Baltimore Police Backed Away From A Community That Protested Against Them, And Guess What Happened?

[EasyAce]

By Susan Wright
https://www.redstate.com/sweetie15/2017/12/31/baltimore-police-backed-away-community-protested-guess-happened/

So the greatest revelation that some communities may be grasping, moving into 2018 is that if you continuously threaten the police, attack the police, protest and spit on the police, they’ll back off and the crime in your communities goes up.

Who knew?

It’s almost as if law enforcement is a necessary part of a civil, safe society, and a couple of instances of bad apples are not the whole of the profession . . .

[Free Vulcan]

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[WingNot]

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

And further...
Elect a stupid mayor and D.A.  and you lose.

[goatprairie]

Who could NOT!!! have predicted this outcome. The idiots who promoted the idea the police somehow cause all the incredible violence in black neighborhoods will never admit to their culpability.
There are ways to cut down on the violence. Giuliani proved that in NYC.
But many people, including many conservatives, cried and stamped their feet about the constitution.
Yes, they'd rather have thousands of dead bodies than the constitution supposedly being violated.
Here's a clue: the constitution is not a suicide pact.

[EasyAce]

Here's a clue: the constitution is not a suicide pact.

Here's another clue---it ain't Silly Putty, either, to be contorted or distorted for the convenience of
one or another group, whether on behalf of the police or on behalf of their critics.

When the police behave contrary to its strictures, they should be held to account.

But holding the police to account must not be permitted to allow the real criminals to run riot.

[Cyber Liberty]

Here's another clue---it ain't Silly Putty, either, to be contorted or distorted for the convenience of
one or another group, whether on behalf of the police or on behalf of their critics.

When the police behave contrary to its strictures, they should be held to account.

But holding the police to account must not be permitted to allow the real criminals to run riot.

I'm with you, it's not an either/or deal.  It's not "burn the Constitution" or "let the criminals wreak havoc."  The thing in Baltimore was mishandled from the get-go, and the big political players all put themselves first.

The police were sloppy in securing their prisoner, probably felony sloppy.  But the racist Prosecutor was out whipping up the mobs before the investigative groundwork was laid to get proper convictions for the negligence.  She did it all for her own political gain, that's all it was for her.  She created the public pressure that caused her and her people to overcharge the cops with charges she knew would not stick.  Last I heard she was still in office.

The Mayor knew all this, yet encouraged the mobs to riot and loot, because she was too chickeshit to stand in their way.  I think the citizens of Baltimore had their say the next election because she's gone.  The new one isn't any better.

Their Congressman in DeeCee only shut up about this long enough to persecute Tea Party people trying to get a break from the IRS' beatdown.  He's still playing Congresscritter-for-life.

So who got squeezed in the end, and left behind to clean up the mess?  The cops on the beat, probably the only ones around who actually remember their oaths to the Constitution.   I don't envy what their jobs have become over the last decade, not a bit.  Their lives matter too.

[EasyAce]

I'm with you, it's not an either/or deal.  It's not "burn the Constitution" or "let the criminals wreak havoc."  The thing in Baltimore was mishandled from the get-go, and the big political players all put themselves first.

The police were sloppy in securing their prisoner, probably felony sloppy.  But the racist Prosecutor was out whipping up the mobs before the investigative groundwork was laid to get proper convictions for the negligence.  She did it all for her own political gain, that's all it was for her.  She created the public pressure that caused her and her people to overcharge the cops with charges she knew would not stick.  Last I heard she was still in office.

The Mayor knew all this, yet encouraged the mobs to riot and loot, because she was too chickeshit to stand in their way.  I think the citizens of Baltimore had their say the next election because she's gone.  The new one isn't any better.

Their Congressman in DeeCee only shut up about this long enough to persecute Tea Party people trying to get a break from the IRS' beatdown.  He's still playing Congresscritter-for-life.

So who got squeezed in the end, and left behind to clean up the mess?  The cops on the beat, probably the only ones around who actually remember their oaths to the Constitution.   I don't envy what their jobs have become over the last decade, not a bit.  Their lives matter too.

@Cyber Liberty
That's the absolute hell in it. The cop trying to do the right thing, the honest job, is endangered as greatly by
the cops who don't as by the criminals.

[Cyber Liberty]

@Cyber Liberty
That's the absolute hell in it. The cop trying to do the right thing, the honest job, is endangered as greatly by
the cops who don't as by the criminals.

I guess Serpico was more of a documentary than just a movie....

[EasyAce]

I guess Serpico was more of a documentary than just a movie....

@Cyber Liberty
If you don't count the excessive liberties taken with a lot of facts, that was really a kind of documentary,
based on Robin Maas's biography of Frank Serpico. Serpico and the late David Durk (he passed away in 2012)
exposed the single worst system-wide epidemic of police corruption in New York since the Harry Gross scandal
of 1959. (Gross was a bookmaker who turned out to have almost as many cops on his payroll as the
city did.) It's quite arguable that the Serpico case among other things may have torpedoed New York mayor
John Lindsay's political ambitions, especially when---during the Knapp Commission hearings Serpico and Durk
helped provoke---Lindsay was asked how it all could have happened, and why he didn't do anything about it
prior to Serpico being shot in the face making a drug bust that may have been a setup to try taking him out,
and all Lindsay could say was, "If you've had as long and as delicate a relationship with the 35,000 member
police department as I have had, you might understand."

Serpico probably received far more recognition than Durk because of that shooting---he was thatclose
to death. He was also awarded a full detective's shield while he was hospitalised; that had been his ambition
from almost the moment he became a cop, but by that point he was so embittered that, when his inspector
presented it to him, he replied, "Tell them they know where they can shove it." Also, Serpico isn't the only
one who has suggested Durk was more fame conscious than Serpico was; Serpico himself said he thought
Durk had too much politician style in him whereas Serpico was strictly a street cop who knew being a cop
was no glamour game no matter how many fantasies of derring-do Serpico himself had as a young cop.

I think, too, that one reason Serpico was more fascinating to people at the time was because, street cop
though he was, he wasn't the typical plebeian cop---he had tastes for opera (he was raised by an opera-loving
shoemaker) and ballet; he preferred to make friends of the people he lived among instead of other cops; he
had parallel tastes for literature and music. Serpico was very much a kind of renaissance type no matter how
he earned his living. He was also a bachelor who didn't suppress his taste for the ladies, though he didn't
exactly flaunt it, either. Serpico was, in short, a guy with charisma written all over him but modest enough
that he simply lived and let live.

[Cyber Liberty]

@Cyber Liberty
If you don't count the excessive liberties taken with a lot of facts, that was really a kind of documentary,
based on Robin Maas's biography of Frank Serpico. Serpico and the late David Durk (he passed away in 2012)
exposed the single worst system-wide epidemic of police corruption in New York since the Harry Gross scandal
of 1959. (Gross was a bookmaker who turned out to have almost as many cops on his payroll as the
city did.) It's quite arguable that the Serpico case among other things may have torpedoed New York mayor
John Lindsay's political ambitions, especially when---during the Knapp Commission hearings Serpico and Durk
helped provoke---Lindsay was asked how it all could have happened, and why he didn't do anything about it
prior to Serpico being shot in the face making a drug bust that may have been a setup to try taking him out,
and all Lindsay could say was, "If you've had as long and as delicate a relationship with the 35,000 member
police department as I have had, you might understand."

Serpico probably received far more recognition than Durk because of that shooting---he was thatclose
to death. He was also awarded a full detective's shield while he was hospitalised; that had been his ambition
from almost the moment he became a cop, but by that point he was so embittered that, when his inspector
presented it to him, he replied, "Tell them they know where they can shove it."

I guess today's politicians don't even try to mask themselves.

[EasyAce]

I guess today's politicians don't even try to mask themselves.

Name one who does.

[goatprairie]

Here's another clue---it ain't Silly Putty, either, to be contorted or distorted for the convenience of
one or another group, whether on behalf of the police or on behalf of their critics.

When the police behave contrary to its strictures, they should be held to account.

But holding the police to account must not be permitted to allow the real criminals to run riot.

I'm trying to follow your argument. So you're saying it's the police who are causing the tremendous levels of violence in the black sections of many American cities?

[EasyAce]

I'm trying to follow your argument. So you're saying it's the police who are causing the tremendous levels of violence in the black sections of many American cities?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

[goatprairie]

No, that's not what I'm saying.

You haven't answered my question. What would you do to stop the tremendous levels of violence in many American cities?
If you think stop and frisk is unconstitutional, what other methods would you employ?
I'm not for using unconstitutional methods (if stop and frisk is unconstitutional) just for the heck of it. What I'm interested in is halting the violence. If simply stopping and searching people in high crime areas works, why not use it?
If you can find another method that would work, I'd like to hear it.

[EasyAce]

You haven't answered my question.

You asked, and I quote, "So you're saying it's the police who are causing the tremendous levels of violence in the black sections of many American cities?" And I said, and I quote, "No, that's not what I'm saying." Holding the police to account when the police behave wrongly is not the same thing as giving violent criminals a pass. We might ask ourselves, too, whether the criminal court system isn't in need of a bit of an overhaul when it comes to throttling crime, violent and otherwise. You probably don't need me to remind you of what happens when court cases get throttled by one or another technicality or corruption. (The Mob---what's left of it---or street gangs tampering with witnesses or juries is only one obvious such issue.) And I suspect strongly enough that you could clean up every police department and court and still put a small nick into crime when all is said and done, because you won't stop crime (violent or otherwise) until, among other things, you figure out a way to eradicate the entitlement mentality of just too many people.

As for stop-and-frisk, I think the Fourth Amendment might have something to say about the tactic. By the way, the New York Police Department (who started the tactic in the first place, if I'm not mistaken) actually did away with the tactic gradually but surely, and in large steps, and a funny thing happened as they did . . . crime in New York, including violent crime, fell over those years up to and including last year. The NYPD also disclosed that over 80 percent of those accosted in stop-and-frisks since the police began using it in the last days of the Bloomberg administration were actually innocent. That's the police themselves, not a watchdog group, saying so. Considering the NYPD's relationship with incumbent mayor Bill de Blasio (he's not exactly the favourite mayor of New York's Finest)---who ran for and won re-election largely on curtailing stop-and-frisk himself---I don't think the police department would be all that inclined to hand de Blasio bragging rights regarding crime statistics.

I don't speak lightly of these things. I'm the paternal grandson of a New York police officer, who retired shortly after I was born as it happens; when my father was stricken with the lung cancer that killed him in 1966, my grandfather swung the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association into action to help and they arranged the round-the-clock oxygen and oxygen tent we lived with until my father's death. (Lung cancer treatment wasn't even a sixteenth in 1966 what it is now.) Grandpa lived long enough to see and mourn the corruption among his former brethren exposed by Frank Serpico and David Durk, which provoked the Knapp Commission hearings of 1971-72 and put the kibosh on then-mayor John Lindsay's political aspirations. (Lindsay was thought to be prospective presidential candidacy material until the Knapp Commission hearings exposed him and his hand-picked police commissioner Howard Leary as having been willfully blind to police corruption. In fact, when Serpico and Durk finally took their story to the New York Times---Durk had contacts on the paper that made it possible; the front-page headline in 1970 read, "Graft Paid to Police Said to Run in Millions"---Lindsay approached then-Times publisher Arthur O. [Punch] Sulzberger to "warn" him that Serpico and Durk were "psycho cops" who couldn't be trusted.)

[goatprairie]

You asked, and I quote, "So you're saying it's the police who are causing the tremendous levels of violence in the black sections of many American cities?" And I said, and I quote, "No, that's not what I'm saying." Holding the police to account when the police behave wrongly is not the same thing as giving violent criminals a pass. We might ask ourselves, too, whether the criminal court system isn't in need of a bit of an overhaul when it comes to throttling crime, violent and otherwise. You probably don't need me to remind you of what happens when court cases get throttled by one or another technicality or corruption. (The Mob---what's left of it---or street gangs tampering with witnesses or juries is only one obvious such issue.) And I suspect strongly enough that you could clean up every police department and court and still put a small nick into crime when all is said and done, because you won't stop crime (violent or otherwise) until, among other things, you figure out a way to eradicate the entitlement mentality of just too many people.

As for stop-and-frisk, I think the Fourth Amendment might have something to say about the tactic. By the way, the New York Police Department (who started the tactic in the first place, if I'm not mistaken) actually did away with the tactic gradually but surely, and in large steps, and a funny thing happened as they did . . . crime in New York, including violent crime, fell over those years up to and including last year. The NYPD also disclosed that over 80 percent of those accosted in stop-and-frisks since the police began using it in the last days of the Bloomberg administration were actually innocent. That's the police themselves, not a watchdog group, saying so. Considering the NYPD's relationship with incumbent mayor Bill de Blasio (he's not exactly the favourite mayor of New York's Finest)---who ran for and won re-election largely on curtailing stop-and-frisk himself---I don't think the police department would be all that inclined to hand de Blasio bragging rights regarding crime statistics.

I don't speak lightly of these things. I'm the paternal grandson of a New York police officer, who retired shortly after I was born as it happens; when my father was stricken with the lung cancer that killed him in 1966, my grandfather swung the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association into action to help and they arranged the round-the-clock oxygen and oxygen tent we lived with until my father's death. (Lung cancer treatment wasn't even a sixteenth in 1966 what it is now.) Grandpa lived long enough to see and mourn the corruption among his former brethren exposed by Frank Serpico and David Durk, which provoked the Knapp Commission hearings of 1971-72 and put the kibosh on then-mayor John Lindsay's political aspirations. (Lindsay was thought to be prospective presidential candidacy material until the Knapp Commission hearings exposed him and his hand-picked police commissioner Howard Leary as having been willfully blind to police corruption. In fact, when Serpico and Durk finally took their story to the New York Times---Durk had contacts on the paper that made it possible; the front-page headline in 1970 read, "Graft Paid to Police Said to Run in Millions"---Lindsay approached then-Times publisher Arthur O. [Punch] Sulzberger to "warn" him that Serpico and Durk were "psycho cops" who couldn't be trusted.)

I don't like corrupt cops, and I don't like the idea of violating the constitution. What I am concerned about is the staggeringly high levels of violence in many black sections of the country.
At some point the issue of public safety overrides obeying "possibly" unconstitutional methods.
Again, the question is:  if obeying the constitution means of mountain of dead bodies annually, at what point would you consider disobeying all the constitution or certain aspects of it?
Remember, it's not only the dead bodies, it's the families as well as the general public that suffers from this violence.
In NRO Heather Wilhelm wrote an article that attributed gentrification more to the declining homicide rate in NYC over other policies. 
I do remember when Giuliani took over as mayor in 1991 NYC had a homicide rate of over 2,000.  He cut that by 75% within five years or so.  One of the policies created to help stop the crime was stop and frisk.  And there was also a corresponding 75% drop in black males shot and killed by the police.
It's only been a few years since NYC ditched the S and F policy to say that it doesn't work.
What we do know that in many American cities where the police have backed off from strict policing, the homicide rate in the black communities has jumped appreciably.
So whether the police use stop and frisk or other methods, it appears tougher police methods are far better than slacking off in deterring violence.

[EasyAce]

At some point the issue of public safety overrides obeying "possibly" unconstitutional methods.

I suspect you meant to say " . . . overrides obeying constitutional methods."

No reasonable person would suggest it's impossible for the police to do their proper jobs under the Constitution. No reasonable police officer would make that suggestion. (I spoke to numerous law enforcement personnel, from beat cops to district attorneys, during my years as a regional news reporter and I never heard one of them make any such suggestion when our conversations approached comparable issues.) It's bad enough that there are those, left and right, who think nothing of flouting the Constitution on behalf of matters unrelated to crime because those matters, actual or alleged, are just too important to be left at the mercy of constitutional scruples. How long would it be before the unscrupulous among police departments (they are always among us, unfortunately, and they make it that much more difficult for the scrupulous police officer to do his or her job on behalf of public safety) put a vise grip upon their departments and the community at large if they were allowed to operate unfettered by the very law they are sworn to uphold? It seems like an exchange of one criminal element for another, an exchange that would prove far more grave for everyone in the long run.

And, unless I'm very wrong, the concept of public safety overriding lawful or constitutional method, prescription, and stricture is usually how martial law is justified (on the public record, anyway) in countries or principalities that impose it.

[goatprairie]

I suspect you meant to say " . . . overrides obeying constitutional methods."

No reasonable person would suggest it's impossible for the police to do their proper jobs under the Constitution. No reasonable police officer would make that suggestion. (I spoke to numerous law enforcement personnel, from beat cops to district attorneys, during my years as a regional news reporter and I never heard one of them make any such suggestion when our conversations approached comparable issues.) It's bad enough that there are those, left and right, who think nothing of flouting the Constitution on behalf of matters unrelated to crime because those matters, actual or alleged, are just too important to be left at the mercy of constitutional scruples. How long would it be before the unscrupulous among police departments (they are always among us, unfortunately, and they make it that much more difficult for the scrupulous police officer to do his or her job on behalf of public safety) put a vise grip upon their departments and the community at large if they were allowed to operate unfettered by the very law they are sworn to uphold? It seems like an exchange of one criminal element for another, an exchange that would prove far more grave for everyone in the long run.

And, unless I'm very wrong, the concept of public safety overriding lawful or constitutional method, prescription, and stricture is usually how martial law is justified (on the public record, anyway) in countries or principalities that impose it.

Not advocating martial law...still awaiting what you would do to stop/curtail the tremendous levels of violence in many black communities.

[EasyAce]

Not advocating martial law...still awaiting what you would do to stop/curtail the tremendous levels of violence in many black communities.

I would think, just let a) the police do their damn job without stop-and-frisk, just get in there and do it, and ignore the damn BLM rhetoric, and b) get to the real root of it---get rid of the entitlement mentality that pervades black and other communities. Because the bottom line is that you really won't get rid of violence in any community until you change that mindset. The police could arrest and the courts could convict every violent criminal found today, black or otherwise (they don't talk much about black-on-black violence still, but you and I both know it's there) and you still wouldn't eradicate it without a big attitude adjustment. And the attitude adjustment isn't just to eradicate the entitlement attitude; it might shock some people to know how much black on black violence springs up not just from the entitlement question but from some blacks who think other blacks looking to work their way into better are "traitors" to their "people." (This isn't just a thing in black communities, either. You find it in a lot of Hispanic communities as well. While I'm at it, how many blacks or Hispanics, or other ethnics experiencing hardscrabble times, are afraid to report crime, violent or otherwise, because of fear of reprisal from the criminal element in their communities?)

[Cyber Liberty]

I would think, just let a) the police do their damn job without stop-and-frisk, just get in there and do it, and ignore the damn BLM rhetoric, and b) get to the real root of it---get rid of the entitlement mentality that pervades black and other communities. Because the bottom line is that you really won't get rid of violence in any community until you change that mindset. The police could arrest and the courts could convict every violent criminal found today, black or otherwise (they don't talk much about black-on-black violence still, but you and I both know it's there) and you still wouldn't eradicate it without a big attitude adjustment. And the attitude adjustment isn't just to eradicate the entitlement attitude; it might shock some people to know how much black on black violence springs up not just from the entitlement question but from some blacks who think other blacks looking to work their way into better are "traitors" to their "people." (This isn't just a thing in black communities, either. You find it in a lot of Hispanic communities as well. While I'm at it, how many blacks or Hispanics, or other ethnics experiencing hardscrabble times, are afraid to report crime, violent or otherwise, because of fear of reprisal from the criminal element in their communities?)

We had better luck dealing with the minority communities before we introduced the "Gibsmedat" programs.  I'm at work, therefore firewalled, but there is a good working definition of that at urbandictionary.com

[EasyAce]

We had better luck dealing with the minority communities before we introduced the "Gibsmedat" programs.  I'm at work, therefore firewalled, but there is a good working definition of that at urbandictionary.com

@Cyber Liberty
You mean the gimmegimme programs ;)

[Cyber Liberty]

@Cyber Liberty
You mean the gimmegimme programs ;)

Same ting.  If you spell it the way I did, there's an actual entry in urbandictionary.com that can be looked up.  I'd do it and post it here, but I cannot until I get home.

[EasyAce]

Same ting.  If you spell it the way I did, there's an actual entry in urbandictionary.com that can be looked up.  I'd do it and post it here, but I cannot until I get home.

"Gibs-Me-Dat" (n.) Annuities, in the form of goods, services, or material (usually welfare checks) given predominately to minorities, in exchange for their tacit agreement to reciprocate by not burning down America's cities.

[Cyber Liberty]

"Gibs-Me-Dat" (n.) Annuities, in the form of goods, services, or material (usually welfare checks) given predominately to minorities, in exchange for their tacit agreement to reciprocate by not burning down America's cities.

Thanks, @EasyAce.  That's the one.  Sound about right?

[EasyAce]

Thanks, @EasyAce.  That's the one.  Sound about right?

That's about right.

Some dare call it extortion.