'Losing Proposition': High-Profile Shootings Of Black Men Involve Resisting Arrest

Valerie Richardson offers a piece on police shootings at the Washington Times. 

Michael Brown, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and Daunte Wright were all Black men killed by police, but they had something else in common: All sought to avoid being taken into custody by fleeing, fighting or refusing to heed officers’ instructions.

 

The “systemic racism” narrative touted by Black Lives Matter and the Biden administration to explain police use of force against Black victims is drawing pushback as resisting arrest emerges as a factor in many if not most high-profile cases.

 

“While there have certainly been exceptions to this rule, often involving officers who were rapidly punished, it is not a misread that a huge percentage of prominent BLM cases — Jacob Blake, Hakim Littleton, Rayshard Brooks, Michael Brown — involve people fighting the police or at least actively resisting arrest,” said Wilfred Reilly, an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University.

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/26/daunte-wright-george-floyd-and-rayshard-brooks-bla/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=eh4sv6UudIcCtYRdFyaJrpZg8P8t2A1z3mlE8VbnK1LaXwmHkPj4remLDOdjREiK&bt_ts=1619481561063 

George Floyd Known For Big Heart, Good Works, Drugs, And A Violent Criminal History

George Floyd was high on drugs, tried to use counterfeit bills in a store and when police arrived, he resisted arrest and was killed in a struggle with police officers. 

Viewing the video, it appears that a police officer used excessive force which resulted in Floyd’s death. The police officer was fired. He was arrested. He will stand trial for second-degree murder.    

Valerie Richardson at the Washington Times offers a look back at George Floyd's life.  

In death, George Perry Floyd Jr. has become a civil rights martyr and a catalyst for social justice. In life, he was a mass of contradictions.

At his best, “Perry” was a beloved family man and standout athlete who rededicated his life to Christ after running afoul of the law, a community leader in Houston’s rough 3rd Ward and doting dad to his precious 6-year-old daughter, Gianna.

At his worst, Mr. Floyd was a drug addict and ex-con who did hard time for a 2007 robbery in which he terrorized a pregnant black woman, and absentee parent to his older children, one of whom didn’t recognize him when his photo appeared two weeks ago on television.

… Police Federation of Minneapolis President Bob Kroll said in a letter last week that Mr. Floyd had a “violent criminal history.” He said the media “will not air this” and accused politicians of scapegoating officers overwhelmed by the protests and rioting. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/7/george-floyd-black-lives-matter-martyr-struggled-d/

Liberals Gone Wild: Starbucks Opens Door To Homeless, Drug Problems With Anti-Discrimination Recipe

As I noted in my Washington Times piece on the Philadelphia Starbucks incident, an open door policy on restrooms will attract the homeless, drug addicts and the mentally ill, which will put off paying customers.

Valerie Richardson at the Washington Times offers a piece on Starbuck’s new liberal restroom policy.

With its decision to allow the non-paying public unlimited access to its cafes, Starbucks may have traded one grande problem for another.

The Seattle-based coffee giant closed more than 8,000 shops for a half-day Tuesday to conduct racial-bias training with 175,000 partners, or employees, absorbing an estimated $12 million hit in response to the high-profile arrests of two black men last month at a Philadelphia café.

While the workshop drew skepticism — liberals noted that such one-day diversity exercises rarely change behavior, and conservatives called the event a “reeducation camp” — the long-term dilemma for Starbucks lies with how much leeway it’s willing to give its non-paying customers.

The come-one, come-all policy announced earlier this month arrived even as fast-food joints, libraries and other public establishments have increasingly cut back access in order to avoid becoming homeless havens and drug dens amid the opioid and heroin crisis.

“Do you really want to deal with a mass of homeless people or whoever is in there — could be drug-addicted, you don’t know — when you’re there with your kids?” asked NBC host Megyn Kelly on her show Tuesday.

In reality, many Starbucks stores, particularly those in suburban, residential and rural areas, have long allowed non-paying customers to loiter and take advantage of the facilities, but the other outlets often had a reason for their tighter policies — problems with a disruptive clientele.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/29/starbucks-anti-discrimination-plan-invites-homeles/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20180326&utm_term=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert

You can also read my Washington Times piece on Starbucks via the below link: 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2018/04/trouble-brewing-over-starbucks-arrests.html

Stand-Up Team: No Philadelphia Eagles Players Knelt For National Anthem in 2017

Valerie Richardson at the Washington Times offers a piece on the football players who did and did not “take a knee” during the national anthem.

If you’re planning to watch the Super Bowl but you can’t stand the NFL takel-a-knee protests, you may want to root for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Not a single Eagles player sat or knelt during the national anthem, one of just seven teams with perfect non-kneeling records, in a season that saw 684 such incidents, according to a study released Thursday by Sports Pundit.

The other Super Bowl LII team, the New England Patriots, landed in the middle of the pack with 17 incidents of anthem sitting or kneeling, wedged between the Buffalo Bills with 16 and the Cleveland Browns with 20.

Still, neither of the Super Bowl teams was in any danger of catching the leader: the Seattle Seahawks, which easily scored the most episodes of sitting or kneeling with 156, followed by the San Francisco 49ers with 110.

Both of those teams play in the NFC West. Oddly enough, the division’s other two teams — the Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams — had zero take-a-knee protests.

The remaining teams with no players sitting out during the anthem were the Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings and New York Jets.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/1/no-philadelphia-eagles-players-knelt-anthem-2017/ 

FBI Report Finds Officers ‘De-Policing’ As Anti-Cop Hostility Becomes ‘New Norm’

Valerie Richardson at the Washington Times offers a piece on an FBI report on “de-policing.”

An unclassified FBI study on last year’s cop-killing spree found officers are “de-policing” amid concerns that anti-police defiance fueled in part by movements like Black Lives Matter has become the “new norm.”

“Departments — and individual officers — have increasingly made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing,” said the report by the FBI Office of Partner Engagement obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, “Assailant Study — Mindsets and Behaviors,” said that the social-justice movement sparked by the 2014 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, “made it socially acceptable to challenge and discredit the actions of law enforcement.”

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FBI spokesman Matthew Bertron said the study was written in April.

“Nearly every police official interviewed agreed that for the first time, law enforcement not only felt that their national political leaders [publicly] stood against them, but also that the politicians’ words and actions signified that disrespect to law enforcement was acceptable in the aftermath of the Brown shooting,” the study said.

As a result, “Law enforcement officials believe that defiance and hostility displayed by assailants toward law enforcement appears to be the new norm.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/4/fbi-report-officers-de-policing-anti-cop-hostility/ 

Police Kill More Whites Than Blacks, But Minority Deaths Generate More Outrage - Analysis Contradicts Widespread Views About Racial Targets

Valerie Richardson at the Washington Times offers a piece on the deaths of whites and minorities by police.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison says she wants to see an officer shoot an unarmed white teenager in the back before agreeing that the “conversation about race” is over, but she almost certainly already has received her wish.

An analysis released last week shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force.

“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race,’” Ms. Morrison told the (U.K.) Telegraph in an April 19 interview.

“This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back,” said Ms. Morrison, who also has won the Pulitzer Prize for her work, which includes the bestsellers “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon.” “And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”

Her comments reflect a widespread view that blacks are routinely targeted by law enforcement while whites shot by police are a rarity. Outrage has surged in recent weeks over the high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of police, notably 50-year-old Walter Scott of South Carolina, who was shot in the back and killed April 4 as he tried to run away from an officer after a traffic stop.

The officer who shot him, Michael Slager, has been charged with murder, and the Justice Department is investigating the case for civil rights violations. Department officials announced Tuesday that they have opened a federal probe into the death of Freddie Gray, 25, who died Sunday from injuries sustained while in Baltimore police custody.

Meanwhile, the deaths of whites at the hands of law enforcement typically receive less attention, even when the case is shrouded in controversy. For example, Gilbert Collar, an 18-year-old white student at the University of South Alabama, was shot and killed while naked, unarmed and under the influence of drugs by a black police officer.

The officer, Trevis Austin, was cleared of wrongdoing in 2013 by a Mobile County grand jury in a case that received little media coverage outside Alabama. Mr. Collar’s parents filed a federal lawsuit last year against the officer.

As researchers are quick to point out, FBI data on police shootings by race is notoriously incomplete, which may explain why Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, decided to use figures from the website Killed by Police.

Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent were black. He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic and 2 percent were Asian and other races.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police-kill-more-whites-than-blacks-but-minority-d/

Note: Peter Moskos is the author of Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District.