If they gunned me down

It's unconscionable.

I don't understand it. What purpose does it serve?

Does the news just want everyone to be frightened? Is that their purpose?

A lot of sickening news about this stuff -
In Houston, a group that openly carries guns everywhere they go - white folks - are planning a rally inside a black community. Tomorrow, I think. Many residents there say they will match gun for gun. I'm sure there will be an army of cops too.

This top image is the one I remember being everywhere in the news.

I remember thinking it was a pretty good photo for them to use, very neutral. He looks like a kid I might know -- a kid anyone might know.

I read an interesting opinion piece today (I'll see if I can find it) that talked a bit about the militarization of the police force after 9-11. It seem to the author that more people started getting shot by the police once they were provided with military style weapons and training.

I haven't looked up any statistics on it but maybe there's something to that.

Thinking back to myself, I'm wondering if this photo thing doesn't go back to the "blacker" OJ Simpson photo Time ran on their cover. Is that when journalism realized how easily manipulated we could be with image choice?

Yes, there are more than one story about that going around, this week.

A look at the swat team that greeted today's protest in Ferguson. There is a frightening video on the site.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/ferguson-protest-swat-team_n_5676690.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

HOLY ****!

The hypocracy of the police response to unarmed black men as opposed fully armed white men is underlined nicely here
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204652539779323&fref=nf

And this is a terrifying indictment of the nature of racism in the USA

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/21-things-you-cant-do-while-black

Those photos just jogged loose a memory --

When Mo was maybe 4 years old we went to some community event where the police were handing out free bike helmets. They arrived in one of those big armored SWAT things.

Mr. B and I asked the what the heck that was all about and they told us that Homeland Security has sent them all this money and they had to spend it on something so they'd spent it on this massive thing.

The community event was the first time they'd ever taken it out of the garage. I don't think they've ever had it out again as this was in a dinky little town that is considered a suburb of my city.

Looking at these photos makes me wonder if they have any black policemen in St. Louis. There isn't one in the photos or video.

Did they just not send them (that seems like a stupid choice)?

Did they refuse to go?

Even lily-white Oregon has black cops. You know St. Louis has to.

I'd like to know the story behind their absence at this protest.

Of fifty three cops in the town, three are black.

And Jiminy Christmas!!

Not allowed in the Swat team somehow?

Is the black guy at the top of the first post Bubba in Forrest Gump?

The Huffington Post's Ryan J. Reilly and the Washington Post's Wesley Lowery were arrested Wednesday evening while covering the protests in Ferguson, Missouri after the death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, who was shot by a police officer last week.

SWAT officers roughed up the reporters inside a McDonald's, where both journalists were working. Reilly snapped a photo, prompting cops to request his identification.

"The officer in question, who I repeatedly later asked for his name, grabbed my things and shoved them into my bag," said Reilly, who appeared on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes" shortly after his release to recount the arrest. "He used his finger to put a pressure point on my neck."

"They essentially acted as a military force. It was incredible," Reilly said. "The worst part was he slammed my head against the glass purposefully on the way out of McDonald's and then sarcastically apologized for it."

Reilly said it will be difficult to hold the officer "accountable for his actions," as the officer did not respond to Reilly's repeated requests for his name or other identification. He said he can't be "100 percent sure" whether the officer was aware that he's a reporter, "but that really shouldn't matter in this equation."

Reilly believes he was arrested because he declined to present the officer his identification when asked for it, he said.

See tweets from Reilly and Lowery below:

The kid was an attempted murderer
trying to literally beat the brains out of an exemplary citizen
by slamming his head on the cement. That 's what u admire.

All he had to do to survive
was to be NON-VIOLENT.
I don t think that was too much to ask.

I 'll raise a glass to salute his victim, Zimmy,
a better citizen than I am.

(If I had not moven to Florida,
u 'd have owed me a dinner!)





David

I'm not. We don't yet know what happened in this case, and the shooting could have been justified.

This country has a sordid history of white people being lynched and demonized for having defended themselves from a minority aggressor, and there is much justification for keeping this officer's identity secret if it turns out that he did nothing wrong.

If these vigilantes expose the police officer's name, I hope they end up with long prison sentences because of it.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: If you have to defend yourself from a minority these days, it is best to just make sure that there are no living witnesses and then just slip quietly away, letting the police chalk it all up to "gang activity".

For that, its best to use a revolver,
not a pistol.

That depends.

A double barrel shotgun firing buckshot leaves the fewest forensics. There is no rifling, and most of the shot doesn't contact the barrel at all.

A silenced weapon firing sub-sonic projectiles will draw the least immediate attention, giving the greatest opportunity for escape.

Normally such a weapon is a .45 pistol. But silencers likely can be affixed to revolvers too.

Perhaps with creativity it would be possible to silence a double-barrel shotgun. That would be the ultimate in clandestine defense.

Impractical; too burdensome, heavy & awkward to carry around all the time.
Almost no one wud do it; like carrying around a fire extinguisher
all the time, against the chance that u will encounter a fire.