“Cops Are Racist” Story Line Ignores a Great Many Facts

[Valin]

Center Of The American Experiment:

Katherine Kersten

August 07, 2016

 

Our nation has once again been pitched headlong into the maelstrom of race, crime and law enforcement. In the wake of shootings by police of black men in Louisiana and in Falcon Heights, Minn., we’ve again heard shrill accusations that cops are racists out to get black men and have watched as Black Lives Matter protesters shut down freeways. We’ve grieved for cops gunned down in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

 

Again, we’ve heard public officials, including Gov. Mark Dayton, denounce police as bigots before the facts of an incident are known.

 

Folks, it’s “get real” time. What price are we paying for ignoring reality — including the demographics of crime; the deadly, split-second environment in which the police work, and the potential for reckless public policies to undermine our communities’ safety?

 

Minneapolis offers an instructive case study. Here, starting in November 2015, Black Lives Matter and other activists wreaked havoc for weeks protesting the death of Jamar Clark. Clark was a 24-year-old with at least 20 previous arrests. He assaulted a woman; blocked paramedics from treating her; refused to comply with officers’ order to take his hands from his pockets, and was shot as he tried to grab an officer’s gun.

 

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman found the actions of the two officers involved to be justified after an exhaustive evidentiary review. But Black Lives Matter and the Minneapolis NAACP — like their counterparts in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and elsewhere — showed no interest in the facts. They continued their crusade against the officers, whose lives are now in shambles.

 

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MPLS (Red Star) Tribune

 

The Comments are...interesting some reality based others....Cops Are Racist!

[Valin]

Black Lives Matter: From a lie to a murder spree
Paul Mirengoff
August 7, 2016

Katherine Kersten of the Center of the American Experiment describes how, in Minneapolis, a lie by Black Lives Matter produced a spike in the murder rate:


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Nor is it “racist” white cops who did the discharging. Kersten points out that the city’s black officers were 3.3 times more likely than other officers to fire their weapons at crime scenes where gunfire is involved, according to a recent study.

In Minneapolis, according to Kersten, the police department gets about 500,000 calls for service a year. Yet it’s hard to find an officer who has discharged his or her weapon in the course of duty. Since May 2013, police officers have shot and killed three men — a mentally disturbed Hispanic man who was knifing another man; a black man who was firing at two officers, and the aforementioned charmer Jamar Clark.

Yet Mayor Betsy Hodges and the Minneapolis City Council have embraced Black Lives Matter’s “the cops are racist” story lie. Council Member Cam Gordon, for example, deplores “the structural racism baked into our system” and “the new Jim Crow that’s plaguing our city.”

Their demagoguery has consequences. For example, the City Council has decriminalized “lurking with intent to commit a crime” and instituted a “diversionary program” (i.e., no fine or jail time) for some who are charged with obstructing the legal process (e.g., by surrounding and obstrucing officers when they try to make an arrest).

 

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