Black Lives Matter

Tulsa reserve deputy charged with manslaughter
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/oklahoma-shooting-video/25702233/

Selling stolen guns?

Was the shot really an accident? (kinda seems like it)

Had the shot not taken place I would applaud these officers with a commendation. Now it seems all of the good efforts are lost in the smoke of possible racism.

There is really not much I hate more than illegal gun sales! Is that worth a person's life? Well had that gun been used to murder someone then, well, yea. Who needs another drive by shooting and using his daughter's book bag to sell a gun?

I support the police and usually admire them and I respect that their job is difficult and often life threatening.

Add racism and unnecessary excessive force to the mix and I lose all respect.

Still, only one gets a trial, therein is where the problem lies...

Not even people convicted of a heinous crime should be "brutalized". Euthanized maybe in a human way (as Hillary says it should be reserved for “really heinous crimes,”).

No one should be brutalized, it is uncivilized.

How to compare ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ to actual hate groups
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialSrslyTV/videos/927753250681402/

So, we should go about shooting Muslims when there's a terrorist attack?

Your 'karma' statement is disgusting and could be considered complicit in these vigilante murders.

Let's see if karma visits you.

So far as I know he's going to trial. Unfortunately he'll get off, the wheelman did.

Paul Ryan ‘Selfie’ With Young Republicans Backfires When Internet Notices

One VERY Telling Detail

GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan loves to pretend that the GOP doesn’t have a race problem. The 2012 autopsy report from the spectacular loss of the Romney/Ryan ticket to President Obama and Vice President Biden had a lot of so-called “minority outreach” goals. Clearly, none of those goals have been accomplished. After all, the current GOP standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has run a campaign that is steeped in racism. He kicked off his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, he has called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, has called women fat pigs and dogs, and accused Fox host and debate moderator Megyn Kelly of being menstrual when called out on this, and a whole host of other things that play to the bigotry that is so inherent in the current incarnation of the GOP.

All of that aside though, there is one very telling photo making the rounds on the internet that perfectly illustrates just how, well WHITE the Republican Party is, despite the wide range of diversity that makes up the actual country. It’s a priceless selfie of Paul Ryan showcasing himself with bunches of young republicans, and you won’t see one face of color in that grand sea of white. For your viewing pleasure (or disgust) here is the tweet of that photo:




http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/racism/paul-ryan-selfie-with-white-young-republicans-backfires-when-internet-notices-one-very-telling-detail/

WH responds to petition to label Black Lives Matter a "terror" group

Source: MSN/CBS News

After days of violence and heightened racial tensions in the U.S., the White House responded this week to an online petition asking the federal government to formally label the Black Lives Matter movement as a "terror group."

"Terrorism is defined as 'the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims,'" read the "We The People" petition, created July 6 on the White House website. "This definition is the same definition used to declare ISIS and other groups, as terrorist organizations."

Black Lives Matter, the petition said, "earned this title due to its actions in Ferguson, Baltimore, and even at a Bernie Sanders rally, as well as all over the United States and Canada." It asked the Pentagon to recognize the group as such "on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety."

Because the online document received at least 100,000 signatures -- at the time of this reporting, it had garnered over 141,000 names -- the White House was automatically prompted to respond..msn.com/en-us/news/us/wh-responds-to-petition-to-label-black-lives-matter-a-terror-group/ar-BBuqWxg

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wh-responds-to-petition-to-label-black-lives-matter-a-terror-group/ar-BBuqWxg


In the United States, if you oppose the unjustified killing of African Americans by police, you are a terrorist in the eyes of thousands of Americans.

If a group incites violence even if it is not directly involved with the violence it is still a terrorist group.

By that definition the NRA is clearly a terrorist group. So is christianity.

Well I might agree with you on Christianity especially in past history but then again I'm an atheist... As far as the NRA is concerned you have to show me evidence... Something like a bunch of NRA members marching and chanting Like BLM did pigs in a blanket fry them like bacon... What do we want Dead Cops when do we want it now...you know, like that.

So is every government involved in the illegal war in Iraq.

I suppose you missed the standoff in Nevada where the rancher feeds his herd on the American people's dime. And the situation out West where one of his kids took over a National Bird sanctuary for their own use. Another bunch of freedom loving freeloaders.

I guess I missed that... And what does that have to do with the NRA being a terrorist group?

My bad, I keep forgetting you think it's all Apple Pie and worship the NRA.

Ah...I see...a non-response response...just as I thought.

Not her fault you don't get it. Give your bunkie a cigarette, maybe he'll explain it to you.

Sorry Conservatives, New Research from Harvard Shows a Profound Amount of Racism by Police…Not Less of It

Don't believe the right-wing spin about Harvard's damning study that illustrates how cops target blacks.
By Chauncey DeVega / Salon
July 16, 2016



Philando Castile was killed by a Minneapolis-area police officer while giving him his identification. Like so many other black men, Levar Jones was also shot by a white police officer while fully complying with his commands. Eric Garner was choked to death while screaming “I can’t breathe.” John Crawford III was killed in a Walmart by police because he was carrying a toy gun that he wanted to purchase. Jonathan Ferrel was killed by a white police officer while seeking help after a car accident. 12-year-old Tamir Rice was street executed by the Cleveland police in less than 3 seconds.

Stories and personal experiences of police thuggery and violence are so common in the black community that they constitute a type of collective memory and group trauma.
ADVERTISING

Thus, it is a type of common sense fact that America’s police are more likely to use lethal force against black people than they are whites. But what if this is not true?

New research by Harvard University economist Roland Freyer severely upsets this narrative.

The New York Times explains how:

In shootings in these 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force.

But police shootings are only part of the picture. What about situations in which an officer might be expected to fire, but doesn’t?

To answer this, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The Police Department there let the researchers look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include encounters with suspects the police subsequently charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.

Mr. Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black. This estimate was not precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But in various models controlling for different factors and using different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.

In a celebratory response to Freyer’s new research, the right-wing news entertainment media is smearing the graves of black people who have been killed by America’s police while simultaneously mocking and deriding the Black Lives Matter movement and its struggle for human dignity. For conservatives, Freyer’s work is also a vindication of their fantastical and delusional belief that systematic and institutional racism against people of color in the United States is largely a myth.

Of course, matters are much more complicated.

Freyer’s research on police use of lethal force is not a definitive rebuttal or wholesale rejection of the racial disparities that exist in how America’s cops treat black people as compared to whites. For example, it does not disprove that the recent video recorded killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were driven by anti-black racism. Freyer’s conclusions, like other research of this type, speak to macro-level societal phenomenon and not every individual case.

While many conservatives are crowing about Freyer’s finding that police may not, in fact, be more likely to use lethal force against black people, they are conveniently refusing to acknowledge how his work providesfurther evidence of anti-black bias (and casual, day-to-day brutality) by the country’s cops:

The New York Times continues with:

Moreover, the results do not mean that the general public’s perception of racism in policing is misguided. Lethal uses of force are exceedingly rare. There were 1.6 million arrests in Houston in the years Mr. Fryer studied. Officers fired their weapons 507 times. What is far more common are nonlethal uses of force.

And in these uses of force, Mr. Fryer found racial differences, which is in accord with public perception and other studies.

In New York City, blacks stopped by the police were about 17 percent more likely to experience use of force, according to stop-and-frisk records kept between 2003 and 2013. (In the later year, a judge ruled that the tactic as employed then was unconstitutional.)

That gap, adjusted for suspect behavior and other factors, was surprisingly consistent across various levels of force. Black suspects were 18 percent more likely to be pushed up against a wall, 16 percent more likely to be handcuffed without being arrested and 18 percent more likely to be pushed to the ground.

Even when the police said that civilians were compliant, blacks experienced more force.

These are the types of daily and cumulative humiliations that logically lead many black Americans to distrust the police, view them as an occupying force that neither protects nor serves people of color, and at the extreme fuels the rage that led Micah Xavier Johnson to shoot 5 police in Dallas, Texas last week.

Social science is cumulative and iterative. For example, Freyer’s conclusions about police use of lethal force will have to be reconciled relative to work by Cody Ross which shows that America’s cops are at least 3 times more likely to shoot unarmed black people than they are unarmed whites. Likewise, social psychologists and others have demonstrated that subconscious racism-implicit bias influences police to shoot black people faster than whites.

If Freyer’s conclusions are correct, then while police may be less willing to use lethal force against a black person in a given encounter, there are so many encounters because of racial profiling or other causes that the country’s police are still killing black people at much higher rates than whites.

These disparities in use of force cannot be explained away by the argument that blacks disproportionately live in high crime areas or supposedly commit crimes at a higher rate than whites, thus the likelihood of negative police encounters are substantially increased.

There will be other interventions made as well. How representative of the United States as a whole was Freyer’s sample of cases? Was there a type of social desirability or selection bias at work, where those police departments whose officers are most likely to use lethal force against black people declined to share their data? These questions are not the fault of Professor Freyer, but rather a function of how America’s police departments are not required to accurately and consistently report the number of people they kill to the federal government and general public.

And ultimately, police thuggery and violence cannot be decoupled from the documented racism and discrimination of the broader criminal justice system, and how America’s police have historically been enforcers of white supremacy. This is the social and political context that any serious discussion of anti-black and anti-brown violence by police in the United States must grapple.

Denzel Washington, in his Oscar-winning performance as corrupt Los Angeles police officer Alonzo Harris in the movie “Training Day” tells Jake Hoyt that, “It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove”. Professor Roland Fryer’s new work is so very important because America’s police departments cannot be properly reformed unless the facts are known—and yes, “common sense” assumptions about race, policing, and the law are challenged.

Once we understand the nature of the problem it can fixed. Anything less will bring sub-optimal results.

Chauncey DeVega’s essays on race, politics and popular culture can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com/. He is a regular guest on Ring of Fire Radio and TV, and hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Follow him on Twitter.

Question: do you think Bob has restricted his phone from dialing nine-one-one when he's in trouble?

You're nothing if you aren't a troll, giujohn.

This will be my last attempt to get you to converse like you're an adult.

If anyone is denied his rights, we are all denied our rights and rights become privilege. And privileges get passed out and denied.

How do find it no problem to have voting rights denied over needless ID requirements that will be overturned as law eventually? And at the same time claim that refusal of gun-ownership to those on the no fly watchlist is unconstitutional and then claim falsely it is impossible to get off the list.

Frankly I, and apparently a large majority of those of us who give a whit about your undocumented personal opinion, don't find your crude and crudely crafted word salad as salient as having an opinion supported by facts. I post what I want according to how I understand the rules. Thats my right as defined by a2k. I support your right to do the same. But I don't have to take your pissing on my shoe off topic and pass it off as rain.

The fact you can't factually support your hate messages or stay on topic is just so much piss.

I'm pretty much done with you unless you grow up.