Category: Cities

Friday Music Break – March 27, 2015

There are more words about music than music today. People are asking a persistent question: Given our endless Middle East wars, threats to our Constitutional rights, growing income inequality, and the continuing of violence against blacks by our police, “Where is the protest music?”

Maybe we are looking in the wrong places. There has been an avalanche of provocative hip-hop and R&B, known generally as “black liberation music” around for years. Recently, it has become more thoughtful, and for whites in America, more accessible. Gawker has an article that provides a discussion of what it is about, and which artists are leading the genre.

Today, let’s focus on three artists, D’Angelo, who, in January, released an album, “Black Messiah” 14 years after his last effort. The title song has these lyrics:

Some will jump to the conclusion that I am calling myself a Black Messiah,
For me the title is about all of us…It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt
And in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough,
And decides to make change happen.
It’s not about celebrating one charismatic leader, but celebrating thousands of them.

The New York Times Magazine’s Jay Caspian King features another Messiah of the moment, Kendrick Lamar. His new album, “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has just been released. The first video released is for the song, “i“, that speaks of his experience in Compton, CA:

They wanna say there’s a war outside and a bomb in the street
And a gun in the hood and a mob of police
And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends…

Finally, J Cole released a new album in December, “Forest Hills Drive”. Here is “Intro”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hh-gGb0Mvk

Sample Lyric:
I said do you wanna, do you wanna be, free
Free from pain, free from scars
Free to sing, free from bars
Free my dawgs, you’re free to go
Block gets shot, the streets is cold
Free to love, to each his own
Free from bills, free from pills
You roll it loud, the speakers blow
Life get hard, you eat your soul

This song asks questions that the all of us must answer for ourselves. We live in a very structured, high-stress, work hard or get left behind society.

Do you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be free?

The answers to these questions are clearly, “YES” for everybody. Cole makes listeners think about what they are doing with their lives, and what really matters.

The Gawker article quotes Matthew McKnight of the New Yorker Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I don’t think it’s an accident that we have all these Black artists who were born around the same time and who are now making art that urges on liberation. America produced us. If there’s any clarity that we can derive from the different stories being told…it’s that a lot of people are fed up.

Kendrick might be one of the few Hip Hop artists who doesn’t want what whiteness affords white people:

And I will die knowing that this white racial supremacy shit has fucked with white folks psychologically, intellectually, and soulfully more than it’s fucked with any of us.

White supremacy is deeply ingrained, so deeply, that in fact, most aren’t even aware they’re infected.

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Friday Music Break – February 27, 2015

With all the talk about Scott Walker’s Republican presidential bid, maybe there should be some equal time for the governor of Minnesota, Wisconsin’s neighbor to the west, Mark Dayton, who is a Democrat. HuffPo reports:

When he took office in January, 2011…Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 % unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota’s first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history.

During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85% on individuals earning over $150,000, and on couples earning over $250,000, raising $2.1 billion/year. He’s also agreed to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2018, and passed a state law guaranteeing equal pay for women.

According to trickle-down economic theory, Minnesota must be losing businesses and jobs, right? Wrong. In the real world, the opposite happened. Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota’s economy, or 165,800 more jobs in Dayton’s first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms.

• Minnesota’s top income tax rate is the 4th-highest in the country, but it has the 5th-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6%.
• By late 2013, Minnesota’s private sector job growth exceeded pre-recession levels, and the state’s economy was the 5th fastest-growing in the United States.

Despite Republican complaints about Dayton’s supposedly anti-business agenda, Forbes ranks Minnesota the 9th-best state for business, while Scott Walker’s Wisconsin comes in at #32 on the same list.

And while Walker was busy blocking people from voting, Dayton actually created an online voter registration system, making it easier than ever for people to register to vote.

Oh, and Dayton is a billionaire. He’s an heir to the Target fortune, and a member of 1% who isn’t a prisoner of the billionaire dialectic.

There you have it, proof that trickle-down economics is bunk. Minnesota proves it.

On to your Music Break:
Whitehorse is a Canadian folk rock duo. Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland were married in 2006, but both were established and successful singer-songwriters prior to marriage and subsequently. They started to perform together in 2011. She also works with Sarah McLachlan, providing backing vocals at McLachlan’s live shows. Here are two songs from their just released “No Bridge Unburned” album. First up, “Downtown”:

Sample Lyric:
I’m electrified by the city light
I get off where I need to
And with who I like
I’m a diplomat
I’m a subway rat
I like the unfamiliar
I’m not scared by that

Next, “Sweet Disaster”:

Sample Lyric:
Galileo was bluffing
It’s just a mess out here
There’s no compass to guide us
Through the flashes of violence and fear

 

See you on Sunday.

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Did Chicago Police Run a “Black Site”?

“At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact”. − George Orwell

The Guardian is reporting that the Chicago police have used a “Black Site” for years:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site. The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights…

Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian reported that alleged activities there included the following:

• Detainees were kept out of the official police booking system
• Persons in custody were often shackled for long periods of time
• Attorneys were denied access to their clients
• There were frequent beatings, causing head injuries

If this is happening in Chicago, then could other cities also be operating illegal detention sites?

A series of US Supreme Court cases over the past 100 years have codified the rights of suspects under our system, but they may not have protected many suspects in Chicago. The Atlantic interviewed Tracy Siska, executive director of the Chicago Justice Project and a criminologist who wrote a story for The Guardian on military interrogation tactics in the city. Siska spoke about the Homan Square abuses of Constitutional rights: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

What used to happen at Homan Square is that prior to a year ago, if you get arrested and you get brought down anywhere in any district, you would not pop up in the city computer as being arrested until they processed the police report, which could take anywhere from an hour to 15 hours.
If they “arrested” you, then they have to report it. But if they don’t “arrest you,” nefarious things could happen and they could interrogate you without a lawyer. And they would move you around from district to district. So [for example] if the family shows up or the lawyer shows up and they say you aren’t here but you are, they’ve denied you access. But if they say you’re at [district] 17, then move you to 15, and then 12, they can question you without counsel. At Homan Square they don’t process paperwork about your arrest. You’re just gone. No one knows.
At some point they have to do the paperwork and prosecute you. After they get your confession, you wind up back in the paperwork.

One implication of Siska’s interview is that the Constitution-shredding actions of the Chicago PD ended in 2014. Again, according to Siska: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

About a year ago, [the rule changed]…After arriving at a CPD facility, [officers] have 20 minutes to one hour to put you into the system, and you appear on the system city-wide. Any officer anywhere in the city can find where you are. And anywhere they move you to, every time you move, [officers] have 20 minutes to one hour to put you in so you show up on a computer. Each time you move, your right to phone calls and Miranda rights starts all over again.

Belated exposure of the possible Constitutional abuses at Homan Square proves once again − as if we need more proof − how deeply the police forces in the US have been corrupted by the military-industrial complex and by our political enablers. It shows the extent that policing has become more like an occupation army (as it has been perceived in minority communities for a very, very long time).

There is no evidence that any loss of Constitutional rights, no matter how appalling, will wake up a solid majority of people in this country anytime soon. Like the Orwell quote says, we have agreed not to discuss some very important things, like Constitutional rights in our cities.

Not just that. We had a $4 trillion war based on lies that we didn’t discuss. We had a $1 trillion dollar financial meltdown. Not discussed. We learned that the NSA “collects it all.” Ho-hum.

“Mistakes happen”, and we just move on, talking about “50 Shades of Gray”. Americans have made their screwed-up priorities quite clear. They’ve given up on reality and have decided to go with fantasy.

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Friday Music Break – February 6, 2015

Today we have music, but first, here is our latest Police State Watch: Vox reported that NY Police Commissioner Bill Bratton unveiled a new militarized police unit that will be trained and armed with heavy protective gear, long rifles, and machine guns to restrain terrorists and social justice protesters. Bratton explained the purpose of the unit, which will consist of 350 officers: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.

Our recent protests? He’s speaking of the reaction to the killing of Eric Garner, most of which was peaceful, if antagonistic to the NYPD. The nation watched in horror last August as police officers deployed tear gas, sound cannons, and armored vehicles against crowds that were peacefully marching and chanting on the streets of Ferguson Missouri. Many of these protests grew increasingly lawless, partly as a result of police responding with military-grade gear.

But there’s more. Here is what Mr. Bratton said at the time of Garner’s killing:

You must submit to arrest, you cannot resist…The place to argue your case is in the courts, not in the streets.

Now, it looks like he supports punishing people arguing a misdemeanor arrest or who are protesting a perceived injustice even more harshly for resisting arrest. Bratton told a hearing at the NY State Senate:

If you don’t want us to enforce something, don’t make it a law.

That’s just the opposite of how resisting-arrest cases work in NYC. Most cops bring in very few cases of people resisting arrest, while a few cops bring in most of them. New York’s Public Radio station, WNYC analyzed NYPD records and found 51,503 cases with resisting arrest charges since 2009. Just 5% of officers who made arrests during that period accounted for 40% of resisting arrest cases — and 15% account for 72% of such cases:

Cops making resisting arrests

It seems that “resisting arrest” charges say more about the police than they do about the demonstrators or defendants, and making resisting arrest a felony won’t lower the number of arrests, it will just give more power to the police.

This means you take your life in your hands if you engage in public dissent in NYC. You could be facing a heavily armed small army. You are certainly facing possible prison time and a permanent criminal record for getting on the wrong side of the wrong cop.

Your freedoms, particularly your First Amendment right of assembly, is under attack by Mr. Bratton and others like him all across America. First, they say you cannot resist arrest. Second, they have a military-style army mobilized to make sure you are busted hard, and fast.

So, with all this talk about cops and arrests, here is Janis Joplin doing “Ball ‘n’ Chain” at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This was Janis’ first large-scale public performance, and it was as a member of Big Brother and The Holding Company. At Monterey, she owned the song, the stage, the crowd, and the festival. Columbia Records signed Big Brother and The Holding Company on the basis of this performance. Here is a live performance for the ages of Big Momma Thornton’s song:

See you on Sunday.

 

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NYPD Should Remember They Work for the Taxpayers

You should have cut the NYPD some slack when the two police were killed in the line of duty. Here is what the Wrongologist said on 12/22:

The harsh reaction that blamed Mayor de Blasio and the Eric Garner and Ferguson demonstrators should be viewed through a lens of that tragedy. The statements made by the PBA, and Commissioner Bratton were over the top, but under the circumstances, we can let go of them.

Fast forward to this week, when a large number of New York’s Finest Most Entitled once again turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio at the funeral service for Officer Wenjian Liu. From the Atlantic: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The show of disrespect came outside the funeral…[of a man] remembered as an incarnation of the American dream: a man who had immigrated at age 12 and devoted himself to helping others in his adopted country. The gesture, among officers watching the mayor’s speech on a screen, added to tensions between the mayor and rank-and-file police…

This came after Commissioner William Bratton asked them not to stage a repeat of their actions at Officer Rafael Ramos’s funeral. His request:

I issue no mandates, and I make no threats of discipline, but I remind you that when you don the uniform of this department, you are bound by the tradition, honor and decency that go with it.

Finally, the New York Times reported that ticket issuance by police in this city of 8.4 million was down by 90% last week:

Most precincts’ weekly tallies for criminal infractions — typically about 4,000 a week citywide — were close to zero.

And, New York continued to function normally, with people going about their business, seemingly secure on sidewalk, street, public transit and in their homes. So, let’s see:

• The NYPD disrespects the mayor.
• They do so for a second time even after a request not to do so by their Police Commissioner.
• They engage in a job action that, in some parts of the city, meant that no tickets were issued.

It’s now time for the NYPD to give some slack to the rest of us. Aren’t the police supposed to answer to someone? It appears that the more vocal among them think they answer only to themselves. And don’t say anything critical of the police, or anything bad that happens is our fault.

We know that they have a tough job, and that they have worked without a contract for more than a year, but they are quickly losing public support, given their current attitude.

When people can’t criticize the police, you have a police state.

And this isn’t the first time the NYPD has had issues with a NYC Mayor. In the early 1970s, Mayor John Lindsay had similar issues with the NY police unions. The NYT, in an editorial reviewed what de Blasio has done wrong:

1. He campaigned on ending the unconstitutional use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which victimized hundreds of thousands of innocent young Black and Latino men.
2. He called for creating an inspector general for the department and ending racial profiling.
3. After Eric Garner was killed on Staten Island, he convened a meeting with the police commissioner, William Bratton, and the Rev. Al Sharpton. He gave Sharpton greater prominence than the NYPD thought he should have.
4. He said after the Garner killing that he had told his biracial son, Dante, to “take special care” in encounters with the police.
5. He generally condoned the peaceful protests for police reform — while condemning those who incited or committed violence — and cited a tagline of the movement: “Black lives matter.”

Mayor de Blasio was elected by a wide margin (he got 74% of the vote) by, among other things, promising to reform the policing excesses that had been found unconstitutional by a federal court. He hired Mr. Bratton, who had achieved with the Los Angeles Police Department what now needs doing in New York.

The NYPD can’t stand behind the bad behavior on the part of some of their fellow officers. The “blood on his hands” rhetoric against Mayor de Blasio sounds like something the NYPD union leaders have learned from watching the Republican Party: Predict that a politician will fail, then do everything in your power to make it happen.

The NYPD has a unique responsibility. They don’t work for a private company, they work for the residents of New York City; NOT for their union, or their fraternity. If they fail to provide that service, they cheat the taxpayers. New Yorkers pay the NYPD salaries. They pay them to ensure the security of all New Yorkers.

But, the NYPD didn’t just pull the slowdown on the Mayor, they pulled it on the taxpayers. Could it be that the city has been wasting a significant amount of the nearly $5 billion it spends annually on its over 34,000 uniformed cops?

In the words of the NYT, what New Yorkers have a right to expect of the NY Police Department is simple:

1. Do your jobs.
2. Don’t violate the Constitution.
3. Don’t kill unarmed people.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 4, 2015

RIP Mario Cuomo:

Cuomo Koch

(Columbus Day Parade, October 11, 1982. Mayor Edward Koch, Gov. Mario Cuomo and Westchester County Executive Alfred DelBello march down New York’s Fifth Avenue) Credit: Associated Press

You have to wonder how different the country would be if Mario Cuomo had agreed to become a Supreme Court Justice in 1993 when Bill Clinton offered to nominate him to replace Byron R. White. George Stephanopoulos has written that Clinton came within 15 minutes of nominating Cuomo, until the latter rejected the job in a phone call with Stephanopoulos.

The Wrongologist never drops bold-face names in the blog, but today is an exception. In 1988, he (and Ms. Oh So Right) were backstage speaking with Frank Zappa, who was playing in Boston. Wrongo asked who Zappa would support for president the next time around, since the Dukakis debacle had just happened. He said: “only Mario”.  At the time, the Wrongologist agreed. But Mario would never run, and Zappa died in 1993.

On Christmas, Neil deGrasse Tyson sent this Tweet:

It caused the usual spewing by the “war on Christmas” crowd, who claimed that Tyson was deliberately provoking them. Tyson replied:

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

Speaking of truth, here is the whole objective truth:

COW The Truth2015 will be totally different, except:

COW New Boss

 

We just ceased combat operations in Afghanistan. What did we learn?

COW Lessons Learned

Republican leader Scalise attends Klan meeting. What did the GOP learn?

COW Scalise

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Two Police Killings, Two Different Reactions

A few more words about the killing of two NYPD officers. It was and is a tragedy. No one should think otherwise. The harsh reaction that blamed Mayor de Blasio and the Eric Garner and Ferguson demonstrators should be viewed through a lens of that tragedy, The statements made by the PBA, and Commissioner Bratton were over the top, but under the circumstances, we can let go of them.

It was different with the professional politicians. On Sunday, Ray Kelly, who was the police commissioner during the Bloomberg administration, said that in his view (and in the view of many officers), that Mr. de Blasio ran on an “anti-police” platform.

He wasn’t alone. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani attributed the killings to the protests that broke out across the city following a grand jury’s failure to indict a police officer for killing Eric Garner. But Rudy being Rudy, went over the top on Fox News on Sunday:

We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police.

OK, that makes the killings Obama’s fault. Then, it was Ex NY Governor George Pataki (R) who weighed in, blaming de Blasio and Attorney General Eric Holder for inciting the kind of anti-police fervor that led to the murders:

(For those who receive this blog in email via FeedBurner, the tweet will not display properly. Pataki said):

Sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of #ericholder & #mayordeblasio. #NYPD

This, just days after Pataki said that he was thinking of running for President in 2016. Pataki seizes an issue and runs (literally) with it.

Yet, de Blasio said on the night of the killings, while standing next to Commissioner Bratton:

It is an attack on all of us; it’s an attack on everything we hold dear.

Isn’t it interesting how the shooting of two NYC cops became politicized, not just in NYC but throughout the country. Bratton blamed, in a roundabout way, the protests and so it goes. All of these guys looking for political advantage on Sunday. Then, on Monday, the headline in NYT said:

Officers’ Killer, Adrift and Ill, Had a Plan

Ismaaiyl Brinsley was a gang member who spent time in jail, who hated cops, who shot his girlfriend before he took the bus to NYC. He necessitates shutting down demonstrations, suggesting we recall the mayor, and blaming the White House.

Yet, in Pennsylvania, in September, Eric Frein, a white guy kills one cop and wounds another. But that story isn’t about how we should end marches and protests, or play the political blame game. He was just a loner with authority issues. This is typical of the coverage of the PA killing: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Police have not spoken about a possible motive for the crime, other than that Eric Frein has talked and written about hating law enforcement. Authorities have said a review of a computer hard drive used by Frein shows that he had planned the attack for years.

NO motive?? The same story says that Frein claimed to have fought with Serbians in Africa. That he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives list. And that when they found him, he had two fully functional pipe bombs.

Clearly, Ismaaiyl Brinsley was the real threat to democracy, not Eric Frein. Two guys, two different plans, two different attacks on police, and two different reactions by the police and Republican pundits.

No surprise here.

Let’s move on to more music for the season with something to make us forget that the America we knew is disintegrating in front of us.

Here is an old Irish song that dates from the 12th century, “The Wexford Carol”. Take a listen to the melody and beautiful words. This version has Allison Krauss performing along with Yo Yo Ma. That’s the amazing Natalie MacMaster backing them on the fiddle:

First verse:
Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His belovèd Son.

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – December 22, 2014

RE: Sony. The twist in this case is the trope that North Korea is suppressing our Freedom of Speech. And, the suppressed “Freedom of Speech” is a shitty Hollywood movie. So the public is getting spun about an invisible, but somehow tangible, “attack” on our freedoms. The Wrongologist has no skills to determine who hacked Sony, but when the mainstream media jumps on something with both feet, you know it supports SOME government theme.

Is the plan to convince the American people that there are “threats” everywhere and that only the State Security Apparatus can protect them from Evil? The usual pun-holes on the Sunday tube talked about how big the threat is, and how vulnerable we are.

America has become a Factory of Fear. Fear the Muslims, fear Putin, fear China, fear immigrants, fear criminals, fear the national debt, fear detente with Cuba. Trouble is, once again, the only thing we’re being urged to do is muster up the courage to go shopping. Authoritarians need their subjects to be afraid. Their bet is that people will submit to bullying if they believe that the bullies are the only thing standing between them and their terrors.

Things have to change. Killing brown people for peace is not working. Our empire is bankrupting us, and has not made us any safer. Unfortunately in the US, our domestic politics, plus our failures in military adventurism, have created ever greater violence and lunacy, further feeding the rolling disaster.

As an example, take New York City. Two police were killed in their patrol car. NY’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the police union, reacts by declaring that the NYPD has “become a ‘wartime’ police department, and we will act accordingly.”
Wartime, really? Are these the union’s marching orders to the 35,000 armed members of the biggest police department in the US? The NYPD seems to be asserting their superiority to the NYC executive branch. This has the earmarks of an attempted coup.

As a former military, the Wrongologist respects the absolute need for a chain of command with an elected civilian at the top. As a former military, he knows that many in the military only respect the authority of civilian leadership if the civilian happens to be a conservative.

The NYPD seems to be ready to strike out at their civilian leadership because they have deemed it to be unworthy of leading their “honorable” police force. Their attitude of superiority should scare the living daylights out of all of us. This attitude is not amenable to any evidence to the contrary, or to self-reflection and examination. It will brook no doubts about the moral purity of the NYC police.

This seems to be coming to a head, and seems that it will only get uglier.

Monday’s Wake Up Music: On a much lighter note, some seasonal music. Here are the Capitol Steps with a seasonal song about Guantanamo:

 

Next, a semi-seasonal tune by The Firemen. Sounds obscure? It is. The Firemen are a duo of Paul McCartney and Martin Glover, who performs as Youth. There are some doubts about whether or not “Dance ‘til We’re High” is a real Christmas song, even though it has lyrics about “winter coming”, “snow falling”, “bells ringing out” and a catchy tune. But, it’s way better than McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”:

Your Monday Linkage:
Tanks that won’t go away. The CRomnibus funding bill includes $554 billion for defense spending. This lines up almost exactly with President Obama’s original request, but Congress made considerable changes to where this money is being spent. According to analysis by Defense News, 10% of the FY15 defense appropriations budget—and 30% of all line items—were changed in the logrolling process. The biggest ticket items include $120 million more for M-1 Abrams tanks, despite Army protestations (for the third straight year) that no additional tanks are needed.

Oops. On July 3, Homeland Security, which plays a key role in responding to cyber-attacks, replied to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about a malware attack on Google called “Operation Aurora.” Unfortunately, DHS officials made a grave error in their response. DHS released more than 800 pages of documents related not to Operation Aurora but rather to the Aurora Project, a 2007 research effort demonstrating how easy it was to hack into US power and water systems.

Ars Technica calls the Sony hack a “software pipe bomb.” Analysis by Cisco of a malware sample matching the signature of the malware that was used in the attack on Sony Pictures, reveals that the code was full of bugs and was anything but sophisticated.

Our frequent commenter, Terry McKenna, has a great post about Cuba and our Constitution. Go read it.

Bill O’Reilly said this on his show:

It’s easier to believe in a benevolent God — the baby Jesus — than it is in some kind of theory about global warming. It’s just easier, is it not?

O’Reilly was making the point that literal belief in the story of the virgin birth as it appears in the gospels is easy, while believing that burning fossil fuels causes climate change is hard. Another way of putting this is that O’Reilly thinks it is easier to believe that a woman can be impregnated without sperm than it is to believe the consensus of the scientific community on an issue he apparently doesn’t understand.

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Why Are Police Looking for Apologies?

What’s with the police union presidents in New York City, St. Louis and Cleveland? All are outraged by fairly tepid comments on the recent and controversial actions of their members, and all want apologies now, dammit. Let’s start with Cleveland.

TPM reports that the Cleveland police union has demanded that the Cleveland Browns football team apologize for a player who wore a T-shirt before last Sunday’s game protesting the police shootings of two black people. Here is the T-shirt:

Andrew Hawkins

That’s Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wearing a shirt reading “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III” during pre-game warmups.

To refresh your memory, Rice was the 12 year old kid killed last month when a Cleveland police officer shot him when he mistook the boy’s toy gun for a real weapon. John Crawford, 22, was killed by police in August at a Cleveland area Wal-Mart while he was holding an air rifle. Crawford was shot while doing absolutely nothing illegal. He was not threatening anyone. He was on his phone in Walmart carrying an item that’s sold at the store. Cops showed up and shot him.

So, seeing the T-shirt, Cleveland Police Patrolman Union President Jeff Follmer reacted:

It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law…They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.

So, nice stadium ya got there. Be a shame if something happened to it. The Browns did not apologize.

On to St. Louis, where the police overreacted earlier this month after a few Rams players entered their stadium making the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture popular with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. The St. Louis Police Association called the gesture “tasteless, offensive and inflammatory”, asked the Rams team for an apology, and called on the NFL to punish the players who ran on to the field using the “hands up” gesture.

And in New York City, the city’s Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (PBA) have been angered by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reaction to the killing of Eric Garner. And NYC’s cops are now telling the Mayor to stay away from cop funerals. The PBA distributed a flier to members, blaring: “DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” Cops were encouraged to sign and submit the “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver to ban what they see as a cop-bashing mayor from their funerals. The NYC mayor traditionally attends all funerals for fallen officers.

De Blasio basically said that he didn’t think the NYPD should be chokeholding its citizens to death, a matter that may require a seasoned NYC lawyer Mitchel Ashley or others to intervene for the families left behind. PBA President Patrick Lynch reacted by accusing the mayor of throwing cops “under the bus.”

De Blasio then went further, speaking about his 17-year-old mixed race son Dante:

We’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him…

That was too much, and PBA president Lynch replied: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

We have to teach our children, our sons and our daughters, no matter what they look like, to respect New York City police officers, teach them to comply with New York City police officers even if they think it’s unjust.

Three cities where cops use questionable tactics. Three cities where using those tactics caused controversial deaths. Three cities where the police are thin-skinned when their tactics are questioned.

These thin-skinned reactions seem totally natural, and consistent with a culture of “comply or die”.

And the police union presidents, by jumping on the comments of athletes and the NYC mayor, make a clear case against public-sector unions. They are not there to serve or protect the greater community, they are there to serve and protect their members, right or wrong. The presidents also are making the case that the police are not part of the community, but exist in a world above the community, since they deserve the community’s respect and legal immunity, regardless of their actions.

And it’s remarkable to see just how incredibly insular, tone-deaf and hyper-sensitive these police union presidents, and at least some of their rank and file, seem to be.

In Cleveland, the union president should be more concerned about the recently completed two-year Justice Department study that found the Cleveland police have a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force”. Will different tactics emerge as the Cleveland police adapt to their consent decree?

We need to rein in our police. There is way too much “comply or else” out on the streets. We see weapons meant for warfare pointed at people trying to exercise the small shred of their free speech rights that remain. All of these cops who killed in these controversial cases have said that in the same circumstances, they would shoot/choke again.

Who should receive the apologies? Hint: it’s not the cops.

UPDATE:

The column above needs to be updated with the news that on Monday, the Supreme Court decided that our police don’t have to know the law when they stop or detain a citizen. The message is that ignorance of the law is not a barrier to policing. From Think Progress:

There is one simple concept that law students learn in their very first weeks of criminal law class: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. This principle means that when an individual violates the law, it doesn’t matter whether or not they knew what the law said. If it’s a crime, and they are found to have committed the elements of that crime, they are guilty.

But now, that rule doesn’t apply to the police. On Monday, the US Supreme Court in an 8-1 ruling, found that North Carolina cops who pulled over Nicholas Heien for a broken taillight were justified in a subsequent search of Heien’s car, even though the reason he was pulled over was not a violation of the law.

The case involved the 2009 arrest of Nicholas Heien near Dobson, North Carolina. Sgt. Matt Darisse pulled Heien over for having only one working brake light, then found a bag of cocaine while searching his vehicle and charged him with attempted drug trafficking. However, state law only requires motorists to have one brake light working at any time. Heien’s attorneys argued that this made Darisse’s search unlawful. They lost.

So, our Supremes failed to draw a line limiting the scope of police stops, at a time when they are rampant and racially disproportionate. Now, police have more leeway to stop passengers on the road, even in jurisdictions that had previously said cops are not justified when they make mistakes of law.

During the past weeks, we have heard a lot about Grand Jury procedure and the “latitude” our legal system affords police and prosecutors. That latitude apparently now includes their right to be ignorant, of our laws. That goes along with:

• Their latitude in discerning what may be a threat to their person.
• Their latitude in the use of fire-power.

Now, they have latitude not to know the laws they enforce.

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Friday Music Break – December 5, 2014

Thinking today about the fact that the New York grand jury did not indict NYPD’s Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the July 17 chokehold death of Eric Garner, who died gasping “I can’t breathe” while in the custody of police outside a Staten Island convenience store. Here, from the indispensable MuckRock, is a screen shot from NYPD’s use of force policy:

COW NYPD Policy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can read the entire policy at MuckRock.

So today’s question is: Are we having the oft-promised national conversation? Is there a fundamental contempt for the law among the people empowered to enforce it? And have we gone beyond just needing a discussion? We already have policies which should have prevented what happened to Amadou Diallo from happening to Michael Brown or to Eric Garner.

Police officers kill too many black people, and then too often, face little or no accountability, particularly when there’s no video to show America what went down.

To help you meditate over the weekend, here is Randy Newman’s “Jolly Coppers on Parade”. His music is a counterpoint to the images. Call it irony, call it disrespect by demonstrators or by the police, call it whatever you need. Obviously not all cops are like the ones we’re seeing in this video, but we all know they are out there:

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke Wednesday onto the media about the matter, talking about his 16 year old biracial son Dante: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

This is profoundly personal to me…I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he [the president] said, ‘I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens.’ And I said to him, I did.

De Blasio went on to note that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who is black, “have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face.” More from de Blasio:

Because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.

This has been going on for centuries, folks. Throwing both hands up in the air signals either “Don’t shoot” or simply despair for changing the way things are.
It’s impossible to tell the difference anymore.

See you on Sunday.

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