A Former Cop Takes On 'The War On Cops'

A Former Cop Takes On 'The War On Cops'

The original “Ferguson Effect” was supposed to be attacks on police everywhere, and for months that never happened. Instances of police being killed were actually dropping. But then Baltimore protests over the death of Freddy Grey turned into rioting; then Baton Rouge, Dallas, Minneapolis, and now Milwaukee. I began to realize this wasn’t hyperbole.

Mac Donald’s book starts with Ferguson. The Ferguson incident brought the issues of police racism and brutality to the forefront, and gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is, unquestionably, the most divisive environment American law enforcement has seen since the Rodney King incident in California in 1991. The current environment may be worse, as the Rodney King issue was often framed as a California problem. The riots after the police officers were acquitted in the King case were severe, but they were limited to Los Angeles. Now, 25 years later, every city seems to be capable of bursting into flames as soon as a police officer fires a weapon.

Analysis of Washington Post police-shootings data reveals surprising result – nearly 2x more whites than blacks shot by police | Watts Up With That?

Analysis of Washington Post police-shootings data reveals surprising result – nearly 2x more whites than blacks shot by police | Watts Up With That?


By race and ethnicity, there were 494 whites, 258 blacks, 172 Hispanics, 15 Asians, 14 American Indians or Alaskan natives, 9 “other” races, and 28 deaths with the race not specified. Which leads to the question … is there a racial imbalance? And in particular, are African-American people being killed at an excessive rate?

Now, many folks calculate the death rates of the groups by comparing the numbers killed, to the corresponding numbers of that group in the general population … but you can’t do that. It leads to wildly incorrect conclusions. Here is an example that shows why comparing numbers of police shootings to the corresponding number of individuals in the general population leads to big errors:

Men make up about 50% of the general population, but men comprise 96% of those killed by police. Does this huge number of “excess male deaths” prove that the police are being sexist and that they are biased against men? Does this imbalance in the number of men killed mean that we need a “Male Lives Matter Too” movement?

Of course not. Instead, it simply demonstrates that men both commit and are arrested for far more crimes of violence than women; that men are far more likely than women to both carry and use weapons; that men are far more likely to both threaten and commit serious violence against a police officer than are women; and most importantly, that men are far more likely than women to violently resist arrest.

Since the common thread in the killings is that the person was resisting arrest, we need to compare how often people of each race get killed by police, with how often people of the same race get arrested by police. But clearly, we’re not interested in arrests for jaywalking and the like. Since 97% of these deaths are occurring in the context of people violently resisting arrest, they are best compared to the corresponding number of arrests for violent crimes.

Here are the results of that comparison for 2015.

• For every 10,000 white people arrested for a violent crime, 38 white people were killed by police (± 2).
• For every 10,000 hispanic people arrested for a violent crime, 21 hispanic people were killed by police (± 3).
• For every 10,000 black people arrested for a violent crime, 21 black people were killed by police (± 2).

Go figure … I was as surprised as you, so I’ve triple checked the numbers, and it’s true—the odds of a given arrest going bad and ending up in a death are much greater for white men than for black or hispanic men.

Are there unjustified killings among the Washington Post data? You can be certain there are, it is a rare but real issue. Is there more work to be done? Assuredly. But the Post data doesn’t and can’t answer those questions

What the Washington Post data can and does show us is that death at the hands of police is a problem for people of all races and ethnicities. It’s not something happening preferentially to black people, quite the opposite. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen a lot, but whenever it happens, we need to make sure it was justified … and if not, we need to hold the responsible parties to account.

What we don’t need to do is to turn an issue of excessive use of police force into a racial issue.

3) If you don’t remember the death of the unarmed black man in the Pennsylvania restaurant who was shot and killed while lying face-down after being tasered, don’t feel bad, blame me …  I fear I have engaged in a bit of constructive deception. I say that the reason you haven’t heard about his death is because contrary to what I stated above, he was actually an unarmed white man in a Pennsylvania restaurant who was shot and killed while lying face-down after being tasered … although as above, your explanation may vary.

8) After finishing writing up this analysis of the data, I came across a discussion today of the same question in The Economist. To my surprise, although they used totally different and much more complete data, they came to exactly the same conclusion—black people get killed less frequently by police, and white people get killed more frequently by police, than one would expect given the number of interactions they have with police. Doesn’t mean that racism is dead, the study in The Economist agrees with my saying above that there’s still lots of racist policing out there … and it also strongly supports my conclusions about the number of deaths.

African American Shooting Statistics | National Review

African American Shooting Statistics | National Review

I have heard many educated people acknowledge the disparity and claim that it just proves racism in the justice system, which is the same as saying that the statistics are misleading, and all things being equal the tendency to commit violent crime is spread uniformly throughout the population. If that’s what you think, you are living in a fantasy world, where urban blight and broken families either don’t exist or don’t make any difference. Racism in the justice system may explain disparate results in marginal cases, but it obviously can’t explain the astonishing disparity in crime — victims, suspects, and arrestees — by racial category in the U.S. The disparity is beyond astonishing. Here are the NYPD crime statistics for 2014, take a look, and while you do, consider that in NYC whites outnumber blacks something like 1.6 to 1.

As you consider the statistics, recall that the night the grand jury’s decision was announced in the Michael Brown case, blacks protested “no justice no peace” and rioted in Ferguson, notwithstanding the grand jury’s conclusion that Michael Brown was not an innocent “unarmed teenager” but in fact had committed multiple violent felonies without provocation, including strong-arm robbery in a convenience store and then the assault (and attempted murder) of officer Darren Wilson in his car.

Amazingly, these facts didn’t make any difference at all to the protesters, and make no difference at all to Black Lives Matter. Why is that? As far as I can tell, Black Lives Matter would have it so people would be able to break the law, defy police, assault police, run away, etc. — and not risk getting harassed or injured by the police. Here’s why that’s a problem: 
When America is ready for a real conversation about race, it will start here. It will ask honestly what the causes are. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that race has absolutely nothing to do with crime rates, and that government policies such as welfare are the real culprit, creating the urban blight and broken families that lead directly to crime. Until then, however, our national conversation on race will remain a source of much agitation and little progress, focused on matters that are secondary or completely irrelevant, such as loose gun laws in areas of the country where the crime isn’t. Obama thinks that “what’s ultimately going to make the job of being a cop a lot safer” is for cops to acknowledge the problem of police brutality. Maybe that’s one problem that needs acknowledging. But a more basic problem looms vastly larger, and until that one is acknowledged by all sides, none of this will be solved.

About That Harvard Study on Police Use of Force. . . | Power Line

About That Harvard Study on Police Use of Force. . . | Power Line

I was struck by dramatic differences in odds ratio for use of force for “compliant” vs. “all” encounters in the NYT article on the recently publicized Harvard study on police use of force (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html). In looking at that data I realized that you could use it to estimate the fraction of stops in which a black person was compliant. I understand that the datasets are different and thus can’t be compared directly, but unless the data are badly flawed, the results are astonishing. Specifically, looking at the 3rd (compliant) and 4th (all) forest plots and selecting the “handcuffed” data (since it is least likely to be reported disparately between officers and civilians) you can derive the following,

(1) Bc*Wt / Wc*Bt = 1.13 (Bc=black compliant, Wt=white total, etc.)

(2) ((Bc+Bu)*Wt) / ((Wc+Wu)*Bt) = 3.17 (Bu = black uncompliant)

Dividing Equation 2 by Equation 1 and a little algebra yields:

Bu/Bc = 1.81 + 2.81*Wu/Wc.

Since Wu/Wc has to be a positive number, that means that black people are uncompliant > 1.81/(1+1.81) = 64% of the time! Unless I’ve made a mistake in my analysis, it seems that if most black parents are really having “the talk” with their kids, other signals overwhelm its efficacy.

Ignorance of Facts Fuels the Anti-Cop 'Movement' - Larry Elder

Ignorance of Facts Fuels the Anti-Cop 'Movement' - Larry Elder

A new study by a Harvard economist, who happens to be black, finds cops less likely to use deadly force on black suspects vs. white.

Angered by the deaths of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown, black men in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri, respectively, who died at the hands of the police, professor Roland Fryer Jr. said, "You know, protesting is not my thing. But data is my thing." So he sought to answer the question. Do the police, in fact, use lethal force against black suspects more than they do against whites?

Fryer examined 1,332 police shootings -- including fatal and non-fatal shootings -- in the police departments of 10 large cities in Texas, California and Florida. He said his findings surprised him. In an article about the study, The New York Times wrote:

"In shootings in these 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force."

But the question remained, when the suspect is black, are officers more likely to use deadly force? The Times wrote:

"What about situations in which an officer might be expected to fire, but doesn't? To answer this, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The police department there let the researchers look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include encounters with suspects the police subsequently charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.

"Mr. Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black. This estimate was not precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But in various models controlling for different factors and using different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites."

Yes, the study found cops were more likely to put their hands on a black suspect vs. a white suspect -- also to cuff, push to the ground or pepper-spray -- but probably because cops don't want the encounter to escalate to a shooting. This use-of-deadly-force study proves that Black Lives Matter, Obama's sympathy with the group and media's obsession with white-cop-black-suspect stories are built on lies. And Fryer's study confirms similar findings in "The Reverse Racism Effect," a study by researchers at Washington State University.

Recall actor Jesse Williams, who in a rant during a BET awards ceremony said, "What we've been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people everyday." Will Mr. Williams now man up and apologize for helping to perpetuate this phony narrative that cops are out to get blacks? Will Time magazine -- one among many media outlets that slobbered over Jesse Williams' rant -- apologize for calling it "powerful"?

After the shooting deaths of black suspects at the hands of the police in Minnesota and Louisiana, Hillary Clinton said, "White people ... have to start listening to the legitimate cries" of black people. This is the usual kind of condescending pap we always hear from Democrats. But in their case, the reason is votes. In order for the Democratic Party to maintain the 95 percent monolithic hold they have with black voters, they need to create scenarios of anger and fear against so-called "structural" or "institutional" or "systemic" racism. We know their motive.

As to the media, one can only conclude that it's about ratings. When a black officer shoots a black suspect, it does not generate the same level of outrage as when a white officer shoots a black suspect, especially when he is unarmed. But of the nearly 1,000 people killed by cops last year -- according The Washington Post's own tally -- the Post reported that less than 4 percent were instances of white cops shooting and killing an unarmed black man.

And there's this. What's hard about complying with a cop's order so you don't get shot? There is no right to defy a lawful order. That a cop may be rude does not make an order any less lawful. Hillary Clinton, showing how she feels blacks' pain, says black parents tell her that they have what is called "the talk" with their children on how to comport themselves when engaged in an encounter with the police. But in almost every recent case of an officer shooting a black person, the black person resisted arrest. So much for "the talk."

How about, "Comply -- you won't die"?

Sally Kohn Doesn't Understand How Laws Work

Sally Kohn Doesn't Understand How Laws Work

The debate over religious freedom has officially broken the collective liberal mind. Rather than just admitting that many same-sex marriage supporters wish to use the power of government to force people of faith to violate their consciences, at least one skeptic of religious freedom has invented a new legal theory on the matter.

In a column for TPM,
liberal media personality Sally Kohn asserted that it makes no sense to say the government is forcing people of faith to violate their consciences, because government can’t force you to do anything:

You may have heard that the government is forcing businesses not to discriminate. It isn’t. If you chose to run a business, you have to follow the laws. If you don’t, that’s a choice—and you choose to suffer the consequences.

Kohn, who has a law degree from NYU, carried her theory even further, stating that members of the police force aren’t really using force to enforce the law unless they put a gun to your head:

This issue of government force is a funny one. You could also argue that the government is forcing you to drive below the speed limit or wear a seatbelt in your car. But it’s not. There isn’t a police officer holding a gun to your head literally forcing you to buckle up. In fact, you are 100 percent free to speed and not wear your seatbelt—and simply deal with the consequences if you’re pulled over. Is the threat of the fine for breaking the law amount to “forcing” you to follow the law? No.

Eric Garner, who was choked by Staten Island police and later died at the scene of his arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes, might disagree with Kohn’s description of what does and doesn’t constitute force. Unfortunately, Kohn fails to see the linguistic hints embedded in the words we use to describe how government compels legal compliance.

We use the phrase “force of law” for a reason: laws that are not backed by force aren’t laws; they’re suggestions. We use the phrase “law enforcement” for a reason. We use the phrase “police force” for a reason. If a law is not followed, it is not unusual for the government to dispatch its resources to force compliance or to levy punishment.

One gets the impression that @sallykohn hasn’t thought about government a great deal. http://t.co/xKwzTuazXK pic.twitter.com/0wbmEFm5Ok
Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) April 6, 2015

Governments pass laws to change behavior. Sometimes government uses carrots — engage in this particular activity we like and you’ll be rewarded with subsidies. And sometimes government uses sticks — engage in this particular activity we don’t like, and you will be punished.



Kohn appears to grasp that last part. After all, she specifically wrote that if you don’t follow a law, you might have to “suffer the consequences.” Unfortunately, she doesn’t expend any mental energy following that logic all the way through. In the absence of force, how are any consequences possible? Who has been sanctioned by government to impose this suffering?

.@sallykohn If there's no government force involved, why would I pay this hypothetical parking ticket? I'd ignore it and do whatever I want.

Sean Davis (@seanmdav) April 7, 2015

Americans don’t pay taxes out of the goodness of their hearts. They pay taxes to avoid force in the form of government fines or levies. We don’t generally drive the speed limit because it’s fun to go slow. We do it to avoid fines and arrest, an act which requires literal physical force. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t end up in a Birmingham jail cell because he longed for the quaint, cozy confines of prison. He ended up in that cell because police forced him into it for the crime of peacefully protesting segregation. That’s how laws — even vile ones like those of the Jim Crow era — work. Blacks didn’t choose to use different water fountains or lunch counters. They were forced to do so by police, hoses, and dogs.



A law is nothing but a threat backed up by force. This principle is not “ideological,” as Kohn tried to suggest on Twitter. It is definitional. The threat of force is what converts a mere recommendation into an actual law.



At one time, Kohn appeared to roughly understand the principle of government force. During the debate over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, Hobby Lobby argued in court that it should not be forced by the government to pay for abortifacients for its employees. The arts and crafts supplier said that if employees wished to use abortifacients, they were free to purchase those with their own money.



This was unacceptable to Kohn, who claimed in a 2013 column for The Daily Beast that “right-wing conservatives are using the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case on contraception to force their religious views on the nation”:

To put it mildly, our forbearers would be appalled by how right-wing conservatives are trying to use government to force their religious views on all of us.

[…]

Hobby Lobby wants to go one step further. This corporation, which already takes advantage of special government benefits by incorporating as a private business in the first place (entitling Hobby Lobby to tax benefits and liability shelters to which individuals alone are not entitled), wants to use its government-created corporate status with the help of government-run courts not just to express its religion on a poster or what have you but to force its employees to comply with the supposed religion of the corporation’s founders. This is, plain and simple, a corporation trying to contort government to impose the religious views of some onto many. This is precisely what our nation was founded against.

She asserted the existence of government force five separate times in that article. Granted, she had it completely backwards, but at least she accepted the premise. Hobby Lobby didn’t want to force anything on anybody. Its owners wanted the freedom to not pay for items they considered to be abortifacients. Hobby Lobby never argued during the case that its employees should be forever banned from using certain types of birth control. The company merely suggested that maybe people should buy some things with their own money. Perish the thought.



But to Kohn, even though a company choosing not to pay for something has nothing to do with government force, that was an example of blatant government force, a dynamic which as of yesterday she said did not even exist. Kohn apparently believes that government force doesn’t exist, that individuals can be forced to “suffer consequences” in the absence of force, that fines and imprisonment for non-compliance don’t constitute force, and that, somewhat paradoxically, an individual choosing to abstain from an activity is a perfect example of the use of government force.



As I noted previously, Sally Kohn has a law degree from NYU.



While the Indiana religious freedom debate raged on last week, I joked that many same-sex marriage supporters had moved the goalposts from “if you don’t like gay marriage, then don’t have one” to “if you don’t like having your conscience violated, then don’t have one.” I didn’t expect to be proven right in less than a week, but Sally Kohn is a charitable person who decided that I needed to be vindicated in short order.



“Don’t like following the laws that apply to businesses,” Kohn asked at the end of her column for TPM. “Then don’t start a business. That’s your choice.”



Segregationists made the exact same argument during the Jim Crow era. Thank goodness that people like Martin Luther King, Jr. ignored them, government force notwithstanding.

Citizen journalists don’t need “Press Credentials” — but that badge may help

Citizen journalists don’t need “Press Credentials” — but that badge may help

...The ACLU also cautions against breaking any unrelated laws, like trespassing, while photographing or videotaping. Pretty simple, right?Yet the police harassment of citizens with cameras or video recorders continues. About the only thing that police will respect– sometimes – is a display of press credentials.& Enter the Constitution First Amendment Press Association, or CFAPA. Started by James Rawles, survivalblogger and author of several
post-apocalyptic best-selling books, the CFAPA website will issue free press credentials and a press badge.
Here is how it works: go to the CFAPA website, found at cfapa.org, read and agree to the Constitutional Journalist’s pledge and member terms. These essentially spell out ethical rules for journalists and provide indemnity for CFAPA. Then download and fill in your name and date of issuance for your press credentials and badge. The press badge would also need a recent photo before you laminate it. That’s it!
Even for someone who does not intend to seek and record the actions of the police in public, it is good to have the CFAPA press credential and press badge handy, just in case. And besides, they are free. CFAPA operates on donations, or sales at its Amazon store, which, humorously, lists for sale trench coats and fedora hats. Presumably, wearing this will enable the citizen journalist to look like one of the reporters in the movie His Girl Friday. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Rawles told me.
But the CFAPA Amazon store also contains more serious items like press badge holders, cameras, voice recorders, books on reporting style and dealing with the police.

Ann Coulter: Speed Kills Racial Profiling Study — The Patriot Post

Ann Coulter: Speed Kills Racial Profiling Study — The Patriot Post

The story never made sense. How could the troopers tell the race of drivers in speeding cars? Did they wait until the driver rolled down his window and, if he was white, say, “Oh, sorry – have a nice day!”

But the Clinton administration was slapping consent decrees for racial profiling on police departments across the country, and the N.J. highway patrol was its prime evidence, based on a study that a child wouldn’t believe.

As is usually the case with bogus race studies, the pivotal 1993 survey compared speed stops on the New Jersey turnpike to the population of all drivers on the turnpike – not with the population of all speeders on the turnpike.

Such meaningless studies are popular on the left, where it is assumed that people of different races, genders and ethnicities will always behave identically in all respects.

If fewer women pass the physical test to become firefighters, that can only be because of sexism. If fewer blacks pass the written test – that’s racism. If fewer whites play professional basketball – no, forget that one. Sports are important. (Unlike arson or vehicular homicide.)

Nonetheless, based on the assumption that blacks speed just as much as whites – because to believe otherwise would be racist! – Temple University’s John Lamberth announced that while only 13.5 percent of drivers along a particular stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike were black, 46 percent of those stopped for speeding were black.

Racial profiling, Q.E.D.

The New York Times ran a dozen articles trumpeting the nonsense study, proclaiming it “the most thorough documentation of the contention that the police regularly pulled over black drivers.” Lamberth himself praised his research for ruling out the possibility of coincidence – and if you can’t trust Lamberth on his own study, who can you trust?

Largely on the basis of that investigation, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Robert E. Francis threw out the contraband evidence seized from 19 African-American men in traffic stops on the turnpike. New Jersey’s ninny governor, Christie Todd Whitman, pronounced her state’s troopers guilty of racial profiling and agreed to a consent decree with the Department of Justice (DOJ) that basically prohibited the troopers from doing their jobs.

Statisticians, and other people with common sense, tried to explain to liberals that human beings are not identical. Any study purporting to show that too many blacks are stopped for speeding must first determine how many speeders are black.

Being denounced as virtual Klansmen, the state troopers demanded a real study.
Confident that any new study would merely serve to confirm the troopers' racism, the DOJ and the New Jersey attorney general commissioned a statistical investigation from the Public Services Research Institute in Maryland.

The institute’s study was a spectacular thing. Using expensive monitors with high-speed cameras and radar detectors, they clocked the speeds of nearly 40,000 drivers on the relevant section of the turnpike. Three researchers then examined the photos to determine the race of the driver – without knowing whether the driver was speeding, which was defined as going more than 80 mph in 65 mph zones.

The result: No racial profiling.

Blacks constituted 25 percent of all speeders and they were 23 percent of drivers stopped for speeding. Controlling for age and gender, blacks sped at about twice the rate of whites. The racial disparity was even greater for drivers exceeding 90 mph.

Inasmuch as the study was irrefutable, Mark Posner, a lefty Clinton holdover in the Bush Justice Department, tried to block it from being released, continuously demanding more information.

But no matter how statisticians fiddled with the data, the results were identical: Blacks were twice as likely to speed as whites – and at much higher speeds. The troopers were completely vindicated.

When the study finally leaked – over Posner’s objections – he informed the press it wasn’t “valid” without articulating any actual problems with it. The attorney general of New Jersey, David Samson, nonsensically said the results didn’t matter because New Jersey had already admitted its troopers were engaging in racial profiling.

Perhaps the Times is right and there is no comprehensive study of police shootings by race. But it’s also possible that there is one, it didn’t come out as planned, so it has never seen the light of day.

Rush Limbaugh: New Media Prevented Mainstream Media from Turning 'Gentle Giant' into Rodney King

Rush Limbaugh: New Media Prevented Mainstream Media from Turning 'Gentle Giant' into Rodney King

Rush Limbaugh said the mainstream media, as desperately as they tried, could not turn "gentle giant" Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson after Brown allegedly charged and beat him, into Rodney King because of today's new media.
Even though Rodney King resisted the arrest of officers who tried all they could to detain him without using force, the nation never got to see the full video. Instead, the mainstream media used an edited one-minute clip of officers brutally beating King after he charged them to fan the flames, trying to hammer home the notion that white police officers stopped a black motorist and senselessly beat him like a dog in cold blood.
Similarly, after Michael Brown's death, the mainstream media tried to paint a picture of Brown as a victim whom a white and racist officer "executed" in cold blood, while Brown was on his knees with his hands up and back turned. But they could not get away with it this time, 22 years after the Rodney King incident that ultimately led to extreme civil unrest and the Los Angeles riots.
Limbaugh said that the difference today "is that there is an entire, very large media and otherwise apparatus that is aligned and empowered and in action, specifically aimed at denying the myth makers a free road, a free rein to write whatever story they want."
"It's the story of the alternative media. It's the story of talk radio destroying the monopoly of the Drive-By Media," Limbaugh declared on his Friday radio show, emphasizing that the mainstream media "no longer get to dictate what is the news" and "no longer get to dictate what doesn't get reported or told."
"They no longer get to dictate commentary about it. They are challenged on virtually every assertion they make, be it the writing of a myth, be it the ignoring of a certain piece of evidence in the story, be it lying about certain things," Limbaugh added.
The conservative icon said that, with the rise of new media, "there are watchdogs everywhere making sure" that the mainstream press "don't have a free road anymore, a free, open road to write any incident the way they want it written."
"Well, now, there are people willing to stand up, go to great lengths to call 'em out on this, so they simply don't have a free road." Limbaugh continued. "And they're not used to this kind of opposition, even though it's not new now. They've never learned how to fight."
Limbaugh noticed that "CNN is noticeably down" because, even in their headlines, "it's beginning to dawn on them that the myth might not prevail here." Headlines have included, "It's starting to return to normal in Ferguson" and "the credibility of key witnesses in question." He noted that even the New York Times conceded, even though it was in paragraph 26, that the police officer was "beaten up" and "still taken to the hospital."
Limbaugh said the original story of "the gentle giant walking innocently down the street on the way to grandmother's house, eagerly thinking about the soon-to-commence college classes, shot in the back by a racist white St. Louis cop" is falling apart.
After the mainstream press tried to rebuild the myth of the "gentle giant," surveillance video of his strong-arm robbery was released, "and the gentle giant was no longer gentle," Limbaugh noted.
"He was a thief. Forty-four dollar box of Swisher Sweets, and furthermore, he was abusive to the clerk, shoving him away, as the clerk attempted to keep him from walking out of the store with the stolen cigars," Limbaugh said. "Then we learn from an autopsy conducted by the myth makers that the gentle giant was not shot from behind. And then we learned that the gentle giant actually did reach into the car and may have attempted to get the cop's gun. And so then a number of witnesses came forward, but many of them are beginning to lose credibility."
In light of these facts, Limbaugh said, "the myth is getting a little harder to hold onto, because if there was ever any real media scrutiny involved, the myth could not survive."
"You can see that watching CNN, there's not this confidence that the myth, as originally created, is gonna hold up, simply because it can't," he said. "You can tell by watching CNN that something's happened, and it's no longer the slam dunk that everybody thought it was, even two days ago."
Six years after the Los Angeles riots, Matt Drudge changed the media landscape forever by breaking the story of Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, which the legacy press tried to conceal. New and alternative media have continued to gain more influence since, and Limbaugh observed that liberals who have been coddled by the mainstream press have "never been in the ring" and have "never had to deal with never-ending, constant media, oppressive attention, attempting to find any flaw to write them out of any story, to discredit them, to destroy them."
"Leftists really don't know what to do when the media turns on 'em, even for the smallest things, even for the briefest of moments. Because leftists have been treated so slavishly and with such sycophancy by members of the Drive-By Media that they just aren't prepared to do battle," he said. "They're not prepared to deal with people calling them on lies. They're not prepared. They haven't been toughened up."
Since "this is something the left has no experience with," Limbaugh said, "they panic when there is the slightest bump in the road." Limbaugh emphasized that young, liberal upstarts enhance their resumes by taking out "Republicans and other wealthy people," but they "very rarely" try to "to destroy Democrat people of power."
He said that after new media outlets exposed the many lies, edits, and omissions of the mainstream press after Trayvon Martin's death, the mainstream press took it on the chin. But he said the legacy media "keep trying" to "manufacture it in such a way that it looks no different than what happened in the 1960s because in that way, nothing's changed. We have made no progress. We're still a racist nation. We still have white cops who will shoot a black kid on sight for no reason whatsoever. Nothing's improved in America on that score."
Limbaugh concluded that new media outlets must always be on alert, though, and never underestimate the "myth makers" in the mainstream press who want the country to believe "that white cops shoot innocent black kids all the time," even though that is not remotely true.
"The myth makers have not given up by any stretch," he warned.

Are Terrorists Targeting Police in Ferguson?

Are Terrorists Targeting Police in Ferguson?

And is Radley Balko a reliable reporter?

Radley Balko, the controversial writer driving much of the media discussion over police “militarization,” has a controversial history of getting important facts wrong. We are seeing how wrong he was in the terrorism taking place in Ferguson, Missouri.
....

As we noted yesterday, Balko’s Wall Street Journal article on the alleged “militarization” of the police was so full of inaccuracies that it was later attached to a very unusual 200-word correction. He has been exaggerating the degree to which police agencies at various levels of government have been using military equipment and tactics.

In another case, it took Balko a year to correct some false statements he made about a marijuana investigation and law enforcement visit to the home of someone named Cathy Jordan.

On March 17, he posted “A belated correction” at The Washington Post in which he said, “I did draw some conclusions in the post that I shouldn’t have.” Balko had claimed that deputies used “paramilitary” tactics and had brought “the boot down upon Cathy Jordan’s neck.” He now admits these claims were false.

....

Al Jazeera’s Ferguson Publicity Stunt

Al Jazeera’s Ferguson Publicity Stunt

We are seeing the herd mentality of the media at work in coverage of Ferguson, Missouri, and even some conservatives have joined the pack. Jonathan V. Last wrote in The Weekly Standard newsletter that arrived in my inbox on Wednesday that “a TV news crew was assaulted by police officers” in Ferguson. That claim is false.
....we reported on August 18 that “The film footage supplied by Al Jazeera only showed one of the correspondents being ‘caught in the crossfire’ when a tear gas canister was shown near the news crew. It was not clear where it came from or who threw it.”

So a tear gas canister being discovered near a news crew and thrown by someone has become an “assault” by the police. This is absurd. The film footage actually showed an Al Jazeera reporter walking into the tear gas, rather than away from it. The incident seemed staged, probably to generate ratings for a propaganda channel that is desperately seeking viewers.

.

The Weekly Standard’s treatment of the alleged assault is another unfortunate example of journalists making serious errors in judgment about events they did not witness. But the fact that an influential publication such as this would fall for the propaganda shows how the narrative about alleged police misbehavior has taken hold in the media. “When you have Kevin Williamson, Mark Steyn, and Ross Douthat all lined up to criticize the police in Ferguson, Missouri, you know that something is happening,” wrote Jonathan Last. “Part of the reason some conservatives are turning on law enforcement is the militarization of the police.”

But perhaps they have overreacted to a liberal version of events promoted by “news” organizations that want to find the police guilty of being prepared for the worst.

In the Al Jazeera case, it appears that the “news” channel contributed to its own reporters getting gassed because of their bright camera lights on the street that caused confusion. As indicated in our previous report on this incident, the tear gas was probably thrown at the outside agitators and demonstrators, but was falsely interpreted by the propaganda channel to have been directed at them. That enabled Al Jazeera reporters to pose as the victims of law enforcement. This generated some publicity for the ratings-starved channel.

Fortunately, some writers and commentators are starting to set the record straight about the police response.

Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag writes that “The militarization of the police was a response to left-wing violence and terror.” In a devastating article, he notesthat:

• “If the left hadn’t spent much of the last century inciting race riots and setting up terrorist groups, there wouldn’t be police officers armed for war.”

• “If not for the left’s disastrous social experiments, the War on Drugs would never have been necessary.”

• “Finally, if the left hadn’t shifted immigration over to the Third World while sympathizing with Islamic terrorists, September 11 and its law enforcement and military aftermath would never have been necessary.”

In the case of Ferguson, he writes, “Stripping away the rioting and looting from the police in riot gear made the law enforcement response seem deranged and insane. It’s only when we see the rioting, the looting and the arson, the shots fired and Molotov cocktails thrown that the heavy gear suddenly has a context.”

In his piece, “Reject the ‘Militarized’ Police Screed,” William R. Hawkins writes, “Perhaps the irresponsible hyperbole about the ‘militarized police’ will fade now that the mob violence in Ferguson has required the calling out of an element of the real military, the Missouri National Guard.” He hopes that “the dangerous flirtation too many supposedly conservative pundits had with left-wing rhetoric will now be seen as an embarrassing episode not to be repeated.”

Alfred S. Regnery writes at Breitbart that “A Google search for militarization of police would make an innocent think that cops in battle gear and AR-15s, riding around in tanks and armored personnel carriers, are on every corner in every town and city in the United States.” He goes on to say that the misuses of military equipment by police in some cases “are far outweighed by the effective demonstration and use of ‘militarization’ by law enforcement” in many others. “To condemn the practice overall because of a handful of misuses makes no more sense than to ban the purchase and ownership of handguns, rifles, and shotguns because a few people misuse them.”

Yet, the reaction by many in the liberal and conservative media to seeing police in military gear and with military equipment was one of horror. That is why the term “militarization” took off in acceptance. It took on a new and more ominous tone in the work of a libertarian writer named Radley Balko, whose articles have been characterized by gross exaggerations and inaccuracies.

It is a legitimate area of inquiry, but the media have mostly fallen for Balko’s distortions.

Jim Simpson wrote about this topic in an AIM special report, “Police Militarization, Abuses of Power, and the Road to Impeachment.” But as veteran crime blogger Tina Trent points out, Simpson focused almost exclusively on federal agency interventions, and he did not carelessly conflate federal behavior with that of state and local police entities. “He does not exaggerate the incidence or significance of events,” Trent noted. “Nor does he deny or minimize the criminal conditions that demand police response.”

Trent commented about Simpson’s work for AIM: “He offers balanced reporting, acknowledging that while select excessive actions can be identified after the fact, they are extremely rare, and state and local agencies are responsible and responsive while performing legitimate, high-danger, high-stress jobs and have excellent records of efficiently protecting the public from real threats.”

By contrast, she says, “Knee-jerk anti-cop activists like Radley Balko and his peers behave as if police are simply sadists who attack innocent people with no provocation.”

Ferguson: New York Times Buries News of Officer Wilson's Injury

Ferguson: New York Times Buries News of Officer Wilson's Injury

What state charges could be filed in the Michael Brown shooting? - The Washington Post

What state charges could be filed in the Michael Brown shooting? - The Washington Post

Ferguson | Mike Brown | Trayvon Martin | George Zimmerman

Ferguson | Mike Brown | Trayvon Martin | George Zimmerman

The Emerging Junta | National Review Online

The Emerging Junta | National Review Online

Here is what happened. In the run-up to the 2012 election, senior IRS executives including Lois Lerner, then the head of the IRS branch that oversees the activities of tax-exempt nonprofit groups, began singling out conservative-leaning organizations for extra attention, invasive investigations, and legal harassment. The IRS did not target groups that they believed might be violating the rules governing tax-exempt organizations; rather, as e-mails from the agency document, the IRS targeted these conservative groups categorically, regardless of whether there was any evidence that they were not in compliance with the relevant regulations. Simply having the words “tea party,” “patriot,” or “9/12” (a reference to one of Glenn Beck’s many channels of activism) in the name was enough. Also targeted were groups dedicated to issues such as taxes, spending, debt, and, perhaps most worrisome, those that were simply “critical of the how the country is being run.” Organizations also were targeted based on the identity of their donors. Their applications were delayed, their managements harassed, and the IRS demanded that they answer wildly inappropriate questions, such as the content of their prayers. When an internal review threatened to expose the fact that, in the words of the IRS’s inspector general, the agency was “using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status,” Ms. Lerner staged an event at a tax-law conference at which she used a planted questioner to preemptively disclose the issue on her own terms, and the agency began claiming that the tea-party targeting, while regrettable, was the work of a few misguided agents at a satellite office in Cincinnati. In fact, the direction came from Washington and was, in the words of the agency’s own e-mails, “coordinated with” a senior manager there, Rob Choi, director of rulings and agreements. This began at the behest of Democratic officeholders, including Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who requested that the IRS disclose to him information about tea-party groups that it would have been illegal for the IRS to disclose. It subsequently emerged that IRS officials had intentionally misled members of Congress and investigators about the matter. During this period, IRS operatives were, according to the Office of Special Counsel, openly campaigning for the reelection of Barack Obama on IRS time using IRS resources. A few were later disciplined for their actions, but the extent of the political activity of IRS agents remains unknown.

The IRS is not just a revenue agency — it is a law-enforcement agency, a police agency with far greater powers of investigation and coercion that any normal police force. Its actions in this matter are not only inappropriate — they are illegal. Using government resources for political ends is a serious crime, as is conspiring to mislead investigators about those crimes. But so far, other than holding Lois Lerner in contempt for refusing to comply with the demands of congressional investigators, almost nothing has happened. The characteristic feature of a police state is that those who are entrusted with the power to enforce the law are not themselves bound by it.

Context is again here important. The IRS scandal is not a standalone issue but comes at a time when the Democratic party is seeking to radically expand the power of the federal government to regulate political speech; we can safely assume that the same people who were using the IRS’s political-speech regulations for political ends will have precisely the same motives and precisely the same opportunity to use other political-speech regulations for precisely the same political ends: to benefit their allies and persecute their enemies. So committed are the Democrats to keeping their critics under the thumb of federal police powers that they have introduced an amendment in the Senate that would effectively repeal the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment, those having proved inconvenient to Democrats in Supreme Court rulings such as McCutcheon and Citizens United, the latter case involving a federal attempt to make it a crime to show a film critical of a political figure under unapproved circumstances.

New at Reason: Greg Beato on Pepper Spray’s Progressive Origins

New at Reason: Greg Beato on Pepper Spray’s Progressive Origins

via Hit & Run on 12/1/11

Pepper spray is in the air. In late September, a New York cop started spritzing Occupy Wall Street protestors with the predatory zeal of a Macy's fragrance demonstrator dispensing free samples of Kim Kardashian's latest perfume. Then, Seattle's finest chemically neutralized an 84-year-old grannie. Next there was Lt. John Pike in central California, quelling a very quiet riot on the campus of UC Davis.
Now, perhaps, may not seem like the most auspicious time to champion pepper spray as a populist triumph, the eye-searing embodiment of some of America's most cherished ideals. But as Greg Beato reminds us, the government's favorite air freshener is also a tool of individual empowerment.
View this article.

When Propaganda Burns More Than Pepper-Spray

When Propaganda Burns More Than Pepper-Spray

via Big Journalism by Liberty Chick on 11/30/11

Today, students, faculty and supporters at the University of California, Davis, have called for a general strike to protest tuition hikes and to demand the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after police pepper-sprayed eleven protesters who blocked a public access way at an #OccupyUCDavis event on November 18th. Students maintain it was Chancellor Katehi who requested the police remove the Occupy encampment and clear access to the facility.  The incident sparked a firestorm of media all across the world and has become a viral phenomenon, and now even an Internet meme.

We stand behind those calling for Chancellor Katehi's resignation.  But not for the reasons they might think.
The events of UC Davis and the way in which the pepper-spray was handled has set a number of dangerous precedents.  In the setting of academia, the rights of the majority of students are being trampled on to appease the tyranny of a minority.  Further, the very system of law and order and its public servants instituted to protect the rights of the public at large have been undermined by incompetent leaders, unable to withstand the growing pressure of a noisy minority and the corrupt media that supports it.  Most importantly, propaganda has established a foothold that is now stronger than ever, and far more dangerous than the short-term effects of pepper spray.
Over the last week, we have seen the media pick up the UC Davis story and run with it, always highlighting the same twenty seconds of one Officer Pike, methodically pepper-spraying eleven "peaceful protesters," while onlookers gasp and scream in horror and dismay.  The public was almost undivided in its immediate condemnation of the act.
But just as Winston Churchill once said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."  Perhaps in this case, it's not so much a lie, but a lot of omissions.
We know now that the Davis 11 locked arms to block the public access way, creating both a safety hazard and barring other students and the public from gaining access to facilities beyond that point.  What the media has never explained is that the protesters were repeatedly warned to clear the path.  Video shows officer Pike, the one with the pepper spray, informing each protester one last time that they would be "subject to the use of force" if they did not voluntarily move.  The protesters acknowledge the warning and hunker down for the consequences.

The media also never provides an accurate portrayal of why the students were protesting in the first place, and what prompted them to block the access way.  In an interview with Democracy Now, UC Davis Sustainable Agriculture student Elli Pearson, one of the protesters in the blockade who was pepper sprayed, reveals the truth.

She describes that the students were there to stand in solidarity with UC Berkeley students and the Occupy Wall Street movement, and to "protest tuition hikes that are happening at public universities all across the nation." Pearson goes on to explain:

"We linked arms and we sat down peacefully to protest their [riot police] presence on our campus, and then at one point we had encircled them [police] and they were trying to leave and trying to clear a path, and so we sat down and linked arms, and said that if they were trying to clear a path they would have to go through us."
When asked if the student protesters were given any sort of warning by police, Pearson responds:
"I believe they told maybe one student or maybe had some dialogue, but certainly not everyone could hear, it wasn't like an announcement that was made."

They intentionally encircled the police and blocked them in.  In doing so, the Davis 11 created a very serious public safety hazard.  But you'd never see that from the same twenty seconds of video splashed across every media outlet.  Not until other bloggers began to delve into the story did the more complete versions of the incident begin to crop up on video.
But by then, the damage was done.
Police Chief Annette Spicuzza and two officers, including Lt. John Pike, have already been placed on administrative leave, and petitions calling for their resignation have been collected.  Videos and internet memes of the "Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop" have gone viral.  The hacktivist collective Anonymous posted Pike's information online and encouraged people to call and harass the officer.  YouTube has since removed the video for violating its policies, so the transcript of the video is as follows:

Greetings police forces of the world. We are Anonymous.
Since the beginning of the Occupy movement we have watched as police violence toward the otherwise peaceful protestors has steadily increased. Your brutalization of our citizens is both unjust and uncalled for. Your raids on our encampments and the illegal actions of corrupt officers within your ranks will no longer go unpunished.
Any officer found to be guilty of these crimes against peaceful protestors will be doxed and have their personal information released to the public. It is time you take a dose of your own medicine and stop hiding behind your badge.
U. C. Davis Campus Police, Lieutenant John Pike, Records Unit Manager.
You pepper sprayed a crowd of peaceful students sitting on the ground. You are a coward, and a bully.
A tool of the corrupt. A puppet for your masters.
Citizens of the world, flood his home phone at [REDACTED].
Flood his cell phone at [REDACTED].
Flood his email at, [REDACTED].
Flood his home with pizza deliveries and junk mail at [HOME ADDRESS REDACTED].
Flood his skype at [REDACTED].
Flood his phones, email and mailbox to voice your anger.
Flood the campus of U.C. Davis.
Flood the streets of the world and stand up for your rights, and against injustice.
We are Anonymous. We Are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us!

All of this before anyone could hear or see the other side of the story.
Other law enforcement personnel have explained that pepper spray is often used as a compliance tool when necessary.  "People don't consider what it takes to break up an unlawful assembly if the protestors refuse to disperse. It always takes some kind of force," said one law enforcement worker we spoke with.  The officers needed to remove the protesters, who'd linked arms to form a blockade.  Reaching in to manually break them apart would have required the use of physical force, while leaving the officers' weapons vulnerable to seizure.  In that case, most procedures indicate that pepper-spray is justified and the most humane of all options.  While it creates temporary discomfort for the protestors, it enables the officers to safely contain, and in this case, arrest the protesters in order to remove them from blocking the public's access.  Protesters have since admitted, they intentionally surrounded the police and blocked them in.  While the video footage shown on mainstream media may not appear this way, the complete footage that has since surfaced clearly backs up the officers' claims.
Police officers are public servants, they are people too.  Where are they supposed to turn when a situation has become so politicized that they aren't supported by their own chain of command?  Did these officers not have a right for the full video to be reviewed and an investigation conducted before being judged?
In March, some of the very same protesters encountered similar events during the March 4^th Day of Action to Defend Public Education (video & photos), when protesters blocked a major California highway in a standoff with police, then went on to "Occupy" buildings and classrooms at UC Davis.  One of those participants listed was Kase Wheatley, the same protester featured in the high-end raincoat and overalls at the November 18^th event as one of the Davis 11 in the video that's appeared all over the media.  Clearly, Kase is no stranger to such conflict, and apparently came prepared.
You see, Kase and other students like him have been at this for some time, supporting union causes like unionized teaching assistants at UC Davis and protesting union busting on behalf of AFSCME.

"The UC system has actually hired one of the premiere union busting firms in the country to basically break up the unions on campus," Wheatley said.  "They're all connected, it's happening all over the world. It's happening with riots and protests in Tunisia and Egypt, and all the way to the United States."

Instead of pointing out Kase's activism experience to provide balance, media outlets like MSNBC have exalted Kase to martyr status, where he was most recently heralded by Michael Moore, who calls the incident an iconic moment in the Occupy movement akin to "Tiananmen Square."

The ramifications of the pepper spray incident reach further than the topic of the use of force.  Too many fail to realize that 200 protesters in a school of over 30,000 tuition paying students is a tiny minority, less than 1 percent.  What about the 99 percent in this case?  The 99 percent who want to go about their daily routines, be safe on their college campus, not be afraid to voice their own opinions, and want to attend the classes they're paying for?
There is no better example of this majority than a young woman and a young man who spoke up at a Town Hall meeting that was held with Chancellor Katehi and other administrators from UC Davis.  As the woman so eloquently stated:

"My concern is what the events of the last week have been doing to the quality of our education. I know that myself personally I've already had two days worth of classes canceled by the professors, I expect to have more classes canceled on Monday with the general strike and I don't think I'm alone in this.  As was just stated, we have midterms coming up, we have finals coming up, and it's both ironic and sad that one of the initial starting points of this movement was to defend the right to education by not making it a classist place, and I do feel as though within the last week we have had some of those rights taken away from us.  Not only are we not able to attend class because of noise, but classes are actually being canceled, we don't have the option to go."

Why Does The Media Hate The Police?

Why Does The Media Hate The Police?

via Big Journalism by Accuracy in Media on 11/28/11

From Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid:

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News attacked the police at UC Davis during a recent broadcast. He said the demonstrators were just "sitting on a sidewalk peacefully protesting" when they were pepper-sprayed. Inviting members of his viewing audience to take the side of the protesters, he said, "Imagine those are your kids sitting on the sidewalk." In fact, some of those "kids" were non-student agitators. They were locked arm-in-arm and had refused reasonable and repeated requests to move. They were threatening the educational atmosphere on campus by erecting a tent city that was luring increasing numbers of criminal outsiders. They wanted a confrontation and got it. What's more, they got it on film, making sure they could portray the police in the worst possible light, without context or background to the confrontation that should have been avoided.
Doesn't Brian Williams have the ability to get facts on the ground before going public with sensational and wild allegations against the police?

Sitting in the comfort of his New York studio, Williams ignored the statement issued by Linda P.B. Katehi, the Chancellor of UC Davis, when she noted that "…on Thursday a group of protesters including UC Davis students and other non-UC Davis affiliated individuals established an encampment of about 25 tents on the Quad." Notice the reference to "non-UC Davis affiliated individuals," including outside agitators.

Katehi said, "The group was reminded that while the university provides an environment for students to participate in rallies and express their concerns and frustrations through different forums, university policy does not allow such encampments on university grounds."
So the radicals were there in violation of university policy, interfering with the rights of others. The head of a college or university clearly had a responsibility to act under those circumstances.

The chancellor went on:

"On Thursday, the group stayed overnight despite repeated reminders by university staff that their encampment violated university policies and they were requested to disperse. On Friday morning, the protestors were provided with a letter explaining university policies and reminding them of the opportunities the university provides for expression. Driven by our concern for the safety and health of the students involved in the protest, as well as other students on our campus, I made the decision not to allow encampments on the Quad during the weekend, when the general campus facilities are locked and the university staff is not widely available to provide support."

So the chancellor wanted to keep the campus safe on the weekend, for the benefit of the real students who were there. Was she expected to let more and more outsiders assemble on campus, to the detriment of the students paying to get an education?

She continued:

"During the early afternoon hours and because of the request to take down the tents, many students decided to dismantle their tents, a decision for which we are very thankful. However, a group of students and non-campus affiliates decided to stay. The university police then came to dismantle the encampment. The events of this intervention have been videotaped and widely distributed. As indicated in various videos, the police used pepper spray against the students who were blocking the way."

Clearly, Brian Williams of NBC News misled his viewers about what these "kids" really did. They flouted the law, interfering with the rights of others.
Veteran FBI agent Rick Hahn said he had a response to Williams' request for parents to judge the "students." He said:

"I want my child to obey the law. Therefore, if my child is ordered by police to clear an area, I expect my child to respect that and obey the law. If my child does not obey the law, then, I expect my child to be arrested. Why?  Because my child did not obey the law. And if my child resists arrest, I expect the police to forcibly affect the arrest. Why? Because that is their duty."

In order to make the point that the police were somehow going beyond their lawful duty and authority, Brian Williams said they were "methodically spraying students with debilitating law enforcement-grade thick pepper spray that's meant to cover like spray paint." Notice the use of the inflammatory language designed to incite public sentiment against the police, who were being encircled by the demonstrators as they tried to move the offenders.
As Rick Hahn points out, the use of pepper spray was designed to reduce problems caused by the physical relocation of the protesters. He says:

"If the police choose to forcibly effect the arrest not by merely physically engaging my child, an action that could lead to serious injury to both my child and the police officers involved, but rather by taking another step to diminish the physical ability of my child to resist arrest, say by dispersing pepper spray or tear gas, I accept that. After all, my child has broken the law by refusing to comply with a police order and has escalated the situation by resisting arrest. Is it therefore reasonable to hope that rather than engaging my child in physical combat, wrestling, punching or worse using billy clubs or truncheons, that the police disperse a chemical to make my child less resistant and, hence, less likely to be injured? My answer is yes, by all means it is reasonable."

Hahn, a veteran of the FBI's battles against domestic terrorists and communists, added, "Perhaps Brian Williams and much of his audience are too young to remember the beatings by fisticuffs and billy clubs that marked the various confrontations between police and demonstrators in the 1960s, but I remember well. Heads were beaten, arms were broken, and people were kicked, bitten and bloodied in physical contests of arrest and resist between police and demonstrators. It was ugly, and I'm sure that many of the demonstrators and police still carry the damage from those wounds to this day."

Some of those confrontations were engineered by members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), whose leaders had been to Cuba to learn tactics of confrontation and even guerrilla warfare. It is time to examine who and what is behind the "Occupy" movement and why billionaire George Soros is financing it.

By attacking the police for their rational and reasonable response to unlawful protests, media coverage of the kind demonstrated by Brian Williams makes it almost certain that there will be more escalation. Chancellor Katehi is already on the defensive, apparently thinking that pandering to the protesters will save her job.

The situation is dire: the campus police chief and two police officers were put on administrative leave, Chancellor Katehi was shouted down at a demonstration while trying to apologize, and the radicals have erected their tents again. The mobs are taking over UC Davis.
The losers will include real students there for a real education, unless they organize quickly to safeguard their rights. Katehi should take a strong stand in favor of law and order on campus, support the police and quickly reinstate the chief and the officers unfairly and hastily put on leave. That is the only way to restore public confidence in her running of the university.

Assault And Pepper | Wizbang

Assault And Pepper | Wizbang

Some key points here:

– The officers informed the protesters that they were about to start pepper spraying, and the protesters were cool with that.

– The officers detained several protesters at the outset.

– The crowd didn’t like that, started demanding the officers release them, and surrounded the officers.

No, the protesters weren’t being aggressive. But they weren’t exactly passive, either — they were pulling the classic passive-aggressive move. They were doing all they could to piss off the officers without provoking them.

I still stand by my earlier argument: of all their options, they took the least worst one.

A pepper spray series

A pepper spray series

via Bookworm Room by Bookworm on 11/22/11

From Zombie, who comments on the gaggle of giggling girls who gleefully relive their pepper spray experience,
and
From Castra Praetoria, who's been pepper sprayed a few times himself (but all in the line of duty),
and also
From James Taranto, who notes that a lack of actual aggression doesn't mean that the protesters weren't engaging in the type of activity that calls for police crowd control of the physical variety.