Comey, complete and unexpurgated

[Valin]

Power Line:

Scott Johnson

October 25, 2015

 

Yesterday’s New York Times carried Michael Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo’s page-one report “FBI chief links scrutiny of police to rise in violent crime.” On Thursday President Obama spoke up for the virtues of the disgusting Black Lives Matter movement. On Friday at the University of Chicago Law School FBI Director James Comey provided a sort of counterpoint.

 

Comey’s comments do not comport with the Times’s prescribed views or, I think, the views of the Times’s man in the White House, so the Schmidt/Apuzzo article is full of the usual disclaimers and rebuttals. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way this particular wind blows.

 

Schmidt and Apuzzo might have reached out to Heather Mac Donald for comments from a scholar who lends support to Comey’s speech, but my guess is that they haven’t heard of her unless they are particularly close readers of the Times’s Room For Debate forum, which posted Mac Donald’s “Rise in crime is a reason to fear anti-police rhetoric” this past June. I bet Schmidt and Apuzzo missed Heather’s May 29 Wall Street Journal column “The new nationwide crime wave.” I bet they also overlooked Heather’s follow-up column “Explaining away the new crime wave.” Heather might make heads explode over at the Times.

 

Here are two of Comey’s comments I have extracted from the Times sludge for consumption as bite-size edibles. The Times article opens: “The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.” Now the edibles:

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

FBI Director Reiterates Link Between Vilifying Police and Spike in Violent Crime
Stephen Kruiser
October 26, 2015

Somebody had to say it.

 

On Monday, FBI director James Comey reiterated that the rise of violent crime in certain cities may be a result of less aggressive policing due to increased scrutiny of officers in the wake of recent high-profile police killings of black men.

 

Repeating remarks he made last week, Comey said at the annual convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago that police and communities of color are “arcing apart” with every incident that involves police misconduct or an attack on law enforcement.

 

He said this growing separation can be seen in many different ways, one of which is through the lens of social media.

 

“I actually see an example and demonstration of that arcing through hashtags: the hashtag Black Lives Matter and the hashtag Police Lives Matter,” he said. “Of course, each of those hashtags and what they represent adds a voice to an important conversation, but each time someone interprets hashtag Black Lives Matter as anti-law enforcement, one line moves away and each time someone interprets hashtag Police Lives Matter as anti-black, the other line moves away.”

Comey continued:

 

(Snip)

 

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[Valin]

Related

 

CNN’s Don Lemon On South Carolina Arrest And Video

Hugh Hewitt
Wednesday, October 28, 2015

 

Audio

 

(Snip)

 

HH: But I’ve got to tell you, Preston was calling me, I was driving from Stanford down to the Simi Valley library debate at the Reagan Library, and I may have been going too fast, and an officer of the law pulled me over. And I must admit, I’m a little ashamed of it, I played the debate card. I said I had to get down to Simi for the debate. And he checked me out, and he knew that I was legit, and he said okay, but here’s the deal. I’m not going to give you a ticket. Will you ask them if they will support police? And last night, it came up, and Peter Kirsanow and I talked about this. Police feel embattled, and I’m sure high school officers now know that they, if they go into a situation like this one in South Carolina, they’re being filmed, right? That’s a given now.

 

DL: Yeah, it is a given. And so I think that one must, whatever job you’re in, we’re all being filmed. I have watched myself, even if I’m, you know, having a bad meal, and the waiter is being nasty, you can’t do, you can’t, you just can’t anymore. But yeah, you know, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to what James Comey has been saying, that the FBI director who has been saying that he fears that talking to officers around the country that they’re afraid to do their jobs, because they’re going to end up on some video somewhere, and possibly end up in jail or being prosecuted. Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic mayor from Chicago, in a city that has lots of crime, is also saying the same thing. And police officers we’re speaking to around the country are also saying the same thing. Listen, I understand, and I think we need to listen to their issues. It’s, their issues are legitimate. But one cannot not do your job because you’re afraid someone is filming you, especially when you have a job that carries as much weight and as much responsibility as a police officer. Listen, I think it’s awful…

 

(Snip)