Filed under: Democrat Corruption | Tags: Baltimore, Ferguson, Police Brutality, Victims
Jonathan Tobin has an essential essay at Commentary magazine’ Contentions blog, on “The Real Victims of the War on Police.”
From last summer’s disturbances in Ferguson, Missouri to the more recent riots in Baltimore, the country has been engaged in a debate about police violence that has hinged on accusations of systematic racism. Regardless of the findings about the shooting in Ferguson or the racial identity of the Baltimore officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a narrative about police racism has become entrenched in our popular culture that has remained impervious to reason or the facts. One of the consequences of this war on police that has been encouraged by statements coming from the very top of our government, including the president and the attorney general, have been incidents of violence against police. When officers go down that generates some attention, yet less discussed is the way the lives of people in poverty-stricken minority neighborhoods are affected by this attempt to blame the nation’s ills on white racism. But as the Wall Street Journal reports today, it is precisely they who are suffering as arrests have gone down in Baltimore in the last month while violent crime has increased dramatically.
In the weeks after Gray’s death as scrutiny and criticism of the Baltimore police has intensified, arrests have gone down by a rate of 40 percent when compared to the same period of time in 2013 and 2014. What makes this figure so startling is that it includes the hundreds that were arrested during the riots that rocked portions of the city. At the same time, violence in the Western district of the city where the riots occurred has gone up in a way far outpacing the increase in the rest of the city.
What’s happened here is obvious. Nothing can or should excuse alleged police misbehavior and if the six officers — three white and three African-Americans — are convicted of responsibility for Gray’s death while in their custody, they will deserve to be harshly punished. But the willingness of so many people, both on the streets and on the airwaves, to take it as a given that the cops are alien invaders who must be resisted has made it difficult if not impossible for them to do their jobs. The whole essay is here.
What is clear is that there is no “epidemic” of black men dying at the hands of police. The epidemic, Jason Riley says, is of “Young black men dying at the hands of other black men.” But nobody wants to talk about that. Nor do they want to talk about the news that the protesters in Ferguson were bussed in from groups like New Black Panthers, ANSWER and the US Human Rights Network, Now they are complaining that they never got paid. MORE owed the protesters money.
There are always unintended consequences. When the administration makes claims of police brutality, the police are afraid to make arrests. That means that more crime is ignored or excused. Democrats really don’t get incentives nor think about unintended consequences. They are concerned with empathy, and they care about poor black people. They will happily vote for more funds for the schools though. That’s why Baltimore has some of the highest expenditure on students in the country. And nothing will change, nothing at all.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
American Elephants 