Tag Archives: police brutality

crime news

Cops under even more scrutiny

I never thought it possible that law enforcement officers would be put under the glare of national scrutiny in the manner that is now occurring all across the nation.

It has happened. It is happening right now.

During nearly four decades in journalism, I have covered law enforcement officers in two states. Those I have known professionally have been stand-up men and women. They have been devoted to the oaths they took to protect and serve the communities where they work and live.

Some of those officers became personal friends and I have sought to keep those relationships separate from the work I did as a reporter and later as an editor. I’ve always have told them: Don’t mess up.

We have entered a whole new era. Police have been seen via social media conducting themselves badly with regard to certain citizens who they swore to protect. These incidents have revealed an ugly and terrible racial divide.

Accordingly, the men and women who risk their lives each day simply by reporting for work are now being scrutinized in a way none of them possibly ever expected.

I live near a law enforcement officer. He works unusual hours and I often go several days without ever seeing him. I now intend, once I get the chance, to visit with him and to elicit — I hope — a candid response to what he is feeling as he interacts with the public he serves.

I long have believed the cops I have known back in Oregon, in the Golden Triangle region of Texas, in the Texas Panhandle and even now in North Texas (where my wife and I plan to spend the rest of our lives) to be men and women of high integrity. None of what we have witnessed in these terrible and troubling times will shake my belief in the honor of those I have known.

The intense scrutiny that has come upon these individuals — and the agencies that employ them — is likely deserved, based on what we have witnessed. I do not intend to impugn anyone’s integrity. I do intend to endorse the call for even greater accountability and transparency of those who work in arguably the most dangerous profession imaginable.

They have my gratitude for honoring the oath they take. I just want to ensure that they continue to earn it.

national news

Protester suffers brain injury

You no doubt have seen the video.

Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester, approached a phalanx of Buffalo, N.Y., police officers armed with shields and assorted riot gear. The cops pushed him to the ground. Gugino hit his head hard on the pavement and blood began pouring out of his ear.

The police walked on by. Someone finally summoned medical help. Gugino was taken to the hospital, where he was listed in serious but stable condition.

It turns out Gugino suffered a brain injury. He needs physical therapy.

What, though, did the president say about this fellow? The Conspiracy Theorist in Chief suggested that Gugino faked his fall, that his tumble onto the pavement was exaggerated. Donald Trump called him an Antifa “provocateur.”

Let’s just say that the only provocateur in this instance is Donald Trump, who is provoking more anger, more distrust of those who are protesting police brutality … which was the cause of the Buffalo march in the first place.

Get well, Mr. Gugino. As for Donald John Trump, well … I am just hoping he is in the final throes of his disgraceful tenure in the nation’s highest office.

crime news

Trump to talk about ‘police reform’? Really? C’mon!

Donald Trump, the guy who famously encouraged police to get rougher with criminal suspects, now is going to talk to the nation about police reform.

To which I say, simply: You gotta be kidding!

Trump is responding to the outcry and uproar over the death of George Floyd and the calls to “defund police” around the nation. Floyd, a native of Houston, died when that rogue Minneapolis cop snuffed the life out of him by kneeling on the back of Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes, 46 seconds.

So now the president of the United States is going to offer his view on how to reform police procedures? Is that right?

Oh, my. Donald Trump has nothing constructive to add to this debate. How do I know that? Because his political record contains zero evidence of any commitment to the issues that have roiled the nation in the wake of Floyd’s death.

Trump doesn’t speak to the issue of police practices. He doesn’t reach deep into his gut to speak to the misery that so many Americans of color feel when they hear of these incidents. Trump doesn’t express a scintilla of empathy or genuine sorrow over the death of a man who was killed while lying on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. 

Trump has saved his public outrage — every bit of it — for the rioters who went berserk in cities across the nation.

What is so profoundly weird is the thought of Donald Trump reading a prepared text from a Teleprompter and trying to persuade us that he means what he is reading. You’ve seen Trump in these moments, yes? When he reads such text, I get the sense that he looks like someone reading a statement with a gun pointed at the back of his skull. Donald Trump simply is incapable of sounding sincere in that context.

What are we going to hear from Donald Trump. More tripe, I fear that it will demonstrate once again to us out here this clown’s fecklessness and recklessness.

national news

Time has come for federal police reform

The nation is facing a watershed moment in its struggle to correct a problem that has grown into a full-blown crisis.

We must debate honestly, completely and comprehensively the issue of police reform at the federal level. What does that take? It requires our Congress — House members and senators — to determine that racist policies in local police departments have contributed to the needless deaths of too many African-Americans.

George Floyd’s tragic demise two weeks ago in Minneapolis, Minn., ad the hands of a rogue white cop appears to be the tipping point.

Democrats are calling for a national response. Republicans so far have been quiet about that. Democrats see racism as a national crisis; Republicans appear to view it as a local matter to be solved at the local level.

I believe today that we are entangled in a national crisis that needs a solution enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president of the United States.

We can talk all we want about police departments enacting policies that ban chokeholds or other restraint techniques that inhibit people’s ability to breathe … for crying out loud! Do we trust all PDs to do the right thing? No. We cannot.

I believe the time has come for Congress to enter this fight. There ought to be a solution that that makes use of these techniques a violation of federal law. I am not not altogether certain that we can endure the kind of response we have seen in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Will a federal prohibition end this mistreatment of U.S. citizens? Probably not. However, there must be ways to apply deterrent pressure on beat cops and the brass sitting in police headquarters to ensure that they follow federal law or else face serious consequences.

Call it the George Floyd Law if you wish, or name it after any of the individuals who have died as a result of police brutality.

Let’s get it done!

national news

‘Could be a set up?’

Donald Trump posted this little ditty today on Twitter.

“Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

You’ve seen the video of the 75-year-old gentleman being pushed to the ground during a protest against police brutality. He hit his head hard on the pavement. The protester was bleeding from his ear. The cops kept on walking by; no one reached out to help him. Gugino was hospitalized and declared to be in “serious, but stable” condition.

And so the president of the United States of America uses this social medium to suggest Gugino faked his fall and essentially created a self-inflicted injury.

Well, just keep tweeting this trash, Mr. President. It only exposes you as being the vile, venal piece of sh** you are.

national news

Kneeling is a legitimate form of peaceful, civil protest

OK, here it comes again: the discussion over whether “taking a knee” while they play the National Anthem dishonors Old Glory.

I didn’t want to re-enter this discussion, but I am going to do so anyway. I’ll just need to prepare for some blowback.

Americans are protesting today against the treatment of African-Americans by some police departments and officers. It’s been a longstanding problem that the nation has so far failed to face on a national level. The George Floyd tragedy brought it to our attention in graphic, tragic and reprehensible fashion.

You saw the former cop kneeling on Floyd’s neck, snuffing the life out of him. Now we have re-ignited the discussion of whether professional athletes have dishonored Old Glory when they take a bended knee while they play the National Anthem.

No. The flag is not dishonored.

What does the kneeling represent? It represents a form of civil protest against certain practices and policies enacted by law enforcement agencies. The demonstration against those policies is, at its very essence, the basis for the founding of this great nation and the flag that flies over government buildings.

The nation was built by men who protested religious oppression. They created a governing document that laid out certain civil liberties in the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The first of those amendments addresses several key provisions: Congress shall make no law that establishes a state religion or interferes with a free press or prohibits the right of citizens to speak freely and to seek “redress” of grievances against the government.

Is that clear enough? It is to me.

Kneeling during the playing of the Anthem speaks against policies that many of us find objectionable. It is in no way a statement of disrespect to the flag, to the nation, to the men and women who fight to preserve our freedoms, or to those who serve the public.

Yet this form of civil protest has been perverted into something unrecognizable to the men who sought to make a hallmark of the government they created.

It all started when a pro football player took a knee to protest. Donald Trump called him and other pro athletes “sons of bitches.” He said they should be tossed aside, ignored, punished for their alleged disrespect of the flag. That is as shallow and idiotic a response as I can imagine.

Here’s my request: If we disagree with the method some folks use to protest a public policy, then focus the disagreement on the act itself … and stay far away from suggesting it disrespects or dishonors the principles on which the founders created this country.

Good heavens! Taking a knee in peaceful protest is the embodiment of what the founders intended!

national news, religious news

Good Book becomes part of POTUS’s political playbook

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Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

I will remain offended likely for a long time at the sight of Donald Trump prancing in front of the church near the White House, holding up a Holy Bible as if it was a political prop.

I’ve heard some chatter out there about how Trump was holding the Bible backward and upside-down.

What is perhaps most profoundly upsetting was the tactic he used to clear the path from the White House to St. John Episcopal Church. He used tear gas and dispatched heavily armed police tactical units to beat back peaceful protesters. You’ve seen the video, yes? It shows cops walloping protesters with their “defensive” shields while tear gas is billowing up around everyone.

This came after Donald Trump proclaimed his honoring of “peaceful protesters.” That ain’t how you “honor” them, Mr. President. They were out there to protest police brutality and to call for reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of rogue cops in Minneapolis, Minn.

Then he stands before the boarded-up church. He holds up the Bible. A reporter asked him if it was his Bible. He responded, “It’s a Bible.”

He doesn’t have a clue as to what it contains, which of course is the holy word by which faithful Christians seek to live. Donald Trump isn’t one of them.

No. He’s carnival barker and a con man. For him to use the Good Book in that fashion is anathema to the message delivered by Jesus Christ himself.

Donald Trump, as has been chronicled widely, doesn’t read anything. He reportedly has no need, being the self-proclaimed smartest human being in all of recorded history.

Instead, he uses Christendom’s holiest text as a political prop.

Disgusting.

local news

Unity found in small towns; bigger cities suffer strife

I went to a “unification rally” this week in Princeton, Texas, the city where my wife and I reside.

It’s a small town, but is growing rapidly. I believe the population here is about 15,000 residents. The unification rally was called in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, where an African-American man died at the hands of cops who treated him with extreme malice and brutality. It proceeded with calm and good manners.

The response to the Floyd tragedy is far different just down the road from Princeton. Dallas is caught up in turmoil and tempest. The police there fired rubber bullets on protesters marching across a bridge that connects downtown Dallas with the western reaches of the city.

Some folks want Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall to resign. If she won’t quit, they want her fired. Hall is standing her ground. I don’t know who’s right in this matter; I wasn’t there. I was busy soaking up the unity being expressed in my Collin County community.

My point, though, is that while there appear to be calls for unification coming from rural communities just like the one where we live, there also appears to be plenty of strife developing in larger cities. Austin had a similar beef that has erupted in Dallas. Other major cities across the nation are enduring emotional conflict and tension as people march for justice and seek reform in the way police departments do their job.

The tension causes me plenty of concern about where we are headed. I do not subscribe to the “defund the police” argument that is getting a voice in some communities. That view suggests rampant corruption and cruelty in all big-city PDs; I do not believe that is the case. Policing is a tough job under the best of circumstances. It becomes exponentially more dangerous when police do not have the support of the community they swear to “protect and serve.”

The nation’s law enforcement community is facing a serious crisis as it seeks to answer the questions that critics are raising about it in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.

The law enforcement crisis isn’t presenting itself in places like Princeton, Texas. It is, though, showing itself in Dallas … and other big cities across the land.

crime news

This tragedy seems … different

Americans have witnessed so many tragedies that we have become numb — or so it seems — to their effects.

Politicians get assassinated. Buildings are blown up. Madmen open fire in schools, churches and movie theaters. And, yes, police officers kill citizens in acts of brutality.

However, this latest tragic event — the death of George Floyd more than a week ago on a Minneapolis street — seems sadly different. This one well might stick in our national consciousness for far longer than anything else we had have witnessed.

Why is that?

I want to posit a couple of theories.

One is the physical evidence we all have seen of a cop holding Floyd to the ground, with his knee pressing against the man’s neck. We watch the cop do nothing to respond to Floyd’s pleas for help, his cries for his mother, his crying out that “I can’t breathe.” The cop, Derek Chauvin, hold him down — while the suspect is handcuffed. Floyd loses consciousness. Chauvin still doesn’t lift his knee off of Floyd’s neck.

How in the name of human decency does one explain this away? How will this former police officer tell the world why he held down a man who offered no resistance until he no longer has a pulse? You’ve seen the video, yes? He looks at the young bystander who took the video as if to say, “So what are you looking at?”

This event calls out loudly and clearly to the issue of how police treat African-American men and whether they treat them differently than they do, say, white men or white women.

The second notion that might produce the seminal moment in police-black community relations has been the reaction of police agencies around the country. We are hearing other law enforcement officials condemning the actions of Derek Chauvin. They are standing — and kneeling — with peaceful protesters in cities from coast to coast to coast in solidarity with the concerns they are raising.

So, the dialogue has commenced. Americans are demanding justice be delivered to Chauvin and the three police colleagues who watched him kill George Floyd. They also are demanding that police cease demonizing American citizens simply because of their skin color.

This outrage should last for as long as it takes for there to be tangible evidence that we are slaying this deadly beast.

national news

Tough talk from … a coward

I am not inclined to use Donald Trump’s refusal to fight for his country during the Vietnam War against him. Yes, this blog has mentioned it on occasion, referring to the hypocrisy of the present-day tough talk juxtaposed with the “bone spurs” diagnosis he received to help defer him from being drafted into the military.

Trump’s excoriating of governors for not being tough enough against the rioters who have brought severe damage and destruction in reaction to George Floyd’s death just is too inviting a target to ignore.

Donald Trump needs a slap across the face for saying what he did about the governors. He called them “weak.” He implored them to “get tough” with those who take protest to the next, destructive level.

I remember, too, how his nincompoop — while campaigning for the presidency — lampooned cops for being too “nice” to criminal suspects. He implored them to rough up the suspects. It’s fair to suggest, then, that the four Minneapolis officers who are complicit in George Floyd’s death took the candidate’s advice quite literally.

So now the man who reportedly said he wasn’t so “stupid” that he would make himself available to serve his country in time of war implores elected governors to get tough on those who are angry at the conduct of rogue cops.

Reprehensible.