People like this are exactly why we haven't yet had racial justice in America. People who completely fail to do a full and fair analysis of various situations that have incited the Black Lives Matter movement, then jump to an incorrect conclusion and lock onto that wrong idea like the jaws of a Rottweiler. People like Sheriff Butch Conway of Gwinnett County, Georgia.
A sheriff who wrote the following in a statement provided to the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"To say that I’m angry would be an understatement. I’m angry that fringe groups who started the culture of police hatred have widened the racial divide in our country by alleging that officer involved shootings stem from racism."
“We will not tolerate the slaughter of officers in this country,” he said.
“It’s not about race,” he insisted, saying that in all of the killings of unarmed black people, the “common denominator in every controversial case of officers using deadly force has been police interaction with people who do not respect the law.”
Fortunately, correcting the record is not that difficult. Keep reading below.
“Law enforcement officers are being dehumanized. Those inciting riots and committing murders are simply criminals and do not represent the majority of Americans,” he went on. “They are domestic terrorists with an agenda. Their message is that police lives don’t matter, which sure sounds like a hate group to me.”
“These hate groups are using the excuse that they have been mistreated by police to justify their actions. If someone feels they have been wronged by a law enforcement officer, there are clear avenues to pursue it through legal means. There is no justification for assaulting or murdering law enforcement officers,” he said.
No one in or associated with Black Lives Matter has assaulted a police officer. Two New York Police Department officers were killed in apparent
"revenge" for the death of Eric Garner. Contrast that with the
nine people that were brutally shot down at Mother Emmanuel in Charlotte in "retaliation" for the Trayvon Martin murder trial. Not for the killing of Trayvon—simply for having a
trial over the killing of Trayvon. Even when he was about as innocent as you can get. All he wanted to do was get home safe. He was unarmed, and he fought because Zimmerman
very likely grabbed and
held onto him. But the trial alone was just too much for this guy.
It's about as fair to blame all black people or Black Lives Matter for the death of those officers as it is to blame all white people or police for the death of those nine people at Mother Emmanuel. Black Lives Matter does not preach that all white people or all cops are an Evil Threat, but the hate groups such as Conservative Council of Citizens that inspired Dylann Roof do preach that black people are a deadly threat to white people, even though that is mathematically completely, totally, false.
[A]ccording to the 2010 Census, there are about 241 million white people, compared with 40 million black people in the country. Doing the same math from above [whites killed by blacks: 868 contrasted with blacks killed by whites: 311 from the 2013 Supplemental Homicide Report] shows the chance of being the white murder victim of a black assailant is 278,729 to 1. Meanwhile, the odds of being the black victim of a white assailant are 129,421 to 1. The chance of being a white victim of black interracial murder is more than twice as unlikely as being a black victim of [a white murderer].
The fact is that fewer police have been killed
during the Obama administration than any other two-term president during our lifetime. But it seems pretty clear that former tennis star James Blake was indeed mistreated by police when they brutally threw him to the ground, even though he not only wasn't the man they were looking for,
the man they were looking for wasn't guilty, either. It's clear that Kamilah Brock broke
no laws but was still detained, then
involuntarily committed to a psych ward for eight days because she dared to claim her nice car was her car, her job was her job and that Barack Obama follows her on twitter, which he does. When officers going through the academy say that they're being
taught to hate and fear black people, when black officers in the NYPD highway division say it's "
rampant with racism" and when black NYPD officers say that they've been
profiled, harassed and assaulted when off-duty, it's not just a matter of "media hype" or "failure to respect the law."
Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.
The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.
As of September 15, 823 people have been killed by police this year, according to
The Guardian's "
The Counted." Of that number, 173 (21 percent) were killed while unarmed. Sixty two of those (35 percent) have been black.
These are the facts, and these facts are why Mother Jones has produced the following chart.
Black people are more likely to die at the hands of police by a rate of almost four to one compared to white people.
Yet to hear Sheriff Conway tell it, that chart above is merely an unlucky coincidence, or it's simply the fault of the dead that they contributed to their own death. Michael Brown wasn't shot at while running away even though he was wounded in the back of his right bicep. He wasn't shot while his arms were raised, even though he also had a bullet graze wound in the back of his forearm that lines up perfectly with a second set of wounds in his upper chest that could only have occurred together if his hand was raised in front him him at shoulder height. The facts and forensics simply do not support the story that he was only shot at while facing Officer Wilson and his arms were down at his sides, and the DOJ did not even attempt to prove this was the case.
To believe Sheriff Conway you have to believe that 14-year-old Tamir Rice really did "go for his toy gun" in the single second before he was shot dead by police, and Darrien Hunt was some kind of "threat" when he was shot in the back while running away from police pursuing him, and Walter Scott was a "threat" as he ran away and was shot in the back. That Samuel Dubose was a "threat" when the officer that shot him in the face lied about being dragged by his car. That Freddie Grey was a "threat" while he was handcuffed and leg-shackled in the back of police van. That Jonathan Sanders and his horse carriage were some kind of "threat' when he was choked to death by police in Mississippi.
Conway wants you to believe that Jonathan Crawford, in the open-carry state of Ohio, was a threat to police while on the phone with his girlfriend while shopping at Wal-mart. He had a toy pellet gun in his hand and had two seconds to comply before he was shot dead by police.
He was not a threat, he did not "fail to respect police." He never had a chance.
Yet at the same time this guy can stand out on the street corner with a real, loaded rifle, screaming obscenities at police for ten minutes and not only not get shot—he didn't even get arrested.
And 18-year-old Steve Lohner can walk down the street with a loaded shotgun, refuse to hand it over to police and refuse to provide them his ID, and still not get shot.
And why don't police break out the tear gas and MRAPs whenever white people riot over sports, disco, or a pumpkin festival?
The issue isn't just why all of these black people are falsely arrested, brutalized, and end up dead. But rather: Why are all of these white people who scream and curse at cops while carrying real-live loaded weapons—why are they not killed so quickly? Not thrown to the ground and tased while handcuffed, not choked until they asphyxiate? Why are their necks not broken in the back of a police van without a seat belt, and why are they not shot in the back?
Because they "respect police?"
I really, seriously, don't think so, Sheriff.
