July 10, 2016


News and Views


POLICING ISSUES

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-spain-visit-dallas-shooting-early-departure/

Dallas shooting forces rare move by Obama in Spain
CBS/AP
July 10, 2016, 7:34 AM

26 photos -- Spain's King Felipe VI (center R) arrives with U.S. President Barack Obama (center L) for welcoming remarks before their meeting at the Palacio Real de Madrid in Madrid, Spain July 10, 2016. REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST
Play VIDEO -- President Obama: U.S. still united despite recent shootings
Play VIDEO -- Obama rejects claim of racial divide deepening
26 Photos -- Police ambushed in Dallas


MADRID - It took the White House more than seven years to lock in Spain on President Barack Obama's foreign travel schedule. But events beyond Mr. Obama's control have turned his first and only visit to Spain, the largest European country that had yet to welcome the president, into a rushed one.

Instead of spending two days sightseeing in southern Spain and tending to more official business in the capital of Madrid, the White House scrapped some of Mr. Obama's events - including a staple of his foreign travels, a question-and-answer forum with young adults - and crammed the rest of his schedule into Sunday. He had been scheduled to travel to Seville for cultural events, but that was among the plans canceled.

Obama rejects claim of racial divide deepening

In a statement announcing the change of plans, the White House said the president had accepted an invitation from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to visit.

"Later in the week, at the White House, the President will continue to work to bring people together to support our police officers and communities, and find common ground by discussing policy ideas for addressing the persistent racial disparities in our criminal justice system," the statement read.

Deadly shootings last week of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, followed by the sniper killings of five police officers in Dallas, the president to make the unusual choice to return to the White House late Sunday, a day earlier than originally planned.

Mr. Obama has been loath to tear up his schedule in response to previous acts of violence, saying repeatedly that altering his plans would be tantamount to giving in to terrorists. But terrorists didn't strike in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, near St. Paul, Minnesota, or Dallas. The assaults followed June's deadly shooting at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub and the rise in so-called lone-wolf terrorism, heightening fears about public safety.

The president noted the "difficult week" as he made small talk Sunday with King Felipe VI after arriving at Spain's Royal Palace for a meeting.

The king thanked Mr. Obama for visiting under the circumstances. The stop in Spain is the last leg of what is likely the president's final trip to Europe before he leaves office in January. He arrived late Saturday from Poland, where he attended a NATO summit.

The White House said the visit will highlight security cooperation between the trans-Atlantic allies, as well as political and economic ties.

Mr. Obama was also scheduled to meet with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy before heading to Naval Station Rota, in the south. He planned to tour the USS Ross, one of four guided-missile destroyers based there, and address troops there before the flight home.

Spain has been gripped by a political stalemate for months, with Rajoy unable to garner the necessary support to form a new coalition government following a late-June election. It was the country's second round of inconclusive balloting in the past year.

Rajoy's party also won an election in December, but no other major party was willing to help him form a government.

Mr. Obama addressed the political situation in an interview Saturday with the El Pais newspaper, saying he hopes Spain's next government will be just as committed to strong relations with the U.S. and Europe. The president has recently stressed the White House's belief in a stronger European Union in the wake of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.

In Spain, Mr. Obama said the world needs Spain's contributions to the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS,) to counterterrorism efforts that prevent attacks and to its fellow NATO members.

"The relationship between Spaniards and Americans goes back centuries," he said. "We're connected by the ties of family and culture, including millions of Americans who celebrate their Hispanic heritage. Spain is a strong NATO ally, we're grateful for Spain's many decades of hosting U.S. forces, and we're major trading partners."

"That's why the United States is deeply committed to maintaining our relationship with a strong, unified Spain," the president said.

Mr. Obama said he has longed to return to Spain ever since he passed through while backpacking across Europe decades ago, during his 20s, a point he underscored just before his private meeting with the king. He said he could not have imagined that he'd return years later and be greeted by royalty.

"I wish I was staying longer," Mr. Obama said Sunday.


Poor President Obama. He doesn’t want to go home to the mess we have on our hands in this country. I have lived long enough, however, to know that things will smooth out and come together again, but not EASILY. I think that’s a good thing. As a society we haven’t done our homework on this matter, and we have failed a big exam. Heaven help us to persist until we get it right.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-white-and-blue/

Black, white and blue
CBS NEWS
July 10, 2016, 9:23 AM

Photograph -- Police attempt to calm the crowd as someone is arrested following the sniper shooting in Dallas on July 7, 2016, during a peaceful protests against police violence. Five officers were killed. LAURA BUCKMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
26 PHOTOS -- Police ambushed in Dallas
Related: Peaceful protest turns chaotic as sniper shoots Dallas police
Ex-FBI profiler: Gunman in Dallas police attack was "well prepared"
Shot mom jumps on son to protect him from sniper fire
Remembering the five officers lost in Dallas
Complete CBSNews.com coverage: Dallas police ambush
Disturbing new video shows Baton Rouge police shooting
Amid protests, DA says La. police shooting may be "authorized killing"
ACLU questions lack of police body cams in Alton Sterling shooting
Then, on Wednesday, again -- incredibly -- in a suburb of St. Paul, Diamond Reynolds began live-streaming on Facebook just after an officer shot her boyfriend, Philando Castile, and he lay dying.
Police shooting during traffic stop leaves Minnesota man dead
Lawyer: Minnesota cop reacted to Philando Castile's gun, not race


We look back this morning on A WEEK IN BLACK AND WHITE ... a week like no other in recent times. With the wounds still fresh in our minds, we wonder how it all could have happened -- and wonder what we can all do together to keep it from happening again. Our Cover Story is reported now by Martha Teichner:

No matter how horrible the Dallas killings were, were they somehow inevitable?

Micah Xavier Johnson may have turned out to be the same kind of troubled mass shooter we've seen so many times before. But what he did with deadly aim was shove the issue of policing and race into all of our faces, again.

"What I think this shows is that in a system that doesn't value black life, it only further imperils blue life," said Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery, the author of "They Can't Kill Us All" (Little, Brown), a soon-to-be-released history of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Lowery was not surprised by the events in Dallas: "You had a nation that, for two years, has almost nonstop been grappling with this idea of policing and what acceptable policing and acceptable police use of force looks like. And we'd had these two incidents, first in Baton Rouge and then in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, one after the other, that were so traumatizing. And you saw the anger and you saw this pain."

By now, the pictures are almost painfully familiar -- what police use of force looked like last Tuesday in Baton Rouge, when cell phone video of Alton Sterling being shot to death went viral. The officers had been told he had a gun.

Castile had said he had a gun.

Reynolds: "We got pulled over for a busted tail light in the back. And the police just, he's covered. He's still my boyfriend. He's licensed to carry. He was trying to get out his ID and his wallet out of his pocket, and he let the officer know that he was, that he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet. And the officer just shot him in his arm."

Officer: "Keep your hands on the wheel!"
Reynolds: "I will, sir, no worries. I will. He just shot his arm off. We got pulled over on Larpenteur ..."
Officer: "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hands out -- "
Reynolds: "You thought ... he would get his ID sir, his driver's license. Oh my God, please don't tell me he's dead. Please don't tell me my boyfriend just went like that."
Officer: "Keep your hands where they are, please."
Reynolds: "Yes, I will, sir, I'll keep my hands where they are. Please don't tell me this Lord, please don't tell me that he's gone. Please don't tell me that he's gone. Please, officer, don't tell me that you just did this to him. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir!"
Police argue that the videos we see often show only part of the story. But these two, back to back, were still damning.

"For generations Black Americans have been talking about these interactions," said Lowery. "They've been saying, 'The police have beat us up. They've killed us. They've harassed us.' And for generations, White America has said, 'You're making it up; we believe the police.' And what has changed has been videotape."

And then, the story changed.

On Thursday there were demonstrations throughout the United States, including the one in Dallas. As protests go, it was a model of peaceful police/community good will ... until the moment when Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire.

Five officers were killed and seven more wounded protecting the demonstrators as they ran away.

This was viral video of a very different kind: we saw good cops, not what looked like bad cops. The theater of public anguish shifted to another stage.

On Friday morning Dallas Police Chief David Brown said, "We're hurting. We are heartbroken. ... We don't feel much support most days. Let's not make today most days."

The irony is that Dallas cops were targeted; community policing is the rule in Dallas. Officer-involved shootings are down; crime is, too. Just a month ago, University of South Florida criminology professor Lorie Fridell was brought in to teach impartial policing, as we watched her do in Philadelphia last summer.

"There are some very potent implications of the science of bias for training officers for those split-second decisions when they need to decide whether or not to use force or not," Fridell said.

Dallas is one of dozens of police forces, since 2014, engaged in a massive soul-searching. It began with Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown, with images of cops looking and acting like an occupying army -- and the riots that followed.

"I think the past two years have been an eye-opener because it hasn't been simply one city," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based police think-tank dedicated to progressive policing. "It hasn't been Ferguson; it has been a series of cities in which you look at the video, and a lot of the police chiefs that I know, they've asked themselves, 'I think that could've been handled better.'"

Wexler worries that now there will be a "Dallas effect."

"It will be very hard on Monday for police chiefs to push their officers back to engage with the community," Wexler said. "It will be twice as hard because of what happened in Dallas."

Now, some context: the number of police officers killed in the line of duty has actually dropped, by more than two-thirds since the 1970s (from 134 in 1973, to 46 in 2015). Dallas puts the number at 25 so far this year.

By comparison, police shot and killed close to a thousand people last year, and already, more than 500 this year -- nearly 40 percent of them black or Hispanic.

But at the end of a bloody week, both black lives and blue lives mattered to Americans anxious about what happens next.

"As tough, as hard, as depressing as the loss of life was this week, we have a foundation to build on," said President Obama as he tried to reassure us. "We have to make sure that all of us step back, do some reflection, and make sure that the rhetoric that we engage in is constructive."

But just last night, in St. Paul -- one of the cities where this all began -- the only rhetoric was the language of the streets. The only reflection was the light from fireworks hurled at the cops ... the matter of policing and race no closer to resolution.

For more info:

Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery
Lorie Fridell, Department of Criminology, University of South Florida
Chuck Wexler, Police Executive Research Forum



"As tough, as hard, as depressing as the loss of life was this week, we have a foundation to build on," said President Obama as he tried to reassure us. "We have to make sure that all of us step back, do some reflection, and make sure that the rhetoric that we engage in is constructive." There have been several cities in the news since Ferguson who are actively changing the attitudes, rules and training of police officers, even without the DOJ moving into their PD and sitting on them hard. That means that not all Whites are into White Supremacy. We are working in the right direction, and it encourages me, though we aren’t at our goal yet. That’s why I want to remain alert and politically active to my dying day. “Progress, not perfection.” That sounds on the surface like a recipe for failure, but in complex and difficult situations, it’s the only way to get anywhere at all without totally tearing up the societal structure, which is always the end of a civilization. The reason Iraq is in such a wreck now is that the war there has totally destroyed the good things in an effort to weed out the bad.



https://www.texasobserver.org/dallas-police-rate-fatal-police-shootings/

Dallas Ranks No. 3 in Nation for Rate of Fatal Police Shootings
by John Wright
@lsqnews
Published
Tue, Aug 11, 2015
at 9:00 am CST

Photograph --
facebook.com/DallasPD, Dallas, the nation’s ninth-largest city, recorded 34 fatal police shootings — a rate of 2.7 per 100,000 residents — over the last five years.


Grassroots activists have worked for years, with limited success, to draw attention to the Dallas Police Department’s use of deadly force — especially fatal shootings of African Americans.

Now, those activists have some fresh ammunition, if you will, in the form of a new report showing that Dallas recorded the third-highest rate of fatal police shootings among the nation’s 10 largest cities from 2010 through 2014.

The report from the Chicago-based Better Government Association, believed to be the first to compare the number of fatal police shootings in the nation’s largest cities, was compiled in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.

The report found that Dallas, the nation’s ninth-largest city, recorded 34 fatal police shootings — a rate of 2.7 per 100,000 residents — over the last five years. That rate was the highest in Texas, followed by Houston at No. 5 (2.23), and behind only Phoenix (3.77) and Philadelphia (3.48) nationally.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said civil rights attorney Shayan Elahi, counsel for the police accountability group Dallas Communities Organizing for Change. “The stats are horrific, and they clearly indicate a problem, whether the city likes to admit it or not. Facts don’t lie.”

Elahi’s group filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice in December calling on the feds to cut off funding for the Dallas Police Department (DPD) until “systemic police misconduct” is remedied. The complaint is pending, and DOJ representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.

According to the complaint, Dallas recorded 58 fatal police shootings from mid-2002 to 2013. While the Better Government Association report doesn’t include information about race, the complaint states that African Americans, who account for only 25 percent of Dallas’ population, were victims in more than half of those cases (33).

Elahi said the complaint was filed after local officials refused to address the group’s concerns, an allegation echoed by other grassroots activists. But Sgt. Warren Mitchell, a spokesman for DPD, insisted that’s not the case.

Mitchell pointed to DPD’s website, which details recent changes to policy governing the use of deadly force. The changes include automatic notification of the FBI, creation of a community engagement team and ongoing training for officers. DPD also recently began posting information about officer-involved shootings online, which Elahi said was one of the positive outcomes of the DOJ complaint.

“It’s something that has been looked at, not only from our perspective, but from a community perspective as well,” Mitchell said. “We definitely hear them, and we’re doing what we can.”

The Dallas City Council recently agreed to purchase 1,000 police body cameras, but that accounts for fewer than one-third of DPD’s officers, and Mitchell acknowledged that the department still has no formal policy for their use.

Collette Flanagan, founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality, said although it may appear DPD has made progress, she believes those advances are superficial.

Flanagan, whose unarmed son was shot seven times and killed by a Dallas officer in 2013, called for independent investigations into police shootings. She said district attorneys are too often beholden to police unions that help fund their campaigns, adding that no Dallas officer has been indicted for a fatal shooting in 42 years.

Flanagan also called for drug testing of officers involved in fatal shootings, as well as elimination of a DPD rule that allows them to remain silent for 72 hours afterward and review video before making a statement.

“I wouldn’t say things have gotten better on the drilldown,” said Flanagan, who called DPD’s community engagement teams “a farce.”

“We don’t care about you coming to our community and having barbecue and drinking soda with us,” she said. “We want you to stop killing our kids.”

John Wright is a freelance journalist based in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter @lsqnews



“Now, those activists have some fresh ammunition, if you will, in the form of a new report showing that Dallas recorded the third-highest rate of fatal police shootings among the nation’s 10 largest cities from 2010 through 2014. …. The report found that Dallas, the nation’s ninth-largest city, recorded 34 fatal police shootings — a rate of 2.7 per 100,000 residents — over the last five years. That rate was the highest in Texas, followed by Houston at No. 5 (2.23), and behind only Phoenix (3.77) and Philadelphia (3.48) nationally. “It doesn’t surprise me,” said civil rights attorney Shayan Elahi, counsel for the police accountability group Dallas Communities Organizing for Change. “The stats are horrific, and they clearly indicate a problem, whether the city likes to admit it or not. Facts don’t lie.” …. Elahi’s group filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice in December calling on the feds to cut off funding for the Dallas Police Department (DPD) until “systemic police misconduct” is remedied. The complaint is pending, and DOJ representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment. According to the complaint, Dallas recorded 58 fatal police shootings from mid-2002 to 2013. While the Better Government Association report doesn’t include information about race, the complaint states that African Americans, who account for only 25 percent of Dallas’ population, were victims in more than half of those cases (33). Elahi said the complaint was filed after local officials refused to address the group’s concerns, an allegation echoed by other grassroots activists. But Sgt. Warren Mitchell, a spokesman for DPD, insisted that’s not the case. Mitchell pointed to DPD’s website, which details recent changes to policy governing the use of deadly force. …. She said district attorneys are too often beholden to police unions that help fund their campaigns, adding that no Dallas officer has been indicted for a fatal shooting in 42 years. Flanagan also called for drug testing of officers involved in fatal shootings, as well as elimination of a DPD rule that allows them to remain silent for 72 hours afterward and review video before making a statement. “I wouldn’t say things have gotten better on the drilldown,” said Flanagan, who called DPD’s community engagement teams “a farce.” “We don’t care about you coming to our community and having barbecue and drinking soda with us,” she said. “We want you to stop killing our kids.”


“She said district attorneys are too often beholden to police unions that help fund their campaigns, adding that no Dallas officer has been indicted for a fatal shooting in 42 years.” Things like these are at the heart of the problem. Those “bad apples” who haven’t been punished, and who know from the evidence of their eyes that they almost certainly won’t be in the future. For a very good web site, go to http://www.copblock.org/, which is a citizens watch site with correspondence from some police officers. In the range of a year ago there was a comment by one officer who said that in his opinion, the lack of enforced rules of behavior was at the center of the problem.

There are simply no CONSEQUENCES for these killings. As for these police unions, they provide legal services and coach the officers who do happen to find themselves facing a judge to say, in explanation for the shooting, “I feared for my life.” Then the judge lets him off!! It’s a multilayer problem. Unfortunately, the bottom layer is on the streets and in the black communities, where an officer who feels irritable because his wife voiced her anger at him before he came on the job, makes a conscious or unconscious decision to pass his pain on down the line. It’s like a great cartoon from my childhood called Beetle Bailey. Maybe some of you remember it. The one I’m remembering now shows Sarge receiving a dressing down from his superior officer, and predictably going home angry, where he then kicks his poor bulldog, who looked up at him with a “what was that for?” conversation bubble above him and a hurt and angry face. End of story.

Well, not quite the end. The family dog who loves his master, will very rarely bite him after that, but we humans are a little different, and when we do get to the point of rage and hatred, we can and do fight back lethally. Cops should not be either surprised or hurt by that. They should merely address the real issues honestly. Go to the damned mandatory community meetings and participate honestly to work at building a bridge for us all to walk across. I’m not saying that just because I am always conscious of abuse of power, I’m concerned about our country, and unlike the Donald Trumps, I don’t believe that more tanks from the Pentagon are the solution to the problem.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dallas-mayor-talks-one-of-the-real-issues-with-gun-rights/

Dallas mayor on "one of the real issues" with guns
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS FACE THE NATION
July 10, 2016, 10:58 AM


Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Sunday that open carry gun laws made it difficult for police to tell, in the aftermath of the shooting that killed five police officers Thursday night, who was a suspect and who wasn't.

"That is one of the real issues with the gun right issues that we face, that in the middle of a firefight, it's hard to pick out the good guys and the bad guys," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "...The common sense would tell you you don't know where the gunfire is coming from, there were individuals that ran across the gunfire ... so it sure took our eye off the ball for a moment."

He said the reason the officers brought people other than the shooter in as suspects is because, in the heat of the moment, it was unclear who was actually involved in the shooting and who just happened to be carrying a gun.

"When you have gunfire going on, you usually go with the person that's got a gun," he said. "And so our police grabbed some of those individuals, took them to police headquarters, and worked it out and figured out they were not the shooters."

Rawlings said he "completely" agreed with the Dallas police chief's decision to use a robot-delivered bomb to kill shooter Micah Xavier Johnson, adding that at a certain point it became clear Johnson "may not be bluffing" about his desire to continue killing officers.

"We talked to this man a long time, and he threatened to blow up our police officers, we went to his home we saw that there was bomb-making equipment later," he said. "So it was very important that we realize that he may not be bluffing. So we ask him, 'Do you want to come out safely or do you want to stay there and we're going to take you down?' And he chose the latter."

In the aftermath of the attack, Rawlings said police are working to determine whether Johnson acted alone or had help in some way.

"We keep looking into his files, talking to his neighbors, his family," he said. "Our objective is to see if there's anybody that aided and abetted him, conspired with him. That is going to probably take some days."

What comes next for Dallas, Rawlings said, is some real soul-searching about how to overcome the attacks and "see a better narrative" out of everything that happened.

"I think we are a laboratory for the United States," he said. "Can we, in a moment of crisis when officers are fallen, forgive? Can we disagree without demonizing? Can we see a better narrative as opposed to just absurdity, that there is redemption as we build this great city? I believe we can."



http://dallascityhall.com/government/citymayor/Pages/default.aspx

Office of the Mayor
Biography: Mayor Michael S. Rawlings
DFW Rawlings 009.jpg

Mike Rawlings came to Dallas in 1976 with a couple hundred dollars in his pocket and plans to work as a radio reporter. He didn't think he'd stay long. But over the next four decades, Rawlings proved that Dallas is truly a city of opportunity.

The Borger, Texas, native worked his way up from an entry-level position at TracyLocke, then the largest advertising agency in the South, to become the CEO. Later, he took the helm of the world's largest pizza company, Pizza Hut, and grew it to record sales. Rawlings then served as chairman and managing partner of private equity firm CIC Partners, where he is currently the vice chairman. He provides business counsel and capital, helping to grow small and mid-sized businesses in Dallas and across the country.

Public service has long been important to the 1976 Boston College graduate. He previously served as chair of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, the city's homeless czar and park board president and he currently sits on the Jesuit College Preparatory Board of Trustees.

Rawlings decided in early 2011 to run for Dallas mayor on a platform that highlighted southern Dallas as the city's greatest untapped resource. Following his June 2011 election, he launched GrowSouth, his signature initiative to spur economic development south of the Trinity River. He's also fought to improve public education, combat poverty, revitalize Fair Park, develop the Trinity River corridor, elevate the city's international profile and turn our city into a top destination for artists all over the world. He's drawn headlines across the country for his bold campaign against domestic violence, Dallas Men Against Abuse. He has presided over the passage of $600 million in new city bonds to fund streets, flood protection and economic development initiatives and he led the City Council through the hiring process for a new city manager and city attorney.

During Rawlings' time in office, Dallas has experienced impressive economic growth. Unemployment as of June 2015 had dropped to 4.1 percent, as compared to 5.5 percent one year earlier. Taxable sales continue to rise and property tax values increased in 2015 by 7.7 percent over the prior year.

Rawlings was re-elected to a second four-year term in May 2015, beating his challenger in all but one of 14 City Council districts. He continues to put Dallas in the national spotlight, in part through his post as an executive committee member for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Rawlings and his wife, Micki, live in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of North Dallas. Their two children, Gunnar, an educator, and Michelle, an artist, also live in the city.



Excerpts -- “That is one of the real issues with the gun right issues that we face, that in the middle of a firefight, it's hard to pick out the good guys and the bad guys," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "...The common sense would tell you you don't know where the gunfire is coming from, there were individuals that ran across the gunfire ... so it sure took our eye off the ball for a moment." What comes next for Dallas, Rawlings said, is some real soul-searching about how to overcome the attacks and "see a better narrative" out of everything that happened. …. "I think we are a laboratory for the United States," he said. "Can we, in a moment of crisis when officers are fallen, forgive? Can we disagree without demonizing? Can we see a better narrative as opposed to just absurdity, that there is redemption as we build this great city? I believe we can."


Thank you, Mayor Rawlings!! If you run for president of the country someday I will give serious thought to voting for you, even if you happen to be a Republican. Finally, I have found a politician whose mind is on more than where the funding for his next campaign is coming from. Will the Koch Brothers pay?

To heck with what the highly doctrinaire Rightist Republicans and the NRA think about the matter. Open Carry, and the simple fact that maybe ¼ of the people walking down the street at any moment are “packin’ heat” for “self-defense,” doesn’t fill me with confidence. That’s a lot of guns, and too many of those people are hostile and paranoid Nutjobs. We are not anymore a nation of educated, refined, gentle, trustworthy and honest people. Just look at the number of folks who are so enthralled with Donald the Drumpf. It shocked me when I saw his percentages in the polls. They’ve been out there all along; they just didn’t have their kind of highly aggressive, crude individual to lead them into battle against foreigners, Welfare Queens, atheists, “people of color,” and Free Thinkers of all stamps.


FROM THE REPUBLICAN SIDE


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/giuliani-blacks-crime-problem-dallas-police-rap-music-chicago/

Giuliani: Blacks must say "what they're doing among themselves about the crime problem"
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS FACE THE NATION
July 10, 2016, 12:12 PM

Play video -- Giulani speaking on Face the Nation


Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that in the wake of growing tensions between police and the African American community, African Americans must explain "how and what they're doing among themselves about the crime problem in the black community."

"If you want to protect black lives, then you've got to protect black lives not just against police," Giuliani said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

The former mayor said police killing black people "happens rarely although with tremendous attention," and instead said the public should focus on black-on-black violence, "which happens every 14 hours in Chicago," adding: "and we never hear from Black Lives Matter."

Giuliani continued, saying African Americans need to teach their children about respecting the police and avoiding violence in their own communities.

"If I were a black father and I was concerned about the safety of my child, really concerned about it and not in a politically activist sense, I would say be very respectful to the police, most of them are good, some can be very bad and just be very careful," he said. "I'd also say be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood, don't get involved with them because son, there's a 99 percent chance they're going to kill you not the police."

He added that African Americans exacerbate the tensions through music and pop culture, saying "they sing rap songs about killing police officers and they talk about killing police officers and they yell it out at their rallies."

The former New York mayor said in order for issues of police brutality -- and violence against police in retaliation -- to be solved, it's time to "look differently at race" and "try to understand each other."

"The reality is we have to look differently at race in America if we're going to change this," he said. "We've been looking at it the same way for 20 years and here's where we are. We both have to try and understand each other."

White people, Giuliani said, need to understand "that African American men have a fear -- and boys have a fear -- of being confronted by the police because of some of these incidents."

"Some people may consider it rational, some people may consider it irrational," he added, saying police departments across the country should have a "zero tolerance" policy for officers who act out based on race. "But it's a reality, it exists."

Giuliani said the phrase "Black Lives Matter," which has been the key slogan for those advocating against police brutality and for criminal justice reform, is "inherently racist."

"Of course black lives matter, and they matter greatly," he said. "But when you focus in on 1 percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that's going on in America and you make it a national thing, and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid that's getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you create a disproportion."



“Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that in the wake of growing tensions between police and the African American community, African Americans must explain "how and what they're doing among themselves about the crime problem in the black community." …. The former mayor said police killing black people "happens rarely although with tremendous attention," and instead said the public should focus on black-on-black violence, "which happens every 14 hours in Chicago," adding: "and we never hear from Black Lives Matter." Giuliani continued, saying African Americans need to teach their children about respecting the police and avoiding violence in their own communities. …. "If I were a black father and I was concerned about the safety of my child, really concerned about it and not in a politically activist sense, I would say be very respectful to the police, most of them are good, some can be very bad and just be very careful," he said. …. He added that African Americans exacerbate the tensions through music and pop culture, saying "they sing rap songs about killing police officers and they talk about killing police officers and they yell it out at their rallies." The former New York mayor said in order for issues of police brutality -- and violence against police in retaliation -- to be solved, it's time to "look differently at race" and "try to understand each other." …. White people, Giuliani said, need to understand "that African American men have a fear -- and boys have a fear -- of being confronted by the police because of some of these incidents." "Some people may consider it rational, some people may consider it irrational," he added, saying police departments across the country should have a "zero tolerance" policy for officers who act out based on race. "But it's a reality, it exists."


I want to say first that Giuliani’s speech on the Face the Nation interview is better than this story, so please go to the website and view it. They clipped off several of his thoughts short and couldn’t convey the human feeling. I’ve always liked Giuliani. If he were to be elected president I wouldn’t be petrified with fright in the way I would with any and all of the Tea Partiers. He isn’t as doctrinaire in his thinking, nor as angry and money-oriented.

"The reality is we have to look differently at race in America….” Giuliani said the phrase "Black Lives Matter," which has been the key slogan for those advocating against police brutality and for criminal justice reform, is "inherently racist." I would like to tell Giuliani that everything in our society is deeply and intricately racist, and that the phrase means specifically “Black Lives Also Matter”; and it has a second meaning – “we are not lying down anymore.” That’s the message that old white men don’t like. It means, “Don’t hit me because, unlike Martin Luther King, I will hit you back, perhaps with a tire iron.”

Everybody has always known that white lives matter, and that in the eyes of so many, we are innately superior to ALL black people. That means that, to a sizable minority of whites, they “can’t learn, can’t be decent people, aren’t clean, aren’t beautiful, can only be praised for their athleticism and their music, and heaven forbid that a young white girl might fall in love with a young black man.” I remember one time when a man told me that if we touch a black person the color will rub off on us. Such bilgewater!

The fact is that we are two armed camps between conservatives and liberals, with a commonly race-based division line. Most of us “Liberal” whites have had years of dealing one on one with black people. Many blacks, however, don’t trust any whites, even if they like us a little bit. That’s why we Whites need to keep trying patiently until we are met with an open attitude and heart.

At that point most of these egregious cases will become INDEED very rare. Giuliani’s statement that white policemen “rarely” kill black people is simply untrue, either because he is blind on the issue, or because he is more cynical than he appears. It is also too much to REQUIRE that they forgive us for 500 years of enslavement and the pervasively despicable way that we, I mean that as the universal “we,” have treated ALL people with darker skin Black, American Indian, East Indian, Middle Eastern, some Jews, and many Asians of a variety of types. Have we asked those people to forgive us? Just look at history before saying “That’s not true.” What we need to do is educate ourselves better on the issue and open our hearts.

After we do that, we need to go through all our institutions from schools and churches to police departments and the military. Then we need to stop segregating ourselves by color in the matter of where we live and pull up the weeds of our miserable rotten feelings, replacing them with flowers instead. The flowers are working and playing together without being forced to do it. That breeds the goodwill that we need to prevent the problems we have today.



I AM CUTTING THIS EFFORT OFF SHORT TODAY BECAUSE I HAVE A CHANCE TO GO DOWN TO THE BERNIE SANDERS/ALAN GRAYSON OFFICE TO HEAR GRAYSON SPEAK AND MEET HIM! BEST TO ALL.