[tomder55]

I don't dismiss them at all. I am putting the blame solely on the elected officals who inflame them and egg them on . De Blasio met with the protesters and should've read them the riot act . Yeah you can protest peacefully . Instead as the chief executive in charge of the police dept . He threw them under the rug and sided with the most extreme positions of the protesters.
No it is not bad policing policy . If there was ANY bad policy in this case it was that deBlasio made it a priority to crack down on the selling of 'loosies ' individual cigarettes . That's why Eric Garner was busted multiple times ....because deBlasio ordered a crack down . This is the same idiot mayor who says that the cops will no longer arrest people who have an illegal substance on their person. But no ! If someone is going to create a black market for a legal product ;when the only reason it can become a black market is because the city gouges smokers with excessive taxation ;well then the whole wrath of the law enforcement should come down on them . The only difference this time was that Garner had health issues . If he was a healthy man and he was taken down that way ;no one would've given the time of day about it .
But deBlasio doesn't want the focus of the case to be about how his petty policy led to Garner's death . So he has joined in with the cop bashing. If he was a private citizen then perhaps it would be just him flapping his gums . But he is the mayor of the city ;in charge of the police dept. He threw them under the bus with irresponsible inflamatory rhetoric . Now we see what the anti-cop atmosphere he helped create has wroght. HE'S the one who politicized this .Not the cops who spoke out against him.

[talaniman]

Eric Garner wasn't selling loosies when he was arrested, and the cops weren't called there for him selling loosies. Had they not focused on his prior bad acts he would not have been arrested and would be alive. He would be alive if one cop had not employed a banned choke hold.

You saw the video, we all did.

[Catsmine]

citizens exercising their RIGHTS to protest

Like these?

[tomder55]

yeah I saw the video . He was resisting arrest . He would be alive if he had cooperated . On the streets is not the place to contest an arrest .

[talaniman]

@Cats,

Bad acts by a few, tarnishing the many. Same could be applied to the actions of cops.

yeah I saw the video . He was resisting arrest . He would be alive if he had cooperated . On the streets is not the place to contest an arrest .

The cop used an illegal choke hold, when he had 6 other cops there. He also didn't relinquish the hold after he was down.

[NeedKarma]

These threads teach us a lot about the USA.

[tomder55]

and 3 cops this weekend were executed as a result . The ironic thing about it was that the 2 executed in NY were not white cops . Oh btw ,a 4th cop was shot multiple times and wounded in St Louis this weekend . And yesterday in the Bronx ,Raymond Leonardo aimed his gun point blank at cops and pulled the trigger . Lucky for the cops ,he had just finished unloading his gun randomly shooting out apartment windows ,putting many of the residents at risk. The cops were responding to the call when he aimed his gun at them .

and Garner was not killed by a choke hold. There was no choke hold. He used approved dept procedures. Garner died due to pre-existing conditions.

[talaniman]

You and Clete don't seem to be able to separate the actions of criminal NUT jobs from those of lawful citizens so its no wonder you cannot separate bad cops from the good ones.

[tomder55]

again , the protests are not about a couple of bad cops . You said so yourself. You think it is systemic based on racisim.... a charge that is a steaming pile of manure. Brown died when a cop defended himself against Brown's assault . Garner died resisting arrest . His health was a major factor .
But you make a moral equivalence between their deaths and the execution style murder of police officers. I bet you have your ' free Mumia Abu-Jamal ' poster too.

DeBlasio made it a point to say in a early presser that he did not trust the safety of his biracial son ,not against the predators on the streets that the cops routinely put their lives on the line battling ;but from the very cops protecting him .
He has a history of making similar anti-cop statements going back before his election. He ran his whole campaign on an anti-cop platform. He has greatly contributed to the tensions .

[talaniman]

Systemic/institutional racism exists, whether you believe it or not.

Brown died when a cop defended himself against Brown's assault .

That's not an established fact.

DeBlasio made it a point to say in a early presser that he did not trust the safety of his biracial son ,not against the predators on the streets that the cops routinely put their lives on the line battling ;but from the very cops protecting him .

Any responsible parent of a biracial/black/child would do the same and no doubt has schooled him on other dangers to him also. Many minorities have come out publicly with the same assertion, yet you dismiss it as divisive.

Man, what's wrong with you? You just can't see the concept of bad cops can you?

[tomder55]

yes I can .
You can't separate them from the bunk you call Systemic/institutional racism .You can't have it both ways . Either you think the whole system is chock full of bad cops ;or you think the bad cops are a rogue small minority in the crime fighting system. Obviously DeBlasio ,and the emperor think that the system is chock full of bad cops ;even in a "progressive "city like NY .

[talaniman]

You hate DeBlasio, and its no wonder you skew everything he says.

[Catsmine]

It's not "bad cops," it's badly TRAINED cops, with Union representation that keeps the poor training going.

For instance, the video DOES show Officer Pantaleno executing a blood choke. US Marine Corps - Close Combat Manual: 6 - Chokes and Holds The Union lawyer, as lawyers always do, claimed it was not a choke hold since it did not strangle Garner, as an airway choke would.

This sort of poor training and cover-up is a larger factor in the mis-trust of police than anything the Rev. of Racism or Grupenfuhrer DeBlasio can do.

Tal, that last comment is the equivalent of calling "racist" to try to win an argument.

[talaniman]

That's my take on this too Cats. Bad training makes for bad cops and no credible review, or accountability makes it worse NOT better.

[paraclete]

If I take anything away from this debate it is that racism has a strong influence on these events and so does lawlessness, so there is an elephant in the room. Police are entitled to protect themselves, what they should not be entitled to do is use undue force or take the lives of unarmed citizens without consequence. No amount of training will change the attitude of a rogue cop and community attitudes, whether racist or to violence are not easy to change. If you have a community that feels it has to protect itsself you have the potential for violence The police should recognise this and not inflame the situation

[Catsmine]

No amount of training will change the attitude of a rogue cop

Proper training can, however, significantly reduce the amount of "attitude" ANY cop displays to the public. If we continue to train Harry Callahan's, we will continue to get Ferguson's.

[NeedKarma]

But there is an ingrained "brotherhood" mentality that will resist this training to change their ways.

[tomder55]

bad training or a handful of bad cops .... here is the relevent point. Elected leaders have been egging and enabling the hatred of cops . The day before the executions ,as the emperor boarded AirForce One for his vacation he said that cops have a 'hidden bias ' left over from Jim Crow days . That is a completely absurd charge; especially if he's speaking about the NYPF ;the most diverse force in the nation. The Emperor ,Holder ,and deBlasio rushed to judgment concluding there was racist motives in the officers actions.

If you have a community that feels it has to protect itsself you have the potential for violence The police should recognise this and not inflame the situation

The truth is this . Blacks ,representing about 13% of the population,commit 53% of the nations murders .....MOSTLY Black on Black violence(91% of the nations murders are Black on Black). If the emperor ,Holder and deBlasio gave a rats a$$ they would be addressing this instead of enabling distrust against the very people who risk their lives trying to protect the Black communities against this national plague . Instead they spin a narrative that the police are the problem. The three of them are disgraceful POS demagogues masquerading as responsible public leaders .

Thankfully Holder is exiting the scene .Hopefully his apparent replacement Loretta Lynch does the job better than Holder ,who in all ways was a miserable failure at his job .

[talaniman]

Community mistrust in some communities didn't start with the current mayor in NY Tom, its been festering for years and you know it. Not just NY, but across the country.

[tomder55]

Yeah well appears that the biggest cities run by the most "progressive" leaders are the biggest problems . How do you explain the murder rate in places like Chi-town ;run by Rhambo ;or Newark ,formerly run by Sen Corey Booker ? As an example.... was the deteriorating social conditions that are directly tied to the breakup of the family unit among African-Americans the result of Jim Crow ? Nope ,the family unit was fine . It began it's deterioration with the social experiments that the progressives began in the 1960s .

Whether this distrust exists or not ,it has been inflamed by the community organizers/agitators we elected as leaders ,and their flunky Sharpton who has left death and destruction in his wake since he usurped control of the civil rights movement .