Pat Oliphant for August 14, 2014

How does he not look suspicious? He can’t help it.

Apparently it’s a birth defect the police are trained to look for.

I think the feds need to come in and take over. The story of the Ferguson police beating and arresting two (black) reporters from the Washington Post was truly horrifying, not to mention yelling at the protesters “Bring it!” These police think they’re in a war against a demonized enemy, not the American citizens who pay their wages. Interesting that when we actually HAVE the police acting as the jack-booted, militarized thugs, the conservatives are disturbingly quiet. Mike Brown not as photogenic as Cliven Bundy, Fox News? What would be the reason for that, I wonder?

All over the nation the police have turned into pigs. They “think” they are infantry in Iraq. They point guns at all people. Every day you read about some police department shooting an unarmed civilian “because it looked like they had a gun”. SWAT teams murder people in their home when they raid the wrong addresses.

Take the tanks away from the police. The police should be limited to a revolver because they are rarely in a situation where they need to pull out a gun. Cops kill far more unarmed civilians than police who are lost in “the line of duty”.

This African-American community finally pushed back against American’s Nazi police force.

Suspicion, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder

There is something systematically wrong when the police and population view each other as enemies.

@Darsan54: excellent comment.

I know the haters are going to come out in droves, but when blacks kill someone the story gets buried. You can do the research your self.

Amazing how brutal attacks on any other ethnic background. do not make the news. I guess only the ones they know will stir up the most ratings.

Granted, there must be some genuinely good people who are cops. However, those I know are racist jerks. My brother in law was a bully in high school, and the police force afforded him an excellent opportunity to continue that hobby as a career choice. The people I have met who he works with often begin as normal people but soon buy into to the “us against them” mentality. African Americans perpetuate the situation when they treat the cops as the enemy, giving even those cops who would prefer to treat them equally difficulty in doing so.Historically, the Black community obviously has no reason to expect fair treatment from any cop, but they need to not just expect it, but demand it. Dignified, peaceful demonstrations are a good way to start, and would command respect that the cops would have to honor, or they look like the bad guys. In that case, the community wins and the cops look like the bad guys.Throwing rocks, shouting obscenities and looting as part of those demonstrations perpetuates the problem, because it makes the people who are doing such things look like dangerous animals. Other Americans may not be thrilled with the cops, and no one can legitimately argue that they treat African Americans fairly, but if it’s a choice between siding with cops who are jerks but aren’t going to harm us, and a bunch of dangerous animals, the cops are going to win.

Peaceful demonstrations only work for the Tea Party. I well remember the peaceful demonstrations of the Occupy Wall Street people and the Pigs with the huge pepper spray containers squirting them in the face as they say quietly. The rich didn’t like that. Today’s police are nothing more than armed mercenaries for the greedy Wall Street scumbags,

There are many different influences that have caused the current conflagration, but I believe that the militarization of our civilian police forces over the last 20-30 years has become a major part of these stories and is actually working against the police’s best interests. When I say militarized, look a the images from this location. They are wearing camo gear (really, why do they need camouflage?), rolling up with APCs, etc.. This started with SWAT teams but has branched out so that even small town police depts have this mentality. First the bogeyman was the war on drugs, now it’s the terrorists, even though the average American has more of a chance to die from a lightning strike than a terrorist. At one time, SWAT was limited to special circumstances like standoffs and hostage situations. Now, they use teams to serve warrants – warrants! It’s gotten out of hand.

“You do know that I am not usually noted as conservative on most issues. And this particular police department certainly seems to be located in a very conservative kind of an area.

But I am growing at least somewhat tired of the continuing attack upon the police in general. If it were not for that thin blue line of generally good men and women our entire society would be at the mercy of the types of thugs that we see every newscast in the Middle East such as this ISIS bunch.

Indeed there may very well be some bad eggs within even good police departments, but certainly no more so than any other of our groups of people that serve the rest of us in a civilization. If it were not for them, the criminal element in all races, colors and creeds would be taking over. Perhaps some of our more negative cartoonists and posters might us think about that for awhile!"-I agree. To tell black children, “watch out for police officers, they will kill you if you look suspicious” (as this cartoon does) is incredibly irresponsible and only encourages them to live in a world of paranoia and imagined threats. Instead we should highlight and correct police abuses when they happen and teach children that there are safe and lawful ways to defend their rights. But I’m sure that this kind of factually inaccurate racial demagoguery is very emotionally satisfying to draw, at least for cartoonists of certain political persuasions.

Sorry, but I couldn’t disagree more. In many neighborhoods in many cities this is reality; it’s not an “attack upon the police in general.” We are a big country with many varied cultures, including many varied police cultures. Some do truly protect and serve. However, in far too many, a poisonous culture of “us vs. them” results in seeing some parts of society as “animals” (as one police officer was caught on tape saying). More unfortunate still, that “us vs. them” is often built around a dominant culture idea of who is deserving of protection and who is not. To dismiss this on “a few bad apples” seems a rather simplistic view of something that is much more complex and problematic about modern American society.

He has done a lot of good, including meeting his campaign promises by about 80% in year 1 and 2.It’s hard to do anything when an entire party tries to make you fail, even going so far as to harm to our own country.

you are so right in saying that Obama was dealt a losing hand, getting what he did from the worst president so far; W. Bush.

I read in a book about marriage and monogamy just recently which said that 70% of all African-American children born in this country are born to single mothers… ;)

and do not try to grab the cop’s gun.