The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 7-13-2016

________________________________________
The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 7-13-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

The Left's War on Cops

In the Democrats' political playbook, fomenting disunity to rally constituencies is goal #1 — dead police are just collateral damage. Black Lies Matter!

By Mark Alexander

Jul. 13, 2016

“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people, which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1787)

(Publisher’s Note: See Disclaimer)

Barack Obama and his Leftist cadres1 have been waging a war on cops since his first day in office — part of their politics of disparity playbook2 strategy to divide and conquer America one constituency group at the time.

Beginning with the 2009 arrest of his friend Henry Louis Gates3, when Obama declared the Cambridge police “acted stupidly4” — saying this before he had any of the facts — he has co-opted numerous altercations between law enforcement and black citizens to use as “race bait5” for his political agenda. He has continuously fomented racial discord in order to maintain the Left’s stranglehold on the black vote.

This has been particularly evident in his second term, when he politicized the chokehold death of career criminal Eric Garner6 in New York, the utterly justifiable shooting of violent hoodlum Michael Brown7 in Ferguson, Missouri, and the death of drug dealer Freddie Gray8 in Baltimore.

Of course, it is the false “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative from the Brown case that gave rise to the so-called “Black Lives Matter9” hate group leading the charge against police nationwide and providing inspiration for the Dallas attack.

(Note: When there was a shortage of high-profile police-involved deaths to further Obama’s racial division agenda, Obama resorted to other incidents like the case of “White-Hispanic” George Zimmerman10, who was exonerated in the shooting death of a black assailant in Florida.)

It is no small irony that Obama has occupationally profiled cops the way he says cops have racially profiled blacks.

There has been a heavy price to pay, both in terms of injured and murdered police officers11 and the “Ferguson Effect12,” in which cops reduce their enforcement efforts to protect against racially trumped-up charges — resulting in significant increases of black-on-black violent crime.

So it was business as usual seven days ago, July 7, when Obama interrupted his press conference at a foreign NATO summit to advance his racially divisive agenda with two recent police shootings13:

“All Americans should be deeply troubled by the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. We’ve seen such tragedies far too many times. … What’s clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve. … All Americans should recognize the anger, frustration and grief that so many Americans are feeling… Michelle and I share those feelings.”

A few hours later, BO addressed the five racially motivated murders of Dallas police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa. Six other officers and two civilians were wounded. The assailant was a black racist named Micah X. Johnson.

Changing from his earlier tone of disunity to unity, Obama said, “I believe that I speak for every single American when I say that we are horrified over these events, and that we stand united with the people and the police department in Dallas.”

He then declared, “I think it’s very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.” Huh?

It wasn’t so hard for Dallas Police Chief David Brown to “untangle the motives” of this mass murderer. “He seemed lucid during negotiations,” Brown said. “He expressed anger for Black Lives Matter. The suspect said he was upset at white people. He said he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers.”

Obviously, the Dallas assassin did not believe Blue Lives Matter14.

Of course, BO had to throw in more race bait: “[We should be] concerned, as all Americans, about racial disparities in our criminal justice system…”

Then, predictably, he pivoted to gun control: “We also know that when people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic. And in the days ahead, we’re going to have to consider those realities as well.”

The heir-apparent to Obama’s legacy of hate, Hillary Clinton15, insisted that white people “have to start listening to the legitimate cries that are coming from our African-American fellow citizens.”

BO’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, took a page from his former AG, Eric Holder16, insisting, “We must continue working to guarantee every person in this country equal justice under the law. We must take a hard look at the ease with which wrongdoers can get their hands on deadly weapons and the frequency with which they use them.”

On Sunday, he issued a challenge to police departments to stop being racist: “I would hope that, uh, police organizations, uh, are respectful of the frustrations that people in these communities feel.”

That earned him a quick rebuke from William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations: “This president and his administration absolutely do not have our back and make our jobs more dangerous.”

Recall that in February of this year, Obama convened a room full of leftist race agitators, including reps of Black Lives Matter, and praised them for being “much better organizers” than he was. He also noted that he was “confident that they are going to take America to new heights” because of their “degree of focus and seriousness and constructiveness.”

As former ABC chief White House correspondent Brit Hume observed, “[Obama] has consistently chosen to see things through the eyes of an aggrieved black activist rather than of a president of all the people. He’s not failed to speak out whenever a black is killed by a white police officer, but has said next to nothing about the continued slaughters of blacks by other blacks in the streets of Chicago, Baltimore, and other cities. He has made his sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement obvious.”

Indeed, as political analyst Jason Riley, himself a black man, noted in The Wall Street Journal17, “Obama has denounced what happened in Dallas, but he has also been winking at a Black Lives Matter movement that has spent the past two years holding rallies that call for (and sometimes feature) violence against cops. [He] has made a habit of minimizing or ignoring the high black crime rates18 that obviously underlie tensions between poor minority communities and cops.”

Three hours before the Dallas attack, BO declared, “Right now the big concern is the fact that the data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents.”

But that’s one of Obama’s rhetorical lies19.

There is no evidence that the “racist cop” claims of Obama and others are borne out in police shooting data20, and as researcher John Lott notes21, Obama’s claim that “African Americans are arrested at twice the rate of whites” does not take into account that “blacks commit murder at almost six times the rate whites do.”

Further, according to Lott, “The assault rate for the general public in the United States is 229 per 100,000 people. But the rate police were assaulted that year was 9,300 per 100,000 officers — a rate 41 times higher. … This data also suggests that police are not actively looking for excuses to fire their weapons. The number of justifiable killings by police equals less than one percent of the assaults on police. Thus even when assaulted, police rarely resort to killing their attackers.”

________________________________________
The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 7-13-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

In a new Harvard study, “Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force22,” the lead researcher, professor Roland Fryer Jr., noted, “On the most extreme use of force — officer-involved shootings — we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.” Fryer, who is black, added that the findings were “the most surprising result of my career.”

As for police who do kill their assailants, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rate of black officers who kill black offenders is 32 per 100,000 black officers, which is more than twice the rate of white officers who kill black offenders — 14 per 100,000 white officers.

Let me share a little secret.

Having spent years as a street cop early in my career, I can tell you that when 95% of murder victims in urban centers are “people of color,” and 95% of perpetrators are “people of color,” cops of any color are going to be more cautious with “people of color.” This isn’t “racism,” this is reality, driven by a desire to make the community safe and to return home at the end of that day’s tour.

Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald, author of “The War on Cops23,” recently responded to BO’s repeated assertions about “racist cops,” declaring, “Obama embraced the Black Lives Matter myth that there is a racist war by white officers against black civilians in this country. … In fact, there’s no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police. Proactive policing has saved tens of thousands of minority lives since the mid-1990s.”

That notwithstanding, in the days following the Dallas attack, there were attempts to murder police in Georgia24, Missouri25, Tennessee26, Baton Rouge27 and Washington, DC28. Additionally, San Antonio’s police headquarters was fired on multiple times, but thankfully there were no injuries.

Perhaps Obama/Clinton constituents should pause to consider what would happen if police officers in urban centers across the nation came down with a weeks-long case of “blue flu” and didn’t show up for work. Those cities would turn into bloodbaths. Of course, some of their constituents are advocating just that. Black agitator and Obama/Clinton supporter Jessica Disu insists, “We need to abolish the police. Period.” When asked who would provide protection, Disu insisted, “We need to come up with community solutions.”

In Dallas on Tuesday, there was an interfaith memorial for the slain officers. Police Chief David Brown spoke for three minutes. Former President George W. Bush spoke for seven minutes. Barack Obama spoke for 40 minutes, referencing himself 45 times.

Obama offered fitting references to the slain officers, references to Scripture and then resorted to more race-bait rhetoric. I have posted excerpts from their remarks here29.

Disgracefully, in the first sentence of Obama’s memorial remarks, he made a joke — “I’m so glad I met Michelle first because she loves Stevie Wonder.” This was a reference to Dallas Police Chief David Brown’s recitation of lyrics from a song. Obama left a long pause for laughter.

Equally offensive were Obama’s thematic race-bait assertions.

Allow me to respond to one: “We know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn’t simply vanish with the law against segregation. … America, we know that bias remains.”

The fact is, Obama and his ilk, who are the purveyors of “black privilege30,” have ensured that racial bias has endured for generations. BO’s black father had no roots in America, so he has no generational “black experience.” But allow me to offer a few words from those whose roots run deep.

At the conclusion of the War Between the States, famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote, “Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What shall we do with the negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. … [If] the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall. … All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University, was among the last generation of black people born into institutional slavery prior to emancipation. Washington became a leading advocate for the rights of blacks — and of all people.

In his 1911 work, “My Larger Education,” he wrote, “There is a class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

In the footsteps of Booker Washington followed Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), an esteemed historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson is most often cited as “the father of black history,” and this passage from his seminal work, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” is representative of his thinking: “If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.”

Fact is, Democrats have masterfully maintained the black ghetto welfare plantation through policies that ensure they will “never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.”

Carrying on the legacy of Washington and Woodson today is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who notes: “Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race.”

Thomas speaks precisely to those concerns expressed 150 years ago by Frederick Douglass.

Today, the truth is that if black lives really mattered to those charged with advancing the Democrat political agenda31, Obama, Clinton and their leftist cadres32 of race hustlers33 would stop the institutional enslavement of black people on the urban poverty plantations34 created by their failed “Great Society35” experiments. For Obama and Clinton, it’s more aptly stated, “Black LIES Matter.”

And a final observation from President Ronald Reagan36: “We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

Disclaimer: This column is not written from the armchair perspective of inbred Beltway journalists and commentators. It is written, as always, from the grassroots perspective. Notably, it is also written from the vantage point of having graduated from a state police academy at age 19, having served through my college years as a uniformed police officer in three states, and having maintained close ties with the men and women in blue ever since. During those years, and in other capacities since, I have been in many situations that required split-second life-or-death decisions. If you haven’t been in the shoes of officers involved in pressure-packed and highly volatile altercations, you simply can’t understand the context of those incidents based on edited videos. Police officers are human, and they occasionally make mistakes — sometimes deadly ones. BUT THOSE ARE RARE EXCEPTIONS. To that end, watch the transformation of a protestor37 who steps into the role of a police officer. And to better understand how fast a traffic stop can go wrong, click here38.

Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis