Only One Person Has ‘Blood On His Hands’ In The Deaths Of Officers Ramos And Liu, And He’s Already Dead
NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot dead while sitting in their patrol car In Brooklyn. And those suggesting that anyone other than the killer has "blood on their hands" are being absurd.
Yesterday afternoon, two New York City Police officers were shot and killed while sitting in their patrol car by a man who who apparently had traveled to New York for express purpose of killing police in revenge for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown:
Two police officers sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn were shot at point-blank range and killed on Saturday afternoon by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill officers. The suspect then committed suicide with the same gun, the authorities said.
The officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were in the car near Myrtle and Tompkins Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the shadow of a tall housing project when the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, walked up to the passenger-side window and assumed a firing stance, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said. Mr. Brinsley shot several rounds into the heads and upper bodies of the officers, who never drew their weapons, the authorities said.
Mr. Brinsley, 28, then fled down the street and onto the platform of a nearby subway station, where he killed himself as officers closed in. The police recovered a silver semiautomatic handgun, Mr. Bratton said.
Mr. Brinsley, who had a long rap sheet of crimes that included robbery and carrying a concealed gun, is believed to have shot his former girlfriend near Baltimore before traveling to Brooklyn, the authorities said. He made statements on social media suggesting that he planned to kill police officers and was angered about the Eric Garner and Michael Brown case
Authorities in Baltimore sent a warning that Mr. Brinsley had made these threats, but it was received in New York at essentially the same time as the killings, officials said.
The shootings, the chase, the suicide of Mr. Brinsley and the desperate but failed bid to save the lives of the officers — their uniforms soaked in blood — turned a busy commercial intersection on the Saturday before Christmas into a scene of pandemonium.
The manager of a liquor store at the corner, Charlie Hu, said the two police officers were slouched over in the front seat of their patrol car. Both of them appeared to have been shot in the head, Mr. Hu said, and one of the officers had blood spilling out of his face.
“Today two of New York’s finest were shot and killed with no warning, no provocation,” Mr. Bratton said at Woodhull Hospital in Williamsburg, where the officers were declared dead. “They were, quite simply, assassinated — targeted for their uniform and for the responsibility they embraced to keep the people of this city safe.”
“Officer Ramos and Officer Liu never had the opportunity to draw their weapons,” he continued. “They may have never even seen the assailant, their murderer.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, standing beside the police commissioner, said, “It is an attack on all of us; it’s an attack on everything we hold dear.”
Mr. de Blasio said he had met with the officers’ families, including Officer Ramos’s 13-year-old son, who “couldn’t comprehend what had happened to his father.”
Late Saturday night, President Obama condemned the “murder of two police officers in New York City,” noting that officers who serve their communities “deserve our respect and gratitude every single day. Tonight, I ask people to reject violence and words that harm, and turn to words that heal — prayer, patient dialogue, and sympathy for the friends and family of the fallen.”
The double killing comes at a moment when protests over police tactics have roiled the city and other parts of the nation. Since a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges in the case of Mr. Garner, a black Staten Island man who died after a police chokehold in July, protesters have filled the streets on numerous occasions. Those protests followed more violent ones in Ferguson, Mo., after there were no charges in the police shooting of Mr. Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
The mayor has taken care to praise officers’ work repeatedly since the grand jury decision, but he has stressed the rights of protesters to express themselves and spoken of his personal experience instructing his biracial son, Dante, to “take special care” during any police encounters.
Some union leaders suggested the mayor had sent a message that police officers were to be feared. Cries for the police to use more restraint have been buttressed by historic drops in violent crime. The city has seen roughly 300 killings so far this year, a number so low as to be unheard-of two decades ago.
But the shooting on Saturday seemed reminiscent of decades past, when the city was mired in an epidemic of drugs and violence and, in 1988, a police officer was shot while he sat alone in his patrol car guarding the home of a man who had testified in a drug case. That killing shook the city, sparking an escalation in the war on drugs and an aggressive crackdown on violent crime. Mr. Bratton said that the attack on Saturday was the seventh time since 1972 that partners in the Police Department had been killed at the same time.
Even as the news about the shootings was still just being developed yesterday, reports began to spread that the shootings were something more than just a normal police shooting, to the extent that there is such a thing, and was related, at least in the gunman’s mind, to the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown and the protests that have been going on, on a nearly daily basis, in various parts of New York City in the month since the Grand Jury announced that there would be no indictment in the Garner case, which followed a similar announcement out of Missouri in the Michael Brown case. What seems apparent, though, is that the killer in this case, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, is a man with a long criminal record who seems to have latched on to the Garner and Brown cases opportunistically:
Hours after Ismaaiyl Brinsley shot a former girlfriend in Maryland on Saturday, he returned to New York, his place of birth, armed with a gun and harboring intentions to attack police officers, officials said.
He would do so by the afternoon, they said, killing two New York City police officers in an ambush shooting in Brooklyn and then killing himself.
By the end of the day, detectives were combing through the life of Mr. Brinsley, 28, who has ties to East Flatbush and whose last known address appeared to be in Atlanta, said William J. Bratton, the police commissioner.
His recent arrest history, mostly in Georgia and Ohio, depicted a man familiar with the criminal use of firearms — but without any apparent acts of serious violence that would have anticipated the sort of premeditated killing of police officers that Mr. Bratton called an “assassination” and that Mayor Bill de Blasio said had been done “execution-style.”
Mr. Brinsley was arrested on robbery charges in Ohio in 2009 and weapons possession in Georgia, court records showed. Investigators in New York believe he had been in the city as recently as 2011 when he was a suspect in a harassment case.
Later that year, he was convicted of felony gun possession in Georgia, and sentenced to two years in prison. It was not immediately clear when he was released from custody.
Reached by phone at her Georgia home, a woman who identified herself as Mr. Brinsley’s sister said she had not seen him in two years. She said she did not remember hearing her brother express anger at police officers. “I need to call my mom,” she said before hanging up.
It was not immediately clear what brought Mr. Brinsley to Baltimore County. But he was there Saturday around 5:45 a.m., when the authorities said he shot the former girlfriend, 29, in the stomach, wounding her in her apartment in Owings Mills, Md.
Soon after, messages began appearing on the woman’s Instagram account, believed to have been posted by Mr. Brinsley, that carried some “very antipolice” messages, Mr. Bratton said at a news conference on Saturday evening. Based on the postings, Baltimore County authorities determined one of them had come from Brooklyn. They said they placed a call to the 70th Police Precinct in New York City around 2:10 p.m.
By 2:45 p.m., law enforcement officials in Baltimore County had warned their counterparts in New York and elsewhere to be on the lookout, sending around a digital warning poster with Mr. Brinsley’s face and history. Around that time, the police said, Mr. Brinsley walked up to a marked squad car on a Brooklyn street with a silver semiautomatic handgun and opened fire at the two police officers inside, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
The Instagram account in question can no longer be accessed, which is typical in these situations, but it wasn’t long after the shootings that links to the last two postings had gone viral, and their links to the shooting were quite apparent as more details were released:
While police in New York have not acknowledged a link between these two posts and the shooting, the gun depicted in the first post does match the description of the silver pistol that was recovered from the body of the shooter after he had shot himself, and the pants depicted in the second photo match those of the body photographed being removed from the subway station near the scene where the gunman is known to have killed himself. Additionally, as noted above, police in Baltimore did send an alert to New York after family members of the shooter’s girlfriend had noticed the Instagram postings. Unfortunately, the alter came too late, arriving just moments before Brinsley opened fire on the two officers while they were apparently doing nothing more than eating lunch in their car. Overnight, the families of Eric Garner and Michael Brown both issued statements of sympathy for the shooting and denounced those who would purport to commit violence in the names of their loved ones. Protesters in New York, who continue to gather on an almost nightly basis to protest the outcome in the Garner matter also expressed sympathy for the shootings, and the entire NYPD just seemed to be in a state of shock. Perhaps most important for New York City, though, is the fact that the shooting comes at a time of extraordinary tension with city leaders in general and Mayor Bill DeBlasio in particular:
It is the sequence that every mayor dreads: the ominous report, the scramble to the hospital and the confirmation that, yes, an attack against the police has proved fatal.
But for Mayor Bill de Blasio, the tragedy on Saturday — when two police officers were shot and killed in an ambush in Brooklyn, according to the authorities — arrived at a particularly trying moment, amid an already fractious relationship with the police.
Police union leaders and officers could be seen turning their backs to the mayor and the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, as they walked past, in a video taken at the hospital where the two held a news conference on Saturday.
A written message from Edward Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, addressed the mayor directly. “Mayor de Blasio,” it read in part, “the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands.”
It is the sequence that every mayor dreads: the ominous report, the scramble to the hospital and the confirmation that, yes, an attack against the police has proved fatal.
But for Mayor Bill de Blasio, the tragedy on Saturday — when two police officers were shot and killed in an ambush in Brooklyn, according to the authorities — arrived at a particularly trying moment, amid an already fractious relationship with the police.
Police union leaders and officers could be seen turning their backs to the mayor and the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, as they walked past, in a video taken at the hospital where the two held a news conference on Saturday.
A written message from Edward Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, addressed the mayor directly. “Mayor de Blasio,” it read in part, “the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands.”
For weeks, New York City has been the roiling epicenter of a national reckoning over the police and race, attracting nightly protests since a Staten Island grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against a white police officer in the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after a chokehold in July.
Police union leaders have condemned the mayor for what they have called insufficient support of the police; they have circulated a letter allowing officers to request that he not attend their funerals in the event of a line-of-duty death.
At the news conference on Saturday, at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, the mayor tried to deflect focus on the recent tensions. He said it was “a time to think about these families” and not “a time for politics or political analysis.”
Asked on Saturday about the turned backs and union messages, Phil Walzak, the mayor’s press secretary, said it was “unfortunate that in a time of great tragedy, some would resort to irresponsible, overheated rhetoric that angers and divides people.”
During the briefing, Mr. de Blasio largely deferred to Mr. Bratton. The mayor recalled the emotional scene with the families of the officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, at the hospital. The 13-year-old son of Officer Ramos, the mayor said gravely, “couldn’t comprehend what had happened to his father.”
The murder of an officer, he said, “is an attack on all of us.”
Even before the shooting, the mayor — who has staked his tenure, in part, on a pledge to reshape the Police Department, healing rifts between communities and their officers in the process — had been engaged in a high-wire act of sorts.
He has sought to express sympathy for the protesters, many of whom have placed their faith in the mayor to turn back what they see as years of overreaching by the police, and support for the officers, who remain wary, in many circles, of his designs.
Amid the protests, Mr. de Blasio had already been forced to confront the specter of violence against the police. Last Saturday, two police lieutenants were attacked during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Speaking at a police promotions ceremony on Friday, the mayor seemed to provide an unwitting preview of his Saturday remarks. “Any act of violence against our police officers,” he told a packed auditorium at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, “is an act of violence against our values.”
Many lawmakers and protesters expressed sympathy and gratitude for the police on Saturday. Some advocates noted that mourning the deaths of officers and deaths at the hands of officers were not mutually exclusive.
Yet by Saturday night, it seemed clear that the dialogue over policing in the city remained fraught.
As is often the case, much of what’s going on here between the police unions and the Mayor’s Office is political in nature. It’s something anyone who has observed New York City politics, or indeed the politics of any big city, in the past would be readily familiar with. To groups like the PBA, as well as others who are sympathetic to the police, anything other than absolute loyalty to the police department is a betrayal, and DeBlasio crossed that line when he expressed at least the slightest degree of sympathy for the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who were outraged over the fact that the Staten Island Grand Jury had refused to indict any of the officers involved in the death of Eric Garner notwithstanding a video that seems to show, at least to the layman, clear evidence of at least probable cause for a case of the the excessive use of force for what was, in the end, a relatively minor offense. Indeed, it isn’t even clear from the available evidence that Eric Garner was committing any offense at all at the time the police began questioning him. In any event, DeBlasio didn’t completely side with the police in the immediate wake of the Garner decision and this appears to be the basis for the near constant denunciations that have come his way from the police unions in the weeks since then, as well as the efforts of some PBA officials to get patrolmen to sign statements saying that they would not want the Mayor at their funerals, as is the custom, should they die in the line of duty. To some extent, part of this can be blamed on the fact that DeBlasio does not appear to have the same relationship with the police that previous Mayors have had, especially Giuliani and Bloomberg. Additionally, his opposition to policies such as “stop and frisk” and the efforts to bring that practice to an end has not gone over well with the NYPD rank and file. Once the Garner protests started and DeBlasio expressed at least some sympathy for the people in the streets, there was already enough bad blood between the NYPD. Now, with union officials openly saying that the Mayor has “blood on his hands” and officers showing open disrespect to him, it only appears as if it’s going to get worse. Given that New York City is the largest city in the country, this kind of tension between the police and the political leadership is bound make waves in the future.
Let’s be clear about one thing, though, the idea that Mayor DeBlasio has “blood on his hands” in connection with the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu is utterly absurd. There is only one person who is responsible for the deaths of those two men, and he shot himself in the head on a subway platform shortly after he murdered them. Politically, DeBlasio may or may not have bungled his relationship with the NYPD during his first year in office, but that hardly makes him responsible for murder. Additionally, the fact that the Mayor may have expressed some sympathy for the people who were protesting the Garner decision is neither outrageous nor inappropriate. For one thing, it’s worth noting that he is the Mayor of all the people in New York, not just the police officers, and that as the elected leader of the city it is his job, in part, to be responsive to the concerns of civilians who see what they think is an injustice being committed by the police department and the justice system. The argument that being willing to listen to those protesters makes any political leader responsible for the actions of a violent criminal thug who traveled some 200 miles for the express purpose of committing murder is nonsense that ought to be rejected out of hand. As Nick Gillespie notes, though, the effort to blame others for what happened in Brooklyn is not new:
Just as Sarah Palin’s defense of gun rights has zero culpability in the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords and Dallas’s right-wing “climate of hate” had nothing to do with Marxist-Leninist Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassinaton of JFK, it’s worth underscoring at every moment of what is already shaping up as a very ugly debate that the actual killer is the culprit here.
As the New York Daily News and other outlets are reporting, the apparent shooter was not only violent and unhinged but had bragged via Instagram that he was “putting wings on pigs” and “putting pigs in a blanket.”
The distance between such rantings and, even worse, the act of shooting policemen sitting in a patrol car, simply has no relation to legitimate and even impassioned criticism of the militarization of police and the protesting of specific acts of apparent injustice.
To suggest otherwise is not simply disgraceful and cheapening to serious public discourse. It’s all too often the first refuge of people on the right and the left who are afraid to actually engage in any sort of meaningful debate.
Unfortunately, I can already see from much of the online reaction to yesterday’s tragedy that meaningful debate is the exact opposite of what is likely to occur. Much like the Brown shooting and the Garner death, and the Grand Jury proceedings that occurred in their wake, quickly became politicized, the deaths of these two officers shot in cold blood will be exploited by people with their own political and power agendas. It is, sadly, the way things work in this country any more.
Before that starts, though, I hope that someone stops to remember the families of these two men, as well as the tens of thousands of members of the NYPD and other officers around the country who will be impacted by this horrible tragedy. They didn’t deserve to die, and they don’t deserve to be turned into political symbols either.
It is all sad. I feel for the families, all the families.
Despicable.
Would have been nice if a certain mayor and president who gave their approval of the protests had repudiated the protestors when they marched through Manhattan demanding “Dead Police”. As it is, their silence gives the impression of their tacit approval of the demand. And that now, after the murders, is a problem for them.
Maybe it’s just my paranoia showing but I’m not sure how much of this story should be taken at face value.
@JKB:
Sure…in the world of Fox News and hate and rage and swamp-fever.
In the real world…not so much.
@JKB:
Funny that you 2nd Amendment rise up against the tyrannical oppressor types are so quick to condemn.
I have one question for PBA leader Lynch and his defenders;
Is a Blue life worth more than a Black life?
@Dave Schuler:
I concur. There are stories out that the killer also shot his ex-girlfriend as part of the rampage. Rather clearly, that wasn’t motivated by police misconduct.
And these police officers sitting in their car, doing their job, were oppressing whom?
Not all police actions are in the best interest of society, but on the whole they are. If you wish to cut down on “harassment”, we need to cut back on the petty laws. But police sitting in their car on the job, ready to take action against those who prey on the weak, well, they are doing on of the actions in the best interest of society.
@JKB: In Israel, politicians who show up on scenes of terrorist attacks, promising to end terrorism immediately if only their political platform is accepted, are called “dancers on the blood.” You, good sir, are such a dancer, with the distinction that they are doing their dances for a rational goal, political advancement, and you are doing it to troll a rather insignificant web forum and its denizens. Rather pathetic.
Blaming DeBlasio is nuts. If you want to blame anyone beyond the actual shooter blame the D.A.s who rolled over like good little puppies and protected the police in Ferguson and Staten Island. There would at least be a thread of logic there however insanely attenuated.
Or, here’s a thought that of course must never, ever be contemplated: thank the NRA, the gun manufacturers and their bought-and-paid-for Congressional employees, for a gun-saturated society. It’s hard to kill two cops in a car with anything other than a gun. Knife? No. Bludgeon? No. Only a gun will do.
Why are American cops uniquely trigger-happy? Because American society is infected with the gun disease. Cops who are (rightly) afraid of a gun-toting public will shoot first, ask questions later. We are in a vicious cycle of violence with several root causes, but all of it raised to a much higher intensity and much higher level of violence because of the gun cult’s hold on this country. Guns in private hands are the cause of police militarization, they are the reason for the body armor, they are the reason cops must adopt a hyper-defensive stance with the general public. Guns are the reason cops are afraid of us and we are afraid of them.
Guns are our ebola. They are a disease. They frighten, they heighten tensions, they reduce the time available for contemplation of a given situation, they kill. Really, that’s all they do: they kill. They kill in the hands of police, they kill in the hands of criminals like this lunatic, they kill in the hands of children.
It is categorically, undeniably false that guns protect the American people. We have both infinitely higher rates of murder than any other developed nation on earth, and infinitely higher rates of gun ownership. That’s a strange notion of safety. Every day 80 Americans die by the gun. We have problems of race and problems of economic inequality, but the aggravating factor, the opportunistic pathogen that exploits and worsens these underlying illnesses and turns sickness to death, is the gun.
@James Joyner:
Or he shot his ex-girlfriend when he decided to go kill cops. Either/or, chicken/egg. But it his traveling 190 miles while posting his intent to kill cops is a sign his killing of the officers was inspired if not provoked by the “Dead Cop” rhetoric of the NYC protests.
And he wasn’t just on a spree or he would have killed the two ConEd workers who confronted him after he shot the cops. As it were, when they backed off, he went on his way. They were, however, able to direct the police to the subway with a description, where he killed himself in the face of armed confrontation.
@JKB:
If he was “inspired” by Ferguson and Staten Island, it was an inspiration driven by police brutality, not by responses to police brutality. You’re reversing cart and horse. The reaction does not precede the action, and the action was the killing of two unarmed black men. And more besides.
So, if you really want to pursue the “inspired by” rhetoric, (and I agree he was so inspired) you need to look at the initiators of this chain of events, not just slice off a piece of it.
@Loviatar: Or, better yet, ask people like JKB the worth of a white life covered in blue compared to that of a black, brown or yellow one covered in that same blue? Or even a white life compared to that same blue-covered black, brown, or yellow one?
Seriously, which life is of more value?
@Nikki:
No, lets get him and his ilk to answer the simple question first, then we can start to parse whether a white civilian is worth more than a minority cop.
If you’re going to blame the protests, you might as well go on and blame the documentation of Garner’s death. And not only the documentation, but the fact that people were allowed to view it as well. You can make a larger case that any fact that leads to causing disrespect for the police is to be blamed. Books, statistics, acknowledgements of any kind of injustice and discrimination are at the root of a violent assassination. If the police were only portrayed as obviously right, then none of this would have happened.
So basically someone like Lynch is saying two things. One, that censorship is perfectly fine with him. And two, more importantly, his perception of the world is exactly what the protestors say it is. Protestors think that the police should treat the communities with fairness and respect; police officers like Lynch believe that unquestioning reverence is what the police always deserve.
@JKB:
Sorry, dude, but you don’t get the benefit of the doubt on this one. Where are these protesters demanding “Dead Police?” Can you produce an example?
Because what I think is happening here is that you saw some people protesting police violence and, inexplicably, confused them with people demanding ambush murders. Granted, this is not the kind of mistake a fair-minded, intelligent person will make, but then again, that’s not exactly you, is it?
@James Pearce: He’ll post a video going around the rightwing where they claim some protesters can be heard chanting “What do we want? Dead cops.” That a few people may have said it means, in the racist cop suckers’ minds, that EVERY protester said it.
It’s a horrific event.
Period. Full Stop.
Two cops were executed a few months ago in Las Vegas, by acolytes of Cliven Bundy. Killed almost the same way at the two in NYC.
That barely was a blip on the national landscape.
Why?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-cop-killers-husband-wife-team/story?id=24052877
I guess I should not be surprised that some people are trying to exploit this tragedy for political gain. Yes, JKB, I am talking about you.
@EddieInCA: In their defense, they were not black and scary.
@humanoid.panda: And besides, what you are forgetting that when people like Obama and DeBlasio mouth platitudes about mutual respect, and the need to avoid violence, scary Black people and brave patriots armed with secret decoder rings hear the the REAL message: KILL WHITEY IN THE NAME OF MARX AND MUHAMMAD.
@michael reynolds: If you want to blame anyone beyond the actual shooter blame the D.A.s who rolled over like good little puppies and protected the police in Ferguson and Staten Island.
@ JKB
Let me see if I understand your reasoning. If only the President and the Mayor had strongly condemned any protest of police brutality, a guy who is crazy enough to murder three people, including two cops, and then commit suicide, would have been at home watching TV, not out on a killing spree.
The cartoon world you inhabit is a strange place indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj4ARsxrZh8
@James Pearce:
@JKB:
We understand that you have been told what you think. That you would outsource your thinking to a tabloid like the New York Post is just sad.
@anjin-san:
Reading comprehension. Look into it.
What I said, was that they should have denounce the demand for “Dead Cops”. Now, there are dead cops and many who refused to call out what was beyond the pale have got a problem.
I understand why, de Blasio and Obama have poor leadership skills. Whereas the 2-bit community organizer can let such lie, a leader, who is responsible for effective oversight, cannot let their such things stand without comment. Silence speaks louder than words in leadership.
@Another Mike:
Riiiight. And that’s how we decide the truth or falsity of a statement.
@Nikki:
I’d like to see that video actually. If there are actual American lefty-ish protestors saying that I will not only be very surprised, I will be very impressed.
Usually their approach is to do something uselessly non-violent (occupy a park, lay in the street) and hope the purity of their righteousness will win out in the end.
Frankly, I would find it more believable that a bunch of right-wingers show up at a gun rights rally with guitars strapped to their backs instead of rifles.
@michael reynolds:
It’s about providing part of a justification for a political killing.
@EddieInCA:
Actually progressive blogs portrayed the 2 nuts as acolytes of Cliven Bundy just like they did with Loughner being a acolyte of Palin.
Leftists don’t want to play guilt by association anymore, huh?
Waiting to see whether the media embraces the same approach they used in 2011 to blame the Tucson shooting on the right.
@Another Mike:
No, it’s guilt by association. I say “X” and Lenin agrees, therefore I’m a communist. The fact that Adam Smith also agrees with my “X” is set aside. As is the fact that “X” is true.
That’s what you were doing: trying to stifle an objective consideration of the facts by drawing a connection between me and a murderer.
@JKB:
According to who? You?
You confuse an angry crowd with a cold-blooded killer. Yeah, we’re the ones with a problem….
The question of guilt is not as simple as people on both sides would – at different times – like it to be.
If you panic in a dark theater and trample a child, you are guilty of that assault and battery.
But if someone just yelled, “Fire! Run for your lives!” they, too, bear some guilt. It doesn’t reduce the guilt of the trampler, it adds a new layer of guilt to the guy who screamed. Both trampler and screamer are guilty (to different degrees) of the crime.
The chain of events:
1) Eric Garner sells illegal cigarettes.
2) Cops choke Garner to death.
3) Authorities cover for the cops.
4) Public freaks out.
5) Nut shoots two cops.
As to the shooting of the two cops, the killer is absolutely guilty and damned to hell if there is one, by his action.
People who chanted ‘death to cops’ may have to some degree (rather a minor degree given this dude’s history) contributed to “inspiring” the killer.
But the cover-up of the killing of Eric Garner in turn inspired the chanting crowds.
There’s guilt aplenty:
1) Idiot lawmakers who would make selling cigarettes a crime worthy of arrest.
2) Out of control, trigger-happy, militarized cops.
3) Prosecutors so beholden to the cops that they’ll cover up anything cops do.
4) Moron demonstrators who subverted their own cause by calling for murder.
5) The killer.
6) A society that refuses to face the damage done by saturating society with guns.
The world is not binary. Events in the real world are not written in computer code. Motives, causes and guilt tend to be more diffuse. The fact that only one man pulled the trigger does not mean no one else bears any of the guilt.
@JKB:thanks for pointing up the ridiculousness of Republucan calls for 2nd Amendment remedies.
@Paul L.:
Oh, I see. We must blame protesters for these murders because…..leftists were jerks that one time?
Grow up.
Giuliani channels JKB…or vice versa…or something.
Comical.
4000 troops die on a fools errand in Iraq and we hear no regret or hint of accountability. An innocent man dies while being tortured and it’s defended. But a nut job kills two cops and by some unimaginable logic Obama has blood on his hands.
@michael reynolds:
Believe me, you are not that important. At most I am drawing a connection between an idea, a meme, and the killer.
This is a tough day for lefty lunatic h8rs @OTB. So hard to square their sanctimonious BS with advocating murder which has now happened.
@Nikki: Maybe you’re too fucking stupid to understand the difference between a killing in the line of duty and a premeditated ambush murder – yeah you are.
‘Peaceful’ protesters
Q:’What do we want’
A: ‘More dead cops’
@bandit:
Congratulations, you’ve outdone yourself.
That was low, even by your everyday low low standards.
@michael reynolds:
Nope, I’m not even gonna concede that. I feel quite confident that the killer was inspired by his own sociopathic pathologies and not some political movement, current event, or slogan.
The “blood on your hands” argument is not about condemning the killer. It’s about condemning the same old boogeymen these wingers would condemn on any other day for any other reason.
At least Another Mike can admit it:
Yeah, don’t worry about whether that’s a connection worth making. Anything that makes the lefties look bad is a connection worth making.
Just listen to them. They’re not even trying to hide it.
@James Pearce:
http://www.inquisitr.com/1682448/some-nyc-protesters-want-dead-cops-now-video/
@Moderate Mom: Yeah, thanks. I saw it.
Still waiting to see the connection between that protest and Ismaaiyl Brinsley, though. I mean, it’s gotta be there. It’s gotta be…..
One thing this shows is the pure deceit behind those who ‘believe’ that Michael Brown was an insane demon who tried to take Darren Wilson’s gun and kill him. Brinsley basically did what Wilson accused Michael Brown of wanting to do.
And yet here’s Brinsley:
The disturbed man who assassinated two police officers in their squad car in Brooklyn on Saturday left a trail of social media threats, firearm arrests, and violence. According to NBC, 28-year-old gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s mother and sister “told the NYPD that he was a violent person and that they were afraid of him.”
Michael Brown was called a gentle giant by his family. He had no criminal record, no long history of violence. But in the end, it’s all the same.
The bottom line is that the people who are blaming protesters and Obama and de Blasio and–because why not–Eric Holder for this crime care as much about the truth behind that as they do what really happened with Darren Wilson and Michael Brown. You’re just weak pathetic bullies, who are too chicken, most likely, to do it in real life, so you live in this fantasy universe where Fox News imbeciles/internet trolling/pure vulgarity do it for you.
@Dave Schuler:
I’d like to see a link to footage of what you are describing. I’ve paid close attention to all manner of video of the protests, and not only in New york; I’ve seen no protestors calling for the death of police officers.
@James Pearce: Yeah, don’t worry about whether that’s a connection worth making.
The video has been linked several times already. From December 13, a “mostly peaceful” protest features the crowd loudly chanting:
“What do we want?”
Dead Cops!
When do we want it?”
Now!“
One week later, a guy citing the deaths of Brown and Garner shoots and kills two cops.
Ironically, neither dead cop was white — one was Hispanic, the other Asian.
The shooter (who, despite being a convicted felon, still managed to get his hands on a gun in direct contravention of existing gun control laws) also cited a bit of the Koran in his declaration:
That had 173 likes.
(Note: The killer misspelled Eric Garner’s name as “Eriv.” That’s not my typo.)
I’m still waiting for Conservative vitriol about Police Unions……Unions are bad right?
@Pharoah Narim: Public Sector unions are bad, generally. And they are irrelevant to this situation.
Happy now?
This is has been profoundly frustrating. A violent lunatic murdering police and a few among many chanting for dead cops obviously do not represent all protesters or bear upon the merits of criminal justice reforms. The killer has been denounced by the President, by protest leaders and by Michael Brown’s family , but they won’t matter or be heard. For some people’s purposes, the most barbarous and foolish must end up becoming representatives and avatars of the entire movement. It’s disingenuous and pointless. Independent prosecutors, body cameras, demilitarization and related proposals do not cease to be ideas worth examining because of a hateful act or because of foolish declarations.
@Another Mike: What’s that? A Facebook quote?
Do you have anything else to support the connection between the “dead cops” protest and this shooting? Or is that it?
Just to be clear……I get that in your mind it’s a solid case. Not really because you’ve thought it through, but because you haven’t. Jenos makes that all too clear in his comment as he illustrates just how far he can take a logical jump.
Shorter Jenos:
A) From December 13, a “mostly peaceful” protest features the crowd loudly chanting “Dead cops.”
B) ????
C) One week later, a guy citing the deaths of Brown and Garner shoots and kills two cops.
That is not a connection. But nice try.
@al-Ameda: Sorry – it must be a tough day to be a murder apologist.
@James Pearce: Tough day to be a murder apologist.
@Pharoah Narim: Tough day to be a murder apologist
@Leah: Those lies are going to getcha
http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEVjdPUpdUctUAMAQPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw–?p=dead+cops+chant&tnr=21&vid=48673A61095409D0CD6348673A61095409D0CD63&l=347&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUQ.415516137465%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DD3-uEQdnchI&sigr=11b603i7f&tt=b&tit=New+York+City+Protesters+Chant+For+%26quot%3BDead+Cops%26quot%3B+-+Cavuto&sigt=121573p94&back=http%3A%2F%2Fus.yhs4.search.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Ddead%2Bcops%2Bchant%26type%3Dvst_ir_14_50_ch%26param1%3D1%26param2%3Dcd%253D2XzuyEtN2Y1L1QzuzytDyEzzzy0AyDtAyEyCtCzy0Bzz0DyDtN0D0Tzu0StCtDyBzztN1L2XzutAtFyCtFtCtDtFtCtDtN1L1CzutCyEtBzytDyD1V1StN1L1G1B1V1N2Y1L1Qzu2StCtBzy0Dzy0D0D0CtG0E0A0B0AtG0BtDtBtBtGyD0E0FyBtGtA0B0D0CtA0B0AtByDyCyEtC2QtN1M1F1B2Z1V1N2Y1L1Qzu2S0FzytB0DtD0DtBtBtGzzyCyEyDtGyE0F0DzytG0AtC0ByEtGyEyEyCzz0BtDyC0D0C0C0DtD2Q%2526cr%253D903086185%2526ir%253D142905_b%2526elng%253Den%2526elcl%253Dus%2526a%253Dvst_ir_14_50_ch%2526f%253D4%2526cat%253Dweb%2526ulng%253Den-US%25252Cen%25253Bq%25253D0.8%2526sid%253Dc418b11e2dbb1a19951ecf24dfb71605%2526stype%253Dvst_ir_14_50_ch%2526sesid%253Df387003dd929b2cbac17637aedb8a0cd%2526csr%253D0%2526ipblock%253D0%2526b%253DChrome%2526bv%253D39.0.2171.95%2526os%253DWindows%252B8.1%2526cc%253Dus%2526ip%253D71.232.100.54%2526pa%253Dvosteran%26hsimp%3Dyhs-fullyhosted_003%26hspart%3Dironsource%26ei%3DUTF-8&sigb=1q4s08uea&hspart=ironsource&hsimp=yhs-fullyhosted_003
Michael Brown and Eric Garner died resisting arrest. Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu and officer Kondek died doing their job. It is a very important distinction. Michael Brown and Eric Garner were committing crimes. Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu and officer Kondek were protecting the citizens of their cities. Obama, Holder and DiBlasio fomented racial h8red. These are the results.
More video
http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEViS6U5dU9EEANsoPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw–?p=what+do+we+want+dead+cops&tnr=21&vid=6570657d6d74710b957458a0539ca4ed&l=593&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUQ.346778508475%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F114593010&sigr=10qq8tmpa&tt=b&tit=Protests%3A+%E2%80%9CWhat+do+we+want%3F+Dead+cops%21+When+do+we+want+…&sigt=11sb4coqa&back=http%3A%2F%2Fus.yhs4.search.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dwhat%2Bdo%2Bwe%2Bwant%2Bdead%2Bcops%26ei%3DUTF-8%26type%3Dvst_ir_14_50_ch%26rs%3D0%26param1%3D1%26param2%3Dcd%253D2XzuyEtN2Y1L1QzuzytDyEzzzy0AyDtAyEyCtCzy0Bzz0DyDtN0D0Tzu0StCtDyBzztN1L2XzutAtFyCtFtCtDtFtCtDtN1L1CzutCyEtBzytDyD1V1StN1L1G1B1V1N2Y1L1Qzu2StCtBzy0Dzy0D0D0CtG0E0A0B0AtG0BtDtBtBtGyD0E0FyBtGtA0B0D0CtA0B0AtByDyCyEtC2QtN1M1F1B2Z1V1N2Y1L1Qzu2S0FzytB0DtD0DtBtBtGzzyCyEyDtGyE0F0DzytG0AtC0ByEtGyEyEyCzz0BtDyC0D0C0C0DtD2Q%2526cr%253D903086185%2526ir%253D142905_b%2526elng%253Den%2526elcl%253Dus%2526a%253Dvst_ir_14_50_ch%2526f%253D4%2526cat%253Dweb%2526ulng%253Den-US%25252Cen%25253Bq%25253D0.8%2526sid%253Dc418b11e2dbb1a19951ecf24dfb71605%2526stype%253Dvst_ir_14_50_ch%2526sesid%253Df387003dd929b2cbac17637aedb8a0cd%2526csr%253D0%2526ipblock%253D0%2526b%253DChrome%2526bv%253D39.0.2171.95%2526os%253DWindows%252B8.1%2526cc%253Dus%2526ip%253D71.232.100.54%2526pa%253Dvosteran%26hsimp%3Dyhs-fullyhosted_003%26hspart%3Dironsource&sigb=1qjf0o204&hspart=ironsource&hsimp=yhs-fullyhosted_003
@James Pearce: A whole lot of people were in that march, chanting quite loudly. I wonder how they feel about getting what they demanded.
@bandit:
@bandit:
I hope no admin ends up fixing your “links” so that the rest of us will forever get to see a master at work.
@bandit:
Seriously?
In triplicate even. It’s like you’re not even trying, dude…..
@PJ: Here, let me post what I think bandit was trying to do.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Hopefully anyone chanting for dead cops feels pretty stupid.
But you know me and protesters. I think they’re stupid generally.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “A whole lot of people … ” You’ve gotta be kidding me. That’s about the same number of people that fall out of a bar after a football game in New York. The reason no one has seen that video except a couple of right wing trolls is that it’s just a small group of trash talkers. You could get the same number of people to show up in Union Square to welcome a rumored visit by actual Klingons! And by the way, if no one except the depths of the right wing trollverse have seen this video, what makes you think the killer did? From what I can tell he doesn’t seem to have been a Fox News type of guy.
Brinsley was a brave black man. Perhaps if there were more like him the police would stop murdering blacks in their community. Mourn for Eric Garner. Who was assassinated on the public street. Strangled caught on film and yet the racist American courts denied justice once again.
Retaluation is a natural response to expect from oppressed people victimized in a hostile environment in a daily basis. If the rules were reversed and black cops were killing white people and writes not getting justice it’s laughable to think whites will march and burn candles praying for their victimizers and justice which they never get. White people would burn American down.
JKB:
The GOP teaches hate for government. They treated the lawless, seditious Bundy like a hero. National Review compared him to Gandhi, Thoreau, and George Washington, while portentously reminding us that “the American order … was born in a violent revolution.” Gordon “go for a head shot” Liddy is pals with McCain. Sharron “Second Amendment remedies” Angle was endorsed by Palin.
Tea-party cop killers in Las Vegas is the result. Jarad Miller shot two cops after telling his neighbor “he was angry at the government. He was hellaciously mad at Obama and anyone who was on food stamps.”
“Would have been nice” if people like McCain and Palin would ‘repudiate’ people like Liddy and Angle. Instead, they are embraced. In the GOP, the violent rhetoric doesn’t come from a handful of random protesters. It comes from public figures like Liddy and Angle, who are elevated and praised.
Explain why your concept of “rhetoric” and “consequences” only works in one direction.
@Jenos Idanian #13: Thanks for fixing the link. Now fix the argument.
@jukeboxgrad: “Explain why your concept of “rhetoric” and “consequences” only works in one direction.”
Because white people are good and minorities are bad.
You know, the scumbag patrol around here is never going to admit that’s what they mean, so there’s no point trying to make them. You know it, they know it, everyone knows it. So either dive down inth the mud with them or ignore them and hope they all go away.
@JKB: that’s too logical. the msm is complacent in this too for edging on the demonstrators and never really throwing any facts at them or holding them accountable for their idiocy- they actually seemed to bury the evidence in the brown case.
the msm sure loves to rile up the usual suspects, it makes for good tv.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Now explain how you know there is a cause and effect relationship between the two events.
Oh, you can’t? What a shock.
Two observations:
1) (on the video) That guy has a really great microphone that can collect those chants from a city street at, say, 1000 yards as cleanly as it does. Just sayin’…
2) And the protesters demanding “dead cops…now” killed how many officers that night? I don’t recall any reports of incidents of violence against police arising from that protest, but I may have been out of the country at the time.
Apparently the chanting was so powerful that it reversed time’s arrow, went into the past and inspired a whole life of crime, plus a suicide attempt, plus possibly the murder of his girlfriend.
I blame Obama.
@Another Mike:
Of course it was a call to action. It was a call for reform in police departments and DAs offices to end, or at least reduce, the horrific level of police brutality in this country, and to remind everyone that in our system, even “thugs” and criminals have rights. You would think that that concept would be something that all the folks on the right who jabber endlessly about the Constitution could get behind.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
So how many idiots does it take to post a nonsense argument?
@michael reynolds: I don’t see why a professional jailbird’s final crime spree can’t also be a politically motivated assassination inspired by lefty activists. Indeed, my hopes for such a confluence of criminal behavior in the same individual are so high that I’m just gonna run with it.
If it’s not true….no matter. I’m not interested in finding out why these cops were murdered. I’m more interested in fitting the cop murders into my larger political agenda, facts be damned.
(And yes….this is my attempt at a “honest JKB\Jenos” movie trailer.)
I think Kevin Drum said it best
So which way do you want it, these killings are the responsibility of right with rhetoric or just a sad coincidence?
@bill: @Jenos Idanian #13:
Here is one right wing nut job, a police chief at that , advocating violent resistance to the government and to “libtards”:
Should the conservative movement as whole blamed if some Timothy Mcviegh type takes action to blow up a building, or to attack an abortion clinic, or to shoot down federallaw enforcement officers-instances of which have already happened?
I am sure every right winger here would be quick to distance themselves from such calls to violence, and would indeed condemn any liberals who attempt to make such idenifications as hypocritical persecutors of the right wing.
So, conservatives, practice what you preach and don’t engage in these types of smears.
@anjin-san:
Yes, and the call was heard. Not the call in your high-minded rhetoric meant as an argument in a blog comment exchange, but this call, “What do we want? Dead Cops!”
As I wrote above: “The cry for justice was heard. A criminal answered the call in a manner only a criminal would have. It was the wrong answer, satisfying only a few in the fringe.”
Michael Reynolds, dancing on the blood for his pet peeve of disarming the unwashed masses. Of course, that the guy was a prohibited felon and that NYC has the strictest gun laws in the country just shows that total gun confiscation is the only option.
@Mu:
This idea that people get guns in spite of existing laws, and therefore tighter regulation is useless…is just dumb, and defies logic.
As the only person here who was actually in the large MillionsMarchNYC protest a week ago, a couple of points about that video
1. That wasn’t the march. The march was about 30,000-40,000 people marchin up 6th Avenue and then down Broadway. The video is of a group of what looks like 50 or so peole in Murray Hill, which is a different part of the city.
2. I’d bet the audio on the video is a fake, because (i) in this day and age of everyone having a smart phone on them, there’s not a second or third video or thirtieth video confirming this, but only one shot from several stories up; (ii) since it’s shot from several stories, up, you can’t actually SEE any indiividual saying that; (iii) at first the audio is muffled to the point of not being able to understand what the marchers are saying– right up to the point when they supposedly start chanting “dead cops”, at which point it’s loud and crystal clear, and also suspiciously well-coordinated.
In short, the whole things looks like a heavily-edited fake
Funny how everyone is avoiding the mention that the shooter was a member of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF).
But NYC is about to learn how things were up until the early 1990s. The NYPD rank and file are adopting “wartime” procedures of two cars per call regardless of type or judgement of patrol supervisors. And not doing unnecessary stops for citations or other events that do not result in an arrest. This is to limit the exposure of officers during this time of heightened risk of ambush and assassination. It is how they coped with the constant threat from radical groups in the 1970s.
de Blasio is likely to get his wish of a NYC just like when his mentor David Dinkins was mayor. Question is will al the hipsters and urban liberals enjoy the old New York the aging hippies are nostalgic for.
@Rafer Janders:
Of course, what other possible explanation could there be? I mean really, think about it, there couldn’t be any other explanation. They are cunning and they are extremely technically proficient, and common sense tells you this is just the kind of thing they would try to pull off. I mean, who are you going to believe? Me, or you own lying eyes and ears. I rest my case.
I agree. I also note the absence of even a single witness. Surely there were many witnesses, including the person who shot the video. If this had really happened, then aside from the video we would be hearing statements from multiple witnesses. And there wouldn’t be just one video, as you pointed out.
@C. Clavin: I didn’t say it was useless, I said that gun laws quite obviously had nothing to do with the murders. The guy was already prohibited from owning a gun, in a spot where carrying a gun has been outlawed for generations.
And as I despise people that claim that oposing politician xyz has to resign because of statement abc, I despise people that try to claim a tragedy for their political cause.
@Another Mike:
Once again, I was actually at the real march all day long, and heard nothing whatsoever like that.But one thing there was at the march was spectator after spectator on the sidewalk photographing and videoing the marchers from a few feet away.
This other, smaller group, however, walks down the street in a busy residential neighborhood, supposedly chanting something highly incendiary, and no one, no one a few feet away on the sidewalk whips out an iPhone to record, except for one person a thousand feet up and away?
@JKB:
If it will bring the rents down and start the take-over by national chain stores and overseas billionaires, then yes, sure.
@Mu:
The guy lived in Baltimore. New York’s gun laws had nothing to do with him.
@Another Mike:
How technically proficient do you imagine you need to be to drop audio onto another video?Ten-year olds armed with an iPad can do it.
@Rafer Janders: I’m with you. That sound track went from “mumba womp” to “dead cop” rather abruptly.
@JKB:
So what you’re saying is that you wish for murder and robbery in New York?
@Rafer Janders:
Yeah, that’s what I mean. Why weren’t they part of the real march? Who authorized them to do their unreal march anyway? There’s something fishy here. In NYC you don’t get to march and protest unless the higher-ups allow it.
@Another Mike:
Ok, now prove that there was linkage between the two events, or that the shooter was even aware that the video in question exists. Hint,,, saying “a babe in a really shot skirt on Fox told me so” is not an acceptable answer.
If you can’t offer proof, I will know you are just enjoying a right wing wet dream and leave you to it.
@Mu: \
You are correct. The problem is not gun laws. The problem is guns.
You can’t kill a cop with a gun law, you need a gun to do that, and thanks to brainwashed cretins in service to rapacious, amoral billionaires, there’s no shortage of guns to be used to kill cops.
@Rick DeMent:
The left has already done all of this. O’Reilly has been blamed for Tiller. Hannity has been blamed for Jerad and Amanda Miller. Christians have been blamed for Westboro Baptist Church. The NRA has been blamed for every shooting everywhere. Have you not spent any time in the comment section before?
What’s your point? That the left gets to blame the right whenever it wants, but the right doesn’t get to respond in kind? Or, that the left was wrong to blame O’Reilly, Hannity, the NRA, et al for the criminal actions of others?
@Rafer Janders:
I dunno….but that’s incredibly unlikely. Much more likely that there were, indeed, some protesters chanting for “dead cops.”
It’s okay. That just means those protesters were wrong. It does not mean that they inspired the killer, that everyone protesting police mistreatment is a “murder apologist,” or anything else.
@James Pearce:
I’m not so sure about that. Fox once showed video of “union thugs”, supposedly in Wisconsin. It turned out the video was actually taken in Sacramento. That was a major news network faking it on national TV, so yes, it’s not to hard to believe that a YouTube video might be a fake.
The video is at least a little suspicious. A very long shot, with crystal clear audio. Who took this video? Why have then not been interviewed? Why is there no other video of this event to verify what supposedly took place?
@Mu: “And as I despise people that claim that oposing politician xyz has to resign because of statement abc, I despise people that try to claim a tragedy for their political cause.”
…says the poster claiming this tragedy to rail against gun laws.
@Gavrilo:
Dude…..it’s pretty obvious that’s exactly what’s going on here.
There’s been a lot of “You tied Jared Loughner to Sarah Palin, so now I’m tying Brinsley to YOU.”
It’s like it took less than a decade from Buckley’s death for the conservative movement to go from something that would make it into Harvard or Yale to something that wouldn’t make it out of the third grade.
I don’t think that any OTB’ers are happy about these murders, but if some of them were ideologically consistent and honest with themselves, they would be. If some of you guys believed the things you’ve typed over the last few months, two dead cops should be like an early Christmas present for you. Immoderate words on my part, I know. But I have to tell you, you’ve been like a mommy to Brinsley, scooping up the mashed peas and making encouraging sounds as you put the spoon in his mouth. And now you’re going to act surprised and disgusted that he ate what you gave him? The only thing that should get you down about this story is that the cops weren’t named Roberts and Lewis.
@wr: Sorry, I didn’t start this as a gun law issue. That was the same guy who does it whenever someone gets killed by a gun.
@Pinky:
Why don’t you show us the statements people have made here that suggest they would think of two dead cops as a “Christmas Present.” Please be very specific.
What we gave him? Ah, so now the murders are laid at the feet of OTB commentators? Please show some evidence that Brinsley even knows OTB exists.
@anjin-san:
In the canyons of high-rises? That’s not that weird.
It’s easier for me to believe this was a real chant than it is for me to believe someone went through the effort to fake it for the Fox News crowd. It’s not like they needed this video to claim that lefties coast to coast want to kill cops. That’s what they were going to say anyway.
It takes a certain amount of cleverness to concoct a convincing fake. I have seen no indication that kind of cleverness is even present.
@Pinky:
Show your work. Because this statement sounds like you are conflating your butthurt of having so many people question what you write with a tragedy that has no link to this page.
Please give quotes from any regular commentator that shows any of us–let’s say 3 such quotes, so as you can’t take one singular quote out of context–or STFU.
@Pinky: Look, saying “if things keep going the way they’re going, other things are going to result that none of us will be happy about” is “putting the spoon” in Brinsley’s mouth, then we have a whole raft of history books that need to be laid on a fire and kindled with another raft of news archives. Saying “This [Brown/Garner/Crawford/Rice] doesn’t bode well for race relations and justice in America” is not equal to saying “Yay let’s kill cops!”
@Neil Hudelson: Butthurt? If I wanted to get 100% agreement, there are sites I could go to for that. I’m fine with the number of likes and dislikes I get. And if I had nothing else to do for a few days, even then I probably couldn’t find three quotes that state outright that these murders are what anyone around here was hoping for. I’m just saying, again, that if some of the commenters thought through what they’ve said, they’d find comfort in this double-murder – or, I suppose, realize that the things they’ve said were wrong.
@Pinky:
What a vile and disgusting statement.
This is something I’m going to remember the next time I catch myself thinking of you as some sort of “reasonable” conservative. Underneath the polite veneer it’s the same old savagery.
@Pinky:
Can someone who’s more fluent in wingnut please decode this statement? Do the names Robers and Lewis have some sort of special meaning that I’m not aware of?
@Pinky:
In other words, you are just being Pinky. Kinda dishonest, kinda cowardly, and unable to back up what you say.
@Rafer Janders: I believe that many OTB’ers would be happier if it had been two white cops instead of two minorities.
@Pinky:
Are you suggesting that people are wrong to disapprove of police use of excessive force because such public disapproval of excessive force leads to the murder of police officers?
You do realize that it is possible to simultaneously disapprove of the inappropriate use of excessive force by the police, and the murder of two police officers? Is that a difficult concept for conservatives to grasp?
@Pinky: Where the flock did that come from? What on earth would lead you to say that?
@Pinky:
So even though your MO on most threads is to take a vile/racist/misogynist statement and explain that, by parsing a word here, looking at a different angle there, and really considering all context, that statement could NEVER be vile/racist/misogynistic…
…in this case, it’s enough that if commentors have been outraged by police brutality, they are also probably happy that police have died.
So you are not only inconsistent, you are dishonest? Or is there a better way I can read this?
TNR nails it here:
@Pinky:
Fine, produce even a single quote that would, if “thought through,” would lend credence to your ramblings.
@Pinky:
No, you misunderstood. Simple as that.
I distinctly remember calling for the Ferguson protestors to arm themselves. That is, go to the gun store and buy a gun. This is not radical. This is not strange. This is, indeed, exactly the kind of remedy that the right would normally recommend.
But now I have to hear this “murder apologist” crap?????
@Pinky:
No, not immoderate, just dishonest and stupid. Disappointing coming from someone who’s not usually one of the children.
@stonetools:
No. This is 2014. We live in a post-Zimmerman, post-Loguhner, post-Holmes, post-Tea Party, post-Heller society.
If young black men want to arm themselves, that’s perfectly legitimate, acceptable, and right. And don’t let any right-winger tell you differently.
@Pinky:
Since when does “cops killing unarmed people is bad” actually mean “kill the police”? Although if that’s really what conservatives are taking from the protests, it makes sense why they don’t understand the problem.
Another in a long line of issues where most conservatives choose not to understand the issue well enough to join the conversation. Although for a movement that won’t shut up about freedom and tyranny, you’d think that cops killing unarmed people would be something they take seriously.
@David M: Is your recollection that we’ve had a few months of OTB’ers saying nothing more than “cops killing unarmed people is bad”? I haven’t heard anyone say “kill the police” on this site, but I’ve seen a lot of comments that could lead from the former to the latter.
@Pinky:
Link or STFU
@David M: you’d think that cops killing unarmed people would be something they take seriously
@Pinky:
Produce them.
@Another Mike:
And since we live in a perfect world, we all know there is no possibility that the process could be heavily skewed to protect cops from accountability.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/da-knew-lying-witnesses-ferguson-grand-jury-trial/
@Pinky:
Since there are so many, it should take you a few short minutes to produce some. Or you could just punk out. I am betting on the latter.
That sound you hear is Pinky frantically rifling through OTB archives trying to find something, anything, that might even tenuously back up what he’s been saying….
@Pinky:
I see…..
Earlier you wrote “I don’t think that any OTB’ers are happy about these murders, but if some of them were ideologically consistent and honest with themselves, they would be.”
But now you’re saying “I haven’t hear anyone say ‘kill the police’ on this site?”
Then of what merit is your first statement?
@anjin-san:
Now how in the heck did the DA know that? Did the grand jury also believe that they were lying?
Hey, maybe the DA should not have let them testify. Mr. DA, you did not allow all the witnesses to testify. You held back witnesses that could have condemned your cop friend. You rigged the grand jury.
In the end the system worked and justice was done. End of story.
al-Ameda:
Yes, because they have small minds that think in binary, comic-book terms. Consider these examples, which are all cut from the same cloth:
A) If you disapprove of the inappropriate use of excessive force by the police, that means you support cop-killers
B) If you understand that the Benghazi attackers were motivated by the Nakoula video, that means you support terrorists.
C) If you disapprove of torture, that means you support terrorists.
The ‘logic’ of A is represented in this thread, and examples of B and C are also easy to find.
@jukeboxgrad: Interesting…what fallacy is it when you accuse someone falsely of making false dichotomies? Straw man? I’m not sure. (BTW, my original comment on this thread was more an implied slippery-slope argument, a logical fallacy but not necessarily one that reaches a wrong conclusion.)
@Another Mike:
Well, you could follow the link and find out. Or is that just too hard for you?
So Pinky, it would seem that your takeaway from the horrific murder of two cops is “Oh goody, a chance to launch a sleazy (and utterly fact free) smear job on people who disagree with my politics.”
Does that about cover it?
Pinky:
Hours ago, you said this:
So far you have cited this many of those words that were allegedly “typed:” zero. Unless you can support your claim with proof, then it is correct to accuse you of “making false dichotomies.”
A Fox affiliate has been broadcasting fake “Kill a Cop” video footage:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-wbff-edit-protest-kill-a-cop
I know I am shocked…
Pinky:
On 4/9/14, Jerad Miller wrote this on Facebook (link):
Six days later, National Review wrote this (link):
A couple of months later, Miller shot two cops. Explain how NR talking about “violent revolution” was not “encouraging sounds” to Miller.
And notice that I cite actual words, while you cite nothing.
Baltimore Fox Affiliate Edits Protest Footage To Sound Like ‘Kill A Cop’:
Edit: Late.
@anjin-san:
So wait….is that the same video that the wingnuts were linking to up-thread???
No, but it shows that the nuts are eager to fake such ‘evidence.’
@C. Clavin:
Lying seems part of the whole wingnut approach to discussion. You have to check out everything they post.
On this issue, they are desperately distract people from the very real problem of police brutality and racism by tying the incident of this crazy man to legitimate, First Amendment protests. It’s sickening, really.
@anjin-san: Very interesting video from the Fox affiliate in Baltimore. Tricky editing, lazy reporting, but -I would note- not exactly a fake.
But like Obama’s birth certificate and Benghazi and any other number of things, do I think “the real story” will supplant the “fake story” in the mind of our country’s right-wingers? Nah….They don’t care about being right.
You don’t have to be right if you prevail.
Well I see that the leftoids have covered all their bases in the “blame game” .
Blame Sarah Palin–check
Blame the cops-check
Blame the guns-check
Blame Fox News-check
Blame the whites-check
Blame the GOP-check
Blame the Constitution-check
Gee-in this rare instance they didn’t blame Bush or Israel.-Wha Happen’d?
@Rafer Janders: Hmmmmm, I thought it was the sound of his brain discovering it sent speech signals to the wrong orifice.
i didn’t have the stomach to read all the lame comments but did anyone point out that the brain dead killer totally missed his mark by killing 2 minority cops? i mean really, he was supposed to kill white cops- how could he possibly screw that up?
and for all the intellects rambling on about influencing these kind of idiots and accepting some responsibility for their actions -here’s an analogy;
you give a retard some shots, hand him/her the keys to a truck and point him/her in the direction of a crowd-who bears the burden of the results?
@John425:
Well, every time I think you’ve bottomed out, you prove me wrong.
@JKB: It is always one that would do exactly as the journalist is talking about. Go ahead, make our day.
@bill:
I guess you are dumber than you thought. I am sure he killed exactly who he intended to kill, police. You will keep the color matter in your head forever; when we all know that it is deeper than color, it just happens that people decided after these last three unarmed black men were murdered by POLICE, that it was time for people to stand up.
He got his targets and it is amazing how you will try to insinuate that he was too dumb to do that. you my friend, are a part of the reason why non-racist people are out on the streets trying to make a change for the better.
You are actually quite appalling
@anjin-san: Dunno if I accept that about me, but you sure are familiar with the bottom of a crap pile.
No need to bring up George Bush right now.
@John425: Get it right. You’re supposed to blame the mayor and the protesters and the Kenyan usurper in the White House.
If you must blame the killer, just make sure to tie him to all the other boogeymen you don’t like. It’ll make you feel better.
De Blasio ran on police abuse. He allowed protesters to run amuck. To say that he bears none of the responsibility is stupid
@anjin-san:
If this is the same footage Fox News in Baltimore was referencing, then they clearly messed up.
At first I thought they said kill a cop, but the next phrase in cell blocks made me listen more closely and it was ’til killer cops, are in cell blocks. I am hard of hearing.
Those news people definitely need to get their hearing checked. Do you have a link to the Fox News people actually saying kill a cop?
“UPDATE: Fox 45 responded with the following statement on its Facebook page: “Last night on Fox45 News at Ten we aired a story regarding the increased risk in being a police officer in light of recent grand jury rulings and the shooting deaths of two police officers in New York City. We aired part of a protest covered by CSPAN that appeared to have protesters chanting “kill a cop”. We spoke to the person in the video today and she told us that is not what she was chanting. Indeed, Tawanda Jones, says she was chanting, “We won’t stop ‘til killer cops are in cell blocks”. We invited Tawanda to appear on Fox45 News at 5:00 and Fox45 News at Ten tonight for an interview so we can discuss the video and the recent violence in New York City. She has kindly accepted and we will bring you that tonight.” – See more at: http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/bcp-fox45-misquotes-tyrone-wests-sister-saying-kill-a-cop-20141222,0,6685861.story#sthash.YrW7YWWd.dpuf”
Very embarrassing and very unprofessional. My guess is someone’s head will roll.
@Pinky: I don’t think that any OTB’ers are happy about these murders, but if some of them were ideologically consistent and honest with themselves, they would be. If some of you guys believed the things you’ve typed over the last few months, two dead cops should be like an early Christmas present for you. Immoderate words on my part, I know.
What an incredibly vile statement. I generally follow this thread and very occasionally post. I don’t know of any regular poster who would remotely fit your description. I can’t say it better than any of the posters early on in this thread, but here goes:
Just because you feel strongly about misconduct on the part of some elements of the police does not mean that you would have any feeling other than revulsion at the random killing of two police officers.
Again, a truly disgusting comment on your part.
@Gavrilo:
The point is that it wasn’t true then when it was liberals making the charge, and it’s not true now that it’s conservatives. On the other hand if it is true now that it’s conservatives making the charge, then it was also true then when it was liberals. The point , as if I needed to make it, is take your pick.
@John425:
Was that pathetic? {{{ check }}}
really? Why? Faking video/audio through various deceptive editing techniques is extraordinarily easy, even for some shmoe on youtube,. For a professional it would be the work of a few very easy minutes, finished before you got back from the restroom.
But since you find it hard to believe, here’s a case where it did happen
@Loviatar: Worth more than a thousand Michael Browns, that’s for damned sure.
Pants up, Don’t Loot!
Ed
@jukeboxgrad: @James Pearce:
I’m sure those evil right-wingers made this up, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U60iAiKYvY
Ed
oh look he seems to have a mental illness that drove him to kill….I S L A M… so strange; so many random killers suffering from the same mental illness….
@Ken:
Sure is. There’s an entire industry devoted to it. However, making a convincing fake is not easy, mostly because there is an industry devoted to it. In other words, there’s a lot of people who can spot it.
The case you link to is not a fake. It’s a mistake.
@Ed: No, Ed, you misunderstand. I’m not saying any videos are right-wing fakes. I’m saying the right wing is not clever enough to fake a video. And why would they need to?
They have no need for honesty or evidence.
I’m also saying that even if you found a genuine video of protesters chanting “kill a cop” that it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
It looks like we found the likely chanters. Your usual small bunch of loud mouths. As I said up thread, in a city the size of New York you can find a bunch of people to support anything, it is dispositive only of that.
@MUNCHBOX:
So if you capitalize your name we won’t know you’re the same fraudulent plagiarizer you were in lower case?
They’ve traced the gun.
Surprise, surprise, it came from the south.
@James Pearce: I got it right. I ran the checklist that leftoids use when playing the blame game on right-thinking Americans.
@michael reynolds: South? As in Chicago? The fast-growing gun/murder capital?
@John425:
Murder capital? Chicago is not even close. Is parroting Fox all you have? It’s really kind of sad.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/14/despite-recent-shootings-chicago-nowhere-near-u-s-murder-capital/
@Gavrilo: “The left has already done all of this. O’Reilly has been blamed for Tiller. Hannity has been blamed for Jerad and Amanda Miller. Christians have been blamed for Westboro Baptist Church. The NRA has been blamed for every shooting everywhere. Have you not spent any time in the comment section before?”
The right is blamed for what they say, and more to the point, what they say in the mass media. O’Reilly isn’t a loon wandering the streets, he’s a voice of the right with a loud megaphone. Same for the others.
@ass hat,
Merry Christmas from the ” fraudulent plagiarizer ” ….yes yes i am. And you’re still the pompous ass hat that spews turds from his mouth…
@ anjin-san other wise known as mr. reading comprehension guy….
you have to understand what you’re reading…only when you say dubious things like
can you get to an article title like that…..
so yes the incubator of obama’s politics is still the murder capital of the states….
its kinda like saying that obama has actually spent less then anybody else because of % of GDP…its a laughable argument.
@MUNCHBOX:
Hey Jenos, if you are not bright enough to understand the article, just come out and say it 🙂
Awww, someone got self awareness for Christmas. Happy holidays I hope your bridge is cozy.