Rob Rogers for June 23, 2018

The vast majority of law enforcement officers are good, decent heroes trying to make our communities safer. We see many stories of police officers who use their own money (out of underpaid salaries) to help struggling families or troubled youths. They are true heroes.

But sadly there is also a significant minority of officers who have shot African Americans in the back while they are running away, shot a mental health professional who was accompanying a troubled patient after he had identified himself, was lying down on the ground with his hands up; have shot victims who were only accused of very minor infractions, shooting a school employee who raised his hands, notified officers of a LEGAL firearm in the car, etc., etc., etc.

Now we see a backlash. Now we see increased number of random shootings of law enforcement professionals. The victims are random and, sadly, often target some of the best.

Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. But if blue lives want to stop setting up the shooting of their own, they had better first stop shooting unarmed young men of color — Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Alton Sterming, Tamir Rice, Terence Crutcher , Stephon Clark and many more.

Trigger-happy racist cops who shoot UNARMED African Americans are the ones who are putting targets on the backs of their less brutal brothers and sisters.

Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. If Blue lives want to stop getting shot, then stop putting targets on the backs of Black lives.

We have too many atrocities for our short attention spans to keep track of.

DD WIZ: There have been shootings of peace officers long before there were shootings of unarmed African American teens. Ever hear of so-called ‘domestic violence’ cases? We just had a recent one here in Central Florida where a woman being beaten escaped from her abuser, leaving her 4 children locked in their bedrooms, and ran for help to get the kids out. When the police approached, the abuser shot at them through the door and wounded one officer with a head shot (he is still in a coma). When the police finally broke into the apartment, the abuser had shot all 4 of the kids to death (one was less than a year old) and committed suicide. At least he saved the community the cost of feeding him for years in jail while a trial and multiple appeals ran their course…

Trump will tell you that policeman was a member of MS-13 to make it fit his narrative.

Echoing EdMeiller above, it’s the illegal (which isn’t a real word by the way; the correct term is “unlawful”) aliens committing all the atrocities, right? The President said so, with his “angel families” included in the photo op. (An “illegal” is a sick bird, rather like our national emblem.)

My neighbor’s son applied to the police academy, and was interviewed by a psychologist who determined he shouldn’t be walking around with a gun and disqualified him from the job. But, that was a big city (St Louis) department. My brother in law, at a small department in Texas, got the job with little training and no psychologist, despite the fact that bullying people was his hobby in high school and he looked on police work as a fine opportunity to get paid for it. He only lasted a couple of years on the job, but I wonder what kind of damage he did to who during those years. Point being, no one should ever be issued the right to bully people unless they are proven to be sane enough to handle it.

Too many guns, too many angry people. No wonder we want to pause and kneel in prayer when honoring our national flag.

I"ve been saying for some time now that all police badge numbers should come with a “00” prefix, signifying a license to kill with impunity, because they never have to pay a penalty for it, no matter how egregious it was.

This is America’s disgusting inhuman progression from public lynchings of African American men and women. Police designated and sanctioned as public murderers.

“I feared for my safety” means as a youth is running away “If he’s brown, gun him down.”

No cop, or CIVILIAN vigilante NRA jerk, should ever shoot anyone in the back who’s running away, even in Texas where it’s perfectly okay. But, this kid was running from a vehicle identified in a drive by shooting, two guns were in the car, and the kid shot had a clip from one of the guns in his pocket, not some “innocent bystander”, but still shouldn’t have been shot. Also, running away with evidence in your pocket is SOP for bad guys, but stupid, and not grounds alone for the death penalty.

“Researchers said they determined that 3,959 black people were killed in ‘racial terror lynchings’ in a dozen Southern states between 1877 and 1950.” Police killed 4887 black people from 2000 to 2017 4887 black people were killed by police. In the present year up to March police have shot and killed 43 African Americans. I post these numbers as information only without attribution. I make no claim that the numbers are totally accurate. Some discrepencys I’ll note: only southern state lynchings are counted. Also the author of the second assertion does not distinguish between armed and unarmed. And third, the rate of killings in 2018 is not at all on pace to reach the totals for the previous years.

We need to let the process work before we condemn. Far too many of these cases have turned out to be justifiable. I’m not saying this one is or isn’t. Just let the process work.

We don’t need another Ferguson.

Someone appears to be coming out of the closet of racism.

Maybe having the power of life and death is too much responsibility for the average human being.

So Trump is silent on this issue. Yet he will not hesitate to call the next NFL player to take the National Anthem with bowed head and bended knee a “Son of a Bitch.”

Some clown says it’s OK to shoot at a kid running away…what if he’s just running away so he doesn’t get shot in the confusion? What if the cop misses and kills a bystander? The use of deadly force must be the very last option. It’s that simple.

My Gradfather’s brother was a beat cop for 30 years. Never took his gun out while on duty. That was a while ago. Seems the first thing today, swing that gun around, might be someone you want to kill.

The Washington Post maintains a database on police shootings. Download it and crunch the numbers. They will show that unarmed blacks are shot by police as often as unarmed whites. Which sounds equitable until you consider that blacks are only 1/5 of the population.

Which translates to you are 5 times more likely to be fatally shot by a policeman if you are black.

There are close to 1,000 shootings of unarmed civilians (all races) by police every year. Any individual shooting can be attributed to extenuating circumstances or a rogue cop. But to write off 1,000 a year is implausible. We have a system and it is broken. Let’s benchmark those police departments that don’t have this kind of shootings.

AL, we’ve seen how the process works. Cops kill people and get away with it, over and over and over and over and…

The right-wing doesn’t care how it separates children from families, as long as they are born first.