Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The New York Times Skewers Childish NYPD For Turning Backs On Mayor Bill de Blasio

Author: Stephen D Foster Jr
December 30, 2014 1:36 pm
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In an article written by the New York Times' Editorial Board, the paper blasted the NYPD for being disrespectful of Mayor Bill de Blasio and for embarrassing themselves through childish acts that trash the department's reputation.
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In an opinion piece published on Monday, The New York Times roundly criticized the childish actions of NYPD officers who shamefully turned their backs on the mayor during the funeral of one of their fallen colleagues, Rafael Ramos. The disrespect continued only days later when de Blasio was booed and heckled as he spoke at a police graduation ceremony. The Times declared that these acts only make things worse and cause people to lose even more respect for the boys in blue.
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    Mr. de Blasio isn't going to say it, but somebody has to: With these acts of passive-aggressive contempt and self-pity, many New York police officers, led by their union, are squandering the department's credibility, defacing its reputation, shredding its hard-earned respect. They have taken the most grave and solemn of civic moments - a funeral of a fallen colleague - and hijacked it for their own petty look-at-us gesture. In doing so, they also turned their backs on Mr. Ramos's widow and her two young sons, and others in that grief-struck family.
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    These are disgraceful acts, which will be compounded if anyone repeats the stunt at Officer Liu's funeral on Sunday.
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The Times then notes that police officers have a stressful job and that they continually have to put up with bureaucracy and criticism as they put their lives at risk to serve a public that is increasingly hostile towards them. None of that, however, justifies the way many NYPD officers are acting.
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    But none of those grievances can justify the snarling sense of victimhood that seems to be motivating the anti-de Blasio campaign - the belief that the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence. This is the view peddled by union officials like Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association - that cops are an ethically impeccable force with their own priorities and codes of behavior, accountable only to themselves, and whose reflexive defiance in the face of valid criticism is somehow normal.
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The New York Times continued by calling for the NYPD to act like the professionals they claim to be and re-build the respect they have lost before the city becomes a more dangerous place.
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    It's not normal. Not for a professional class of highly trained civil servants, which New York's Finest profess to be. The police can rightly expect, even insist upon, the respect of the public. But respect is a finite resource. It cannot be wasted. Sometimes it has to be renewed.
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    The failures of some cops, the misguided policing tactics that feed a sense of oppression in parts of the city, the offensive provocations of some in the police-reform protest movement, and the horrific killings of two officers, have led the city to a dangerous point.
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In conclusion, the Times pointed out that Mayor de Blasio "has been doing and saying the right things" in an effort to unite everyone, including "meeting Tuesday with leaders of the five police unions to lower the temperature and to move the city forward."
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    Surely many officers understand and accept his conciliatory words and realize that the things Mr. de Blasio has done - like hiring Mr. Bratton, increasing financing for the department and modernizing its equipment - are motivated by an honest desire to do right by the Police Department.
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    The grieving rank-and-file need to recognize this and also see the damage that many of their colleagues, and their union representatives, are doing to trash their department's reputation.
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All in all, the Editorial Board did a fantastic job. But there is one point they make that most will reject.
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The New York Times claimed that police officers are "held responsible for their mistakes in ways that the public is not," which is complete bullshit. In fact, the very reason why people are protesting against the police in the streets and tensions are so high is precisely because police officers are NOT held responsible for their mistakes in the same way average citizens are.
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Shooting and killing an unarmed teenager, combined with all the witness accounts, should have resulted in an indictment by the Ferguson Grand Jury. But because the killer was a cop, the prosecuting attorney didn't do his job the way he would have if the killer had been just an average Joe. The same can be said of the Eric Garner case, which sparked the protests against the NYPD.
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The Staten Island Grand Jury declined to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who placed the unarmed Garner in an illegal choke hold. Unable to breathe, Garner died because of Pantaleo's reckless actions and the whole thing was caught on camera. The only person who the Grand Jury did indict was the person who filmed the encounter. Pantaleo killed a man and didn't even receive a slap on the wrist.
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So while The New York Times should be applauded for standing up to the NYPD and calling them out for their childishness, they deserve criticism for claiming that police are actually "held responsible for their mistakes in ways that the public is not." Because unless they have been hiding under a rock, it's pretty damn clear to the public that police are not treated like the rest of us. Whereas a normal citizen would have been indicted for murder and likely sent to prison, the officer who killed Eric Garner, and many other officers across the country, have been allowed to walk free as they have hidden behind their badges to escape punishment for their crimes. No average citizen gets that kind of treatment, and neither should police officers.
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Thomas Jefferson - founding atheist?

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositers of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
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Police violence

 "[W]e look away from violence done by the police, because the police are not the true agents of the violence. We are.
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We are the ones who designed the criminogenic ghettos. We are the ones who barred black people from leaving those ghettos. We are the ones who treat black men without criminal records as though they are white men with criminal records. We are the ones who send black girls to juvenile detention homes for fighting in school. We are the masters of the American gulag, a penal system "so vast," writes sociologist Bruce Western, "as to draw entire demographic groups into the web." And we are the ones who send in police to make sure it all goes according to plan."

-      Ta-Nehisi Coates, getting to the truth of the matter.
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Re-post of a favorite


Fairy Tales


Knowledge is a wonderful thing and we learn more every day


Bible Stroies - just think about them


A discovery of self


What do YOU celebrate?


Shooting report - guns are everywhere. When will it be YOUR turn to suffer a tragedy?






Gun control - do they not see the hypocrisy in what they say?

The Today Show did a story on this very incident this morning. They repeatedly stressed how the mother was a responsible gun owner - she did everything right - she even had a special "bag" [????] she carried the gun in. Oh, how could this happen?

YOU STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLES! SHE HAD A GUN IN A BAG THAT SHE LEFT IN A SHOPPING CART WITH A TWO YEAR OLD CHILD WHO SHOT AND KILLED HER. SHE WAS NOT BEING RESPONSIBLE AND SHE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT. KIDS AND GUNS DON'T BELONG TOGETHER.

Now that kid has to grow up knowing he/she killed his/her mother. And there were two or three or related children who witnessed the murder.

GET RID OF THE FUCKING GUNS!!!!!


Is it time to revisit the Patriot Act or are we stuck with the government spying on us forever?


The right-wing and hostage taking


Liberal - I wear the label with honor


The fifth estate is letting us down


It takes balls


We got a whole boatload of them


A little known benefit of the ACA


Help the cops - get the guns off the streets.

One of the biggest reasons for the crazy-ass shootings by police, along with the militarization of police forces around the nation, is the unrelenting pressure from the NRA that everyone should have guns. With so many stinking guns out there, the police have to believe that their lives are in danger about 75% of the time they walk into a situation. Just recently an officer in our area was shot and killed while responding to a call over a domestic disturbance.

Want to help the police? GET THE FUCKING GUNS OFF THE STREET!


Full confidence in support for racist legilation


Conclusive results!


Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Blame N.Y. Officers Deaths On Convicted Criminal With A Gun, Not Obama

By: Rmuse
Tuesday, December, 23rd, 2014, 11:10 am
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There is a tendency among certain groups in America to assail anyone who fails to praise injustices against other Americans. Fundamentalist Christians claim they are persecuted and criticize American opposition to religious Republicans forcing religion on the people, and now various law enforcement groups are condemning and blaming public officials and citizens for demanding justice for murdered and unarmed African Americans. It is telling that in America, when a criminal kills a law-abiding citizen, or a criminal kills a police officer they are held accountable and punished in the criminal justice system. However, as Americans have witnessed more and more,  when police kill citizens, especially unarmed African American citizens, no one is held accountable and failure to praise the killings is an outrage.
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Sadly, just protesting or commenting on that simple truth makes one blameworthy for the tragic death of two New York City police officers. Apparently, if President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and protestors around the country had celebrated and praised police for killing unarmed African Americans, Republicans and law enforcement would have placed the blame where it belongs; the man with a long criminal history and a gun who murdered two police officers. It is telling that law enforcement failed to blame Obama, Holder, de Blasio, and protestors for the criminal shooting his girlfriend in Baltimore before going to New York, but she was likely African American.
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First, Americans are not anti-law enforcement, they simply want accountability when police violate the public trust. However, in the same way religious fanatics claim they are under attack when they face criticism for pushing their pseudo-biblical beliefs on all Americans, law enforcement claims they are under attack when the people demand they are held accountable for killing unarmed African Americans. This idea that there is a concerted anti-law enforcement crusade guided by the President, Eric Holder, or in New York's case,  Mayor Bill de Blasio, is beyond absurd.
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Report: New Congress Dumping CBO Chief To Clear Way For Special GOP Budget Math

Daniel Strauss
Monday, December 22, 2014, 6:09 pm
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The incoming leaders of the new Republican-controlled Congress have opted against reappointing Doug Elmendorf as head of the Congressional Budget Office, Bloomberg News reported Monday citing an "aide briefed on the decision." The move helps clear the way for so-called "dynamic scoring" -- a Holy Grail of conservative GOP budget wonks who don't like the way the costs of tax cuts are currently calculated.
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Re-post of a favorite


Religions on the offensive


With God on your side...


Religion and the human condition


Evolution - the thought process


Do you REALLY want to worship her god?


Shooting report - and tell me again why these people all need guns?






Gun control - because too many of us are too crazy to own guns


Our economy is very, very sick


Mao*Mart


Walmart - the cheapest hooker in town


It's time to demand that employers pay a living wage


Happy Days are here again!


The police - we have every right to question them


Thinking like a conservative


We're doing it to ourselves


But most can't see the forest for the trees


He's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of crooked politicians