Thursday, December 4, 2014

White Cop, Black Victim:

Update: Now it's Friday……I give up.

Update: It is now 5:00 Thursday, Dec. 4 and as of yet there is NO mention of Eric Garner on the online website front page.

Ignorance and indifference is alive and well here in knoxville….
at least in the the KNOXVILLE NEWS, on-line version anyway, our source of all news they feel you need to know. Not one word about the Eric Garner grand jury "no bill" decision and the resulting peaceful demonstrations in New York City and across the country. Just a few disparaging stories on the Michael Brown decision…mostly from the perspective of "those black thugs asked for it." (Of course I'm sure folks around here are pissed off that a sympathetic demonstration was going on  at the University of Tennessee…those disruptions were brought to the fore.) I don't remember reading but a paragraph about Tamar Rice, at the twelve year old shot by a cop, either. 

Folks around here get all their news from FOX. What more do you need? Well, maybe they at least heard this in passing: Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX staple as a legal analyst, stated that the death was negligent homicide.

The officer who caused the death of Eric Garner is not new to such behavior.
".. Pantaleo falsely claimed that he saw crack and heroin in the backseat of the car—everyone in the vehicle was arrested, but the charges were subsequently dismissed."

The policeman that killed Tamar Rice was already fired once, and unfit for duty.
According to the personnel file, supervisors questioned Loehmann's maturity and were already in the process of removing him from the police department when he left."

Not to mention the baldly farcical grand jury hearing held by Prosecutor McCulloch, who led the jury in the direction he wanted by "dumping" all evidence on them with no instruction, discarding witnesses who did not conform to his version of what happened, and giving false instructions to the jury of nine white and three black persons. I didn't even mention that Darren Wilson was allowed to tell his rehearsed "testimony", unquestioned' for four hours……highly unusual.

"Also, the assistant to the prosecutor gave the jurors an outdated…now illegal…law on which to judge all the "evidence' they were to present. Then after everything was presented she said, in essence "oh, never mind…we goofed….my bad."

Nobody is saying that Michael Brown was totally innocent. Nobody is denying that Eric Garner had not been in trouble before. Yes, Tamar Rice had a fake gun…as did John Crawford in Beavercreek, Ohio (my Alma Mater, by the way). But what the heck is wrong in a country that now has a militarized police force that feels the "shoot first, ask questions later" route is the way to go? Are these "big strong guys" now afraid of ALL black people? Is human life…somebody else's anyway…that unimportant to them? Has the "us versus them" mentality that the Right loves to push on media such as FOX and RW radio really taken hold? 
I am totally disgusted….and the people here in Knoxville are more concerned with which new restaurant to go to, the Vols finally going to a Bowl game once more, or when the First Baptist Church is having it's Christmas program…..

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