According to Riley:
Between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the United States. The black arrest rate for most offenses — including robbery, aggravated assault, and property crimes — is still typically two to three times their representation in the population. Blacks as a group are also overrepresented among persons arrested for so-called white-collar crimes such as counterfeiting, fraud, and embezzlement. And blaming this decades-long, well-documented trend on racist cops, prosecutors, judges, sentencing guidelines, and drug laws doesn’t cut it as a plausible explanation.”
Whew! Now that’s a HARD TRUTH. Uncomfortable to discuss? Sure. Unpleasant to hear? Absolutely. But if law enforcement is to examine its conscience and identify the better angels of its nature, let’s be fair. We can certainly discuss intractable socioeconomic conditions and lack of opportunities, failed (Democrat) social policies, crumbling schools, blighted neighborhoods, single-parent households, hopelessness, and despair as contributing factors. But let’s be candid. Let’s call this what it is — a lack of embedded personal responsibility values that perpetuate themselves relentlessly across generations. Something has to give, no? This begins at home. Not in the government entitlements line.
But back to the perceptions that we have to dispel. Take the venerable New York Times, for instance. In story after recent story, the Times insists on perpetuating myths. And Black Lives Matter helps feed your narrative and fuels your resentment and anger. But it is a distorted reality that stokes your ire. And understanding this will help you as you grapple with these “hard truths.”
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald directly confronted the Times’ slanted coverage of the issue. Decrying 2009 statistics in New York City that indicated that blacks made up 23% of the population in the five boroughs, but, were 55% of those stopped by police, the Times has attempted to make the case that “racist NYPD cops” indiscriminately pick on black folks. But, as outlined in Riley’s book, MacDonald swats this myth away:
…blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009 (though they were only 55 percent of all stops and only 23 percent of the city’s population). Blacks committed 80 percent of all shootings in the first half of 2009. Together, blacks and Hispanics committed 98 percent of all shootings. Blacks committed nearly 70 percent of all robberies. Whites, by contrast, committed 5 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009, though they are 35 percent of the population (and were 10 percent of all stops). They committed 1.8 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies. The face of violent crime in New York, in other words, like in every other large American city, is almost exclusively black and brown.”
Hard truths indeed…
Some will sense this as an indictment of all black folks. It assuredly is not. The criminality in black circles is related to a small percentage of folks. We shouldn’t be inclined to isolate the few in order to smear the whole. But, hey, now, Black Lives Matter, isn’t that what you seek to do with whites and law enforcement? The egregious acts on an infinitesimal percentage of our populace shouldn’t stand as a requiem for justice, equality, and the fundamental fairness our constitution provides for all of us. And it shouldn’t indict an entire race or profession.
A recent documentary, entitled “American Anarchist,” chronicles the evolution of the author of The Anarchist’s Cookbook, William Powell, who as a radical Leftist 19-year-old penned the ubiquitous coffee table book for every budding terrorist who believes pipe bombs are the way to effect change. Today, Powell is notably apologetic about his notorious offering that he penned back in 1970 and which has sold some two million copies to date, as he recognizes the powers of persuasion in sick, demented, and diseased minds prone to the influence of the printed word and hyperbolic rhetoric. Remorse through reflection and the continuous litany of mass murderers and terrorists having had his book in their personal libraries prior to the commission of their heinous acts.
Black Lives Matter — your rhetoric has led to avoidable murderous rampages, as well. Some of your marchers have taken to chanting “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” and “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!” Again, we understand that the actions of a few don’t represent the intentions of the whole. But your overheated rhetoric and vitriolic pronouncements against American law enforcement has led to cop slayings in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and New York City. Does your organization take responsibility for the white, black, Asian, and Hispanic cops that were ruthlessly slain in retaliation for the false narratives and myths I disassembled above?
Let’s get real here for a second. Your organization began as “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” and was forced to rebrand itself after the lies and untruths related to “witness” statements in the Michael Brown case were debunked in grand jury and by solid, irrefutable forensic evidence. And remember — you had an overtly sympathetic White House and Attorney General in 2014. If there was ANY way possible to charge Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson with murder, Eric Holder and his then Assistant United States Attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, Tom Perez would have assuredly done so. As in the case of many of these highly publicized officer-involved-shooting incidents…the facts simply don’t match the false narrative promoted.
Perez has gone on to serve as President Obama’s Secretary of Labor and was just recently elected to be the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. His recent speeches and television appearances have highlighted his extreme partisanship. His most offensive offering of late — “Republicans don’t give a sh_t about people.”
Yes, he was the senior DOJ official charged with determining the fates of multiple police departments from 2009-2013. A number of departments unfairly saddled with consent decrees, making them answerable to federal oversight and unfairly smearing them as “racist” and “oppressive.”
Most law enforcement professionals are conservative and lean right, politically. I state this with 25 years of anecdotal evidence as my proof.
And…”Republicans don’t give a sh_t about people.” ~ so sayeth the former DOJ Civil Rights Division Official charged with ferreting out “racism” within law enforcement…
One way for a wholly partisan former governmental official to promulgate a deceptive message that works to your benefit, Black Lives Matter. Are you sensing this? Any of this? All of it? Conversations like this where we both acknowledge our shortcomings and frailties are never comfortable. They’re hard. But, we desperately need to have them. And when folks advocating some of the positions I’ve put forth, hereon, are shouted down or bullied, branded as “racists,” well, quite honestly, it shuts down debate, but it doesn’t award you the moral high ground.
And, yes, talk is cheap.
Lord knows I have my own house to get in order, and I am earnestly attempting to do so — moving past mere talk. Just earned my Master of Professional Studies in Homeland Security and Criminal Justice Leadership from St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and am diligently working to get accepted into a Ph.D. program that will allow me the opportunity to study policing methodologies and their sociological impacts on crime and relationships. This, all, in an effort to better understand us — cops, humans, blacks, whites, Hispanics, criminals, academics, et al.
I also know that as we recently witnessed the Obama Administration be replaced in shocking contrast by the Trump Administration, it ushered in a new era, one whereby cops were no longer “villains,” but might be viewed as more infallible than they truly are. And this is no less dangerous than the misbegotten presumption of guilt laid down by the Holder/Perez Civil Rights Division of DOJ. And so I issue a challenge to AG Jeff Sessions led DOJ. And if you can’t meet that challenge, you are directly contributing to the sense of inequality in justice meted out and felt by the folks who ascribe to the Black Lives Matter platform. So please heed my words…
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