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Police Groups Blame Obama, Black Lives Matter for "War on Cops"

by NicholeClark8 Posted on July 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wake of Thursday’s shootings in Dallas, which claimed the lives of five police officers, law enforcement organizations across the country have used social media to show their solidarity with the Dallas Police Department and the families of those who were killed or injured.

But some police groups are also joining high-profile right-wing figures in issuing sharp criticisms of those they see as facilitating a “war on cops,” often taking direct aim at President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page Friday, the National Association of Police Organizations stated, “While we mourn and grieve and commit ourselves to supporting the survivors, we must also stand up and speak out against the senseless agitators and gutless politicians who helped bring about these murders.” The post also criticized the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights for its supposed refusal “to prosecute cop killers”:

In a Friday morning interview with Fox News, William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said Obama has not done as much as his predecessors when it comes to “condemning violence against the police and urging support for the police.”

In St. Louis, KMOX radio is reporting that Jeff Roorda, a top official in the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association, is standing by a controversial Facebook statement that he posted on his personal page hours after the shootings. The post includes a photo of a pair of hands covered in blood, with the caption “THIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, MR. PRESIDENT.” (The post has been deleted from Roorda’s page.)

Officials with other police organizations have been less heated in their reactions to the shooting but have still implied that some of the blame lies with Black Lives Matter. Patrick Lynch, the leader of New York’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the Dallas shooting was the result of “national anger against police caused by erroneous information.” In 2015, Lynch faced public backlash after he said that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s support for Black Lives Matter-led protests contributed to the deaths of two NYPD officers.

On Thursday, while addressing the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile this week in encounters with law enforcement, Obama stressed that Black Lives Matter was not anti-police. “When people say black lives matter, it doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter,” he said. Prominent Black Lives Matter activists have condemned the shootings and offered their condolences to the officers and their families.

In a speech discussing the Dallas shootings earlier Friday, Obama was firm in his condemnation of the attacks on police officers, saying there was “no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement.”

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Police Groups Blame Obama, Black Lives Matter for "War on Cops"

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Why Is the Murder Rate Increasing?

by AllanTrapp Posted on May 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at Vox, Dara Lind has a longish piece about the “Ferguson Effect,” the notion that homicides are up because police are afraid to do their jobs in an era of viral videos and public backlash against police violence:

Just like there’s been a certain reluctance to admit homicide is rising at all among people who don’t want to blame Black Lives Matter protesters for it, there’s been reluctance to attribute any rise in homicides to changes in policing….But the reality is that changes in policing do affect crime rates. Indeed, “proactive” policing — in forms that have officers walking around neighborhoods and building relationships with their residents — is one of the most effective things a city can do to prevent crime. You just have to look at the correct scale: Police departments are local institutions, and they affect things on a local scale.

“Gun violence is very local,” says crime analyst Jeff Asher. “And changes in gun violence patterns probably have local explanations.” So he doesn’t give much credence to Comey’s version of the Ferguson effect theory — that the hypothetical fear of being the subject of a viral video somewhere is changing how cops around the country do their jobs. “There’s little evidence in the places we can measure it,” he says, “that proactivity in, say, Louisville, went down because of events in St. Louis or Baltimore.”

The problem, of course, is that this kind of thing is difficult to measure, which means the Ferguson Effect is all but impossible to verify. Personally I’m skeptical: homicide rates appear to be up a lot more than overall violent crime rates, and that’s hard to square with any kind of policing theory. And it’s important to get this right: If we choose the wrong theory about why murder rates are up, we have almost no chance of getting them back down. Liberals and conservatives alike need to be willing to go wherever the data leads them.

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Why Is the Murder Rate Increasing?

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Coal company paid its execs $8 million in bonuses just before filing for bankruptcy

by Lawerence4929 Posted on March 18, 2016

Coal company paid its execs $8 million in bonuses just before filing for bankruptcy

By on 18 Mar 2016commentsShare

Arch Coal, the second largest coal company in the U.S., filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January in an effort to reduce its debt, currently valued at $5.2 billion. Three days before, according to bankruptcy filings, Arch awarded company executives with $8 million in bonuses.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Arch executives and directors collected $29.17 million in wages, benefits, bonuses, director fees and other payments between January 2015 and this past January, according to papers filed this week in the St. Louis bankruptcy court. The payments included $8.12 million in bonuses paid out to seven executives on Jan. 8. Some $2.78 million of that amount went to Chairman and Chief Executive John Eaves. Arch sought chapter 11 protection on Jan. 11.

An Arch spokeswoman declined to comment.

However, a person familiar with the payments said the bonuses were awarded under longstanding, companywide incentive plans that had been approved by Arch’s board of directors. Some of the bonuses were earned over 2015, while the remainder was paid based on the company’s performance over a three-year period ended 2015.

Since 2012, Arch has laid off 3,000 employees.

While this may seem like an act of corporate malfeasance to anyone who is not an coal exec, Arch is hardly the only fossil fuel company to lavishly award the bosses even as the business founders. In 2014, Alpha Natural Resources, the third largest coal company in the U.S., was required to pay a $27.5 million fine for water pollution and spend $200 million cleaning up facilities. Soon after, amid tumbling stock prices, the CEO and president of Alpha were each given $2 million bonuses. The next year, Alpha filed for bankruptcy.

Clearly, the coal industry is in trouble. Prices are down, companies are going bust, banks are pulling their support, and workers are losing their jobs. But even as Big Coal dying, its CEOs are doing just fine.

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Coal company paid its execs $8 million in bonuses just before filing for bankruptcy

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Hooray! A Brand New Site For Creating Lots of Charts About Democracy.

by Aubrey0290 Posted on February 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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The world is awash in charts these days. It’s a great example of a simple proposition of economics: when something gets cheaper to produce, we produce a lot more of it. Just as computers turned a dozen daily pieces of mostly useful snail mail into hundreds of mostly useless emails, they’ve turned data laboriously collected by experts and then laboriously converted into clunky bars and lines by the art department into colorful masterpieces that can be created by pretty much everyone at the push of a button or a modest investment in learning Excel. Half the charts I produce for this blog come either directly from my good friends at the St. Louis Fed or indirectly by downloading their handy datasets into Excel.

There are lots of sites that produce charts these days, with new ones popping up all the time. Joshua Tucker points us today to V-Dem, which provides “15 million data points on democracy, including 39 democracy-related indices.” The V-Dem website tells us that it is “a collaboration among more than 50 scholars worldwide which is co-hosted by the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame, USA.” So let’s take a look.

V-Dem is pretty easy to use: pick one or more countries, one or more variables, and a time period. Click “Generate Graph” and you’re off. So let’s take a look at a few that I drew more or less at random. Here’s #1:

That’s peculiar, isn’t it? We’re used to thinking of the United States as the king of money in politics, but we’re actually the steady blue line right in the middle. Italy apparently spends more than us and Germany spends a lot more. But in the 2000s, Germany plummeted down to middle and Sweden skyrocketed up to the middle. By 2013 we were all pretty much the same.

Of course, I have no idea what this is based on. In theory, I could download the codebook and eventually decipher the data sources, but you can probably guess what the odds of that are. So for now it remains a bit of a mystery. Here’s #2:

This one is less surprising. It tells us that in the mid-1900s American political parties weren’t very cohesive. Then around 1980 they started to become much more cohesive, looking more and more like parliamentary parties in Europe. Oddly, though, V-Dem thinks that Democrats and Republicans got a bit less cohesive around 2005. This contradicts the conventional wisdom enough that it might be worth someone’s while to look into it. #SlatePitch, anyone? Here’s #3:

Sweden and Germany are the winners here, unsurprisingly. But the US does pretty well too. We’ve gone from a distant fourth place in 1972 (among the seven countries shown) to a close tie for first. Of course, everyone else has gotten a lot better too. In fact, if you want to zoom way in for the details and take a glass-half-empty approach to things, we’re actually in last place now. We were doing pretty well until 1993, but since then we’ve made almost no progress. Once again, if this is true it would be interesting to investigate. What happened in 1993 to suddenly blunt the rise of women’s participation in politics?

So that’s that. On the upside, there’s a lot of data here and it’s pretty easy to generate colorful charts out of it. It’s interesting too. Three out of three random charts that I created instantly posed challenges to the received wisdom that might benefit from further study. On the downside, it’s difficult to figure out the source of the indices or to download the data series themselves unless you’re willing to download the entire dataset and load it into your statistical app of choice. That makes further study hard for non-experts. Nothing’s perfect, I guess.

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Hooray! A Brand New Site For Creating Lots of Charts About Democracy.

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The Kids Today…Seem Pretty Smart, Actually

by TheodorWashingt Posted on January 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m not as cynical about the purpose of universal education as the late Aaron Swartz, but I love this historical retrospective from a piece of his reprinted today in the New Republic:

In 1845, only 45 percent of Boston’s brightest students knew that water expands when it freezes….In 1898, a…Harvard report found only 4 percent of applicants “could write an essay, spell, or properly punctuate a sentence.” But that didn’t stop editorialists from complaining about how things were better in the old days. Back when they went to school, complained the editors of the New York Sun in 1902, children “had to do a little work. … Spelling, writing and arithmetic were not electives, and you had to learn.”

In 1913…more than half of new recruits to the Army during World War I “were not able to write a simple letter or read a newspaper with ease.” In 1927, the National Association of Manufacturers complained that 40 percent of high school graduates could not perform simple arithmetic or accurately express themselves in English.

….A 1943 test by the New York Times found that only 29 percent of college freshmen knew that St. Louis was on the Mississippi….A 1951 test in LA found that more than half of eighth graders couldn’t calculate 8 percent sales tax on an $8 purchase….In 1958, U.S. News and World Report lamented that “fifty years ago a high-school diploma meant something…. We have simply misled our students and misled the nation by handing out high-school diplomas to those who we well know had none of the intellectual qualifications that a high-school diploma is supposed to represent—and does represent in other countries. It is this dilution of standards which has put us in our present serious plight.”

A 1962 Gallup poll found “just 21 percent looked at books even casually.” In 1974, Reader’s Digest asked, “Are we becoming a nation of illiterates? There is an evident sag in both writing and reading…at a time when the complexity of our institutions calls for ever-higher literacy just to function effectively.”

Education was always better in the old days. Except that it wasn’t. As near as I can tell, virtually all the evidence—both anecdotal and systematic—suggests that every generation of children has left high school knowing as much or more than the previous generation. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But if I am, I sure haven’t seen anyone deliver the proof.

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The Kids Today…Seem Pretty Smart, Actually

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10 of the Worst Cable News Moments of 2015

by HugoMcBrayer Posted on December 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Another year is about to pass, which means we’ve managed to survive 12 months of cable news—and endure some fantastically awful segments that the networks churned out. But that doesn’t mean we emerged unscathed! Whether it was calling the president of the United States a “pussy” on live television or relentlessly covering Donald Trump’s circuslike presidential campaign, cable news had plenty of lowlights in 2015. Here are some of the most memorable ones:

San Bernardino shooting
Days after the shooting in San Bernardino, California, several media outlets were able to get inside the home of the two suspected shooters—access that involved a crowbar and a cooperative landlord. Despite the questionable circumstances, reporters from a slew of networks, including CNN and MSNBC, swarmed the residence. The resulting circus of cable TV coverage even disturbed some network hosts.

“I’m having chills down my spine, what I’m seeing here,” said CNN security analyst Harry Houck, as reporters on the scene continued to film throughout the home. “This apartment is clearly full of evidence.”

At one point, an MSNBC reporter zoomed in on a driver’s license that likely belonged to one of the suspects’ relatives.

Insulting the president
A Fox News contributor abandoned every sense of decorum when he slammed President Barack Obama’s terrorism strategy and called him a “pussy” on live television. The network suspended him for two weeks, finally answering the question we’ve all wondered: “Just what does it take to get suspended from Fox News?”

Migrant crisis and Syrian refugees
The international effort to resettle Syrian refugees sparked widespread concern about how refugees are vetted when they seek to be admitted into the United States, particularly in light of the deadly attacks in Paris. Instead of taking time to explain the complex and rigorous process, cable news shows often appeared to inflame safety concerns with misleading portrayals of refugees escaping violence in Europe and the Middle East:

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Fox News also appeared to lend legitimacy to a biblical prophecy that some have used speculate that the Syrian crisis may signal the end of times. Watch the report on the “spooky passage” below:

Gun control and mass shootings
Amid calls to strengthen gun control laws and end the gun violence epidemic, Fox & Friends aired a segment about how to teach kids how to take down an active shooter with these self-defense skills:

Freddie Gray
When protests erupted in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore resident who died from a spinal cord injury while in police custody, CNN chose to ignore the demonstrations in favor of covering every second of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

If you were seeking coverage of the rallies, contributor Errol Louis suggested viewers could “find a live feed” somewhere else.

When the network did report on Gray later, CNN led one online story by describing Gray as the “son of an illiterate heroin addict.”

Donald Trump
There are myriad factors that have led to the rise of Donald Trump as a major GOP presidential candidate. The media’s insatiable appetite (including our own, at times) to cover his inflammatory campaign rhetoric is definitely one of them. On cable news, Trump was practically unavoidable.

After announcing his plan to bar all Muslims from entering the United States if elected president, a slew of cable news shows scrambled to talk to Trump about the proposal, which gave Trump a huge platform for his offensive ideas:

Leggings
In one of the creepier clips of the year, Fox News featured an all-male panel to opine on how a woman should dress in public. The clothing item in question was leggings. In the segment, the official “Panel of Fathers” ruminates over “lady parts” and whether they’re comfortable with the “women in their life parading in public with leggings, because they ain’t pants.”

“Guardian Angels”
In which Fox News, a news organization, lends legitimacy to this photo of a “guardian angel.”

Happy holidays!

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10 of the Worst Cable News Moments of 2015

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The King of Beers Wants to Push Craft Brews out of Your Supermarket

by DanelleDHTV Posted on December 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pity Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgian-owned behemoth responsible for such beloved US beers as Budweiser, Bud Light, and Michelob Ultra. When InBev bought US beer giant Anheuser-Busch back in 2008, the company accounted for 49 percent of the US beer market, the Wall Street Journal reported. Since then, its US market share has dipped to 45 percent. Since 2005, sales of its big domestic brands like Bud have dropped 5.7 percent, even as craft-beer sales have rocketed up 173.6 percent. What’s a transnational, industrial-scale maker of flavor-light, marketing-heavy brews to do?

The answer, according to the Journal: use its still-formidable US market heft to squeeze out those fast-growing craft-beer makers. Understanding AB InBev’s maneuver requires a bit of background. After Prohibition, the US government sought to limit the market power of brewers by imposing a three-tiered system on the industry. One set of firms would brew beer; another set would distribute it; and a third would retail it, either in bars or carryout stores. Much of that old regime has broken down—in many states, for example, small brewers can sell directly to the public through brewpubs. But in most states, distributors—the companies that move beer from breweries and stock retail outlets’ shelves and bars’ taps and bottle offerings—can’t be owned directly by brewers. â&#128;¨

To get around that restriction, megabrewers have for decades sought more or less exclusive agreements with nominally independent distributors. Today, the US beer market is dominated by AB InBev and rival MillerCoors, which together own about 80 percent of the market. Independent craft brewers account for 11 percent of the US market—and that’s growing rapidly, even though crafts tend to retail for $8 to $10 per six-pack, versus about $6 for conventional beers. Most distributors sell either InBev or MillerCoors brands as their bread and butter, the Journal reports, plus a smattering of independent craft brews. That’s why in supermarket beer coolers these days you’ll typically find a few national craft brews like Sierra Nevada, along with maybe a few local favorites, after you walk past towering stacks of Bud and Miller six-packs.

So AB InBev has launched a “new plan to reverse declining volumes” in the United States by offering sweet incentives for company-aligned distributors to restrict sales of craft beers and push more Bud Light and whatnot. Get this, from the Journal:â&#128;¨

The world’s largest brewer last month introduced a new incentive program that could offer some independent distributors in the U.S. annual reimbursements of as much as $1.5 million if 98% of the beers they sell are AB InBev brands, according to two distributors who requested confidentiality because they were asked not to discuss the plan. Distributors whose sales volumes are 95% made up of AB InBev brands would be eligible to have the brewer cover as much as half of their contractual marketing support for those brands, which includes retail promotion and display costs. AB InBev, which introduced the plan at a meeting of distributors in St. Louis, estimates participating distributors would receive an average annual benefit of $200,000 each.â&#128;¨

The beer giant plans to devote big bucks to the scheme—about $150 million next year, as part of a “three-year plan to restore growth in AB InBev’s most profitable market,” the United States, the Journal reports. â&#128;¨

And beyond pushing up the percentage of AB InBev products in the mix, the incentive plans place another restriction on the distributors who choose to take advantage of the offers: They can only carry craft brewers that produce less than 15,000 barrels or sell beer only in one state.â&#128;¨ Such a provision would put a hard squeeze on excellent, relatively large craft brewers like San Diego’s Stone, Northern California’s Sierra Nevada, and Colorado’s Oskar Blues. InBev’s new program is already having an impact, the Journal reports.

At least one distributor has dropped a craft brewer as a result of the incentive program. Deschutes Brewery President Michael Lalonde said Grey Eagle Distributing of St. Louis last week decided it will drop the Oregon brewery behind Mirror Pond Pale Ale because it “had to make a choice to go with the incentive program or stay with craft.”

All of this raises the question: Under US antitrust law, can a giant company legally throw around its weight like that? The answer may well be yes. Ricardo Melo, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of sales strategy and wholesaler development, stressed to the Journal that the incentive program is voluntary—that is, distributors are free to decline the extra support and continue stocking as many craft brands as they want. But apparently, the company doesn’t think many distributors will turn down such a sweet deal. Currently, the Journal reports, just 38 percent of AB InBev-aligned distributors participate in the company’s incentive programs. The company “aims to double participation in three years behind the new rewards plan,” the article adds.

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The King of Beers Wants to Push Craft Brews out of Your Supermarket

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This GOPer Wants to Sabotage a Missouri Student’s Dissertation Because It’s About Abortion

by Andrew Brentford Posted on November 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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A state lawmaker is trying to stop a graduate student at the University of Missouri from studying the affects of one of the state’s abortion restrictions, claiming that her dissertation violates state law and is an abortion marketing ploy.

In a letter to University of Missouri officials, state Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) argues that Lindsay Ruhr, a graduate student in the School of Social Work, is illegally using public funds to conduct her dissertation research on the state’s law that requires a 72-hour waiting period before a woman receives an abortion. Ruhr is using Planned Parenthood data to analyze the effects of the law on women’s decision making. In Missouri it is illegal for public employees and facilities to use state money towards “encouraging or counseling” a person to have an abortion not necessary to save her life.

“This is a concerning revelation considering the University’s recent troubling connections to Planned Parenthood,” wrote Schaefer. “It is difficult to understand how a research study approved by the University, conducted by a University student, and overseen by the Director of the School of Social Work at the University can be perceived as anything but an expenditure of public funds to aid Planned Parenthood.”

A university spokeswoman told the Huffington Post that the doctoral student received neither scholarship money from the school nor state grant money for her research. “We must stay committed to the discovery, dissemination, application, and preservation of knowledge to support our mission while abiding by state and federal laws,” said Mary Jo Banken. “We will continue performing life-saving research in our laboratories while providing the highest quality of educational opportunities to our students.”

Ruhr told Al Jazeera that she stands by her project and the objectivity of her research. “The whole point of my research is to understand how this policy affects women,” she said. “Whether this policy is having a harmful or beneficial effect, we don’t know.”

But Sen. Schaefer, who chairs the state’s recently-created Committee on the Sanctity of Life, contends that the dissertation is nothing but a “marketing aid for Planned Parenthood.”

About half of states have 24-hour waiting period laws on the books, which require that a woman meet with a physician a day before getting an abortion. Missouri is one of a handful of states that require women wait 72 hours. In September, amid nation-wide investigations into the organization over its fetal tissue research, the University of Missouri responded with a number of measures against the women’s health organization. It canceled its contracts with Planned Parenthood that eliminated the option for medical students to do clinical rotations at the health care network. A month later, the nursing school reinstated its contracts with two Planned Parenthoods, but with a clause that prevented students from learning about abortion by prohibiting any student from helping to provide them. The university also revoked Planned Parenthood’s hospital admitting privileges, which allows the clinic to offer medication abortions, a safe and effective method of first-trimester termination. Without admitting privileges for that center, Missouri will be left with only one abortion clinic, in St. Louis, 125 miles from the university.

Planned Parenthood officials have asked the University of Missouri Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, who recently announced his resignation over mounting racial tensions and student protests, to reinstate the admitting privileges contract with the health care organization. “Before assuming a new role, we urge Chancellor Loftin to immediately reinstate appropriate clinical privileges to ensure there is no disruption in health care services for the residents of this community,” Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Kansas Mid-Missouri, said in a statement on Monday. They have not yet received an answer.

While the university works on its response to Schaefer’s request for documents, Ruhr’s research will continue with the school’s backing.

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This GOPer Wants to Sabotage a Missouri Student’s Dissertation Because It’s About Abortion

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The War on Quentin Tarantino, Arby’s, and the Cleveland Browns

by JanisUnaipon Posted on November 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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A boycott against filmmaker Quentin Tarantino launched in late October by the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has been gaining steam with police unions across the country, with groups from Philadelphia to Los Angeles urging the public to reject the Hollywood director’s movies. “New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous ‘Cop Fiction,'” PBA president Patrick Lynch said at the outset. The campaign is a response to remarks that Tarantino made while participating in a peaceful march against police brutality in New York City on October 24. “When I see murder I cannot stand by,” Tarantino told reporters. “I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”

As of November 2, the national chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police is onboard with the boycott, and the National Association of Police Organizations, which represents more than 1,000 unions, has also joined in. On Tuesday, Tarantino responded in the Los Angeles Times: “All cops are not murderers. I never said that. I never even implied that,” he said, adding, “What they’re doing is pretty obvious. Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out.”

He’s just the latest. Ever since officer-involved killings became a major national issue, police union leaders have gone on the warpath, using odd boycotts and over-the-top incendiary statements to defend the ranks and push back on rising pressure for reforms. Tarantino joins a colorful list of people and places under fire from the unions. Here are six others:

Screenshot of Fairfax Fraternal Order of Police Facebook page Washington Post/Facebook

A pumpkin patch. In October, Brad Carruthers, the head of the Fraternal Order of Police chapter in Fairfax County, Virginia, called for the boycott of a local pumpkin patch after he spotted a Black Lives Matter sign in the business’s window. “This is a time in which law enforcement is the target for criticism for almost everything they do and officers are constantly questioned by the public and the media without the benefit of all the facts,” Carruthers wrote on his Facebook page, calling the display a “slap in the face” to the Fairfax County police. “The presence of this sign at Cox’s Farm helps perpetuate this kind of behavior and judgment. I know you have heard it all about a million times but the truth is that ‘All Lives Matter.'” Carruthers later took down the post, explaining that it misrepresented his intent. He told the Washington Post that he felt the Black Lives Matter movement had been “hijacked” by anti-police activists.

Arby’s. In September, police unions in Florida called for a nationwide boycott of the fast-food chain, after an officer in Pembroke Pines claimed that she was denied service while going through an Arby’s drive-thru. According to a police report on the incident, a manager told the officer that she was denied service because she was a cop. “In this case, after the clerk refused to serve the officer, the manager came up to the window laughing and said that the clerk had the right to refuse service to the officer,” John Rivera, the president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, said in response. “This is yet another example of the hostile treatment of our brave men and women simply because they wear a badge.” Another local union leader added, “I think the president needs to get to a podium and say ‘This needs to stop,’ that we need to put Ferguson behind us, Baltimore behind us, and we need to start treating officers with dignity and respect.” The Arby’s employee, Kenny Davenport, later explained to local reporters that he couldn’t serve the officer because he was busy with other customers and had asked for his manager’s help. The manager had made the remark as a joke. “We don’t hate cops,” Davenport said. “We don’t hate anybody. We’re just trying to get people out of the drive-thru.”

New York City. In July, the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association lambasted the city comptroller’s office after it announced a $5.9 million payout to settle the wrongful death case of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a NYPD officer last December when police confronted him on the street for illegally selling cigarettes. Union head Ed Mullins called the settlement “obscene” and “shameful,” arguing that a jury would have awarded a lower figure. “In my view, the city has chosen to abandon its fiscal responsibility to all of its citizens and genuflect to the select few who curry favor with the city government,” Mullins told the New York Post.

Screenshot of bystander’s video footage Ramsey Orta

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Last December, after a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the NYPD officer who choked Garner to death, de Blasio extended his sympathy for Garner’s family and protesters, adding that he worried about the safety of his own mixed-race son. His comments were met with outrage from Patrick Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. “What police officers felt yesterday after that press conference is that they were thrown under the bus,” Lynch told reporters. The group then encouraged officers to sign a waiver it posted on its website, entitled “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice,” asking de Blasio and a city council member to not attend the funerals of fallen officers. Tensions further escalated after two NYPD officers were shot execution-style by a gunman in Brooklyn that month. Speaking from the hospital where the officers died, Lynch again railed against de Blasio: “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said. “Those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protest to try to tear down what New York City police officers did every day. It cannot be tolerated. That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor.” During de Blasio’s visit to the same hospital, and the subsequent eulogies he gave at the officers’ funerals, hundreds of NYPD officers famously turned their backs to the mayor.

The Cleveland Browns. Ahead of a Sunday football game in December 2014, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins entered the field wearing a shirt with the words “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford,” two young black men who were shot and killed by police in Ohio last year. During a pre-game warm-up a week earlier, Browns cornerback Johnson Bademosi had worn a shirt that read “I Can’t Breathe” in protest of the Eric Garner decision. Cleveland Police Patrolman Union president Jeff Follmer sent a letter to a local TV station demanding that the team apologize: “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium, and the Browns organization owes us an apology.”

Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins, December 14, 2014. Tony Dejak/AP

The St. Louis Rams. During team introductions at a game last November, five Rams players ran onto the field with their hands up, in a sign of support for Ferguson protesters and Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old who was shot and killed by a police officer in August 2014. The St. Louis Police Officers Association condemned the display, demanding that both the Rams and the NFL apologize, and calling for the players to be disciplined. “It is unthinkable that hometown athletes would so publicly perpetuate a narrative that has been disproven over and over again,” the association’s business manager Jeff Roorda said. “I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I’ve got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours. I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser’s products. It’s cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do. Somebody needs to throw a flag on this play. If it’s not the NFL and the Rams, then it’ll be cops and their supporters.”

St. Louis Rams players, November 30, 2014. L.G. Patterson/AP

Cory Shaffer, Northeast Ohio Media Group

Police unions have also worked to raise money for officers involved in deadly shootings, but some of those campaigns have stirred controversy for their insensitive tone and management. After then-Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was put on paid administrative leave for the shooting death of Michael Brown, Shield of Hope—a charity arm of the local Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15—launched a GoFundMe campaign to accept donations from supporters. The page raised more than $234,000 before it was shut down due to a series of offensive comments posted by donors. In July, the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association launched a similar campaign for an officer who was placed on restrictive duty after shooting an unarmed 18-year-old over an attempted burglary. A flyer for the fundraiser advertised several raffle prizes, including a television and a Glock 26 pistol.

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The War on Quentin Tarantino, Arby’s, and the Cleveland Browns

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The St. Louis County Police Department Just Released Video Of The Guy They Shot On Monday

by WallaceSkeats Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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The St. Louis County Police Department released surveillance footage Tuesday that they say shows Tyrone Harris pulling a gun out of his waistband. Harris, 18, was shot by police in Ferguson on the night of August 9 after he allegedly fired at undercover officers.

The day marked the first anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and demonstrations throughout the day were peaceful. That evening violence erupted.

“The video shows Harris grab a handgun out of his waistband once shots are fired during the protest in the W. Florissant corridor seconds prior to the officer involved shooting,” says Shawn McGuire, media relations officer for the St. Louis County Police Department. Harris was in critical condition after the shooting, and was subsequently charged with several felonies, including 1st degree assault on law enforcement officers. McGuire says police are still investigating the incident.

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The St. Louis County Police Department Just Released Video Of The Guy They Shot On Monday

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The St. Louis County Police Department Just Released Video Of The Guy They Shot On Monday