In my post The Danger Of Crying Wolf I used the example of the killing of Breonna Taylor as something that should be protested but that is lost in the background noise of every police killing being automatically assumed to be unjust. In a tragically predictable twist, a "protest" being held in Louisville, Kentucky coinciding with the release of the audio of her boyfriend calling 911 and the ongoing rioting in Minneapolis turned violent.
Breonna Taylor: 7 people shot in protests over the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, police say Outcry over the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor reached a boiling point overnight Thursday in Louisville, Kentucky, when gunfire erupted during protests and audio was released of Taylor's boyfriend's call to 911 the day of her death. Seven people were shot downtown, the mayor said in a video message on Twitter. Property damage also was reported after peaceful demonstrations took a turn, Louisville Metro Police Department officials said during a news conference.
Large groups with tension high and the police backing down is a recipe for violence and with the weekend upon us, I expect things to go from bad to worse not only in Minneapolis but large metro areas around the country.
Even in the middle of protests/riots demanding justice for two black people killed unjustly, there are large elements of that community that simply can't restrain themselves from shooting each other over petty disputes.
It is all too common. In my post yesterday, Is It Really About Justice?, I posted this chart detailing the murder rate in Baltimore after career criminal Freddy Grey died in police custody:
About 100 additional people were murdered annually in the years following the police backing off after the death of Freddy Grey than in the years prior. So in response to one black man dying under shady circumstances in police custody, black men killed several hundred fellow black men in four years.
Is that justice? Is that peace?
If you are incapable of living in peace, I am not really interested in your calls for "justice"
Seven people shot Thursday night and as Friday breaks across America, lots of people with mayhem on their minds and no jobs to go to are about to cut loose in American cities. Remember when I said the time to bugout is right now and not when things are already out of hand?
Five men shot in Dorchester, one dead, police say Five men were shot, one of them fatally, at the Franklin Field Housing Development in Dorchester just before midnight on Wednesday, law enforcement officials said.
Details are pretty sparse. It happened in a housing project and Dorchester is heavily black and increasingly mestizo so I don't expect to hear anything more about this one. Spicier posts incoming.
In 2017, a cop in Minneapolis shot and killed an unarmed woman. She was approaching the police vehicle to ask for assistance. She was barefoot and in her pajamas. The police in the vehicle were responding to a call and testified that they heard a "loud noise" and were startled. There is no evidence this happened and they didn't mention it in their initial report. The officer driving had his window down and his partner in the passenger seat shot the unarmed woman, who was not touching the vehicle or acting in a threatening manner. The shot went through the driver's side window and struck the woman, meaning the officer shot across the body of his partner. She bled out quickly on the scene.
The officer who shot the woman was arrested, tried and convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for killing an unarmed woman and the city paid an enormous settlement for the wrongful shooting.
Justice was done and community activists were pleased.
Right?
Wrong.
The woman who was killed was Justine Damond (aka Justine Ruszczyk), a white Australian woman, and the cop who murdered her was Mohamed Noor, a Somalian living in Minnesota.
When Ms. Damond was murdered, there was no rioting. There was no looting. There were a couple of small, quiet and peaceful protests.
When the officer convicted of killing her was found guilty, you didn't see an outpouring of gratitude from the people who complain about police brutality. As I detailed in a prior post last May, Justice For Justine Damond?, what we saw instead were blacks complaining that he had been found guilty of murder. From the prior post:
"Officer Noor was going to jail no matter what because he's a black man who shot a white woman in the state of Minnesota," said John Thompson, an activist and friend of Philando Castile, a black man who was killed in 2016 by a Latino suburban police officer who was acquitted. Alana Ramadan, an African American and Muslim who held a sign calling for the resignation of Hennepin County's head prosecutor, said the African American people she's spoken with knew Noor would be convicted. "It's almost like there's no hope," she said. ------- In a statement, the Somali-American Police Association (SAPA) criticized the jury's decision. "Officer Noor is the first police officer in Minnesota's history to be convicted of murder while in the line of duty," the statement read. "SAPA believes the institutional prejudices against people of color, including officers of color, have heavily influenced the verdict of this case. The aggressive manner in which the Hennepin County Attorney's Office went after Officer Noor reveals that there were other motives at play other than serving justice." "SAPA fears the outcome of this case will have a devastating effect on police morale and make the recruitment of minority officers all the more difficult."
I would think that a cop who murdered an unarmed woman being convicted of murder would be cause for celebration and an example of justice being done but it apparently was just more racism.
According to the "Somali-American Police Association", and imagine explaining that to the men who founded Minnesota, this finding of guilt would make it harder to recruit minorities to become cops.
So we should let black cops murder unarmed white women because not being able to murder unarmed white women makes it harder to recruit black cops?
What a shitty message that denigrates all of the black cops who sign up for a a thankless, dangerous job.
Meanwhile, as predictably as the sun rising in the east, the "protests" for "justice" have devolved into wanton rioting, mayhem and looting. It is hard to make the case that you are protesting for justice when it looks mostly like you are just taking advantage of an opportunity to loot and steal and commit acts of violence. I am not going to link to any videos, they are pretty easy to find (there are a bunch here at Zero Hedge), but I can't see how someone can say with a straight face that this looting is about "justice" when you see people loading flat bed carts with big TVs or women casually pushing a cart through a wrecked store grabbing whatever strikes her fancy.
As I have been saying for a while, blacks will circle the wagons around each other even in a case like Mohamed Noor gunning down a woman in her pajamas because they see politics as I have come to see it: a tribal and racial conflict with no place for the runner-up. Stacy Abrams, a possible contender to be Joe Biden's running mate, was right when she said: "I believe in identity politics. And I believe identity politics are the only politics that win"
(video starts at the relevant point but the entire thing is worth watching
While the killer of Justine Damond saw his community speak out against his guilty verdict while white Minnesotans sat mostly mute and stayed entirely peaceful, Minneapolis is burning because a white cop killed a black man. Stores looted and burned, property destroyed, police vehicles trashed. Burning down the Autozone to strike a blow for "justice"!
The ongoing protests/rioting/looting/general mayhem in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd aren't really about "justice". Four cops were fired. At least one will face criminal investigation, likely at both the local and Federal level, and the other three probably will face criminal charges as well. The U.S. Department of Justice has declared their investigation to be a "top priority"....
In other words, the DOJ is trying to fend off additional looting and rioting.
What would justice in this case look like? Summarily executing the cops involved in the street?
At least one looter was shot by a pawn shop owner and armed citizens are showing up to help protect businesses. If this continues into the weekend, we could see a lot of people getting hurt. "Protesters" have already been spotted outside of the homes of the cop who was kneeling on George Floyd and the home of the county prosecutor.
Things are getting out of hand and the cops are reportedly standing down and letting the looting happen.
The thing is, they are getting justice. We just aren't getting peace. In other words, this isn't about justice at all. When a cop oversteps and kills someone and then gets convicted, the gauge of whether it was just or not is entirely based on the race of the cop and the person killed. It doesn't even matter if the cops were justified or not, there are still people invoking Michael Brown as a martyr when it was obvious he was attacking the cop who shot him in justifiable self-defense.
In a few months George Floyd will be mostly forgotten but the stores burned won't be re-opened and things in the black community won't be any better. Likely they will be worse. When career criminal Freddy Grey died in police custody in 2015, the city exploded in riots and the police backed down on enforcement. Freed from the oppressive police brutality, Baltimoreans responded with an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity:
Why would a cop even get out of his car unless someone was shooting at him in a majority black neighborhood? Nothing good is going to come of it and there is a decent chance that you can end up on camera, fired from your job, having your family threatened and perhaps even ending up in jail.
Summertime just got a lot hotter and the next incident of a black guy dying at the hands of a cop, regardless of the circumstances, could tip the whole thing over.
Last week I wrote about The Danger Of Crying Wolf. Today we are seeing another example of this playing out.
A black man in Minnesota, George Floyd, was placed under arrest by Minneapolis police. On video it appears that a white police officer is kneeling on the man's neck (I haven't watched the video and don't plan to) for several minutes. The man pleads with the officers, saying he can't breathe. At some point he stops moving but the cop keeps his knee on the man's neck until paramedics arrive. The man ended up dying. Like I said, I didn't watch the video and I have no interest in watching someone slowly being killed on camera. People who I respect have watched it and I have enough testimony to know that there isn't a lot of gray area here. The guy was basically throttled to death.
Was Floyd a criminal? Sounds like it, both from this incident and before. Was he resisting arrest? Probably. Was he drunk and/or high at the time? Maybe. That doesn't change the fact that he was handcuffed and on the pavement with a man's knee on his neck. This has all the appearance of an actual case of police brutality.
The response has been reasonably swift. The incident happened on Monday and by Tuesday four Minneapolis cops were fired. The FBI is being called in to investigate. I would be surprised if at least one of the officers, the guy kneeling on George Floyd's neck, was not indicted on criminal charges.
This is the way it is supposed to work. Something awful happened, the cops were summarily fired (not easy for government union employees), the Feds are investigating and charges are likely forthcoming. Isn't the mantra "No justice, no peace"? We seem to be getting justice, the cops were fired and the justice system will now almost certainly indict them. Are we getting "peace"?
Nope.
There were violent clashes last night in Minneapolis, including the rather predictable throwing of rocks and bricks, and looting, with the police forced to respond with tear gas. There was damage to police vehicles which is going to bring a forceful response.
Whoever that guy is, he should be easy to identify and arrest.
Meanwhile, the reason the cops got involved in the first place was in response to a call from an employee at a store called Cup Foods where George Floyd was allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20. According to the story from the Star Tribune, this has led to the store owner getting death threats.
Cup Foods’ owner, Mike Abumayyaleh, later confirmed that one of his employees had followed store policy by calling police after someone, thought to be Floyd, tried to pay with a counterfeit $20 bill. Abumayyaleh said he’s been receiving death threats since then.
That is the proper policy for someone who is trying to use counterfeit bills. Paying with a counterfeit bill is theft, just as if you stuffed merchandise into a bag and ran from the store. I am guessing a man with the last name of Abumayyaleh is not a white guy and is probably just a business owner trying to make a living and often dealing with crooked people. Because his employee called the cops, something any reasonable person would do, he is getting death threats. Where is the justice and peace for him? Does "justice" mean you let people rip you off, because if it does he will close up his store and then people in that neighborhood will have one less place to buy groceries.
Again, this seems like a pretty blatant case of police brutality but it is already getting lost under the deluge of people rioting and looting, race hustling lawyers like Benjamin Crump sniffing around for a payday and the simple fact that we get the same reaction from the "Black Lives Matter" whenever a black man is killed in a conflict with police, which happens far more than it should thanks in large measure to black men regularly committing crimes far out of proportion to their population.
There are cases of police brutality, lots of them. Many of those cases happen in the black community, partly for the reason that blacks tend to have criminal interactions with the police far more often and they also seem to be less inclined than whites to cooperate peacefully with law enforcement. There is very likely a racial component in some cases, just as there are racial components in many of the violent crimes committed by blacks toward white people.
Cops are people. People come in all kinds, most are average, some are great and others are awful. Not everyone who goes into law enforcement does so with the same motivation, just like in every other profession.
Most people go into youth ministry and teaching because they love children and see it as a way to help them become better people but of course some people go into those fields because it gives them intimate access to young kids.
Most people take jobs at places like the DMV because it pays relatively well and has good benefits, but some people go into those jobs because they are miserable and being a petty functionary affords them the opportunity to make other people miserable.
Most people who go into law enforcement do so with good intentions or because they have a family connection but some people go into law enforcement because it gives them the opportunity to push people around, hurt people and even kill people.
Did the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck become a cop to hurt people? Is he someone who went into law enforcement for the noblest of reasons but slowly lose any compassion after years of seeing the worst of humanity day in and day out? I don't know. I do know he should at the minimum be considered for criminal prosecution and he shouldn't ever be a cop again but apparently for the "No justice, no peace" crowd, he should be summarily executed without trial because the video made them angry.
Incidents like this one should cause outrage, but not outrage that leads to rioting and looting, but the real outrage should be reserved for real outrageous situations. If you chant "no justice, no peace" when cops shoot a man who is shooting at them, it cheapens the slogan and numbs all of us when real outrages happen.
The Libertarian Party recently held some sort of virtual national convention and nominated Jo Jorgensen to be their candidate in 2020. Jo styles herself on her webpage as "Dr. Jo Jorgensen" (she has a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology), an affectation I always find pretentious in academics outside of the university setting and one that seems especially common among women.
On many of the issues, she has decent positions. Unlike someone like Bill Weld, the first mannequin to run for Vice-President, Jorgensen has been a libertarian since before I could vote and her position on most issues reflects current libertarian thought. Unfortunately that means that she holds the one position that will make sure that a libertarian form of government never actually happens...
Repealing "arbitrary quotas" on the number of people crossing our borders is suicide for libertarianism. I have covered this at length in other posts, most specifically Open Border Libertarianism Is Self-Defeating but here is the gist of it. The people who would come here if the borders were open would almost universally be opposed to every position Jo claims to champion, from gun rights to a smaller Federal government, other than freeing "persons convicted of non-violent victimless crimes". Our migrants today are not Irish or German. They are mestizo, Asian and African and those groups consistently and overwhelmingly vote for bigger government, against gun rights, for higher taxes on the productive class and less liberty for all of us.
The typical response from libertarians is to argue that just because people live here, it doesn't mean they get to vote but unless we eliminate birthright citizenship the net result is a massive influx of people who are reliably going to vote for far left positions and against liberty.
In fairness to Jo, I do understand the libertarian argument, in theory, for open borders and the free and unrestricted movement of people. The problem is that, as with virtually all standard libertarian positions, when you deal in reality instead of theory, the whole thing falls apart and is exposed as a farce. In a perfect world full of people who share common values and culture and who can always be counted on to act rationally, libertarianism might work. In a very small, ethnically homogeneous nation it might work. In a country with 350,000,000 people who are divided into several large, competing tribes? No way. In other words, her position on de facto open borders is ideologically consistent with her world view, just practically impossible. So I can sort of respect that while at the same time utterly rejecting it.
She seems nice enough, kind of has a matronly, "Tammy From HR" look about her. She speaks passably well but isn't terribly charismatic. She probably would have done well enough to get a Gary Johnson level of support, somewhere around a couple million votes. Not enough to win of course, that isn't on anyone's radar, but maybe enough to make a little splash and siphon enough votes from Trump to give Biden the win via states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I reject the idea that the libertarian would pull from Biden, people familiar enough with most libertarian thought are far more aligned with the GOP than the Democrats. But then I saw who was going to be her running mate.....
The Libertarian Party nominates their Vice-Presidential candidates separately and directly, unlike the two major parties where it is mostly a selection by the Presidential candidate. Apparently Jo Jorgensen favored John Monds as her running mate. Monds is from Georgia and is one of the very rare black libertarians. He seems pretty solid on his credentials. His wife is a professor and he has been homeschooling their four children, so he looks like a decent, hard working fellow and a ticket of a woman and a black man would maybe attract some attention. Unfortunately the delegates had other ideas and nominated this guy.....
His name is Jeremy Cohen but he calls himself Spike Cohen and his social media presence is a pages long cringe-fest, the ramblings of a dumb ass who desperately wants to be seen as edgy and hilarious but comes across as just flat out stupid. He was partnered up with crackpot Vermin Supreme, a man known for wearing a rubber boot on his head and a platform including the promise of a free pony, and this is what he has on his VP section.
Spike Cohen was born Jeremy Cohen at an extremely young age in 1982. At the age of 3, Jeremy went to the theater with his family to watch the My Little Pony movie. After witnessing the heroism and bravery of Spike the purple dragon, he informed his family that Jeremy was in fact dead, and he was now Spike. This bit of information proved to be a strong indicator of how Spike would conduct himself for the rest of his life.
That is comedic gold right there. When you have to try that hard to be funny, it is a sure sign that you are terribly unfunny. His entry on Wikipedia makes a big deal out of him being Jewish and a former(?) frequent drug user.
In a Presidential race featuring a billionaire former reality TV star alongside Mike Pence, a demented old creepy dude and whichever wahman of colour he chooses to be his running mater, Jeremy/Spike Cohen is the least serious one of the bunch. Facing a collapsing economy, a fiscal disaster on the horizon and rising tribalism, Jo Jorgensen could have made the case as the serious candidate in the race but not with this cringe clown as her running mate. It is not her fault, this is the hand she was dealt. I am sure behind closed doors she is beating her head on a desk, now that she finally becomes the nominee and had the chance to have a serious ticket, she is instead condemned to be a laughing stock thanks to this dipshit as her running mate.
Whatever chance the Libertarian Party had of being taken seriously was dashed when the delegates decided to, for whatever reason, nominate Spike Cohen as their VP candidate. There are plenty of serious people, like John Monds and Austin Petersen but they choose a guy like that? How could any semi-serious adult, recognizing the state of the world and our country in particular, cast a vote in good conscience for that tool?
The libertarian moment in America came and went, first with the platform of pothead Gary Johnson and weirdo Bill Weld and finally with the nomination of a man who lacks sufficient seriousness to be a cashier at a pot shop.
The future will be in the hands of economic populists and nationalists. Sadly it is probably already too late.
While Memorial Day weekend saw just a crapton of shootings in general, there were at least two mass shootings that I came across and both were in unusual locations.
Six people were wounded Saturday in a Daytona Beach shooting as massive crowds gathered during Memorial Day weekend. Daytona Police Chief Craig Capri said Sunday at a news conference that two people were shot around 7:30 p.m. on South Ocean Avenue near Breakers Oceanfront Park. Police later discovered four people were hit by shrapnel during the shooting. None of the injuries are life-threatening, he said. Capri said the victims are not cooperating with the investigation and police have not arrested any suspects.
I am not sure what they mean by "shrapnel" as that might indicate they were hit by bullet fragments or by debris from a ricochet or even something unrelated to the actual shooting but I am still going to count it. Videos from the crowds seemed to indicate a common factor in the beach-goers including some genius throwing cash from his car to the crowd.
The second mass shooting happened in Myrtle Beach. As I mentioned in the prior post, Myrtle Beach had several shootings over Memorial Day weekend but one had four people wounded and in an unusual twist, six people were arrested in connection with the mass shooting.
Six arrested in early Sunday morning shooting on Ocean Blvd. Sequion Johnson, 18, of Lumberton was charged with four counts of attempted murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and unlawful carrying of a pistol. Darriante Tymaine Marriscell Parker, 19, of Lumberton, was charged with obstruction of Justice and unlawful carrying of a Pistol. Sincere Joshiano Johnson, 21, of Lumberton; Kwashek Breeden, 20, of Lumberton; Ty’reck Demonte Hill, 20, of Lumberton, and Yakemiean Johnson, 20, of Lumberton, were all charged with Obstruction of Justice.
Here are some choice mugshots of the alleged mass shooters and their buddies.
More mass shootings from gangsters and thugs, likely to receive no attention from the media.
As expected, the warmer weather combined with a long weekend led to the usual results. From Chicago...
Chicago’s deadliest Memorial Day weekend since 2015: 10 shot dead, 38 wounded Ten people died and 38 others were wounded in weekend shootings in Chicago — the deadliest Memorial Day weekend since 2015, when 12 people were killed. Despite the state’s stay-at-home order, the weekend’s death toll has already surpassed last year’s holiday weekend, when seven people were killed and 34 were injured during the period from 5 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Tuesday.
48 shot during a long weekend but the prior weekend saw 38 shot (six fatally). It is looking like a hot summer for Chicago again in 2020.
Also in Baltimore....
‘These are not random’: 9 dead, 5 injured amid Memorial Day weekend violence in Baltimore Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison sought to reassure residents at the end of a holiday weekend that left nine dead and five others injured, even as city residents remain ordered to stay at home because of the coronavirus. In a news conference Monday afternoon, Harrison called the level of violence “incomprehensible and unconscionable,” but noted two of the shootings had occurred inside residences, suggesting that the victims knew the perpetrators. “These are not random. We know for a fact that these are not random,” Harrison said of the incidents while speaking at the department’s Northern District. In several instances, victims had been carrying handguns; a few of the dead had been previously convicted of crimes like attempted murder. “Some of this was retaliatory violence," he said.
Better marksmanship in Baltimore. This morning another man was fatally shot in Baltimore, it was at 1:30 AM so I am not sure if that counts as a Memorial Day weekend shooting or not. St. Louis made a solid showing.....
19 shot, 4 killed in St. Louis during violent Memorial Day weekend St. Louis police are investigating a string of shootings that left 19 people shot and four dead. There have been at least 63 homicides in St. Louis City this year. That’s close to the same total as this time last year, despite the coronavirus outbreak. The shootings happened just hours apart across the city.
St. Louis is quietly one of the most violent cities per capita in America but doesn't get the same attention as places like Chicago thanks to Chicago's sheer numerical superiority. Cleveland, the Mistake On The Lake, had their share of shootings plus a rash of stabbings.....
Not even sure how many were shot, they only counted the dead.
There was a mass shooting in Daytona, but that will get it's own post. Even Myrtle Beach had some "out of town gang related" shootings.
‘People are acting like animals’: Tourists react to recent Myrtle Beach shootings Recent shootings along Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach are causing some tourists to rethink whether they’ll visit the city in the future. The three shootings, all of which authorities have confirmed were gang related, have caused concerns to rise for tourists.
The "acting like animals" quote comes from these three ladies from Virginia....
Uh oh, that sounds vaguely racist. One of the three shootings led to four people wounded, so that is another mass shooting and will be included in the Daytona post. My hometown of Toledo, Ohio had a bunch of shootings including six people shot in a 24 hour span.
Toledo police investigate multiple overnight shootings With the weather warming up and society beginning to open up again, Toledo police anticipated certain violent crimes might start to increase. But six people shot in four separate shootings in one night is still more than usual. From late Sunday night into early Monday morning, police responded to four separate shootings across Toledo. Six people were shot and treated at local hospitals, and police believe that none of the wounds reported are life-threatening, Toledo Police Sgt. Brian Smith said Monday.
Toledo is having all sorts of problems with large gatherings, which often result in shootings if the demographic mix is right. A bunch of people were arrested on Monday at a large gathering in Toledo. Nine charged for disorderly gathering in Swayne Field parking lot Approximately 700 people, along with 300 to 500 vehicles were loitering, trespassing, and causing a disorder, police said. Police received several 911 calls of people fighting, individuals with guns and some of them shooting guns, court records show. Several vehicles also blocked the street.
Here are the 9 who were arrested....
Alanda Y. Coachman, 30, of the 5500 block of Lewis Avenue; Ashley M. Gray, 32, of the 900 block of Keill Road; Nina Madrid, 33, of the 1800 block of Norwood Avenue; Jastassia J. James, 35, of the 1200 block of Hiddenwood Court; Darryl Robinson, 21, of the 2200 block of Whitney Avenue; Rashad D. Smith, 25, of the 1300 block of E. Manhattan Boulevard; Robin L. Robinson Jr., 28, of the 2200 block of Whitney Street; Lakesha L. Jones, 39, of the 1200 block of Fernwood Avenue; and Andre Jones, 35, of the 1200 block of Fernwood Avenue, are each charged with a first-degree misdemeanor offense of riot near Monroe Street and Detroit Avenue.
The gal on the bottom, second from the right, has an awfully friendly face. 700 people at the gathering. Clearly the high rates of coronavirus among blacks are the result of racism.
It is a little harder to get good numbers on other cities. The Detroit papers have lots of individual stories but I didn't see a comprehensive listing of the shootings in Motown over the weekend. But generally speaking, urban/gang/teen gun violence isn't really taking a holiday.
