Saturday, January 10, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/officers-says-leadership-demonizes-the-police-and-empowers-public-hatred-of-the-nypd/

NYPD officers: Leadership doesn't have our back
By INES NOVACIC CBS NEWS
January 8, 2015

Friction between the New York City Police Department and Mayor Bill de Blasio shows no signs of easing, with union officials rejecting the mayor's leadership following a meeting with the department's top brass.

"We don't believe that there is a willingness on the part of City Hall to solve these problems," Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said after meeting with NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton Wednesday. "The solutions will come from the leaders who are here. We wish there was a leader in City Hall."

It's a tough start to 2015 for the NYPD. Recent events - the furor over a grand jury's decision not to charge a police officer in the death of Eric Garner and ongoing criticism of the department's police tactics, including stop and frisk - have sparked anti-police protests. Amid those protests, comments from de Blasio on police-community relations have been interpreted by union officials and many rank-and-file within the department - though not all officers would agree - as hostile toward the police.

"Going out there and doing your job every day and putting your life on the line, then seeing what's going on on the street as people throw garbage at cars and spit at you and you're being portrayed as evil, it takes its toll on you. And that's the frustration, and that's the anger," said John Cornicello, a retired NYPD lieutenant who was a detective for most of his 31 years on the force. Cornicello is now director of investigations at Squad Security.

"Going back in my career there's been too many deaths of police officers that I worked with that were killed on the job that I was working on," said Cornicello.

According to officers we spoke to, the Dec. 20 killing of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in an ambush represents something different - and particularly dangerous. The gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore earlier that day before traveling to New York City. Brinsley posted anti-police messages online in the days leading up to the deadly ambush in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

"They wanna act that the killing of Ramos and Liu was a random act by some crazy person. If he wanted to randomly kill two police officers, he would have done it in Maryland," Angel Maysonet, a cop who retired just one week ago after 22 years on the force, told CBS News.

None of the active-duty officers we spoke to wanted to be quoted in this piece, but Maysonet echoed what that all said: that they thought the city's current leadership demonizes the police and empowers public hatred of the NYPD. Some other cops would argue this is posturing for the current contract dispute between the City and police unions.

Maysonet says it's affecting how cops do their jobs.

"Stop, question and frisk was a great tool for officers, especially like the two officers shot in the [46th Precinct] the other day," said Maysonet. "Cops don't feel like the mayor or the commissioner has their back. So now they're not searching people and not being proactive in terms of finding guns or helping people in the community. Which is basically what we signed up to do."

The number of arrests and court summonses in New York City have plummeted in recent weeks, and anti-police sentiment has caused NYPD officials to mandate changes for how cops should respond to calls.

"After the assassination of the two detectives, [the management] mandated that two cars go to every job," said Maysonet. "Now just normal jobs like a bank burglary, alarms, things of that nature, you always have two cars--at least--responding to jobs, instead of one."

"You can rest assured if there's five cars [available], five will go out," he added. "It's not about being scared. We're just more cautious now."

Officers explained how being extra cautious is now a reality for the NYPD, until de Blasio and Bratton show more solidarity with the police.

"Every mayor, regardless of labor disputes, has always had our backs, when it comes to supporting us doing our jobs, said Maysonet. "This mayor does not."

Bratton, who has criticized officers for turning their backs on de Blasio during funerals for the two dead officers, also hasn't escaped officers' ill will.

"Instead of going to press conferences and posturing and crying crocodile tears, pretending he's so affected by officers getting killed -- he needs to show-- actions speak louder than words."




"We don't believe that there is a willingness on the part of City Hall to solve these problems," Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said after meeting with NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton Wednesday. "The solutions will come from the leaders who are here. We wish there was a leader in City Hall."... Amid those protests, comments from de Blasio on police-community relations have been interpreted by union officials and many rank-and-file within the department - though not all officers would agree - as hostile toward the police.... None of the active-duty officers we spoke to wanted to be quoted in this piece, but Maysonet echoed what that all said: that they thought the city's current leadership demonizes the police and empowers public hatred of the NYPD. Some other cops would argue this is posturing for the current contract dispute between the City and police unions.... Maysonet says it's affecting how cops do their jobs. "Stop, question and frisk was a great tool for officers, especially like the two officers shot in the [46th Precinct] the other day," said Maysonet. "Cops don't feel like the mayor or the commissioner has their back. So now they're not searching people and not being proactive in terms of finding guns or helping people in the community. Which is basically what we signed up to do."... The number of arrests and court summonses in New York City have plummeted in recent weeks, and anti-police sentiment has caused NYPD officials to mandate changes for how cops should respond to calls.... "You can rest assured if there's five cars [available], five will go out," he added. "It's not about being scared. We're just more cautious now." Officers explained how being extra cautious is now a reality for the NYPD, “until de Blasio and Bratton show more solidarity” with the police.

Pardon me, but that sounds like the officer is saying that if management would stop questioning the shootings of unarmed men, the police wouldn't have to go in such large numbers to a call. I say they should show up at least in pairs all the time, every day, and with their cameras running, rather than going out individually as Wilson did in Ferguson. He was outnumbered, which caused him to “defend himself.” That's what he says, anyway. Even going in groups, though, it's according to what the officers actually do. If they beat the suspect to a pulp like they did with Rodney King because he acted in a sexual manner to the female officer those years ago, they are still overstepping their authority. When I saw the video I understood what made the patrolmen furious at the time, but I also saw their excesses. King shouldn't have behaved that way; nonetheless, he didn't assault her after all. We still need to have self-control and professionalism on the part of our officers, even when street punks act up in an obnoxious and disrespectful manner. If they are actually dangerous, of course, that's another story. The incident still should be investigated thoroughly by the police department, however.

I'm sorry to hear that people are throwing garbage at the police and spitting on them – they should arrest anyone who does that – but we need order within “The Thin Blue Line” as well as on the streets. To me, if management puts an officer who is overly violent on suspension or fires him, especially if he has done that more than once, that is not a lack of support for police, but a valid discipline issue. If those officers do not get punished for what they do, the pattern of abuse of power will continue into the future. In an Internet article several months ago when this whole thing broke out in Ferguson, a police officer was quoted as saying that it is the lack of serious punishment by department heads that causes these events to be so prevalent. I definitely support both Bratton and de Blasio in their pursuit of changing things for the better. That needs to happen across the country. We the public need to stand behind them and all other police departments who try to change these conditions.

“... comments from de Blasio on police-community relations have been interpreted by union officials and many rank-and-file within the department - though not all officers would agree - as hostile toward the police.” So not all officers feel that they are lacking support in their work, and believe that there is a less violent and unfair way to do their work. To me we need to hire officers with good self-control and judgment, train them to treat everyone with equal fairness, and work to solve community problems in the neighborhoods where they patrol. I have known police officers off and on down through the years and they were – or gave every evidence of being – good people, definitely not hostile individuals nor “stupid” as they are sometimes considered to be. I remember witnessing an arrest once. A purse snatcher with a woman's handbag in his hand ran into the office of New York Life in DC when I was working there. There were two policemen right behind him and I saw them take him down. It was a violent struggle, a very exciting day at work, but they didn't pull a gun and just wrestled him to the ground. That is the usefulness of having officers go in pairs so they don't have to shoot to make the arrest. That man was black, but they didn't beat him up or anything like that or use any swearing or expletives. One of the officers said that the man had bitten him, and that he would have to go to the hospital. He sounded angry and disgusted, but that was all. It was in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and a bite could be lethal; at least everybody was deathly afraid of AIDS back then. I do consider the way those officers operated to be the correct way, if it is at all possible. Presumably they were not simply “on their good behavior” because there were 15 or so witnesses to the incident, but good and well-trained law officers.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-dolphins-player-rob-konrad-falls-in-ocean-survives-by-swimming-9-miles-to-florida-shore/

Ex-NFL player falls in ocean, survives by swimming 9 miles to shore
CBS/AP
January 9, 2015

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Former Miami Dolphins fullback Rob Konrad swam nine miles back to shore after falling off his boat while fishing off the South Florida coast.

The U.S. Coast Guard reports that Konrad had gone fishing alone Wednesday after being dropped off at a Boca Raton dock.. Friends became concerned after he didn't meet them for dinner, and the Coast Guard later sent a helicopter to look for him.

The Coast Guard said Konrad apparently fell off the 36-foot boat, which had been on auto pilot. Unable to get back to the boat, Konrad began swimming toward shore. He made it some time after 4 a.m. Thursday and contacted the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

The Coast Guard estimates that Konrad was in the ocean for about nine hours,CBSSports.com reports.

Officials say the 38-year-old was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for possible hypothermia.

After playing four years at Syracuse, Konrad was drafted by the Dolphins in 1999 and played for the team until 2004.




This is really impressive. I know a woman last year swam from Florida to Cuba, but she had been training beforehand, probably for months. I think being a football player, and therefore very strong, worked in his favor. When he got out of the water he calmly called the Sheriff's Office. He's going to be a hero in town after this, I'm sure.





http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/09/1356509/-Fox-News-Host-How-Can-We-Spot-Bad-Guys-If-We-Can-t-See-Tone-Of-Their-Skin

Fox News Host: How Can We Spot Bad Guys If We Can't See "Tone Of Their Skin"
librarisingnsf
FRI JAN 09, 2015

Sometimes the (nasty) truth surfaces, even on Fox News. They sometimes use code words to express their discriminatory views, but sometimes the truth just slips out. It looks like it did on Wednesday. Fox News host, Shannon Bream, wants to know how (on earth) are we suppose to spot the "bad guys" if we cannot see the "tone of their skin"?!

From the New Civil Rights Movement:

On Fox's "Outnumbered" Wednesday, the cast got into a discussion about how Paris police didn't have enough weapons, which enabled – they claimed – the Islamic extremist terrorists to massacre 12 people.

Enter Fox News anchor Shannon Bream, a former corporate attorney and graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

Bream, speaking unscripted, wondered how police would be able to identify "bad guys" if they had ski masks and couldn't "even know what color," what "the tone of their skin was?"

That's my question about these guys because if we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had, you know, ski masks on, do we even know what color they were?," Bream asked. "What the tone of their skin was," she tried to clarify – as if that were less racist. "I mean what if they didn't look like typical bad guys?"

That is pretty overt and obvious, IMO.





Notice this woman took her college degree at Liberty University. Until he died, Jerry Falwell used to preach on the radio. He also said that the cartoon children's show “Teletubbies” was teaching kids to be gay. An organization called The New Civil Rights Movement is mentioned in the article above. See the following articles on Google under that search term:

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/ – a new source for liberal information and involvement is here. Check this website out.

The New Civil Rights Movement - Huffington Post
www.huffingtonpost.com/news/the-new-civil-rights-...

The Huffington Post
This week, I spoke to David Badash of The New Civil Rights Movement and photographer/activist Jenna Pope about the Marriage Equality debates at the …

Alan Williamson: It's The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian ...
https://plus.google.com/.../posts/hAxXPSguA2o

Alan Williamson:
Dec 10, 2014 - ... Civil Rights, New Deal and More -- "what apocalypticism did was give white evangelicals a framework and a rationale for fighting the Civil Rights movement"

Police killings prompt activists to seek 'new civil rights ...
www.latimes.com/.../la-na-eric-garner-react-2014120...

Los Angeles Times:

Dec 5, 2014 - They want to be treated the same," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said of protesters Thursday ... I feel like there is a new civil rights movement.".

“Enter Fox News anchor Shannon Bream, a former corporate attorney and graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.... That's my question about these guys because if we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had, you know, ski masks on, do we even know what color they were?," Bream asked. "What the tone of their skin was," she tried to clarify – as if that were less racist. "I mean what if they didn't look like typical bad guys?"

This is embarrassing. We really do need a sea change in the thinking patterns of the average American Citizen. We tend to wrongly blame it all on the police, when it's actually our whole society, especially in the South and West. One problem with too many police department heads is that they, also, think this way, and they are enforcing the law with bias and unnecessary violence. Unfortunately the presumably criminal suspects all too often never make it into a courtroom to get their justice. They are tried and punished on the street. See the Mother Jones article below.



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men

Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?
By Jaeah Lee
Fri Aug. 15, 2014

The killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, was no anomaly: As we reported yesterday, Brown is one of at least four unarmed black men who died at the hands of police in the last month alone. There are many more cases from years past. As Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Missouri chapter put it in a statement of condolence to Brown's family, "Unarmed African-American men are shot and killed by police at an alarming rate. This pattern must stop."

But quantifying that pattern is difficult. Federal databases that track police use of force or arrest-related deaths paint only a partial picture. Police department data is scattered and fragmented. No agency appears to track the number of police shootings or killings of unarmed victims in a systematic, comprehensive way.

Here's some of what we do know:

Previous attempts to analyze racial bias in police shootings have arrived at similar conclusions. In 2007, ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter investigated fatal police shootings in 10 major cities, and found that there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims in every one, particularly in New York, San Diego, and Las Vegas.

"We need not look for individual racists to say that we have a culture of policing that is really rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds," NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks told Mother Jones. It's a culture in which people suspected of minor crimes are met with "overwhelmingly major, often lethal, use of force," he says.

In Oakland, California, the NAACP reported that out of 45 officer-involved shootings in the city between 2004 and 2008, 37 of those shot were black. None were white. One-third of the shootings resulted in fatalities. Although weapons were not found in 40 percent of cases, the NAACP found, no officers were charged. (These numbers don't include 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was shot and killed by a transit authority officer at the Fruitvale BART station on New Year's Day of 2009.)

The New York City Police Department has reported similar trends in its firearms discharge report, which shows that more black people have been shot by NYPD officers between 2000 and 2011 than have Hispanics or whites.

When you look at the racial breakdown of New Yorkers, black people are disproportionately represented among those targeted as criminal shooting suspects, firearms arrestees, and those fired upon or struck by police gunfire.

Often, the police officers do not get convicted or sentenced. Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor and director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Statistics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, has identified dozens of black men and women who have died at the hands of police going back as far as 1994. She notes that while these incidents happen regularly, it often takes a high-profile case, such as Brown's, to bring other recent incidents to national attention.

"Unfortunately, the patterns that we've been seeing recently are consistent: The police don't show as much care when they are handling incidents that involve young black men and women, and so they do shoot and kill," says Jones-Brown, a former assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County, New Jersey. "And then for whatever reason, juries and prosecutor's offices are much less likely to indict or convict."

Between 2003 and 2009, the DOJ reported that 4,813 people died while in the process of arrest or in the custody of law enforcement. These include people who died before an officer physically placed him or her under custody or arrest. This data, known as arrest-related deaths, doesn't reveal a significant discrepancy between whites, blacks, or hispanics. It also doesn't specify how many victims were unarmed. According to the FBI, which has tracked justifiable homicides up to 2012, 410 felons died at the hands of a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.*

But black people are more likely than whites or Hispanics to experience a police officer's threat or use of force, according to the Department of Justice's Police Public Contact Survey in 2008, the latest year for which data is available. Of those who felt that police had used or threatened them with force that year, about 74 percent felt those actions were excessive. In another DOJ survey of police behavior during traffic and street stops in 2011, blacks and Hispanics were less likely than whites to believe that the reason for the stop was legitimate.

The Justice Department has investigated possible systemic abuse of power by police in at least 16 cities. 

Police shootings of unarmed black people aren't limited to poor or predominantly black communities. Jones-Brown points to examples where police officers have shot unarmed black men and women in Hollywood, Riverside (California), and Prince Georges County—a Maryland suburb known as the most affluent US county with an African-American majority. "Part of the problem is that black people realize that you don't have to be poor, you don't have to be in your own community...and this can happen to you," she says. These killings occur against black people of varying socioeconomic backgrounds: "Actors, professional football players, college students, high school grads. They happen to black cops, too."

Yet, the lack of comprehensive data means that we can't know if there's been an upsurge in such cases, says Samuel Walker, a criminal justice scholar at the University of Nebraska in Omaha and author of The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. "It's impossible to make any definitive statement on whether there were more incidents in the last 5 to 10 years than in the past," he says. "We just don't have that kind of data." But what is certain, Walker says, is that the fatal shooting in Ferguson "was just the tip of the iceberg."

UPDATE (8/15/14): USA Today reported that on average there were 96 cases of a white police officer killing a black person each year between 2006 and 2012, based on justifiable homicides reported to the FBI by local police. As I reported above, the FBI's justifiable homicides database paints only a partial picture—accounting for cases in which an officer killed a felon. It does not necessarily include cases involving victims like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others who were unarmed when confronted by police. The data in this post has been updated with 2012 numbers, and the map has been updated to reflect that certain cases have been closed.




“Previous attempts to analyze racial bias in police shootings have arrived at similar conclusions. In 2007, ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter investigated fatal police shootings in 10 major cities, and found that there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims in every one, particularly in New York, San Diego, and Las Vegas. "We need not look for individual racists to say that we have a culture of policing that is really rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds," NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks told Mother Jones. It's a culture in which people suspected of minor crimes are met with "overwhelmingly major, often lethal, use of force," he says.... "Part of the problem is that black people realize that you don't have to be poor, you don't have to be in your own community...and this can happen to you," she says. These killings occur against black people of varying socioeconomic backgrounds: "Actors, professional football players, college students, high school grads. They happen to black cops, too.".Yet, the lack of comprehensive data means that we can't know if there's been an upsurge in such cases, says Samuel Walker... As I reported above, the FBI's justifiable homicides database paints only a partial picture—accounting for cases in which an officer killed a felon. It does not necessarily include cases involving victims like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others who were unarmed when confronted by police.”

The widespread “culture of policing” is a large part of the problem. Of course, in all poor neighborhoods of any racial group, a higher percentage of the people there will show violence, drink and use drugs, be depressed and hostile, and make money by illegal means – selling drugs or stolen guns, etc. That is still not the nature of most of the people who live there, though, so to treat every man or boy walking down the street like a criminal is insulting and abusive. It engenders hatred. Most of those people are just poor and maybe ignorant, and as a result may have dropped out of high school and can't get a job, even if it isn't a time of economic depression. The statement that they should “get a job” just isn't rational.

Two or three weeks ago I searched under the term “Broken Windows Policing” after I saw it in an article on this subject. There are a couple of books and a number of articles, one in a police publication, discussing this pattern of policing. It is the idea that one broken window leads to more if it isn't fixed. That concept has been taken to mean that police should jump on people in those poor neighborhoods with both feet for every slight infraction. Sometimes that means a $50.00 ticket for a broken tail light, which is a financial hardship for the poorest people. Other times it means that two young men who are showing off by walking in the road are roughly commanded to get on the sidewalk. Hitting these minor crimes hard is supposed to “prevent” more serious crimes from occurring. Of course, the aim is to intimidate rather than solving problems or interacting with the poor people there with some respect, as the officers usually do when the teenaged boys or drunks or whatever they are up to are white. What the police need to do, especially in minority communities due to the overall environment of racial hatred today, is meet with neighborhood people and leaders more than once or twice, try to solve problems and decrease the hostility in the interactions. That's “broken windows policing” or “neighborhood policing” without the violence.





http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/

George Zimmerman Has Until Tuesday To Turn In His Guns
by JEAN ANN ESSELINK
January 10, 2015 1:52 PM

George Zimmerman, arrested late Friday night on charges of aggravated assault and domestic violence with a weapon, has been ordered to turn in his guns.

George Zimmerman, the self-appointed vigilante who was acquitted of murdering unarmed teen Trayvon Martin last year, was arrested late Friday night on charges of aggravated assault with a weapon and domestic violence. 

According to Seminole County booking documents, Zimmerman, 31, was arrested by the Lake Mary police and was booked at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility at 10:10 p.m. Zimmerman was released at 12:15 p.m. after posting a $5000 bond. Judge John Galluzzo also ordered Zimmerman to surrender all of his firearms.
Though the charge against Zimmerman indicates a weapon was used, Judge Galluzzo said the weapon in Friday's assault was a wine bottle and not a gun. Since the judge also told Zimmerman to pack up his girlfriend's belongings and give them to his lawyer, and Zimmerman is charged with domestic violence, it is reasonable to assume his girlfriend was the victim of Zimmerman's assault.
This is the third run in with the Lake Mary police Zimmerman has had since his acquittal in the Trayvon Martin Case.
In September 2013, Zimmerman's estranged wife, Shellie Zimmerman, called 911 to complain he had was threatening her with a gun.
In November 2013, Zimmerman was arrested and accused of domestic violence by  girlfriend Samantha Scheibe.
In September 2014, Zimmerman was involved in a road rage incident.

Slate reports that Zimmerman is scheduled to appear back in court on February 17 to answer the charges. 




Zimmerman can't seem to stay out of trouble now that he beat the rap on murdering Trayvon Martin. He is one of those people who seems to me to be lacking normal intelligence, or at the very least, he has gone insane. I wonder if he had been killing people before that case occurred, but didn't get caught. He is definitely habitually violent, especially against people who are smaller than he is. I'm glad to hear that the court is taking his guns away. People like him are the type who shouldn't be allowed to carry a weapon.

It's my opinion that most people don't really need a gun. Most of them just want to feel the rush that being armed gives them. It isn't always men, either. The killer's mother at Sandy Hook was another of the same type. She was a gun collector. I wouldn't like to see guns completely outlawed except for the police and military, but I would like to see owning more than two or three handguns and maybe a couple of hunting guns be made illegal. Nobody needs that many, and when they do have them it's a sign that they are at the very least a little “unbalanced” mentally – paranoid or overly aggressive.

Such people are more likely to join a right-wing militia group or go on a shooting spree like her son did than are normal people. This present focus among the far right religious groups on an imminent apocalypse is typical of such people. There is talk on many Internet sites of race war, as well. The trend is dangerous, to say the least, and might be the beginning of some organized effort to mount a violent political movement. I hope I will live to see these social uprisings reduced in scope, even if they can't be stopped completely. Our society is in peril.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-releases-sketch-of-person-of-interest-in-blast-near-naacp-office/

FBI releases sketch of "person of interest" in blast near NAACP office
CBS/AP
January 9, 2015

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Authorities on Friday released a composite sketch of the man they believe detonated an explosive near the offices of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP.

The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also offered a $10,000 reward for information on Tuesday's explosion, which caused only minor damage and no injuries but rattled nerves due to its proximity to the nation's oldest civil rights organization.

Federal officials say they do not know whether the NAACP was targeted but are investigating the explosion as a possible hate crime.

"We're exploring any potential motive, and domestic terrorism is certainly one among many possibilities," Denver FBI spokeswoman Amy Sanders said Wednesday.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Ravenelle said Friday authorities drew the sketch of a bald white man with sunglasses based on accounts of witnesses who saw him place a device behind the building that houses the NAACP and a black-owned barbershop. The man returned to his truck and left as the device detonated.

Ravenelle said there were no threats to the NAACP in the weeks before the bombing. "Only the bomber knows why he put this there," he said.

The crude device failed to ignite a canister of gasoline placed next to it, but Ravenelle said even if it had succeeded it probably would have only caused minor damage. He said that doesn't undermine the seriousness of the crime, however.

"The bottom line is somebody placed a bomb outside of a facility with the intent of doing something nefarious. That's enough for us to do the investigation. We don't have to have a certain degree of damage to prosecute somebody on this," Ravenelle said, according to CBS Denver.

On Tuesday, the Denver NAACP office denounced the incident as a hate crime.

"This is proof that racism is still alive and reared its ugly head in the form of this cowardly act. Regardless of the actions of others, we will continue to fight for the equality of all people," the civil rights group said in a statement.

"We're standing vigilant and are trying not to let this disrupt anything," Colorado Springs NAACP volunteer Harry Leroy said Wednesday.

Colorado Springs police said they were stepping up patrols in the area.




“The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also offered a $10,000 reward for information on Tuesday's explosion, which caused only minor damage and no injuries but rattled nerves due to its proximity to the nation's oldest civil rights organization. Federal officials say they do not know whether the NAACP was targeted but are investigating the explosion as a possible hate crime. "We're exploring any potential motive, and domestic terrorism is certainly one among many possibilities," Denver FBI spokeswoman Amy Sanders said Wednesday.... "The bottom line is somebody placed a bomb outside of a facility with the intent of doing something nefarious. That's enough for us to do the investigation. We don't have to have a certain degree of damage to prosecute somebody on this," Ravenelle said, according to CBS Denver. On Tuesday, the Denver NAACP office denounced the incident as a hate crime. "This is proof that racism is still alive and reared its ugly head in the form of this cowardly act. Regardless of the actions of others, we will continue to fight for the equality of all people," the civil rights group said in a statement.”

I hope they catch the perpetrator of this hate crime and all of his compatriots, assuming there are any. Even if it's just one man, it's symptomatic of the present turmoil over race. The great white Christian Church should reach out a hand in friendship to their black counterparts, and even to those of us who don't often go to church. The right-leaning Fundamentalists are the primary problem in our society's drift toward greater racism. Even though they have found some places in the Bible that seem to refer to black people in a derogatory way, the right wing attitudes that are active right now are simply not Christian at all, though even groups like the KKK claim to be based on Christianity. It isn't my kind of Christianity, however. I am happy to know that there are liberal Christians, too, and I feel sure they are more correct in their interpretation of the scriptures than the white fundamentalists. See the article on this subject below from Christianity Today. It shows hope within the white Christian community and a desire to make progress on the issue of race. It is too long to insert the whole thing here, so go to the website and read the whole article if you're interested.



http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/behind-ferguson-how-black-and-white-christians-think-race.html?paging=off


RESEARCH
Behind Ferguson: How Black and White Christians Think Differently About Race

Findings from significant study of religion and race in America inform debate over reactions to Michael Brown's death.

By Morgan Lee
POSTED 8/21/2014

As protests and vigils have become daily occurrences in Ferguson, Missouri, so have online debates over how black and white Christians have (broadly speaking) reacted differently since teenager Michael Brown was killed by police officer Darren Wilson in a St. Louis suburb earlier this month.

With an increasing number of Christian writers arguing that a significant gapexists between black and white Christians, the latest findings from a significant ongoing study of religion and race in America offers some hard statistics—and suggest that polarization is increasing.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, CT noted the growing gap in how black and white Christians now think about race. Researched by Michael Emerson of Rice University and David Sikkink of Notre Dame (and released by the Association of Religion Data Archives), the second wave of the Portraits of American Life Study found that divergent perceptions on race among black and white Christians have continued to widen since 2006.

CT directly reviewed five key findings:

More evangelicals and Catholics have come to believe that "one of the most effective ways to improve race relations is to stop talking about race." In 2012, 64 percent of evangelicals and 59 percent of Catholics agreed with this statement, up from 48 percent and 44 percent respectively in 2006.

The increases—driven by whites in both groups—were the only statistically significant changes among religious groups studied (apart from "other" Protestants: 56 percent agreed in 2012 vs. 41 percent in 2006). By comparison, 44 percent of black Protestants agreed in 2012 (vs. 37 percent in 2006), as did 52 percent of mainline Protestants (vs. 46 percent in 2006).

Among black evangelicals, 34 percent agreed in 2012, vs. 24 percent in 2006. Both findings were less than half the rate of white evangelicals (69 percent in 2012 vs. 51 percent in 2006).

More evangelicals now agree that "it is okay for the races to be separate, as long as they have equal opportunity." In 2012, 30 percent of all evangelicals agreed, up from 19 percent who said the same in 2006.

This increase was the only statistically significant change among religious groups studied, and occurred among white evangelicals (20 percent in 2006 vs. 34 percent in 2012), not black evangelicals (19 percent in 2006 vs. 16 percent in 2012).

By comparison, 30 percent of black Protestants agreed with the "separate but equal" idea in 2012, as did 24 percent of mainline Protestants, 20 percent of Catholics, and 24 percent of "other" Protestants.

On the question of whether the government "should do more to help minorities increase their standard of living," whites are no longer divided along religious lines the way they were six years earlier.

In 2006, more than 4 in 10 white non-evangelical Protestants agreed that the government should do more, versus only 3 in 10 white evangelicals and white Catholics. But in 2012, researchers found that "the religion effect disappeared" thanks to "substantial declining support" among white mainline Protestants (dropping from 42 percent to 21 percent) and white "other" Protestants (42 percent to 20 percent). Thus, "regardless of religious affiliation, whites were statistically identical to each other" by 2012.

In contrast, black Protestants saw a statistically significant increase in agreement that the government should do more: 68 percent agreed in 2006, while 84 percent agreed in 2012. (By comparison, 73 percent of black evangelicals said the same in 2006, declining to 69 percent in 2012.)

In 2012, 41 percent of black evangelicals said they think about their race daily, an increase from 36 percent in 2006. Meanwhile, 13 percent of white evangelicals said the same in 2012 (vs. 11 percent in 2006). By comparison, 48 percent of all blacks and 10 percent of all whites said the same in 2012 (vs. 42 percent and 10 percent, respectively, in 2006).

However, the only statistically significant change from 2006 to 2012 was a decrease among  Hispanics: 54 percent said they thought about their race daily in 2006, but only 42 percent said the same in 2012.

More Americans now say they have been "treated unfairly" because of their race. And moreover, the increase from 2006 to 2012 was statistically significant for all groups: blacks (36% to 46%); Hispanics (17% to 36%); Asians (16% to 31%); whites (8% to 14%); as well as all Americans (13% to 21%).

Among religious groups, the only statistically significant change occurred among Catholics: 23 percent said they had experienced racial prejudice in 2012, up from 12 percent in 2006. By comparison, 43 percent of black evangelicals said the same in 2012 (up from 30 percent in 2006), as did 16 percent of white evangelicals (up from 11 percent in 2006).

Among evangelicals addressing these gaps were Matt Chandler, who pastors The Village Church in Texas and is president of the Acts 29 Network. On Monday, Chandler tweeted: "My son Reid has blonde hair and blue eyes & will more than likely never be seen as 'suspicious' by police #WhitePrivilege #Ferguson.”

Chandler expanded his argument on his blog later, saying that his comments had come after a friend had asked “What does white privilege have to do with what happened to Mike Brown?”

“The facts are still being debated, and I am hopeful that justice will take place once those can be established, but the way white people tend to perceive the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and in situations like this is through distinctively white lenses,” wrote Chandler. “We believe that our experiences, histories and benefits of our hard work are universal experiences for everyone. This is simply not true. I’m not a sociologist, but I’ve read enough, lived in enough places and have enough friends that I’m beginning to understand what motivates the frustrations and anger that can exist deep in the hearts of young black men.”

Thabiti Anyabwile, an assistant pastor for church planting at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and Gospel Coalition council member and contributor, suggested that the majority of evangelical responses had been a “general lament” and “the expressing of sentiment.”

“There’s not yet been anything that looks like a groundswell of evangelicalcall for action, for theology applied to injustice. It’s possible (even likely) that I’ve missed a call for action from my colleagues and peers in the evangelical world. But I don’t think I’ve missed our most influential leaders with the widest reach. They’ve been silent en masse,” wrote Anayabwile, calling on his fellow conservative Christians to action.

“We don’t want to be your statistics—whether wrongful death statistics or church membership statistics. We want a living, breathing, risk-takingbrotherhood in the gospel lived out where it matters. Until evangelicalism can muster that kind of courage and abandon its privileged, ‘objective,’ distant calls for calm and ‘gospel’-this or ‘gospel’-that, it proves itself entirely inadequate for a people who need to see Jesus through the tear gas smoke of injustice,” he continued.

Josh Waulk, a former policeman who is now the pastor of counseling and discipleship at Lakeview Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida, drew on his current vocation and his previous time in law enforcement.

“My seminary education would not have served me well in hand-to-hand combat during my career, so far as all this is concerned. It’s hard to imagine slugging a guy with Calvin’s Commentary on Ephesians, or calling on a fleeing felon to stop, because of his total depravity,” wrote Waulk. “The two occasions I was shot at, and the one occasion I discharged my firearm in the line of duty could only be prepared for at the range, and on the streets. I only wish the general public knew just how profound tunnel vision and auditory exclusion are for the PO in a threatening scenario. If they understood, the more reasonable would be less apt to ask the question, ‘Why did he have to…?’”

Trevin Wax, the managing editor of The Gospel Project at LifeWay Christian Resources, described Ferguson as “ripping the bandages off the racial wounds we thought were healing but instead are full of infection.”

“It is exposing the ongoing, deeply rooted structures of society that continue to feed and reinforce our prejudices," he wrote. "It is exposing how, decades after desegregation, we have self-segregated into neighborhoods and suburbs. Economic stagnation, family breakdown, and a drug culture are three strands of a noose with strangling force, suppressing people on the margins as the rest of society moves forward, blithely unaware of the realities faced by their fellow citizens across town. ... Privilege is real, and so is oppression. We live in the same country, in different worlds.”

Austin Channing, a resident director and multicultural liaison for Calvin College, challenged Christians who desired to positively affect the country's racial polarization to do more than "attend an MLK service or a Ferguson vigil" or "add people of color to your social media lists." "Choose a new church home and sit under the teaching of a black preacher for two years. Choose a new neighborhood where your fate is intimately tied to the fate of people of color," she wrote. "Go back to school and take a history class from a black professor where your academic success lies in his/her hands."

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