Black lives matter

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No, we don't support, or even condone the riots as the ones going on in Milwaukee right now. However, right wingers routinely deny any policing problem, as does this guy:

The county sheriff has long been a staunch opponent of Black Lives Matter and critics of the police more generally. He called Ferguson protesters“vultures on a roadside carcass” and has gone so far as to say that Black Lives Matter would eventually team up with the terrorist group ISIS. He described the decision to charge the six Baltimore officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death as a “human sacrifice,” and frequently spouts the debunked myth that people have launched a war against cops. 

“Americans watching the news of the murders of police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, are observing a civil war unfold within our borders. A war between rule of law and anarchy-seeking hate,” he wrote in an article for The Hill last month, referring to attacks on officers as “guerilla warfare.”

“It’s time to reclaim our future and it begins by condemning Black Lives Matter, organizers and inspiration for hate, friend to enemies of law and order. Last year, Clarke referred to members of Black Lives Matter as “Black Slime” who need to be “eradicated.”

The Right-Wing Extremist Who’s Fanning The Flames In Milwaukee — ThinkProgress

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In front of a nearly all-white crowd in a nearly all-white town on Tuesday, Donald Trump decided it was a good time to make his pitch to black voters. But he did it in a particularly strange way: He said Democrats were lying about racism in American police departments, and argued that police don’t discriminate against black people at all.

The Daily Show host Trevor Noah couldn’t believe it. "So wait. Donald Trump is implying that the only reason black communities feel oppressed isn’t because of their experiences. No, it’s because of the Democrats who have tricked them," he said. "Like before that, black people didn’t know what was happening to them? Like black people were surprised when Democrats came and [were] like, ‘Wait, what? This is oppression? Oh, I thought the officer was massaging me with his nightstick! Oh, I didn’t know! Why thank you, Mr. Democrat.’"

To disprove Trump’s claim, Noah pulled out the recent Justice Department report on the Baltimore Police Department — the result of an investigation that found a police force that failed at essentially every part of its job, from basic stops to solving cases.
Noah pointed to several particular findings:

• The Baltimore Police Department targeted and disproportionately stopped black residents for stops, searches, and arrests — sometimes with orders like, "Lock up all the black hoodies."
  
• One black man in his mid-50s was stopped 30 times in less than four years, typically for small crimes like loitering or trespassing. He was never found to be doing anything wrong.
  
• During a ride-along with Justice Department officials, a sergeant told a patrol officer to stop a group of young black men. The officer protested, saying he had no valid reason for the stop. The sergeant responded, "Then make something up" — again, in the middle of a ride-along with federal investigators.
  
• During one stop, police ordered a woman into a strip and anal cavity search in full view of the street. The officers found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
  
• One template for police arrests, provided by a shift commander, automatically included "black male" in the description of the arrest.
  

Donald Trump said police aren’t racist. The Daily Show listed several ways they are. - Vox

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Interesting article from Vocativ, worth a read

Mapping Police Violence monitored officer-involved deaths across the country from January of 2013 until April of this year. In that time period, police in Oklahoma killed a total of 92 people, 30 of whom were black. That’s a rate of 108 people per million. Oklahoma’s rate for all races is 24 per million. The only other states that come close to Oklahoma in terms of the ratio of black people killed by police are Utah with 102 per million people and Alaska with 85, according to the data.



Of the 30 black people killed by police in Oklahoma, seven were unarmed. Charges were only filed against the officer or officers in two of those seven cases. By comparison, charges also were filed against officers who killed caucasians on two occasions, but there were 18 more white people killed by police than black people—and in one of the cases, the suspect who was killed was armed. The other was an unarmed woman whose vehicle was struck by a police cruiser.

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And some other necessary perspective, from Think Progress. And since there are more cops today, the figure actually understates the improvement:

Conservative politicians and commentators are claiming that a recent spate of cop killings means police officers are being “hunted” thanks to the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement, which criticizes racist policing. One cop even faked his own shooting amid the hubbub, triggering a city-wide manhunt. But despite the fearmongering headlines, the historical trend shows otherwise.

The number of police officers killed on the job has been steadily dropping for decades — after spiking suddenly in the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon began the War on Drugs.


CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos/ThinkProgress
Historically, we are living in an era of police safety.

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Whatever they do, they can't win..

“I sure wish there was some sort of respectful, silent civil protest that people could engage in that wouldn’t enrage the other side,” Colbert said. Then an image of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick flashed on the screen. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert “Yeah, no, that’s not gonna work either,” Colbert quipped.

By taking a knee during the national anthem during football games, Kaepernick has drawn tremendous criticism and anger online — becoming the most hated football player in the league, according to a poll by E-Poll Marketing Research. Many people, such as conservative pundit Tomi Lahren, have characterized Kaepernick as unpatriotic, telling him to “leave” if America “disgusts you so much.”

This puts Black Lives Matter protesters in a bind: If some people in their protests get violent, they’re all criticized as violent. If they take up more peaceful protests, they’re still criticized for hating America or for, as Donald Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, put it, “far too much talk about institutional bias and racism within law enforcement.”

Stephen Colbert blasts the ridiculous double standard around black people protesting - Vox

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It remains to be seen whether the truth will come out and whether Mr. Scott was or wasn't holding a gun. So far little if any evidence emerged that he did..

The moment North Carolina police shot a black man was captured on video by his wife, who can be heard pleading with officers: "Don't shoot him!" In the footage, Rakeyia Scott tells husband Keith Scott to get out of his car as Charlotte police surround him. The clip does not show the actual shooting, or make clear if Mr Scott was carrying a gun, as police say. Charlotte city leaders have been under mounting pressure to release their footage of this week's shooting. Mr Scott was the 214th black person killed by US police this year out of a total of 821, according to monitoring site Mapping Police Violence.

In the clip, an officer is heard shouting: "Hands up!" Charlotte race riots years in the making US shootings: Five ways to rebuild trust Charlotte shooting: Unanswered questions Mrs Scott cries: "Don't shoot him. Don't shoot him. He has no weapon. He has no weapon. Don't shoot him." An officer says: "Don't shoot. Drop the gun. Drop the [expletive] gun." Mrs Scott says: "He doesn't have a gun. He has a TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury]. He just took his medicine." Family lawyers have previously said Mr Scott suffered head trauma in a car accident last year.

Seconds later shots ring out in the clip, and Mrs Scott rushes forward shouting: "Did you shoot him? He better not be [expletive] dead!" Mr Scott - a 43-year-old father-of-seven - was fatally shot in an apartment complex car park on Tuesday by police who were searching for another person wanted for arrest. There are conflicting accounts of his death - police say he was armed and that a pistol was recovered at the scene; his family says he was holding a book.

'Don't shoot!' wife tells Charlotte police in video - BBC News

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As a third night of mass unrest over the police killing of Keith Lamont Scottrocked Charlotte, North Carolina Thursday night, the congressman who represents the city’s suburbs, Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC), told the BBC that the protesters were not motivated by police violence, but white success.

“They hate white people because white people are successful and they’re not,” Pittinger said, as the BBC anchor gaped at him in disbelief. “It is a welfare state. We have spent trillions of dollars on welfare, and we’ve put people in bondage, so they can’t be all they’re capable of being.”

Setting aside the fact that the overwhelming majority of people on government assistance are white and have jobs, and that many white people were also out in the streets this week protesting the police, Pittenger’s comment echoed the idea — popular in the far right fringes of the internet — that Black Lives Matter protesters are anti-white. The leaders of Black Lives Matter have called this a myth, writing: “None of this is about hatred for white life. It is about acknowledging that the system already treats white lives as if they have more value.”

After receiving wide condemnation for his comments, Pittenger apologized, insisted he has black friends, and accused the outlet of taking the remark out of context — though both the question and his full answer were aired in full.
This is somewhat of a pattern for Pittenger..

North Carolina Congressman: Charlotte protesters ‘hate white people’ for being successful

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The whole series of articles are a must read..

Devah Pager of Harvard conducted a study of racial discrimination in New York City in 2004 by sending young black and white men to apply for jobs at 170 businesses, bearing fictitious and carefully matched résumés. She found that white applicants were more than twice as likely to get a call back; indeed, a white applicant purportedly just released from prison did no worse than a black applicant with a clean record.

This year, Pager published a follow-up based on what had happened to these businesses in the 2008 recession. She found that the companies that had discriminated were significantly more likely to have gone out of business — which may suggest a price tag for discrimination.

Inequities are not just about individual discrimination, for the larger problems are systemic. I was just in Detroit, where 9 percent of children suffer lead poisoning (more than in Flint); if this were happening to rich white children on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, there would be outraged demands for a national commission and reparations.

When opioids were primarily a black problem, America’s instinct was harsh prison sentences; now that it is mainly a white problem, we’re more compassionate and are improving treatment programs. America’s education system is structured so that white suburban children often get an excellent public education, while inner-city black kids disproportionally get a third-rate education.

When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 7 - The New York Times

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Daniel Shaver, 26, was unarmed. He was sobbing, begging the police officers not to shoot him. He was crawling on the floor toward officers, as a cop on the scene told him to do. But as he inched forward, he appeared to extend his hand backwards — and an officer, 27-year-old Philip Brailsford, opened fire, killing Shaver. On Thursday, Brailsford was acquitted of a murder charge over the 2016 shooting. Police then released video of the encounter.

An ex-cop from Arizona was acquitted for shooting an unarmed, sobbing man - Vox

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Police killings of unarmed black men helped fuel the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Now a new tragedy — the shooting death of an unarmed black man in his own backyard — is raising new questions about how much things have changed, if at all.

On Sunday, 22-year-old Stephon Clark was shot in the backyard of the home he was staying in with his grandparents. Police officers were purportedly responding to reports of a man breaking car windows.
According to a press release issued by the Sacramento Police Department, a helicopter tracking a suspect directed the officers to Clark, who ran towards the house after being confronted by officers. The police department said Clark turned and began to “advance forward with his arms extended, and holding an object in his hands.”

The officers, who are said to have thought the object was a gun, then fired 20 rounds at Clark. It’s unclear how many of the shots hit Clark, but other facts aren’t in dispute, and they’re disturbing: After the shooting, officers waited several minutes for backup before moving to handcuff Clark and beginning medical treatment. And the only item he turned out to have been carrying was a cellphone.

Stephon Clark shot and killed by police in his own backyard - Vox