It seems prescient now that Nancy LeTourneau chose yesterday afternoon to write a piece calling for a federal response to the civil rights challenge of our time, which she characterized as “both the over-incarceration of black and brown people and the police abuses that have been capturing the headlines once again.”
As she noted, “most of the control over these issues is currently in the hands of state and local governments” and “progress is – at best – a patchwork, and tends to come in jurisdictions that are probably already in the lead on addressing them.”
As if to drive home the urgency of LeTourneau’s point, later in the evening a sniper shot numerous law enforcement officers in Dallas, Texas, killing four policemen and one DART officer, and wounding seven more cops and two civilians. It was the deadliest day for American police officers since September 11, 2001.
“We are working very diligently on processing the crime scene to find evidence to bring any other suspects to justice,” [Dallas Police Chief David Brown] said.
But during the overnight standoff, the suspect told a police negotiator he acted alone and wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers, Brown said.
“He said he was not affiliated with any groups,” Brown said. “He said he did this alone.”
The police were in the area because a rally was being held to protest the deaths of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Louisiana and 32-year-old Philando Castile in Minnesota. Both black men lost their lives at the hands of cops in what certainly appear to be unjustified shootings.
The Dallas police chief seems to understand the urgency of the situation:
“We’re hurting, our profession is hurting,” Brown told reporters at the news conference. “There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city. All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.”
I am sure that there are unique and preexisting tensions in Dallas that fed into this, and it’s also perhaps the responsibility of a deranged mind, but the police chief isn’t wrong to see the atrocity as emblematic of a more general lack of trust. After all, the immediate impetus for the protests wasn’t anything that the Dallas police had done. People were in the streets to complain about something much more systemic and widespread.
Historically, the aftermath of a cop killing isn’t a time of thoughtfulness and reflection. It’s a time when people rally around the fallen officer and the department he or she served. Discussion of possible underlying causes is very unwelcome, as it might be interpreted as some kind of justification for a murder. Yet, perhaps the very scale of this incident is sufficient to break that rule.
It won’t be easy, particularly since the shooter so clearly expressed an anti-white racial motivation. This is a real invitation for people to rally to their tribe, whether that be the men with badges or just whites vs. blacks.
To avoid that, we need good, solid leadership on all sides. The Dallas police chief already recognizes that there’s a larger issue here, and he and other defenders of the police don’t need to be battered over the head with the argument that they’ve brought this on themselves. That will make them withdraw at a time when they might be open to discussion. At the same time, the temptation will be there to blame the protesters for stoking so much hate that they motivated this attack. That will make the protesters harden their positions and stop listening.
As LeTourneau documented, the administration has been very active in working on this issue, but they’re limited in what they can accomplish without more congressional authorization. Our current Congress can barely pass a bill to rename a post office, but we’ll have a new Congress in a few months. With the right makeup, the next Congress may find a law enforcement community that is willing to work with them on finding some federal solutions.
In the meantime, our thoughts should be with the families of the victims in Dallas, as well as with the families of the victims of police violence.
Sometimes I feel like we’re too wired, too networked, the world is too small. Our nervous systems are spread too thin and can’t carry the load. The hits keep coming. It takes a village to raise a child, not a country or a world; yet we feel an intimate connection to places far beyond our walls. That’s a good thing, in so many ways, but is it also a debilitating and dangerous thing? We’re still reeling from Orlando and Tamir Rice and Baghdad–we’re still reeling from Sandy Hook–and every day brings another hit of grief and anger and hopelessness.
I read an article about Trump getting ‘inside the decision loop’ or ‘decision cycle’ of the other primary campaigns. By the time they’d formulated an intelligible response to one thing Trump said, he’d done two more things that required responses. He broke their ability to react. That’s how all the violence–the killer cops, the Dylan Roofs, the San Bernardinos, Parises, Bangladeshes, and now this–and the mediation fo the violence feels to me.
I’ve read that violence is starkly down from ten and twenty years ago, both gun violence in the US and violence worldwide. Is this true? Is something uniquely broken right now? Is something changing? If so, is it the degree of violence or something else?
Declined but started to rise after 2010.
Not true. 2014 was lower than 2010.
America is a far less violent place that it was 25 years ago.
This is a simple fact. In fact, GUN VIOLENCE is down significantly.
So here is a thought: what if we started a discussion with this fact. Lawless is not increasing. Chaos is not rampant.
When you start with these facts you can discuss the problem rationally.
But in my experience people don’t want rational discussions.
This is a pretty good summary.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in
-the-united-states-heres-why
So what’s changing? Media focus? Social media? Social awareness?
I’ve been super-impressed by BLM’s ability to focus and drive a (horrible yet crucial) narrative; but how do you address a real social tragedy like men being shot to death by cops without giving the impression of rampant chaos and brutality?
One reason is the cuts that were made in local news rooms some years ago. It changes the news. Crime is cheap to cover.
Another is that declining crime doesn’t fit anyone’s explanation of modern American. If inequality causes crime – why is it decreasing as inequality increases. If we are turning away from religion, what’s a social conservative to say when we see crime decline at the same time. If you are angry about guns, what do you say as gun violence declines without gun control?
Some of it is probably about cell phones and video too.
America may be far less violent by statistics but I wonder whether that is the impression people take away with all the recent mass shootings and now the apparent police murder of unarmed citizens? And then there is the gun culture and readily available assault rifles with thirty round clips and, lest we forget, there is Wayne and Donald telling us all we need is a good guy with a gun. So you are right people don’t want a rational discussion. This is quickly becoming existential.
Mass shootings are news precisely because they are not the routine coverage.
The turn of local news media to “If it bleeds, it leads” means that top of most local television coverage and web sites is a crime report. Given the size of media markets, it is not hard to get one crime report a day. Day after day, even if the crime occured 50 or 100 miles away.
Plus, the police departments even in small towns engage in public relations activities that none thought necessary before the Law Enforcement Assistance Program of the Nixon administration. The press then becomes the stenographer for police departments. That frustrates reporting on corrupt actions and excessive violence of police departments.
Where police unions exist, they have an incentive to hype the threat to the public and themselves in spite of the evidence. Jeff Roorda in St. Louis takes this to the extreme, but the pattern exists throughout the country.
There is a lot of money riding on crime continuing to be a problem. And also a lot of political power as well.
If we actually solve crime and war, we would have to return to the promises of the Bill of Rights because we would no longer be in an “emergency” situation.
Both the right and the left are very invested in the idea that nothing good is happening in America. This is a factor too.
Here is one stat: between 1995 and 2012 youth incarceration in America DECLINED BY 45%.
Did you know young people were far LESS likely to be imprisoned than they were a generation ago?
There is actually a BI-PARTISAN consensus to find alternatives for incarcerating youth at the state level. It runs the spectrum from Jerry Brown in California to Rick Scot in Florida.
There very good things happening in states around law enforcement, and I say this as a prosecutor who resigned because of the drug laws in the 90’s..
You think there is a prayer in hell that story gets talked about?
Part of the problem is TV news itself. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a serious problem. It makes people think there is a lot more crime than there is.
Absolutely. How many know how far crime has fallen?
Not many according to things like Pew Research.
From what I understand, Dallas PD is actually one of the better departments. A model even.
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/8/12128116/dallas-shooting-police-protest-community-relations
That’s valid. Chief Brown is one that’s really trying.
I live in an Urban Area.
Dallas is an Urban Area.
I see someone with a regular gun, let alone a RIFLE, and I’m calling 911.
How many law abiding citizens saw him with that rifle – before he got to the protest?
5?
15?
40?
And, in NORMAL circumstances, not all, but most, would have done what I would have done – call 911.
BUT, because of Texas’ Open Carry Law……the law abiding concerned citizen could do NOTHING.
Where’s the NRA’s Statement?
This was THEIR law.
After all, isn’t it all we need are those who are armed to stop things like this?
WHO IS MORE ARMED THAN THE POLICE?
WHERE is the NRA’s Statement?
None, he drove up to the spot he started shooting a couple of blocks away from where the protests were taking place. It’s in the video of the original police officer he shot that was recorded by a Ismael Dejesus in a near by hotel.
This video
The SUV with the emergency flashers on is the shooters.
As for expecting the NRA to say a word about this or defend both Alton Sterling’s or Philando Castile’s second amendment rights, all I can say is don’t hold your breath.
They will no more do this than they will accept their criminal culpability for the growing problem with gun violence in the country.
Consider this statement:
What was the source of this information? Were there independent witnesses? Will there ever be an opportunity for a contrary set of facts?
Is this the moment when the Wall Street media look into the abyss or not?
Rupert Murdoch and the chain of command down to the editor who signed off on the front page of the NY Post should at least be subjected to FBI and Secret Service interviews demanding their intentions.
The turn toward sanity will not happen with milquetoast statements from Democratic elected officials or continued coddling of the NRA, which is now a transparently whites-only Second Amendment gun club.
Not.
Bet on it.
Not the abyss of which you speak, anyway.
This occurrence will only add to the geometric progression of violence in the U.S. that has been fueled by militarily-supported economic imperialism both abroad and domestically. The main job of the so-called justice system here in the U.S. is to maintain order by force in the ghettos in which we keep the low wage earners. End of story. Every ghetto is now a potential Fallujah, and both the controllers and their hired domestic military…the police…know it. They cannot fall back. There is nowhere available for retreat.
This society is coming apart at the seams.
The fondest dreams of Osama bin Laden are now coming true. So-called “ordinary” citizens have quite plainly seen that terrorist actions work very well to destabilize countries and societies. They don’t need to go to the Middle East to train; they just have to pick up the gun(s) that they own…often guns that they have owned for a long time and if not, available on any bad street in any bad ghetto of the U.S., so stop dreaming about “gun control”…step out of their dwelling prepared to die and start shooting.
This particular snowball is running ever faster downhill, Tarheel, and neither gun control (the left’s so-called solution) nor increased police action (the right’s version) is going to stop it. The old saying “A snowball’s chance in hell” doesn’t seem to pertain in the hellish ghettos of the mind.
Watch.
Only real justice…not currently represented on either side of the dominant centrist political spectrum of the U.S…will slow this snowball.
Buckle up…the rough ride is only going to continue no matter which side of the aisle is in real control, and it will get even faster if neither side dominates.
Watch.
AG
P.S. Do you know the real secret to survival?
Surviving.
By any means necessary.
The ancestors of almost all here who were not shipped over as slaves came to the U.S. to escape the same sort of escalating violence…war, poverty, pestilence, hunger, the whole lot.
Now? Now there is nowhere to go that’s even a halfway good bet. I got yer “globalism,” right here!!!
Watch.
We are all up against that particular wall.
Who ya gonna call?
Ghostbusters?
Riiiiiight….
Which seams exactly are you talking about?
It always seems to be perpetual Charles Dickens:
Dallas is a metropolitan area of 7 million, roughly 50% white, 27% Hispanic/Latino, 15% black, and 8% other ethnicities/cultures. What we know at the moment is that at least one and possibly four people killed four Dallas Police Department officers and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police officer who were monitoring a #blacklivesmatter protest of the police murders in Minnesota and Louisiana. That might be a stitch but that seam isn’t in a run yet. Over most of the country on a routine basis, law and order still exist much better than in most places during the 1980s. The tattered legitimacy in Washington DC does not yet permeate to the grassroots generally.
But as you likely know from study and possibly experience, societal collapses are not predictable and happen very rapidly. There are lots of different political movements wanting to trigger a collapse during this election period for a variety of motives. The fact that they are partly counterbalancing makes the situation unpredictable as to converging on stability (and possible rigor mortis) or spinning off wildly into some variety of chaos or another. So far the direction is toward rigor mortis rather than chaos.
And the Wall Street media thus (minus Fox News, for other reasons) re-entrench themselves after being knocked mildly and briefly off kilter of late. I’m not sure that the Wall Street media have viewports to the abyss any longer. Management closed them in the last remodeling. Except for the image of a black army officer in camos with a military-issue rifle striking more than mild sang-froid, that is. And a white good-old-boy in the same garb and with the same gun not. But that oversimplifies the composition of the media. But not the consensus view of reality.
The ancestors of the non-slave emigrants to America were diverse. Bunches were shanghaied to fulfill a number of headrights for a land grant in America and became involuntary indentured servants. Others came out of economic destitution. Others were sent to America as punishment for their crimes, which often meant merely indebtedness. Not all came volutarily. Not many came with the affluence of tradesmen or the skills that could be adapted to the “New World’ of farmers. And then there were the soldiers and ex-soldiers, seeking a new opportunity to “ply their craft”. Although their histories recount the hard times, their daily life was much the same humdrum. Domesticated plants to till the soil and plant themselves.
There is nowhere else to go now. Stephen Harper so totally transformed Canada that it is no longer the land of exile. What other places welcome Americans with less than affluence.
At the moment, I suspect that we are too co-opted as a culture to bang. More likely we’ll hit the wall with a media-driven whimper.
Which seams exactly am I talking about?
The seams that hold skin-marked low wage workers into their ghettos, Tarheel.
Physical, emotional and mental seams.
The tattered legitimacy in Washington DC does not yet permeate to the grassroots generally?
The breakdown is already in place, Tarheel. When an entire nation begins to believe that its elected representatives do not represent them, the threads that hold the fabric of the society start to loosen. To be replaced by…what? Martial law? Chaos? Both? None of those possibilities offer much whimper room, media-driven or not.
You say that societal collapses are not predictable and tend to happen very rapidly?
I believe that they are often predictable…not those that result from natural disasters or unforeseen wars, but this one has been building for 50+ years. Yeah…right. The Civil Rights bill and alla that? Tell it to the dead people and their relatives. Tell it to the people stuck in a downward ghetto cycle fueled by low wages, no wages and piss-poor schools. They’ve got “civil rights,” ok. Keep yer mouth shut and act civil or we will fuck you up!!! As far as “rapidly” is concerned…define your terms. There has been a steadily accelerating uptick in what the media terms often calls “senseless killings” for the past several years. What was “HOTTEST-THING-EVER!!!” news 4 years ago is now a weekly staple of the news cycle.
You write:
This one and the Orlando slaughter less than a month ago are symptoms of the advancing chaos, Tarheel…as are the recent (videoed!!!) police murders earlier in the week in Minneapolis and Baton Rouge. It’s a snowball effect, for sure. Cops kill someone unjustly, so do the military actions in the Middle East. People organize to protest; cops get even more nervous and trigger-happy. More protests, more shootings and so on and so forth until…until whatever.
Facebook and Twitter have been deluged with posts approving of the shooter’s actions and urging others to do the same, to the point that Facebook…as it has done more and more on many levels…is summarily deleting them. Twitter will doubtless soon follow, but it’s too goddamned late to be able to successfully censor what is now going in in peoples’ minds.
Too little, too late.
You also write:
Of which “culture” do you speak, Tarheel? You say something earlier about the mainstream media rebalancing themselves. But they do not control or even seriously affect ghetto culture. Not really. Decades of highly violent protest music (often minimized as mere “hip-hop” or “rap” by said mainstream media) has had a disastrous effect on the minds of many, many ghettoized black people, people who think that the situation is hopeless so why not go out with a bang rather than a whimper. And that in turn has led to a “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude from cops (of all races), because they are out there on the streets and damned well know what is happening. They are not “media-driven” whimperers, they are soldiers afraid of getting killed. Just like in Afghanistan, where this Dallas guy learned his trade.
Just like popcorn in the cooker. First a few and then more and more.
Watch.
Gonna be an interesting summer.
Political conventions in two ghettoized cities.
Watch.
AG
Is this the summer that police forces and the military polarize ethnically? Otherwise, rigor mortis and lockdown are the likely responses. There were similar assertions of societal collapse from 1965-1975. Instead we got the early stages of rigor mortis–solving problems without making changes.
The effects on the political conventions will be interesting to watch. The obvious narrative being pushed is that Chief Brown coddled protesters. That does have implications in the city that gunned down Tamir Rice and the city that back in the day bombed MOVE.
The redlined ghettos have been in flames before. the powers-that-be seen to see that as an acceptable and self-punishing form of venting. One of the things I noticed in Chicago was that the scars of 1968 have never been rebuilt. In Woodlawn and the West Side especially. Forty-something years and vacant lots after vacant lots. Punishment does last long.
My sense is of an approaching naked authoritarianism regardless of the outcome of the election.
SNAP!!! could provide the excuse for “taking off the gloves”.
This interpretation of what is going on is like a funhouse mirror of what I see happening in the nation at the moment. I’m seeing a lot of sophisticated discussion and real grappling with what is going wrong with our law enforcement, including considerations of how economic and social inequalities work hand in glove with inequalities in justice. I also see an active, determined set of movements which are manifesting some successes and are extremely determined to achieve more and more.
My God, there’s a front pager at Red State who is hammering away at his readership with post after post about the legitimate concerns of BLM. In the middle of Trump’s trip down Jim Crow Boulevard, these things are happening.
It’s far from universal, and there’s the usual yahoos spouting hurtful bullshit. But, glory be, a number of yahoos who we would normally expect to splash accelerant on the fire are largely keeping their yaps shut.
And ferchrissake, even Trump tossed in a statement that …”the deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota make it clear how much work we have to do to make every American feel that their safety is protected.” I don’t recall Governor Wallace name-checking the victims of extrajudical violence with such sympathies and sentiments. Insincere? Sure. Meaningful all the same? Yes.
I’ll believe the words when I see not just the actions but the positive results of those actions over a period of years. Until then? Just more political blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Racism is an economic tactic, centerfielddj. Always has been. No matter who the segregated group my be…Black, Latino, Irish, Jewish, Italian, whoever…they have markers that relegate them to the low-wage group. Once the ones who can do so blend into the mainstream Western European landscape of the U.S., the racism against that particular group lessens or completely disappears. It is the unfortunate fate of people of color to not be able to change their name from whatever to Joe Smith and disappear into the culture. Thus they mostly remain, holding the shitty end of the stick. As long as capitalism remains in its current form, unlimited profit will be its norm. And unlimited profit needs low wage workers. After the robot revolution is complete? Damned if I know. Mass genocides, I think.
Unless we change that capitalist system for the better. Put socialist limits on it.
Will that happen?
I dunno that either. Ask Bernie how he did. Better than anyone else before, but not good enough, and that was just getting elected. If he had succeeded in that, then what? Stonewalling, I think, until they managed to get rid of him.
Not a pretty picture, but there it is.
Sorry…
AG
The source of that is the police chief reporting to the press what he was told (or possibly knew directly) that the shooter told the police negotiator.
And the shooter is now dead and incapable of refuting that as a motive. We await background about the people involved outside of the police reports. We also await the identities of the other suspects. There is also the possibility that there is a deeper Homeland Security operation going on to assess risk in other locations.
History: US Marine, a Veteran of Vietnam War in UT Tower shootings – 1966
From today’s diary – Dallas Horror City [Update].
He was overseas. Did anyone check to see if he went in for PTSD?
The protesters in Dallas did the right thing. They came together to protest unnecessary death. They were peaceful. They were loving. The Dallas cops did the right thing. They supported the protesters. They were in summer uniforms, not tactical gear. They were not enemies. Neither side is to blame, and it doesn’t seem that they blame one another. “Asked how these events would change police reaction to future protests, the chief reiterated that these were “peaceful protests until these events happened” that Dallas was not going to militarize its police operations. And they were not going to “let cowards change our democracy” by affecting the right to protest.” The organizers of the protests said, “We want Dallas to know that violence of any kind we condemn,” Alexander said in a 3 a.m. phone interview. “We continue to stand with the families of these officers and pray with them, as well as we stand with the families of Alton Sterling and Philando in Minnesota.” “We didn’t want anyone else to die,” [Dr. Jeff Hood] said. “That is the reason we did the protest. … Violence doesn’t heal anybody.”
It’s not about protester vs. cops, or black vs. white. It’s about those who see violence as a solution and those who want peace. Our hearts can be with all of Dallas.
Redstate has the best piece on all of this.
Really excellent.
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/08/uncomfortable-reason-came-dallas-yesterday/
Ha! He did an excellent piece post-Ferguson, too. Linked it in Oui’s Dallas post.
The comments are remarkable, as well, at least the few that I read.
Somebody has stared into the abyss that the Freedom Caucus and Trumpism is creating.
Very nice to see that.
Trump supporters are fucking frothing at the mouth in anticipation for the upcoming race war.
The criminal justice system’s thoughtful response to a violent incident clearly motivated by perception of unequal application of the law and democide against a minority on racial grounds by an increasingly militarised and ostracised police force is to summarily execute the perpetrator with a targeted drone. Well played.
When does this get addressed? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/police-shootings-traffic-stops-excessive-fines