The strange struggle between NYC cops and mayor

I'm having a very hard time understanding the disagreement between the New York City cops and the mayor. Why are the cops so incredibly pissed off at Mayor DeBlasio? He's not directly responsible for a maniac from Georgia shooting and killing two cops in Brooklyn. (Who's directly responsible? Obviously the guy who did it, but he killed himself so there goes the chance for vengeance.)

Is DeBlasio indirectly responsible for the cops' deaths? Wow, that's a tough one... that reasoning works only if you include as 'indirectly responsible' anyone who makes the public criticism of lethal police action. If that's true, millions of people are indirectly responsible. See--it makes no sense, at least on the surface.

The case against DeBlasio

When a situation makes no sense on the surface, there are usually factors below the surface, and that's the case here. It was fascinating to read a non-ranting explanation of why the police force is upset with the mayor. DeBlasio ran as a progressive who would end police stop-and-frisk policies and give a friendlier ear to minority complaints. In itself, that shouldn't anger the police. However, DeBlasio took that friendship to places that were bordering on offensive. DeBlasio has embraced Al Sharpton as a major ally, even seating him in a place of honor at a large public event that was supposed to be conciliatory. Sharpton has never apologized for the times he was wrong about supposedly racial incidents--not for his role at Ferguson, and not for the Tawana Brawley accusations. This is a double-standard that supports minority grievances and blames police 100% of the time, so I understand how the mayor's embrace of him angers the police. As a bit more gasoline on the fire, the boyfriend and son of a top aide to DeBlasio's wife tweeted remarks about 'pigs.' There are to be plenty of reasons for the police to be angry with the mayor.

The case against the NYC police

But it's equally fascinating to see forces within the police pour accelerant on their justified anger. Possibly even before the shooting of two officers on Dec. 20, some police circulated a request that the mayor stay away from police funerals (not it's not a new tactic). The head of the PBA (Patrolmans Benevolent Association) said that many people had blood on their hands and it "starts at City Hall in the Office of the Mayor."

And of course there's the biased media

I consider that rhetoric to be over the top, but it's not the only extreme rhetoric against the mayor. In the New York Post (a Murdoch-owned newspaper with pulp standards), a columnist wrote:

"Determined not to let a crisis go to waste, the mayor has spent the last two days cranking up the volume and the vitriol of his anti-cop agenda... Imagine that. The city is in turmoil over the Staten Island case and the mayor throws gasoline on the fire by painting the entire police force as a bunch of white racist brutes. Has he no shame? He certainly has no facts."

It's unlikely that the mayor "has no facts" or that he said anything like "the entire police force as a bunch of white racist brutes." Attributing those sentiments to him is vilification, which is obviously what the columnist intended to do. 

It's not just a local fight either. Here's Bill O'Reilly:

"...many on the left believe the American police are the guardians of the oppressive justice system. They prop it up.

Apparently that is what Mayor de Blasio believes, that there is injustice among his own police officers... That point of view that the left is putting out there saying the police are instruments of oppression rather than a protective force is causing outrage on the part of the cops themselves. Any fair-minded person can understand that. It is easy.

...'Talking Points' believes Mayor de Blasio does not respect law enforcement, has directly insulted each and every member of the New York City Police Department and should resign his position."

O'Reilly mixing in a few reasonable points, but he ends up over-the-top nonetheless--calling for the mayor to resign not for what the mayor did, but for how the most disgruntled can spin it.

Strangely (again), the head of the PBA (Patrick Lynch) got some of his own medicine, as some police shouted at him that they wanted more equipment, not the apology that Lynch insists on. Pushing ensued, but no injuries. Polls show pushback from the populace against the disrespect among the police.

Reasonable protest vs. sickening protest

So far I've given more criticism to the police and conservative media who are fanning the flames. But what has the mayor done to worsen the situation? Working with Sharpton and similar minority individuals and groups. The rhetoric of these groups varies. Some marchers against the lack of criminal charges from the death of Eric Garner chanted "Black Lives Matter" and "Hands up, don't shoot." On the other hand, one break-away group chanted for "Dead cops."

The extreme groups are definitely a problem that taint those protesting police actions. How do you draw a line between a peaceful protester and those a short distance away who are burning and looting? For the peaceful protester, the choice is tough, You may not want to give up a legitimate protest, yet you don't want to be associated with unwarranted hooligan behavior.

I personally have no trouble distinguishing between different types of protesters, but it's not just that some are responsible and some are violent. Some advocates, like Sharpton, will never change their rhetoric, even when the evidence shows that guilt and innocence weren't as originally portrayed. I don't know whether DeBlasio looks at evidence or not. I know that many of his detractors don't look at evidence, however. Is there something wrong with DeBlasio supporting retraining so that police use less force? I can't see what's wrong with that. We consider changes in medical procedures all the time to reduce negative outcomes. This is an intelligent response, not a hateful one.

Why do folks have to hate?

Maybe what surprises me the most is that too many people reach for the hateful response. There were responsible demonstrators in Ferguson who stopped looting, and then there were the looters. There are the people hoping that police will be killed ("pigs in a blanket, smells like bacon"), and then there are the ones who mocked the dying words of Eric Garner, who died during an arrest. Why all this nastiness?

And even among those who aren't as hateful as this, why can't they work to find some middle ground and understand the important issues for the other side? Do we have to vilify everyone who doesn't agree 100%?

I'm rather hoping that the people of New York City will be able to demonstrate how to let tempers cool and move on to a more productive dialogue. Maybe that hope is crazy, but the alternative is even more heated words and protests. There won't be a constant ratcheting up, cooling will happen sometime, so now is a good time for it. I recommend a new chant:

CHILL OUT!

vosizneias.com

Extras. The police chief of Nashville is an example of cooling tempers. What would happen if you screamed into the face of a white cop? It depends on the cop, what kind of day he's had, and lots of things.

Scoop: Possible media bias in action

A commenter in the Washington Post put me onto this:

MEDIA TIES ROMNEY TO TRUMP, IGNORES OBAMA-SHARPTON CONNECTION

...But as is always the case, the media's double standard is a glaring one. After all, Al Sharpton is a proud and open Obama supporter, Obama has met with Sharpton, and Obama hasn't distanced himself from the MSNBC' racial demagogue -- who just this weekend made headlines with this: Republicans Want To 'Wipe Out Innocent People' Like 'Hitler's Germany'.

That accusation is very specific, so I looked it up. At that time, only conservative outlets were carrying the story. Here's a fairly complete, well-sourced article quoting Mark Levin. Unless Mark Levin did some nasty editing (as Breitbart did to Shirley Sherrod), Al Sharpton said something pretty inflammatory.

Uh, false alarm. I just listened to the whole exchange on Mediaite, and Sharpton is saying that some Republicans condemn some genocides (like Jews in WWII) but ignore others. Looks like tricky editing to provide red meat to the base... and Mark Levin sounded so calm and persuasive, I fell for it. Oh dear. Thank God I checked a little more before I hit the "Publish" button. And I thought I was going to nail the liberal media on something.

If you're interested, follow the story for a few days. How big does this trumped-up story get? We shall see.

 Before digital made fraud easy.

Photo: soundonsound.com

Update 6/1/12. This story has died. That's good, but as a lie and falsification, it never should have been a story at all. Still, I'll remember it as a lesson in the difference between the standards that mainstream media is held to and the standards of someone like Levin. By the way, if some of the links don't work, the story became an embarrassment.

Reflections 6/12/12.  To the conservative media, this was going to be a story about the MSM being biased for liberals. Instead, it was really a story about the creation of lies for hungry conservative media outlets, their lack of professionalism in the simple act of checking sources, and their lack of accountability. So far, only Mediaite has corrected the story. None of the conservative sites I reviewed contain a correction. Ah, to be so in the right that nothing you do is wrong. The MSM didn't catch this story to show the machinations of the conservative media either. God, I've learned a lot about media bias from this incident.

Update 6/4/15. Another example of editing a story dishonestly.

Tribalism as a reflex

I've been following the Trayvon Martin case since it went national. I don't see it as primarily a racial issue, though it definitely has racial tones in it, and I can easily see why blacks are roused to demonstrate. Anyone could be roused, but the case is going to have particular resonance for people who feel targeted for suspicion.

The Beginning

If I remember correctly, the national coverage started on Monday, March 19. By Friday, it was the biggest national story. Demonstrations had been organized. Al Sharpton was down in Florida. Obama, Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney all commented on the case. In general, they each said it was a tragedy that should be investigated thoroughly. For the life of me, I can't see anything wrong or offensive or even partisan in such a sentiment. It seems logical to me--someone dead by gunshot, therefore a need to investigate how and why and to determine if there was a crime.

Getting Nasty

How did we go from that logical sentiment to the conservative media circling the wagons? I can try to trace all the steps: Gingrich criticizing Obama for noting that Trayvon and he were could have been family (read: were the same race without saying 'race' or 'black'); the stupid hoodie comments by Geraldo Rivera. But then the reaction on the outer right seemed to go crazy. (Note: I'm not even going to touch the comments on various blogs because people are always trying to outdo one another in outrageous statements.)

Some conservative blogs, including some within the conservative mainstream, started trying to portray Trayvon as a thug, which is hard to do when he'd never been arrested. In lieu of an arrest record, they used his posed gangsta photos, his suspensions from school, and the braggadocio on his twitter account.

In the meantime, CNN was reporting all the developments regardless of whether they tended to support Zimmerman or the Martin family. They reported the statement from the unnamed neighbor who saw Trayvon over Zimmerman on the grass. They reported about the demonstrations, they displayed the video of Zimmerman in the police station and the picture of Trayvon with the gangsta-style gold tooth ornament. The only information they didn't pass on were the hacked emails (many of which weren't authentic) and the tweets.

It's not clear to me why part of the conservative media went so negative on Trayvon Martin. It was known that he was unarmed, so why is it important to show Trayvon was a thug?

When You Don't Know Why

I don't have a logical answer to this, so I have to reach for an emotional reason. This story got a lot of traction, and it fits many points that Democrats/liberals/progressives make: there is racial profiling that hurts blacks, even resulting in death; police don't fully investigate the deaths of young black males; black males are presumed to be guilty of something; assailants, even when known, can get away scot-free with killing a young black male. A new concern is that Florida's Stand-Your-Ground law will result in even more deaths of young blacks that aren't investigated or prosecuted.

The story works so well for Democratic/liberal/progressive narrative that conservatives are left grasping at anything they can to lessen the impact of the story. Not all conservatives have felt this need. Many are treating this as largely a legal and police procedural matter where the state investigators and the courts will have to determine if Zimmerman was justified or not. These sane conservatives haven't felt the need to defeat the story.

The others, however, tried to shred the story, criticizing the media (of course, a favorite target), black spokesmen, Obama, Hispanic organizations (for not tribally supporting Zimmerman), the special investigator, and most cravenly, the dead boy.

Why is it so important to defeat the story rather than letting it play out? Is all news a zero-sum game, where the points your opponents can make should be blocked whenever possible, no matter how?

For some partisans, this is undoubtedly true. But why can't some, who have more responsibility because of their roles on news sites, let go of the competition and let the Democrats win those points? Instead, in their unwavering, single-minded tribalism, they try to smear whomever they can, and just end looking like the foul sewer floaters that they have become.

Battle lines

 Photo credit: cleftintherock.org

Extras.

• Measured response by HotAir, Morning Joe, Allen West.
• Examples of needless attacks: at Karen Finney, Daily Caller, more Daily Caller, wagist, Nice Deb, National Review, and Christian News.
• Perhaps the first national reporting of the incident and its significance.
• Critique of local coverage.
• Detailed CNN coverage.
• Minute-by-minute timeline, with contradictions and uncertainties.
• Detailed account of Trayvon's family's actions in the first two weeks afterward. 

Disclosure: I lived in New York at the time of the Tawana Brawley case. I haven't forgiven Sharpton, and there is no way I can be fair or neutral about him.

Updates. There are too many to mention. Click on the label "Trayvon Martin" to see more.