Related: Louisiana Getting Rid of Good Old Boy Cops
"Tension eases in Ferguson, focus shifts to grand jury charges" by Sara Burnett and Jim Salter | Associated Press August 23, 2014
FERGUSON, Mo. — For Many Ferguson residents, eager to end the disruptions to their lives caused by protests and police presence considering the racial tensions of the case, even the makeup of the grand jury was being closely scrutinized. Two black women and one black man are on the 12-member panel, along with six white men and three white women, said Paul Fox, director of judicial administration for St. Louis County Circuit Court.
Without specifically mentioning the grand jury’s racial makeup, the Brown family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, said the panel ‘‘works perfectly’’ as long as the prosecutor presents the necessary evidence and doesn’t withhold information.
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Better return an indictment -- or else!
FLASHBACK:
As a point of reference I turned Air AmeriKa on in the car yesterday
because the sport station was Jimmy Fund telethon day, and came across a
laughable character by the name of Mark Levine.
He was almost crying feeling sorry for commander Johnson, and all the
black and white want to do is live together. He was railing against the
"anarchists" ruining it all, and then says he blame the "gun nuts" and
would tell us why when we get back.
I stuck around and he comes back and calls the "Second Amendment
freaks terrorists" before launching into a gun control screed. I'm
sitting in my car thinking it was the AUTHORITIES that did this, you
moron. The he starts going off about how outgunned the police are -- in
the face of the propaganda pre$$ reporting of how militarized police
departments have become! And yet that puke with a radio spot was whining
and crying about the under assault authorities!
The best part, however, was when he referred to an incident in
California where two guys with AK-47s and bullet proof vests went on a
killing spree and "terrorized" a neighborhood -- in 1997!
HA-HA-HA-HA! And here we are in 2014!
What the show told me after a mere fifteen minutes is the propaganda
pre$$ has so lost the public mind they have resorted to absurdity.
"Progressives" are pathetic!
Related: Ferguson Protests Hijacked By Agent Provocateurs
And now they are showing up on my Boston Globe opinion page?
"US gun culture has police arming to keep up" by Michael A. Cohen | August 23, 2014
Over the past two weeks, Americans have been transfixed and horrified by the surreal images of police donning camouflage and gas masks and pointing sniper rifles at unarmed demonstrators in Ferguson, Mo. Why have police departments become so enamored with tools more associated with war than with walking the beat? One answer is receiving precious little attention: America’s gun culture.
Here we go again!
America is a nation awash in firearms. It’s simply impossible to talk incisively about what’s happening in Ferguson without talking about guns and the ease with which ordinary citizens and criminals can get access to them.
Except it is the PEOPLE ARMED to the TEETH, the COPS that DID THIS!
C'mon Mike!
Police today are much better armed because it’s the only way they can keep up with criminals, the most infamous being a 1997 shoot-out at a North Hollywood bank in which the robbers were toting automatic weapons and wearing body armor.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
****************
With assault weapons and high-capacity handguns making up an increasing share of gun sales and being heavily marketed by gunmakers — and with politicians refusing to limit the lethality or availability of such weapons — an arms race is being spurred between the citizenry and police.
The dangers of that are evident on the streets of Ferguson. While the overheated reaction of police to peaceful protests is an outlier, the increased utilization of military-style weapons is not.
Has he so vastly forgotten Occupy?
“If you give a police department a SWAT team, they will want to use it,” says Jim Bueermann, the president of the Police Foundation, which promotes effective policing. “And if you’re not clear on the appropriate times to utilize it, then you will begin to normalize its deployment.” Indeed, according to a recent ACLU report, nearly 80 percent of the SWAT raids they examined were conducted to serve search warrants, which was rarely the case in the past.
When you combine these weapons with a police culture that has officer safety as its top priority, it should hardly come as a surprise that police departments will exercise an abundance of caution in protecting their officers — and an abundance of firepower.
Oh, is that what they were doing?
The way this guy has turned the protesters into the perpetrators stinks.
At the root of the problem is that policing in America is unlike anywhere else in the developed world. Elsewhere, it’s a highly unusual, and controversial, event when a police officer uses deadly force. British police officers, for example, fired their weapons in just three incidents in 2013, with no fatalities.
Here, the cops blow people away with regularity and are then cleared of it. And if that is some argument for European gun control, from my cold dead hand.
****************
Although rates of violent crime are historically low, police killings are not declining. In Massachusetts, for example, the number has gone up every year from 2008 to 2013.
But it us, the citizens, that are responsible because of the gun culture. Must be those rotten antiwar people, not the war-profiteering "defense" companies and the agenda-pu$hing propaganda pre$$ that promotes them.
This country is steeped in militarism, promoted by government, money, and ma$$ media and this guy is blaming the average citizen for the culture. Whatta putz.
None of this means that police officers who use deadly force should get a pass. But it’s a reminder that chalking up such shootings simply to overly aggressive police doesn’t tell the whole story.
Like the Amerikan media would tell the whole story about anything! OMG!
America is the most heavily armed country in the developed world.
With a MILITARY BUDGET LARGER than the REST of the WORLD COMBINED!
Our toxic gun culture and permissive gun laws are crucial factors in the ongoing militarization of America’s police departments.
The government fobbing off war-profiteering purchases to help suppress an increasingly angry populace has nothing to do with it, huh?
But in a nation seemingly inured to the constant tragedy of senseless gun violence, that is barely part of the conversation.
Because one has nothing to do with the other, you agenda-pushing puke.
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What the hell is the Century Foundation anyway?
Just another bunch of globalist do-gooders, huh?
"R.I. peace workers go to Ferguson, Mo." August 23, 2014
Four peace workers from Rhode Island traveled this week to Ferguson, Mo., trying to help ease unrest after a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager. The workers are from the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence in Providence. The nonviolence training director at the institute, Salomao ‘‘Sal’’ Monteiro Jr., told The Providence Journal that he and three colleagues arrived in Ferguson Thursday and plan to stay through Saturday. Monteiro said they planned to offer support and possibly nonviolence training to Ferguson residents. The institute’s mission is to reduce group-related violence. Protests and violence erupted in the city near St. Louis after Michael Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9."
UPDATE: Obama orders review of arming police with military-grade weapons, tools" by Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt | New York Times
