Monday Medley

• Why Conservatives Still Won't Admit That Charleston Was A Racist Crime
  

  Aurin Squire at TPM lists several prominent GOPers (e.g., Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Nikki Haley, a WSJ columnist [anonymous and invisible if you don't have a subscription], etc.) who use words like "I don't know [why it happened]," "unimaginable," "we don't know the motivation," "senseless tragedy," etc., and responds to these protestations of incomprehension:
  

  Given the history of the South, along the rise of both active shooters and gun access, we can't call what happened Wednesday night a “senseless tragedy.” In fact, the Charleston church shooting is full of savage sense. Thanks to complicity at best, and outright racist at worst, the “inconceivable” is still feasible. The fear tactics that were once localized in the dark backwoods of our political landscape now reach every phone and laptop. ...

  We DO know the motivation, the act is NOT inconceivable, we CAN imagine, and Repub's will find there's no use in pretending we don't or can't.
  
  
• Sixth greatest extinction event in the history of our planet is underway
  

  (Be sure to click through to the underlying paper and at least read the abstract, in which the authors justify this statement: "These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.")

  Yes, it IS happening, as demonstrated under fairly strict criteria. Yes, humans ARE causing it. Will H. sapiens survive it? The abstract doesn't explicitly say, but you may live to find out!
  
  
• Supreme Courts rejects appeal of decision overturning NC's mandatory ultrasound abortion law
  

  (At last, some good news, however limited: because the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of this lower court's decision, women who reside in North Carolina cannot be forced by state law to obtain an ultrasound (an unnecessary, expensive and possibly inaccessible procedure) as a precondition for obtaining an abortion.)

  Now if they can only find a clinic that has not closed and get transportation to it...
  

And now two that hardly require any explanation, considering the nature of many of today's police forces:

• Florida police murder black computer engineer as he listens to music; attempted cover-up exposed
  
  
• Police crush, kill man begging for his life, screaming he was suffocating until his ears turned blue
  
  

"Monday, Monday..."

‘Don't Call It A Curfew’: BORDC/DDF's Executive Director Comments On Baltimore

This article by Shahid Buttar, executive director of the recently merged Bill of Rights Defense Committee - Defending Dissent Foundation (BORDC/DDF, occasionally DDF/BORDC) considers the serious possibility that the actions of the Baltimore police imposed no mere "curfew" on parts of the city but actual de facto martial law, in response not to a "riot" but to a rejection by demonstrators of an all‑out fully equipped military operation by those police, consciously and brutally imposed on the demonstrators.

The trend toward use of military equipment, gear and tactics by city police departments against protesters of all sorts, most of the latter nonviolent, scares hell out of me, as I am certain it is intended to do. And Godwin's Law becomes less applicable as, incident by incident, protesters are beaten, tased, gassed, pepper‑sprayed etc. in the streets or taken to jail and denied the most fundamental rights of people detained in America. How often is an arrest for protesting peacefully effectively a death sentence, or a jail term without charge, trial, conviction or sentencing?

And when is enough, enough? Buttar depicts a sign at one protest:

These aren't riots. You are watching an unjust system be[ing] dismantled.

One can only hope that interpretation is recognized in the halls of power before protesters are driven to more extreme measures to make their voices heard.

Miscellany: Police Behavior, Riots, Race, Nutjob GOPers And Their Guns

This post may not be particularly coherent, but I need to clean the accumulation of tabs in the browser...

• Bryan at Why Now? points us to CBC for a less ruthlessly "edited" view of police behavior in the news: Baltimore shows police killings America's real state of emergency
• Jon Sopel at BBC News explores What a riot does achieve
• Paul J. Weber at AP via TPM notes that TX Gov Orders State Guard to Monitor Possible Military Takeover of Texas, and similarly, Rand [Paul]: I'll Look Into Whether The Military Is Planning To Takeover The Southwest; together, these tend to prove that the Texas GOP is full-blown batshit fucking nuts
• Josh Marshall at TPM thinks we're crossing that Bridgegate exactly when we come to it
• Aniza Garcia at TPM reports that a Child Finds A Loaded Gun In John Boehner's Capitol Bathroom
• antifa at Kos poses and firmly answers ignorant white Americans' too-frequent question, "Why do they burn down their own neighborhood?"

Maybe next time I'll have something original to write. (Maybe not...)

Chicago Police Systematically Deny Counsel To Arrestees

Is this still true?
Even in Chicago?

In my not-so-humble opinion, denying the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to people arrested in the context of exercising their First Amendment right to free speech in protest of government action, especially denying that right systematically, is arguably one of the most egregious sorts of police misconduct possible. I mean, if Chicago PD is doing this, they might as well be firing rubber bullets into crowds, assaulting peaceful protesters with billy clubs, using tasers on nonviolent protesters, etc. (Oh, wait...) Police denying arrestees' access to an attorney is behavior characteristic of a totalitarian government, not a representative democracy.

Kevin Gosztola at FDL has details. This is no April Fool's joke!

War And Peace War And Police

I promise this post is shorter than the first proposed title would indicate. But the subject it addresses - the military-style up-armoring and officer training of America's police departments - is already underway and growing rapidly. Tom Engelhardt has the basics in his article at The Nation, What Does the Future Hold for a Country Forever at War? — The domestic arms race in America is a one-way street—and the question is what awaits us up the road. Two paragraphs out of the middle should crystallize what concerns me... and of course Engelhardt himself... so much:

...

Reminder to officers:
Don't be a cartoon!

The occasion for such reflections: machine guns in my hometown. To be specific, several weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announced the formation of a new 350-officer Special Response Group (SRG). Keep in mind that New York City already has a police force of more than 34,000—bigger, that is, than the active militaries of Austria, Bulgaria, Chad, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kenya, Laos, Switzerland or Zimbabwe—as well as its own “navy,” including six submersible drones. Just another drop in an ocean of blue, the SRG will nonetheless be a squad for our times, trained in what Bratton referred to as “advanced disorder control and counterterror.” It will also, he announced, be equipped with “extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns—unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.” And here’s where he created a little controversy in my hometown. The squad would, Bratton added, be “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”

Now, that was an embarrassment in liberal New York. By mixing the recent demonstrations over the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others into the same sentence with the assault on Mumbai and the Charlie Hebdo affair in France, he seemed to be equating civil protest in the Big Apple with acts of terrorism. Perhaps you won’t be surprised then that the very next day the police department started walking back the idea that the unit would be toting its machine guns not just to possible terror incidents but to local protests. A day later, Bratton himself walked his comments back even further. (“I may have in my remarks or in your interpretation of my remarks confused you or confused the issue.”) Now, it seems there will be two separate units, the SRG for counterterror patrols and a different, assumedly machine-gun-less crew for protests.

...

The cop to viewer left
does not give me confidence...

In America, the police should emphatically not be viewed as a branch of the military, or as a separate military entity for domestic use. That way lies the demise of our freedom, probably quickly and certainly not cheaply in money or lives. The situation is not mitigated by the obvious readiness with which grand juries nationwide are willing to no‑bill law enforcement officers who may have committed crimes in performance of their purported duties. (We'll never know, will we, if no trials ever take place.). The people who put these institutions in place in virtually every big city in America (and not a few smaller ones) need to read their goddamned history! And they need to do it before we find ourselves living in pre‑W.W. II Germany. (Yeah, I know; that knocks on the door of Godwin's Law. Better that than a no‑knock raid...)

The other great loss, of course, is that of the wisdom conveyed by active public protest. (If you think there is no such wisdom, you've probably ended up on the wrong blog; maybe you need something more toward the right.) In my younger, healthier days, I felt confident in standing in the Main Street esplanade traffic circle in Houston, holding my own handmade sign or one end of a banner, with people of similar mind, demonstrating (word chosen advisedly) the nonviolent alternative to conventional wisdom to a public that might otherwise never give it a thought... the conventional wisdom always being "go to war, America!". For better or worse (I can see it either way), the groups I participated with were always orderly, never violent and on the rare occasions a permit was required (usually when we anticipated blocking traffic), duly filed for one. That was enough to keep us out of jail, though that was not a primary goal.

Today, literally any protest, however orderly, would be deemed "terrorism," and paddy-wagons full of protesters would promptly be on the way to jail or, worse, to a hospital to be patched up after they were beaten. Yes, by cops, drunk on the power conferred by all their new equipment and (inadequate) military training.

Do we want to have and keep the freedoms talked about by our nation's founders and fleshed out by many of our forebears since the founding? This is sure as Hell not the way to get to them!

The Naming Of Bad Places

Wish fulfillment map of US
with Alabama sunk as deep as Lake Michigan

When I was perhaps three or four years old, some of my mother's elderly relatives, farmers like my grandparents, living in a tiny country town in Texas, hard-shell Baptists who thumped their Bibles as hard as anyone I've known before or since, used to tell me that if I misbehaved, I'd be sent to the Bad Place. Even at that age, I considered that threat unlikely to be realized. But they were sure I was headed straight for the Bad Place.

They never told me its name is Alabama...

(Be sure to watch the video. I know the news and the D-leaning websites have been heavy on police violence lately, but you need to see this one for the full effect.)

In this case, the police have regressed from their usual beatings of African Americans after "questioning" them to decking a 57‑year‑old man visiting from India, a man walking down the street in front of his American family's home, a man whose primary crime was that he spoke no English. The cops decked him, paralyzing him (possibly only temporarily) in the process. They apparently decked him because he did not understand commands they had been shouting at him (we don't have details there; the confrontation, if that's what it was, happened before the apparent cell phone video starts).

I don't have much patience with the police terrorizing people from India. It's hard to generalize about a nation with that many people, but I think it's fair to say that most Indians from families well-off enough to move to or visit the United States are likely to be well-educated, hardworking, very family-oriented, and civilized to a degree not often found in Americans. If I were to be assigned a roommate for the duration of a trip, or a coworker for a technological project, I'd rather he (or she, in the case of the IT coworker) be Indian than Alabaman, 9 times out of 10. (The 10^th one is too addicted to tobacco to be able to put it aside as a courtesy or smoke outside even for the duration of a trip. Been there; choked on that.)

In short... for partaking of a culture dramatically different from white-bread America's, the people of India who come here have on average a lot of Americans' classic virtues, for which we can only admire them. Could we please restrain the worst of our police from beating them to a paralyzed pulp when they come to visit?

Young White Female Seattle Cop Pepper Sprays Older Black Man Walking Past Her In MLK Day March, Talking On His Cell Phone

I can hardly believe my eyes. To this have we fallen: A line of Seattle police monitors passing marchers at an MLK Day event, apparently some sort of (obviously peaceful) protest. The young white woman cop turns from checking someone's sign on a stick and handing it back to him, instantly shrieks at the orderly line of marchers to "get back" (at least I think that's what she's shouting), and without pausing to await action by the crowd on her command, pepper-sprays the line, squirting several people and dousing an older Black man talking on his cell phone, who reacts in obvious pain:

(Watch Hagopian clip on YouTube)

I watched this clip perhaps a dozen times to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, and wound up thinking, "Jeebus on a crutch! To what depths have we plunged?"

I'm sorry, but "I was scared of the big n[BLEEP!]r walking toward me" is simply NOT an adequate excuse. At a minimum, this policewoman needs some training, and the City of Seattle should pay the man his medical expenses and probably compensate him for his pain and suffering as well.

And most of all... we have to put a stop to the "cops can get away with anything" mentality that seems to prevail throughout the nation these days. Otherwise, people outside America might think we are uncivilized or something. 

(H/T Ahiza Garcia at TPM.)

Violent Gang Roving Streets Of Berkeley...

... and they look like this:


   (Watch on YouTube.)

That was posted by Todd Zimmer three days ago.

I understand why cops are at protest events. I do NOT understand the justification for their wearing full riot gear, kettling peaceful protesters, taking pokes at people whom they may find annoying but who aren't threatening anybody, occasionally beating the crap out of one or another protester (or, worse, bystander or neighborhood resident), etc. Are antisocial tendencies the new unwritten requirement for anyone wanting to become a police officer?

I mean, these guys are not Chicago PD circa 1968, but why do they have to do this at all? Violence begets violence; irrational confrontation provokes irrational confrontation. You can't tell me this police behavior does one single thing to help keep the peace... and after all, when (as one officer said) they are "just doin' [their] job," that behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with their job. Wielding nightsticks at a mostly orderly crowd represents a failure to do the only legitimate job of a police officer faced with a crowd: keeping the peace.

(H/T jpmassar at Kos.)

Missouri AG Confirms: Grand Jury In Michael Brown Killing Was Misled By DA Regarding MO Law On Police Use Of Deadly Force

Frank Vyan Walton at Kos has the details. Here is an excerpt of the basics:

...

The background of this situation is that Lawrence O'Donnell reported that after reviewing the transcripts of the Darren Wilson Grand Jury, his analyst discovered that Assistant District Attorney's working for Bob McCullough gave the Jurors an outdated copy of Missouri Law that all that was required for an Officer to use deadly force is their "reasonable belief" that there was a threat.

In 1985 the Supreme Court amended this law to include a "probable cause" requirement under Tennessee v Garner and the Jury wasn't informed of this until 3 months later just before their deliberations, nor even at that time was the difference and relevance of this explained to them clearly.

The misleading information was given to the Grand Jury directly before Darren Wilson's testimony giving the impression that all that was required under the law for Wilson to kill Michael Brown was his belief that he was in danger, without the additional requirement of probable cause for such a belief.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

This is far more than tragic: this is obscene. Will anything happen to that Assistant DA now, would s/he be indicted, or at least fired? I wouldn't bet on it...

Khalil Gibran Muhammad: Darren Wilson Is ‘America's Model Policeman’

Khalil Gibran Muhammad at The Nation argues persuasively that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson is speaking both accurately and truthfully when he says he was just "doing [his] job" when he shot and killed Brown:

...

And yet, despite all the equivocations, the shooting death of the teenager on August 9 and Monday’s grand jury decision not to indict Wilson were entirely unsurprising. They are the predictable outcomes of a criminal justice system doing exactly what it was meant to do. For all the dissecting and debating of the veracity of Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony this week, one thing seems crystal clear. He was in fact doing his job.

Indeed, by this standard, isn’t Darren Wilson actually a model police officer?

Wilson, Brown

He certainly thinks so. When asked by Stephanopoulos if he could make “something good” come of this experience, he said he would “love to teach people” and give them “more insight in uses of force.” That he may have logged more time on first-person shooters—emptying clip after clip to take down demonic super-villains who “run through shots”—than actual police work is beside the point. Darren Wilson has the kind of experience that many Americans value.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

What can we do to render the system and its White citizens less predisposed to regard Black men as criminals based solely on the color of their skin?

That's a hard question, if for no other reason than that 85-90 percent of our population has never given a thought to reforming that system, or even acknowledged to themselves that there is a problem.

This is not about overt racists; it's about a large percentage of White people who do not think of themselves as racist and who are not thought of as racist by other White people. That's far more insidious than racism out in the open.

One thing Americans could do, if we had the political will, is to de‑commercialize the penal system, to reduce any financial incentive to imprison people. That won't reduce the number of police murders of young Black men for no reason, but it will reduce the number of such men jailed prospectively, so to speak. I'll never forget a neighbor of mine when I was a kid who saw a Black man walking through our (overwhelmingly White) neighborhood and cursed him: I said, "He's probably just walking to the bus stop; that's not a crime." The neighbor replied, "I've never known a n***** who's not guilty of some crime!" That's a much more difficult problem to address, and I confess I don't have a clue how to fix it in general. I suspect most racists become racists in their childhood, and that by the time it manifests itself in a public context, it's too late.

Anybody have any good ideas? or is Muhammad right, that Wilson is, was and ever shall be just "doing [his] job"?

‘Hands Up, Don't Shoot!’ — St. Louis Rams

Yes, they really did: the St. Louis Rams came out on the field, each raising both arms, palms outward, in the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture used by many of the protesters of Michael Brown's killing by Darren Wilson. (Daily Kos, Huffington Post)

According to the Kos article, many Rams fans were not amused. And now the St. Louis Police Officer's Association is "condemning the display." Did they get their lil' fee-fees hurt? Awwww, that's too bad... at least no one shot them dead in cold blood when they were unarmed and mouthing off.

But y'know what? A great many of the Rams players are African American. In their place, I'd probably make a similar statement. If the league punishes them, the league board should be taken to court for a First Amendment violation. Yeah, I know; that would never happen...

‘It Doesn't Add Up’: Nancy Grace On CNN

Watch Nancy Grace on CNN as she explains how she, as a typically pro-cop, anti-marijuana former prosecutor, is unconvinced by Darren Wilson's testimony about how he was afraid for his life enough to fire all those shots. Look at the photos of Darren Wilson after the incident: there's barely a mark on him. Why, Ms. Grace asks, did he not simply put the pedal down and get the hell out of there, since it was obvious to him that Michael Brown did not have a gun?

I am increasingly persuaded that justice was not served in the Ferguson grand jury's no‑true‑bill.

(H/T Bryan, whose thoughts as a former law enforcement officer are well worth your time to read.)

Utah: Police Killings Exceed All Other Categories Of Killings

Ahiza Garcia at TPM:

There have been more deaths caused by police shootings than by gang members, drug dealers or from child abuse in the past five years in Utah, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

This year alone, the Tribune reported, police shootings have claimed more lives than violence between spouses or partners, for a total of 13 deaths. A toll, which includes 22-year-old Darrien Hunt who was fatally shot by police in September.

"The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it's going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings," Chris Gebhardt told the Tribune.
Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant who served in Utah, continued by noting that the situation "definitely can’t be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement."

...

Utahns have been on the violent side since before the state was admitted to the union, a fact noted by Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame (see A Study in Scarlet, 1886). And I have known enough Utahns to state unequivocally that there is considerable manifest bigotry against people who are not Mormon.

But when combined with increasing police violence nationwide, apparently those facts yield outright murder in Utah by the very people whose job it is to prevent murder. Salt Lake City, Utah is a place I visited in my youth on a high school choir tour; not only will I never visit the place again, I will try hard not even to cross it in an auto. New slogan: Utah... the Scary State. Or perhaps Utah: Worse than Texas.

NYPD Commissioner Bratton Re Man Shot Dead In Stairwell By Rookie Cop: Dead Man Was Doing — Nothing Wrong

Specifically, Bratton wrote: "He was not engaged in any activity other than trying to walk down the stairway." The rookie cop was nervous and employed a practice newly approved by NYPD of patrolling a housing project's stairwell with his gun drawn.

Think twice before you enter a stairwell in a public building in NYC: it may be your last walk...

But that's not all:

[The man's girlfriend] said the officers never came down to check on the mortally wounded man, and medical help was only sent after she banged on a neighbor’s door for help.

And that's still not all:

Both officers were taken to Jamaica Hospital and treated for tinnitus.

Any bets on whether the rookie continues employment until he's a veteran cop?

(ASIDE: I do not mean to make light of the incident by using a cartoon cop, but I do not want to use a picture of a real police officer with his gun drawn, for fear he will be misidentified as Gurley's actual killer.)