuse at the hands of Chicago police, it amazes me that these individuals were not heard sooner.
Then, I wonder why they weren’t heard before Tuesday. Why did it take so long for anyone to hear these people?
National reforms are a good idea but not a well thought out idea because not all police agencies are a problem. Not all police within a department are a problem. Not even racial bias is always a problem with departments, but other issues of police misconduct are.
Then we have departments that seem to be able to walk on water, they may not always be able to solve the case but they try, they are not abusing criminals or law abiding citizens.
One place to start would be getting the DOJ involved sooner. The big question is, does the DOJ have the staff or time to handle getting on board sooner rather than waiting until over 100 people show up after years of systematic abuse at the hands of a police department?
Another really good place to start, begin isolating departments that tend to show racial bias more than other departments, which is really quite simple when it comes down to it.
Besides, most legal experts agree that a national reform plan is highly unlikely because it would have no political will.
One thing a lot of people may not know or understand is that a large part of the DOJ’s budget goes to the War on Drugs through the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI. That means only a small fraction of it goes to investigations of police misconduct.
Changing the budget for the DOJ requires action from Congress to re-appropriate funds. Congress isn’t doing a lot in terms of action right now in case anyone hasn’t noticed.
Some would argue that the bigger issues are:
Politics, in that our nation's politics do not have a strong enough commitment to its public as of today. And we unfortunately need them in order to make changes with things like police reform.
And the biggest issue of all, many would argue is that large amounts of money designated to fight the war on drugs have allowed police departments to militarize and become more aggressive in their approach.
Ahh but another solution does exist and it's one that a lot of people are eyeing as a possible solution .
The DOJ could make some of the grants offered to police departments contingent upon departments being in compliance with the Civil Rights Act as well as other Federal laws…
Here is a small break down of what some of that looks like:
Since around 94 the DOJ has allotted something like $15 Billion to police departments around the country in community oriented policing service grants. And that my friends, well it’s just one of the types of grants the DOJ offers to police departments.
The DOJ says that in 2015 the Chicago police department received over $3.1 million just to hire 25 new officers.
The Chicago police department has received at least, a cool $5 million in grants from 2007-2013.
No one likes to talk about it but the threat to take that kind of money away from police departments might just help resolve a lot of issues with police misconduct.
That would certainly entice Chicago to clean up much faster than the DOJ’s ongoing investigation will.
In Oakland even with the consent to decree, the department was able to keep its internal investigation of sexual misconduct from the court ordered auditor for months. I wrote about it before if you missed it.
By withholding Federal funds from police agencies and departments rife with problems, it would bring about the much needed change many are calling for in certain communities.
Taking that money or the possibility of the ability to even qualify for a grant would hurt police departments and it would in turn force them to act much more quickly to reform than the DOJ’s investigation and possible outcome.
In order to do even that however, well we’d need politics, and right now the political will to change things is pretty much stalled out somewhere.
Maybe someone playing Pokémon Go can manage to find our political leaders political will somewhere along the way???
Our answer is that we need our nation’s political leaders to find the political will it needs to make the right kinds of changes instead of just play around and not give a shit.
We can go about this the long way or the short way. It’s taking money away from departments who are problems or letting the DOJ have years to investigate then wait even more years and years to see change.
As much as I hate to admit this again, but this is yet another reason voters are swinging towards Trump. In business if you don’t take swift action it can be costly, business leaders don’t wait they act.
Political leaders, they tend not to act quickly enough. They have the wait and see approach when instead they should be reciting “Founded on the Principles of Right,” until it sinks in and they get it.
Sadly, this is another time where we have to ask our leaders if they are even listening and then if they hear the words we are speaking?
This past weekend several media outlets reported on the Black Lives Matter protesters getting out of control during protests across the US. I just saw a news clip out of St, Paul telling viewers that an officer has suffered serious spinal injuries because protesters dropped a cinder block on the officer's head?!?!?
Are you kidding me? Not even a week after 5 officers were gunned down and killed in Dallas, TX some folks thought it would be a good idea to drop a cinder block on an officer’s head?
The leaders of this movement need to reign it in before the message gets lost.
To be fair however, the day after the shooting in Dallas, I had the TV on while getting ready for work and sneaking in an 3 AM workout, 4 hours of nonstop news coverage was dedicated to the shooting in Dallas. 4 hours of no other news but the shooting in Dallas, I think even the weather was cut short that morning to continue live coverage about the shooting in Dallas.
The media was camped out at the hospital while hospital workers made a line blocking the media from actually filming the bodies of the officers being removed from the hospital.
The media is so goddamned classless they can’t even give the fellow officers, families, loved one’s or hospital any breathing room, while they try to broadcast live on TV the dead, lifeless bodies of the officers being wheeled out on a gurney and loaded up for the morgue.
Is that what we American viewers want to see broadcast whilst eating breakfast? The bodies of dead police being wheeled out to an awaiting vehicle?
Wouldn’t mainstream media be happier if they were allowed into the morgue to film the autopsy for all of us to see on live TV?
I was horrified to see the news about Dallas, my heart sank. I was also horrified by the coverage by our media industry and I was disgusted by the lack of decency. They reminded me rabid dogs in the wild.
That’s classy!
Two men were shot and killed by police last week, two African American men which is why the Black Lives Matter movement was protesting at the time of the shooting in Dallas.
So getting back to being fair, I did not see 4 hours of solid coverage of either of those two shootings and quite frankly that is part of the problem.
The movement feels unheard so in order to get heard, they become destructive and out of control in some cases. It matters not that the movements leaders ask that protesters remain peaceful, the followers want to be heard and when they feel unheard, they get out of control.
Some members of the movement see that a black man just shot 5 officers as everyone saw on TV nonstop for 24 hours the day after. That member then gets an idea.. If we want to bring attention to our cause, I have to do something risky in order to get it otherwise the media is not going to cover it.
As we have seen with every mass shooting in this country, they get bigger, bolder and dirtier. The reason’s get crazier, the shooters get crazier, and the reason why they did it get’s lost thanks to every live news broadcast on TV.
The media is as equally out of control and out of hand with its thirst for violence. I mean nonstop man, 24/7 the Dallas shooter is in the news, his picture, his name, this headline from Business Insider “The Dallas shooter was 'ostracized' by black power groups before he opened fire on police officers in Dallas.”
“Black” power groups. Again, I’ve said this before too, why do we always feel the need to highlight “black” rather than just “power” group? By using words that lean towards racial division, we instill it into the reader's mind.
The media released details about his military service, an image of a social media account he had was online the day after the shooting as the media was so thirsty for anything they could find out about the guy.
I’ve said this before as well, it is not the media’s job to investigate these types of situations and bring us the details until law enforcement is ready to release it.
I’ve hinted at this in my past pieces about the Ferguson Effect, the media should be held accountable for some of this violence because of the way they report it.
Countless headlines keep popping up about why the guy did it and the media is bringing in experts, blaming the cops, blaming things like radicalization, the Black Lives Matter Movement...let’s be honest and call it like it is.
Maybe the man felt alone, he wanted to be part of something, he felt held down, held back, he wasn’t getting anywhere with his life, finding a job that’ll cover the bills is not easy these days for anyone.
Maybe he was discriminated against not only for being black but because maybe being in the military messed with him mentally a little bit and no one would hire him. Yes employers do that, they just choose not to report that they do. Maybe he had a run in with police and he was angry about that, maybe he had a fine that he was upset about…
Maybe he did try to join some type of group that had a propensity for violence...
The point is, the media should stop trying to suggest reasons why he did it and let law enforcement tell us when they finish with the investigation. The media should stop trying to “help” us understand the shooter, they are hindering the outcome.
A lot of times when someone get’s to a breaking point, they will try to be part of a group that will help provide basic necessities for them, or bring them much needed resources, such as living expenses, food, even if that group is a radical one. When even that doesn’t work, well this is exactly how it turns out.
The goal of law enforcement is always to understand why, to get to that goal investigators go through the person’s life very carefully not in the course of a newscast or two or just a quick look at his social media. Investigations take so long because investigators actually investigate not grasp at any meat on the bone they can get to.
At least investigators make the effort to the understand the person and the why so they can better prevent shootings like this in the future. I am not even sure what in the hell the media is trying to do. All I know is that by the time investigators usually release the details as to why no one is listening any longer because the media painted the picture for us, the way they wanted to.
Someone should reign those guys in...while we are at it.
I have also seen countless headlines that are really divided about whether or not our country is divided by racism or even if we have a problem with racism. Even social media is deeply divided.
Well, we do have a problem with racism, we also have a problem with sexism, we are divided over whether or not to treat those in the LGBT community as equal, women have to fight for the same pay a man gets for doing the same job…
So should BLM just get over it then?
The Black Lives Matter Movement provides a venue for those that are fed up, but because of the movements lack of control over its own protests, the movement provides a venue to those who are willing to behave violently just to get the point across. They are providing the perfect storm for those seeking to cause violence, kill or harm police and in general aren’t at the protest in an effort to make things better or so that they can be part of making sure the world hears the movements cause.
Things like blocking traffic on major roadways, impeding the passage of pedestrians trying to get somewhere safely, bringing guns to protests, dropping cinder blocks on the heads of our police, shooting our police, do not fall under the category of a peaceful protests.
Protesters are better served if they direct the protests to the appropriate parties, not interfering with the public's right or ability to get to and from on major roadways or walkways.
By that I mean, a protest held at that cities capital, state building and the like, instead of interfering with the general public's ability to travel by car or foot. That just makes the public decline to support your cause because you are causing problems.
So is the Black Lives Matter Movement out of control?
I’m not sure it ever was in control, it’s always been riddled with rioting and violent behavior. They seem to think that the general public has to hear their message and the message isn’t even clear.
Saying things like “Stop Shooting Unarmed African American Men” while some of those of those men were shot while committing a crime and failing to do as police instructed, well most people feel the shooting was justified and not racially motivated. That is because BLM has not provided any facts to say that it was.
So the message becomes lost because while BLM and it’s supporters want you to believe most police shootings of African American males are racially motivated, the statistics simply and undeniably never have supported that. To be honest, when you are asked to comply with orders from a police officer and fail to do that, you could potentially escalate the situation to the point where someone gets shot. Black, white, whatever race.
Before anyone starts, we could argue that all day long because anyone can get google gun stats and police shooting stats all day until they find the one they want to use.
I get mine from the FBI because I enjoy things like drinking coffee, if I google searched the stats on officer involved shootings I’d have less time to make (I use a press) and then enjoy a delicious cup or two or more of coffee.
So in short no I do not believe that BLM ever had control, it’s message was never clear. They tried to raise awareness about officers shooting unarmed individuals and went about it by saying race had something to do with it. It didn’t. Cops shoot unarmed individuals of every race.
The leaders of BLM went about this whole idea the wrong way and lost complete control of it, which is exactly why no one listens to it. The point that they tried to get across is that black's are more likely to get arrested, pulled over, serve longer sentences than whites. But clearly from the protests I have seen they centered the efforts around black males who were shot, some of which were shot while breaking the law, not complying with police orders, reaching for a gun or what appeared to be a gun after the situation had escalated.
The point is, the reason people don't respect or believe in BLM is because they have centered around individuals who were caught behaving badly. IF the individuals had not been, well the outcome would have been different.
All save for the media, they love reporting on the violence so that keeps the movement alive at least.
If it were me and thankfully it’s not, I’d scrap the movement or get my ass in gear and save it. Until then the police are now leary and untrusting of these large scale protests, who could blame them if they overreact then and whatever message, well it will get further lost.
Again, I’ve said this before in my Ferguson pieces, cops are less racist than BLM makes them out to be. Racism in this country is being perpetuated by it’s citizens, the media and movements like Black Lives Matter.
While it racism is alive and well, so are other discrimination's against others and they all deserve attention.
I see this all over social media, “All Lives Matter.” Until we decide to understand that we will always be divided.
