I remember some of the same people who are doing the complaining now are the one's who wanted us to STFU about Professor Henry Gates getting manhandled and arrested inside his own home (and no, I'm not making an equivalency argument, but that shit goes on in the African American community every g-damned day). They also didn't want President Obama to comment on it because it was a distraction from the "really important issues" of the day.
Now all of the sudden they are suggesting these police tactics are somehow the President's problem and demanding he do something about it. Here's a recent twitter by Joan Walsh that set off a firestorm last night.
The militarization of cops came after 9/11 under Bush. It wasn't that Davis decided to go nuts. Our president now has something to do w/it.
First of all, the idea that the "militarization of cops" started after 9/11 would come as a serious surprise to activists in this country going back decades.
And secondly, I'd suggest its too bad Ms. Walsh doesn't seem to read the publication she writes for because only a few months ago a co-worker of hers wrote an article at Salon titled Obama cracks down on abuses by big-city police departments. That news went almost completely unnoticed by the left. And NOW they want to scream at President Obama to DO SOMETHING?
I can guarantee you that what we can expect from this administration is to monitor this situation and intervene when/where its called for and the law allows.
Amen. Thank you so much for posting this.
ReplyDeleteHear! Hear!
ReplyDeletePolitical_Bill.
There should no longer be any doubt that many white Democrats, liberals and progressives, are suffering from a serious psychological complex disorder. Their incessant "need" to have Obama be responsible for nearly any conceivable political-issue is beyond comprehension.
ReplyDeleteWhat they demonstrate toward Obama is akin to derangement syndrome. They have convinced themselves that Obama must be blamed for the problem, regardless of its origin, or its lack of veracity to be grounded in truth.
In other words, they're clinically-obsessed with him.
tell it
ReplyDeleteTELL IT!!!
Thank God someone remembered that report about the administration cracking down on police brutality. It was wildly under-reported for many reasons but I'm just gonna go ahead and say that it wasn't reported on because many people thought that it would never effect them. Of course those many people happen to be the very same people who are now bitching about police brutality.
ReplyDeleteYou're equating brutalization with 'militarization'. Militarization is using military tactics, weapons and principles (to include dissemination of propaganda and coordinated intelligence gathering. This is new and de facto unconstitutional. I grew up on the East Side of Detroit during the era of 'The Big Four'and am well acquatined with police brutality. As brutal as the cops have been in communities of color in the past, heretofore they haven't been technically militarized. No fan of Salon, but Walsh is correct in this instance.
ReplyDeleteMace - we all know what triggered Walsh's reaction was what happened in Berkley - the pepper-spraying. Excuse me but that doesn't equate with what you're referring to as "militarization." That's just plain on stupid police brutality.
ReplyDeleteDoes Cointelpro count as militarization? Hell, I'd put J Edgar Hoover's time in office as an exercise in militarization.
ReplyDeleteVic78
@Mace: your definition doesn't make Joan Walsh right in any way.
ReplyDeleteQ: President Obama invented the SWAT team, the police unit trained to use military-style techniques and weapons?
ReplyDeleteA: No, President Obama did not. He was 7 at the time. Daryl Gates, the infamous, racist, Rodney-King-beating-and-subsequent-1992-LA-Riots enabler did.
"The first SWAT team was established by inspector Daryl Gates in the Los Angeles Police Department in 1968."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT
Q: Is it militaristic, if a municipal police department dropped a bomb on a residence?
A: Yes, it is (e.g. West Philadelphia in 1985).
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/93137669.html
Walsh is losing her damn mind. Where was she when the police threw a grenade through the window of a home,in Detroit,and killed a innocent child asleep on the couch. To add insult to injury there were cameramen there videotaping the raid for a reality show.
ReplyDeleteShe should STFU! and be quick about it.