RAND'S ANTI-POLICE FERGUSON PANDERING WILL BITE HIM IN 2016

[mystery-ak]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/02/Rand-Paul-Ferguson

by BEN SHAPIRO  2 Dec 2014, 6:23 AM PDT

On Monday, President Obama hosted a symposium on the events of Ferguson, Missouri – in truth, a symposium on supposed police racism in America. Joining him at the White House were MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, whose record of racial reconciliation includes calling Jews diamond merchants and white interlopers, and New York City mayor Bill De Blasio, who has hampered the NYPD’s ability to fight crime in dramatic fashion. Obama took the opportunity to blast police.

Obama stated that Brown’s shooting “laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis…and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.” His solution did not include fighting crime. Instead, it featured body cameras for cops, as well as cracking down on the “militarized culture inside our local law enforcement.” Note the language: Obama doesn’t care about police being armed with military-style weaponry. He does care about a “militarized culture” – also known as a police culture.

This is not likely to go over well with millions of Americans who watch Ferguson burn and wonder why the feds want to hamper the police.
And that, in turn, bodes ill for the presidential hopes of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who also met with Sharpton last week. “We talked about his position on dealing with some criminal justice issues that I am concerned about,” said Sharpton. He said that he and Paul “don’t agree on much,” but they would work together.

Artur Davis, a black former congressman, rightly called out Paul, stating, “I have a better idea for Rand Paul. Meet me in Montgomery, Alabama, where the modern civil rights movement was born, and let’s visit neighborhoods where ordinary people are struggling to raise their kids; not ‘leaders’ with cable shows, but families doing the best they can against tough odds.”

Paul has attempted to use Ferguson as a wedge issue on militarization of police. In a pandering op-ed for Time magazine back in August, Paul – who has also pandered to blacks on issues like voter ID (“I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people”) – suggested that the criminal justice system was racist, and that arming it created a threat to American blacks.

Paul wrote:

If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.

Of course, Brown did a bit more than that. He robbed a store, then tried to take a gun off a cop, then charged a cop. But, after making some generally well-accepted points about the difference between military weaponry and police weaponry, Paul continued pandering:

Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them….Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

Paul has done advocates for demilitarization of police no favors by mimicking the Obama line that over-armed police represent symptoms of a broader racist police ill. And that nonsense will come back to bite him when he runs on a non-law-and-order platform in 2016.

[Scottftlc]

That garbage will certainly impact my support/lack of support for Paul in the primaries...his opponents may just look a bit better.  Trying to paint this as a policing problem merely extends the multitude of detestable lies that this entire controversy is based upon.

[Atomic Cow]

Rand Paul is just as crazy as his daddy except he tends to keep his mouth under control, most of the time.

[Oceander]

Without in the least justifying or excusing the late Mr. Brown, the police are not angels and they are, in fact, a significant part of the problem.

Here's the thing though:  it's not really about race so much as about economic class.  The reason it sometimes appears to be about race is that - due mostly to democrat/progressive policies - a lot of poor neighborhoods are disproportionately black.

Poor neighborhoods tend to be rougher places, with more ongoing criminal activity, such as muggings, drug dealing, larceny, and the like, which means that cops go into fight mode as soon as they enter those neighborhoods, without any particular provocation.  People in poor neighborhoods also tend to not be able to pay to defend themselves in court against unwarranted criminal charges, so the cops in those neighborhoods, who are already hopped up on an us-vs-them fight mode, are much more willing to use harassment, threats, and arrests to push around people whom they believe, generally speaking, need a firmer guiding hand than do people in more upscale neighborhoods.  Then there are the minority of cops who get their jollies abusing people; they can usually get themselves off to their heart's content in poor neighborhoods because, again, poor people can't afford to pay for legal representation and generally don't get listened to if they complain to the cop's supervisors or to internal affairs.

The late Mr. Brown appears to have grown up in just such a milieu, where the cops are powerful outsiders who use their power to push everyone else around without any real justification for it.  That does not justify or excuse his behavior, but it ought to explain his behavior, and it is only by understanding better where that behavior comes from and why so many people like him engage in similar behavior that we might be able to start to change the culture that gives rise to that behavior.