Totally un-self-aware. Create a war, treat the populace like enemies, then complain when somebody starts 'shooting back'.

My comment in no way condones violence, I'm just saying I understand why people are pissed enough at police to do it.

You don't condone violence but you understand it?

Feel the same way about other crimes? Rape or robbery maybe? You don't condone but you could understand why someone would do it?

Sheesh...

I understand the reasons many crimes are committed. Pretty much all of them, barring those committed by the completely insane.

Are you saying you can't understand why crimes are committed?

IIRC - he's not at all empathetic to the cause. Bless him, agree to disagree and move on.

between "understand" and "condone", don't you?

{Paraphrasing} ... about the 2 cops shot: I don't condone it of course, but can see why it happened. The police need to look in the mirror to see the problem.../{paraphrase}

Maybe you don't fully understand human beings? I worked as a bouncer for years, a few of them in one of the roughest biker bars in Broward County, FL. 98% of the people could be talked down... talked out of a fight, but there was that 2% that just WANTED to fight someone... anyone, it didn't matter who. All they understood was violence, and you had to break down and speak to them in their own language: pure unbridled violence dealt out swiftly and harshly enough that it got through to them, especially when they left the bar in 1 of 3 ways... in handcuffs, in an ambulance or handcuffed to a stretcher in an ambulance.

Ghost

The officers that were shot were not even part of the Ferguson department.

Violence is never the answer.

Most large scale change in social and economic justice comes because those with the most to lose are scared
The economic reforms of the 30's came because the elites in US society feared that the Socialists would win the White House. In the 36 election, both the Democratic and Republican Party took 5-8 ideas from the Socialist Party's 10 point economic plank
The Civil Rights Act and other legislation that passed i the 60's got support from the establishment because they were scared

Started shooting back..... Now there's a surprise....

It's just the truth. Shoot enough people and sooner or later somebody will shoot back. What would you do if you and your family were being shot at? Would you shoot back, if you could?

It's easy to say violence is wrong, and it is, but but it's also human nature to strike back when struck.

or to suicide bombings by Hamas.

We were not hit on 9-11. We were hit back - at least from the POV of the ones doing the hitting. And then what did we do? Turn the other cheek?

on the cleaner who was scrubbing toilets for minimum wage in the Twin Towers at the time.

Besides, its not just the police who are responsible. The local government are just as complicit. And the local government was overwhelmingly elected by white residents. So presumably they are all fair game as well.

Ask anyone who has had the snot beat out of them for breathing while black.

after they shot someone: "well, its a harsh world".

If it is inevitable that residents are going to start firing on police, it is equally inevitable that the police are going to reach for their own guns just that little bit quicker in future.

You say: "..residents are going to start firing on police,.."

That's just bull shit. Residents are not firing on police and haven't been. You have a damn twisted idea as concerns facts. You should delete your posts and take a break.

or citizens, civilians, residents. Whatever your preferred term is.

Why you should spout such nonsense paints you in an ugly color.

Seriously, just delete that trash and take a long break.

Meaning the 'residents' of Ferguson.

The residents of Ferguson, or of the US, do not shoot at cops like you have inferred. So what you wrote is bullshit and you should delete it because it is just bullshit.

shot at these cops, because the said cops have bullet holes in them.

That's not bullshit. What you wrote before was bullshit and you should delete it and take a long break.

but who was not "resident" in the US, shot the said police. So you're saying that...maybe it was a long-haul airline pilot? Perhaps a quantum physics-induced stochastic ooze that caused someone not normally resident in the US to be present in the US for the shot?

I'm honestly fucked if I know. And I'm not deleting anything, maybe future generations can read this and try and deduce what you were on about. Good night.

You're getting better:

You wrote and I quote: "I'm honestly fucked if I know" That's two right!!

That's just it. YOU DON"T KNOW.

But you do know it wasn't "residents" you don't even know if it was a resident you are "I'm honestly fucked if I know"

Please, You've done blown yourself up, just delete and walk away.

as I made clear in my previous post. Have a pleasant evening.

Tamir Rice.

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7275297/tamir-rice-police-shooting

Or how about Andy Lopez, another kid with a toy gun, who got 3 seconds?

I don't think it is possible for cops to "reach for their own guns just that little bit quicker in future" considering the cops already don't give these kids a chance to even get their bearings before shooting them. FFS, how much quicker are you talking about? Nanoseconds?

along with the other piece of quibbling pedantry about using the term "residents".

How about this: if police are to be exposed to attacks such as this one (which appears to be taken for granted given how many "you reap what you sow" posts are being made in this thread), then it is natural and inevitable that police will respond by exhibiting a greater inclination to use deadly force themselves.

Of course, we are all at pains to point out that no one is condoning anything (I think I've read that about six times). But if there is to be a war (and again that seems to be the common insinuation) then that will be the result. Don't you agree?

if he had a chance with that 'quick draw' fool that killed him within 2seconds of arriving on the scene......just saying

In Ohio. And the cops who committed these acts of violence are always let off of conviction if ever charged in the first place. There really is only one way this can go if it continues. And it ain't pretty. I found it ironic too the chief saying they were targeted for being cops.yeah. well.

like they are prone to do.

What is so disgusting about that statement? It is a statement of fact, the police forces in a lot of places are shooting people for no real reason whatsoever and are taking no responsibility or paying any price for these acts.. eventually someone is bound to react exactly like that...

So be "disgusted" with a truth if you so choose , that doesn't change the truth one bit..

No I definitely do not condone it nor do I approve of it but I do understand it.


No one should be shooting anyone unless it is truly self defense, LEO's are supposed to be trained in tactics designed to minimize this sort of thing, that is why they carry night sticks, seven cell flashlights(which if you pay any attention to you will notice the way they hold it so that it can be used to strike pretty fast) and tazers these are non-lethal weapons, but they seem to use firearms as a first response more and more...So more people are being killed under pretty suspect circumstance, un armed and mostly in no position to cause the type of harm that requires lethal force. And no one is being held responsible for these actions... So it is pretty understandable that the frustration level is off the board and going further and further off every time some one is killed under suspect circumstances.

I will repeat what I said on another thread on a different topic (and was roundly criticized for it) ...

"When you are the aggressor/offender, you don't get to complain about the aggressed against/offended's response. You only get to shut it down by changing your behavior."

(Note: the "you" is meant in the generic sense)

Probably a million or so. How many Black people has it killed...probably somewhere in the hundreds?

By that logic, I figure I've got as much moral right as anyone to shoot a government official or two. And the best part is, no one can complain about my response!

For the jury: yes, irony is intended.

Your Blacks killed in America is off by a factor of 100+; but, you have missed my point.

but that scarcely matters, its all in the eye of the beholder.

wrongdoings will always return to negatively affect them.

The idea being that these shootings are an outgrowth of the behavior the oppressors, which I agree with. I'm only surprised that things seem that restrained. It says a lot for the people trying to live their lives in Ferguson regardless of what the city and their neighbors are doing to them.

The no respect thing is catching up with the more mainstream population. Just shot because black. Just shot because cops.

With ya Skidmore.

if people shoot cops it is only blow back from decades of abuse.

I do not condone it nor support it, I just don’t care.

Perhaps the cops will figure out that what they are and have been doing is only pissing folks off. People can only take so much until they can’t take it anymore.

And it hurt like fury 'cause I was still wearing the shoe.

However, a war is well underway. Michael Brown was murdered in cold blood and the DoJ went out, looked around, and wrote a report that basically said, Ferguson has a race problem. Now maybe you will argue that the DoJ couldn't do anything more. I don't buy it but let's say it's true. Those on the brutalized side of this war aren't going to look at Holder's "report" and see any thing more than empty rhetoric. Ferguson might fire a couple of people and paint the police station, but I doubt anything substantial will change. And there will be more Fergusons and there will be more stories like this I am afraid.

I abhor violence, but dammit, freakin' cops don't give shit who dies or gets wounded until it's one of them.

And then it is a huge national tragedy, as though they are so noble and self-sacrificing, like their lives are so vastly more important than anyone else's.

Sure it is sad when a cop is killed. But it is equally sad when an unarmed black man is killed - perhaps more so, because it is an injustice that will never be addressed, because so many in this nation will be indifferent to his death, because that man will be demonized and his name tarnished to justify his own killing.

were part of an organization with a long history of beating the FUCK out of people just because they were black, or giving people 15 tickets for jaywalking just because they were black, or giving people tickets for non-broken tail lights just because they were black...

Yeah, STFU.

Justifying violence against anyone is pathetic.

whether it is directed at my comments or the chiefs. My point is simply that his statement is exactly the complaint from minority communities about their treatment at the hands of cops who are racists--they were shot because they were ________. This is the crux of the matter.

DON'T STEREOTYPE OTHERS

from the cops IMO.

Like many things, it's a on scale or spectrum, from supporting "just war" to not harming any creature ever. Most people are somewhere in the middle, for instance, they'll fight or kill to protect their life, their family, or their home, but they oppose violence in most other situations.

I don't know where you are. At the far end of the scale, past Buddhist monk somewhere, if I infer correctly from your post.

Eric Holder said, [this] “was a pure ambush…This was not someone trying to bring healing to Ferguson—this was a damn punk who was trying to sow discord in an area trying to get its act together.’’

Who would do such a thing?

Peaceful protests for months and now all of a sudden when the scales of the justice system begin to tilt in favor of actual justice this happens? I smell a rat. Or possibly a pig.

....I suspect the shooter(s) is(are) white right-wing extremists. And the purpose was to stir up more violence, and to halt any progress toward justice. Wouldn't be at all surprised.

But also to demonize the righteousness of the protesters. The effect will certainly be to take some heat off the corrupt establishment and give the other "side" a point of view to denounce the protesters and anyone who speaks out against this institutionalized injustice.

I'm reserving any hard opinion on this until the person who did it is apprehended. But I will be shocked if it is a resident of Ferguson.

They just had a win and in spite of all those who applauded Wilson and poo poo'd the idea that there could be one drop of racial bigotry in that police department. . . Those naysayers in America and at DU - got their asses handed to them on a silver platter by the DOJ.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone connected the justice system out there. Someone who just saw all that hate they held in their core get smashed to bits and pieces. Someone's spouse, parent, sibling - someone who took sick glee in knowing someone they were close to could inflict institutional racism on people because it was "fun".

Want a read on a store? Check its magazine rack.

I don't know why it's so hard to understand that respect for the sanctity of human life is something we should all have for one another, regardless of job, race, creed or political persuasion.

The thing is, most people I talk with are disgusted with cops like the ones in Ferguson. Not all cops are like that, by any means, but when they are like that, it needs to be corrected. And they see the double standard: cop life = sacred; black life= shoot it down at age 12 for zero provocation. I believe many people are not swayed by his statement or by the pretense offered by NYPD officials that only cop lives matter. Most Americans want ALL lives to matter, and I believe even most cops don't approve of what happened in Ferguson.

I am so glad I live around cops who are human beings first and foremost. I don't think they will ever shoot any kid in cold blood without a threat to their own safety, and that is one of the things I love about them. They TALK to the kids around here, get to know them, and develop a relationship with them. They don't see the residents as "the enemy" even though there is a lot of poverty and petty crime here.

If a cop does get uppity, he doesn't last long.

by inviting officers from troubled departments to ride along as observers and see how good policing is done.

and I'm sure, like Andy Griffith, they don't always go "by the book." They make allowances in some cases, or maybe cross the line in others, but they haven't shot anyone, even though one of theirs was killed and other officerss have been repeatedly shot at.

But all municipal departments should have training in how to talk to community members. When the cops get out and chat with the kids, ask how they're doing, make it plain that they care, kids respond to that. They view the cops as neighbors, not as enemies.

In the '70s, just south of Atlanta, all the kids hung out in their muscle cars and VWs behind the Red Lobster - the Lob - and smoked cigs, pot and drank beer ( legal age was 18 then.) The cops would come by and we'd hide the stuff, but they knew. They never harassed us or bothered us. They'd say hi, wave and drive on past, unless they wanted to ask us about some crime or other we might know about.

I can't imagine that happening now.



Every town should be working on their community relationships.

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest in the early '70s, and I understand completely what you are saying.

Just talking to people is key to just about everything in human relationships.

it just doesn't seem plausible that the shots were from a fed up protestor.

the "protesters" were there to celebrate positive movement in the cause, i.e., the resignations and terminations, why shoot?

the indication seems to be that the shots were fired from some way off.

which seems consistent with claims by other observers that the shots came from a residential area some way distant:-

When you target folks for their skin color, they are going to target you for being cops. It's not rocket science.

They can whine all they want to now. Not one fuck given in the Jama household. They need to start treating citizens like human beings, regardless of skin color or any other qualifiers they have been using as excuses to go around bullying people and killing people. While they get away with murdering innocent, unarmed kids, they can expect to continue to receive more blow back. Ninety nine point nine percent of the protestors are peaceful. They need to put their thinking caps on and take their easy "go to" methods of policing out of the picture. That is why cops are lousy at finding out who killed anyone or who committed other crimes. They don't bother to find out who really did something. They just grab a black person and start trying to escalate a situation then shoot the kid, then claim the kid must have done whatever they don't want to bother investigating. For fuck's sake, if they would do their job without starting a fucking race war, they wouldn't be having these problems. I have no pity for them at this point. The world's smallest plays on. They need to relearn to do their damn jobs like they are supposed to instead of just grabbing another black kid and shooting them dead.

They just piss me off with their whining.

Your brand of toxic thinking is what has reduced DU to a pathetic laughing stock.

If you have any shame at all...NOW would be the time to feel it.

which then got trounced in the usual spiral of one-upmanship and big-swinging-dickism that you tend to see on these subjects.

Two cops got ambushed last night just for doing their job.

NOW would be the time to support them. Wish the best for them. Wish the best for their kids and families as they recover.

Instead...stupid posts like the OP.

but the blamelessness of police shooting victims is not as often stressed as the blamelessness of police who are shot. Apparently they have rounded up a couple of suspects already. Somehow I doubt that the DA is going to bother with a long, circumlocutory grand jury process before having those suspects tried.

You want to have an honest discussion?

and in fact, if you cast your eyes upthread I am carrying a fair bit of water trying to combat the more lurid aspersions that are being made by the denizens of this honourable forum.

Fuck me, I am copping it from both ends tonight.

None of the killing is justified or justifiable. My point is that if the cops had not had the attitude that black people should be targeted because of their skin color alone, then none of this would be happening. That this man can say this without a glimmer of insight into why they are there, not even a nod, speaks volumes.

... expressing anger at the FPD duality

he thinks he knows the motivation of the shooter.

Baghdad Bob would be impressed.

or a clairvoyant. Either they know who did it (the KKK, false flag attack by police) or they know the person's motivation for shooting (retaliation for police killings).

Speculation is human nature. I only have a problem when baseless speculation is presented as fact.

And there are definitely some people who are presenting their baseless speculation as fact.

should run out and apply to be the chief of police in their town? I mean, if he is just speculating and getting paid I want in on this action!

Apples to oranges.

How does he know the shooter wasn't just firing randomly at a crowd of people and hit two cops? And here I thought they were supposed to have some kind of evidence or at least a good clue or two.

Maybe they do, I would hope so for such a bold statement to be made in public.

I fire my pistol randomly out the window and hit not one but two cops, and no one else. There's more chance of my lotto numbers coming up.

any day of the week of the year for the rest of your life. Maybe they already know who did it. They did assault a house and arrest 3 people.

Still, who said the person fired randomly? Maybe they were aiming for two other people and missed? Hit two cops and now we all assume that was the purpose.

or is random coincidence politically selective these days?

The point being: No one knows what happened and the police have given no evidence to support their narrative. Meaning there is equal evidentiary support for BOTH random shooting and targeted killing.

its just that the unicorn scenario is inherently less likely.

If I shoot my wife, the police might believe that it was an accident. If I separately shoot both my wife and my kid, the prospects of it being an accident are slim to none.

Shooting one cop might be an accident, shooting two of them is unlikely to be so.

It's doesn't matter what you think is "unlikely". The police shouldn't have press conferences where they spread potential misinformation by making statements that have no evidentiary support.

If your Wife got shot (regardless how it happened), do you think they have a press conference and declare that you are a murderer and you did it because she was a secret prostitute? It's just as likely as an accident and there is just as much evidence as the current situation.

The police haven't fingered anyone as the murderer, nor have they concocted some elaborate back story out of thin air as with your prostitute example. What they have said is that this appears to be a deliberate and intentional shooting of police officers. Not only is that conclusion eminently reasonable, but it appears to be accepted by the protest leaders as well:-

Things we'd call the police for (isn't that funny) if our crazy uncle said them.

We're far too principled for it. If someone breaks into our Saab we simply take the train home, singing "we shall overcome" along the way.

and being an asshole.

Who is they?

The protesters?

Prove it, asshole, or shut the fuck up.

chief.

an officer killed and unarmed [African] American and the American needs to be supported! Both issues carry equal weight. To devolve the conversation to (insert group name here) is irrelevant and divides us even more. No one should have to choose which lives are more valuable since as human beings we all have some worth in this world.

It seems to me that the chief's statement was as divisive as any.

The cops that were shot weren't Ferguson police (and what's the point if they were?). You can hate the chief for his crooked force but at the end of the day two people were shot by a mad man who needs to be apprehended.

The man that was speaking was the guy who from the force that was filling in for Ferguson's messed up department. What I was doing was pointing to the irony of his words, an indication to me that why these people are protesting on the street is still not understood. At the end of the day, these officers were shot and at the end of the day, Michael Brown and many others like him are dead because they were who they were. At the end of the day, the fracture in the community still exists.

His words speak volumes about the mentality of the protesters in Ferguson. All they want is a resolution to the corruption in their city, unlike certain people here who just come out here and call the rest of us cop haters or whatever they're saying. Thanks for your feed back.

That's what you falsely claimed upthread.

I'll tell you who the shooter was: An American Sniper.

The sad part is I still remember all the backlash I got from certain posters here for saying the *only* reason Zimmerman followed Trayvon was the tone of his complexion...


After that, I began to turn to the dark side...