This Week in Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf's Podhoretz Prescience (1/29)
David Shasha
Bari Weiss Podhoretz Prescience (1): I Really Love Bill Barr!
On Thursday we again learned that Trumpscum degenerate Bill Barr consistently violated the DOJ requirement of neutrality under the Rule of Law, with his antinomian attempt to undermine the Mueller RUSSHER COLLOOSION probe by working overtime with Trumpscum Idiot John Durham to promote Conspiracy Theories in the Lysol QAnon manner:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/q8vTm2xFdco
I was intending to post The New York Times exposé of the truly degenerate Banana Republic AG on Sunday along with the SHU, but after reading the report it quickly became apparent that it had turned into a lightning rod issue on cable news, so I chose to post it on Friday morning, along with the special newsletter on Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf and her corrupt BFF:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/KQcGVju_8V4
The ever-prescient Weiss, of course, never apologizes, or ever examines herself and her horrible Neo-Con racist ideas, so it was no surprise that her other BFF, the equally vile Bill Maher, joined with her in giving us a prime piece of Banana Republic AG enabling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q151r4c33Hc
Maher is always happy to provide a welcoming venue for the Trumpscum Seditionists, and his Barr softball interview was par for the course.
That he did not know about the NYT report is no excuse.
Weiss and Maher still owe all of us an apology.
Bari Weiss Podhoretz Prescience (2): Blue Lives Matter!
For those who might have missed it, I posted Weiss’ prescient “Free” Press article on the perennial Trumptheme, Blue Lives Matter, with my comments:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/HBSuRO7DDY0
The complete post, which includes the offending article, follows this note.
On Friday night, the Memphis PD released the very confusing video footage of the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X60z-yNVz5U
The key part of the video, the actual murderous beating, was not captured by police bodycams, but by a camera that appeared to be across the street from the violence.
It was far more difficult to actually see the details of the atrocity than even the notorious Rodney King video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9JiIdsjfjo
In any case, I wanted to compliment Weiss, who, just moments after the Nichols video release, violated the Shabbos by appearing on Maher’s show, where the first item up for discussion was the Nichols murder by five African-American policemen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxQTq5b7its
BLUE LIVES MATTER!
Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf is on top of it!
She appeared along with LOSER Tim Ryan, who helped bring Trumpscum Seditionist J.D. Vance to the U.S. Senate:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/opinions/ohio-us-senate-ryan-vance-meaning-sracic/index.html
Prompted by Maher’s pathetically racist introduction (he ignored both the Nichols murder and the Barr NYT report in his monologue), Ryan and Weiss began the segment with a vigorous defense of the police and excoriating Anti-Racism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxQTq5b7its
The Zombie Orange Pig was kvelling!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noCx808TvZU
All the sympathy was for the killer cops, who are underpaid and unhappy, because some of them are now being held to account.
Which, sadly, did not save the life of Tyre Nichols; an unarmed Black man who had done nothing wrong when he was pulled over and murdered.
As I continue to say, police are to be held accountable for their crimes, while Weiss believes that we should pity them as they continue to exhibit a lethal form of White Supremacy.
And we should well note that Weiss and Maher made the spurious claim of “Black on Black” crime; as if the Black cops were not themselves aware of their own White Supremacy.
Indeed, they were oblivious to the fact that they had internalized the universal police culture that would have killed them if they were driving home from work.
Driving while Black is a very lethal proposition.
More than this, it needs to be pointed out the irony of the fact that, unlike similar police brutality cases involving White cops, these African-Americans were immediately fired and the video released.
The following NYT article clarifies the matter:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/us/police-tyre-nichols-beating-race.html
The complete article follows this note.
In the end, the Weiss Maher segment was a piece of racist tripe which ignored the problems of African-Americans and continued to promote the Trumpist Blue Lives Matter Fascism.
It is the Tikvah Rufo way.
Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf just cannot help herself.
It is all AMERICA FIRST!
And that massive cash influx does not hurt one bit.
David Shasha
Trumpscum Bengelsdorf Bari “Blue Lives Matter” Weiss Goes Norman Podhoretz Irving Kristol Ballistic
There really is a through-line on all this week’s Zalman Bernstein TGIFs.
On Thursday Bari Podhoretz Weiss gave us a pure Trumpscum “Blue Lives Matter” piece of Podhoretz propaganda:
The complete article follows this note.
The article’s author Leighton Woodhouse is a true Weiss loyalist, as he recently promoted the Elon Musk “Twitter Files” fraud:
First, we must recall how Trump himself used the “Blue Lives Matter” issue to get in good with his White Supremacist followers:
Second, we should be aware that the article’s protagonist Tracy McCray had issues with now-removed San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, the bete noire of the Right Wingers:
We should also be aware that the California police are dealing with the murder of one Keenan Anderson, who was the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors:
This lays out the context for the tendentious article on police officers leaving the fold, many going to the White Suburbs, where they can be with their “people.”
It will be recalled that the spate of police killings helped create BLM, which in turn pressured for accountability:
With the help of Traitor Joe, the proposed George Floyd Policing Act was not passed:
Let it be said clearly that police officers have a very difficult job, and that crime is a real problem, especially in the COVID era.
That said, police, like any other Americans, need to follow the Law and should be held accountable when they break the Law.
We know that it has been easier for police to evade the Law because of protections like Qualified Immunity:
https://www.cato.org/study/how-qualified-immunity-hurts-law-enforcement
Weiss’ aim here is to promote a Trumpist version of policing, using PILPUL methods to bamboozle the reader into submitting to the White Supremacist position, as was the case in the Neo-Con movement of Commentary magazine:
https://www.nationalreview.com/1999/06/my-new-york-norman-podhoretz/
It is all about promoting fear of Blacks and other minorities.
As I keep saying, it is important to note the stories that Weiss has remained silent on.
DEATH SENTENCE and his own White Supremacist Cancel Culture.
Attacking the AP African-American Studies course:
Promoting Axis Nazi Duce Hirohito AP History:
And a McCarthyite “search” for Transgender students in Florida colleges:
Nazi Florida is indeed “DeSantis Country”!
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/iNd626mdx3k/m/qpO4rndDBgAJ
And then there is Trump’s frank admission on stealing Classified Documents because they are “Cool Keepsakes”:
https://sports.yahoo.com/trump-boasts-kept-classified-folders-195937891.html
The ongoing George Santos SHANDA:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23520848/george-santos-fake-resume
The Virginia school shooting, perpetrated by a child:
The NRA marketing assault weapons to those children:
https://www.texasobserver.org/firearms-children-youth-market-nra/
https://vpc.org/publications/start-them-young-tactical-rifles-for-kids/
“My Kevin” and his Insurrection caucus taking over key House committee assignments, particularly Homeland Security:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/21-mccarthy-holdouts-got-committee-assignments-rcna66152
The lunatics have taken over the asylum:
And, last but not least, the Israel Lobby’s Cancellation of Human Rights Watch head Ken Roth’s appointment to Harvard:
Which apparently was just reversed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/arts/harvard-israel-antisemitism-roth.html
Cancel Culture is not a problem when it involves those we disagree with!
When it comes to The Tikvah Fund and the Trump Fascism, it is all about what subjects are discussed, how they are discussed, and ultimately what subjects are ignored.
We know where Bari Weiss stands on this score.
David Shasha
America’s Police Exodus
By: Leighton Woodhouse
Last year, Brian Lande, an officer in the Richmond, Calif., police department, had to draw his gun to stop two drunk men from clobbering each other to death with metal rods.
In 2015, he threatened deadly force to stop a fight between two more drunk men. One was armed with a hatchet. Another, with a wrench.
On another occasion, he drew his firearm to arrest a man hopping a backyard fence, fleeing the scene of a burglary.
None of these was remarkable in Richmond, a working-class city just east of San Francisco that’s notorious for its drive-by shootings, break-ins, carjackings, and countless petty crimes.
When I asked Lande if he often had to unholster his gun—a standard-issue Glock 17—he told me he’d done it so many times that “they all bleed into each other.”
Luckily, he’s never had to pull the trigger.
But things could easily have gone south. If a suspect had made a suspicious move or pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a gun—it happens more than you’d think—he would have had less than a quarter of a second to make the most awful decision of his life: whether to kill another human being.
“You’re in an incredibly inauspicious situation,” Lande told me. “The chance of making a good faith mistake is high.”
What that means is that if you’re a cop, you’ve got to be confident that if a tragedy occurs—if a life is taken that should not have been taken—your chief, your city council, the powers that be will at least treat you fairly, hear you out, and ensure that justice is served.
But these days, a growing number of cops aren’t so sure of that. Making the wrong decision is now a lot more likely to land you in prison, Lande explained. “It’s not tenable for my family,” he said. So in early 2022, he started thinking about quitting his dream job.
He was hardly alone.
A 2021 survey showed that police departments nationwide saw resignations jump by 18 percent—and retirements by 45 percent—over the previous year, with hiring decreasing by five percent. The Los Angeles Police Department has been losing 50 officers a month to retirement, more than the city can replace with recruits. Oakland lost about seven per month in 2021, with the number of officers sinking below the city’s legally mandated minimum.
The list goes on: Chicago has lost more cops than it has in two decades. New Orleans is backfilling its shortfall of officers with civilians. New York is losing more police officers than it has since such figures began being recorded. Minneapolis and Baltimore have similar stories. St. Louis—one of the most dangerous cities in America—has lost so many cops that there’s a seven-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide pile of uniforms from outgoing officers at police headquarters called “Mount Exodus.”
And in San Francisco, just across the bay from Richmond, the police department has seen 50 officers out of a force of fewer than 2,000 take off for smaller, suburban departments, according to Lieutenant Tracy McCray, the head of the city’s police union.
“That was a lot of talent for us,” McCray said. “They were great, bright new cops. A couple of them were born and raised in the city.” These were the kind of officers that advocates for reform say they want more of: cops from the communities they police, black cops, Latino cops. “All of their roots they had here,” she said. “They just up and left.”
A big part of what’s prompting police to leave America’s big cities is the perception the public has turned against them. A 2020 poll showed that only seven percent of police officers would advise their kids to go into law enforcement. Eighty-three percent of those who wouldn’t recommend it cited “lack of respect for the profession.”
“Suddenly, everyone is telling us how to do our jobs. They’re saying we’re biased, racist, only want to hurt black and brown communities,” said McCray, who is black. “These officers worked in these communities, were invested in these communities. Suddenly, people who don’t know us are saying you’re this, you’re that.”
The shift in police officers’ perception of how they’re viewed by the public happened gradually—starting with the first Black Lives Matter protests of 2013, after the shooting death of Travyon Martin and the acquittal of the man who killed him, George Zimmerman. There were more BLM demonstrations: in 2014, following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York. Then came the 2015-2016 Democratic presidential primaries, in which BLM played a prominent role.
And then, in late May 2020, George Floyd, a black man, was killed by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, and it was caught on video. The incident ignited protests across the country—a “racial reckoning”—and, soon after, reform.
In some cities, including Portland, Oregon and Columbus, Ohio, local governments set up police review boards with the power to subpoena police records and oversee day-to-day policing. States including Illinois, Minnesota, and Oregon tightened use-of-force standards. New Mexico and Minnesota required officers to intervene if another officer was using what might be deemed unreasonable physical force.
It became popular—even fashionable—for politicians in progressive circles to flaunt their anti-police credentials. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, the city council resolved to “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.” (They reversed course after crime surged.) In New York, after winning the Democratic congressional primary, now-Rep. Jamaal Bowman tweeted: “Police officers have sworn to protect and serve the institution of white supremacy.”
A month later, the ACLU tweeted that “policing is rotten to its core” and “has always been a racist institution in the United States.”
In Portland, Kristina Narayan—the legislative director for Tina Kotek, who was then Oregon’s Speaker of the House and is now the governor—was arrested while participating in anti-police protests at which Molotov cocktails were thrown at the cops.
All of this revealed a disconnect between progressives and much of the rest of the country, including many Democrats: A 2020 New York Times poll showed that 63% of registered voters opposed cutting police budgets while 55% of Biden supporters favored it.
“When I was a cop, we were afraid we might mess up and get in trouble,” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “But you had to do something wrong. Now cops are getting in trouble for doing exactly what they’re supposed to do.”
“The rules of the game changed,” said Brian Lande, the Richmond police officer. He was referring to a 2019 California law that further limits when cops can use force—and more broadly, to the shift in thinking among Democratic elites.
Lande went on: “Let’s say you see a guy, he’s just robbed a bank, he’s got a gun, he’s running now into the preschool.” Once upon a time, that would have been enough to justify using force. Now you’ve got to be confident that a crime is “imminent”—and sometimes you’ve only got milliseconds to figure that out.
If you get it wrong, and if the skin color of the cop and the victim suit the narrative that cops are propping up the institution of white supremacy and wantonly snuffing out black bodies, you could be prosecuted as a murderer.
“Other people who don’t live in your community, but who are speaking on behalf of your community, don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about,” McCray told me. “Black Lives Matter was talking about putting ambassadors on the street—where they at?” Referring to one of San Francisco’s most violent neighborhoods, she added: “Haven’t seen one damn member of Black Lives Matter patrolling the Bayview making sure police aren’t ‘hunting and killing black people.’”
Lande added: “If you’re a cop, you’re like, ‘Ok, well, I guess I’m not going to put myself in situations where that’s likely to occur. So I’m not going to go make traffic stops in places and of people that I think might likely be carrying firearms, because I don’t want to have to get that decision right. That’s too hard.”
In Richmond, the politicians were signaling loud and clear: We don’t like cops.
After the riots in Ferguson, and especially after the murder of George Floyd, the Richmond City Council cut the police budget, forcing hiring freezes. Council members also threatened to slash officers’ salaries by 20 percent.
By last spring, the Richmond Police Department had lost so many officers that those who remained were forced to work overtime 40 to 60 hours per month. That requirement came on top of being forced to work back-to-back shifts when unexpected vacancies opened up. Investigations and traffic enforcement more or less stopped. Burnt-out officers were just doing patrols—driving around passively, waiting for something to happen.
When Lande tried to recruit new officers, cops told him they preferred to go somewhere with a friendlier local government, where they wouldn’t have to fear getting laid off or having their salaries and benefits reduced. Many went to Napa and Sonoma Counties—wine country.
Last September, Lande followed suit and left Richmond. “I felt very conflicted about it,” Lande told me. “Residents of Richmond are disproportionately poorer, disproportionately victims of violent crimes.”
Lande and I had known each other since our graduate school days, studying sociology at Berkeley. He’s one of the most thoughtful and educated—and experienced—cops in the Bay Area. He has published academic papers on how to train the police to interact more effectively with the public. He had studied this question—police-community relations—while on a stint at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the Pentagon.
But research hadn’t been enough for Lande. “As an academic sociologist, I learned quickly that my ability to make a difference was pretty limited,” he said. As a police officer, he went on, “I could make a difference in people’s lives—and I wasn’t bad at it.”
He loved his job in Richmond. But the calculus of policing had changed.
In August, as Lande was preparing to leave, Richmond saw four murders in the span of a week. In the same time period, Oakland, to the south, experienced five murders in three days—and the following month, three homicides in a single hour.
Lande transferred to Kensington, a 15-minute drive away.
Kensington is filled with California craftsman-style bungalows, mid-century ranch houses and Spanish-style villas with Priuses and Teslas out front, and decks with gorgeous views of the San Francisco Bay out back. Black Lives Matters signs are everywhere, reflecting Kensington residents’ solidarity with working-class black people in cities like Richmond—even as Richmond has become less safe as a result of the changes that movement has ushered in.
Life is good: Officer Lande is now Sergeant Lande. His job involves far fewer risks. Much of his day is filled with administrative work at the station. When he goes out on patrol, he mostly writes parking tickets.
But he is not optimistic. “An enormous amount of damage has been done,” he told me. “Instead of seeing real investment in policing, like what we see in Europe, we’ve seen a massive disinvestment.”
In August 2022, President Biden announced his Safer America Plan in response to rising crime. Among other things, it includes plans to hire 100,000 more police officers. That upset the ACLU, which disparaged the plan as “more criminalization and incarceration,” and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which asserted—without providing evidence—that adding police officers would only victimize black people.
Peter Moskos, the former Baltimore police officer now teaching at John Jay College, was mystified by progressives who insist that the single greatest threat faced by black Americans is systemic racism. “Congratulations!” said Moskos, who has called for legalizing drugs in response to the drug war’s ineffectiveness and its disproportionate impact on young black men. “You’ve increased the black murder rate. You’re giving blacks worse policing through this transfer of cops—and doing it smugly in the name of racial justice.”
Leighton Woodhouse is a journalist and documentary filmmaker in Oakland. His last piece for The Free Press was about the mythical origins of Santa Claus.
From The “Free” Press, January 19, 2023
Tyre Nichols Beating Opens a Complex Conversation on Race and Policing
By: Clyde McGrady
The killing of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man in Memphis, at the hands of police has prompted outrage and condemnation from racial justice activists, police reform advocates and law enforcement officials, including the chief of the Memphis Police Department, a Black woman who lobbied for policing changes in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
The fact that the five officers charged with Mr. Nichols’s murder are Black complicates the anguish. It has also brought into focus what many Black people have said is frequently lost in police brutality cases involving white officers and Black victims: that problems of race and policing are a function of an entrenched police culture of aggression and dehumanization of Black people more than of interpersonal racism. It is the system and the tactics that foster racism and violence, they say, rather than the specific racial identities of officers.
“It’s not racism driving this, it’s culturism,” Robert M. Sausedo, the head of a Los Angeles nonprofit formed after the Rodney King beating in 1991, said after watching the video of Mr. Nichols’s beating Friday night.
“It’s a culture in law enforcement where it’s OK to be aggressive to those they’re supposed to serve,” Mr. Sausedo said. But he also commended Los Angeles Police officials for their progress working with the community since the King beating.
Videos released by the city of Memphis on Friday evening, including police body camera footage and shots from a pole-mounted police camera, show Mr. Nichols crying out for his mother while officers hold him down, kick him in the head and punch him.
“We have to talk about this institutionalized police culture that has this unwritten law, you can engage in excessive use of force against Black and brown people,” Ben Crump, the lawyer for Tyre Nichols’s family, said in a television interview.
Many urban police departments have been pushing to diversify their ranks, a strategy policing experts still support as one way to improve practices and law enforcement’s relationship with minority communities.
James Forman Jr., who has studied and written on race and law enforcement, said that asking why the race of the officers did not prevent them from violence against Mr. Nichols loses sight of the systemic forces at work.
“Blackness doesn’t shield you from all of the forces that make police violence possible,” Mr. Forman said. “What are the theories of policing and styles of policing, the training that police receive? All of those dynamics that propel violence and brutality are more powerful than the race of the officer.”
Amber Sherman, an activist and organizer working with the Nichols family as they push for policy changes in the police, said that racism is a clear factor in policing when you look at who the victims of police violence are, not the race of the officers.
Officers of all races “are indoctrinated into a practice that sees Black people and brown people as less than,” Ms. Sherman said.
On social media, some people rejected the idea that racism was to blame, arguing that pointing to systemic policing robs individuals of agency and responsibility.
“Can’t people be bad people motivated by their lack of maturity, self-awareness and inability to discern? Does every incident involving police and black men have to revert back to being an issue in race?” Barrington Martin II, a former Democratic congressional candidate in Georgia, wrote on Twitter.
Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey wrote on Twitter that “It is a warped worldview that can’t grapple with the fact that people of all races do bad things. Black police brutally beating a black man isn’t because of white supremacy, racism or a system. They did it because people have the capacity to do wrong.”
Others expressed disappointment that Black officers did not have more empathy as well as concern that the race of the officers would muddle the issue of entrenched police violence against Black people.
“As an African American, it’s unfortunate that because the officers are Black, people are going to say violence against Blacks is not racially motivated,” said Joel Kellum, 57, a public school teacher in New York City.
“Black cops will do that to Black perps, too,” Mr. Kellum added. “It’s complicated and it’s sad.”
Police reform advocates have long argued that departments should more accurately reflect the demographics of the communities they police as a way to improve policing and help build trust in those communities. In Memphis, 65 percent of the population is Black, and so is 58 percent of its police force.
“We have a very simplistic way of approaching the problem of policing and believing that representation is some kind of silver bullet,” said Professor Jody Armour, a University of Southern California law professor who studies racial justice. “It’s not just a Black and white issue, but a Black and blue one. And when you put on that blue uniform, it often becomes the primary identity that drowns out any other identities that might compete with it.”
Mr. Armour said the Memphis incident shows that it is a “fairy tale” to think that adding more members of a marginalized group in the police will lead to more just and fairer treatment of members of that group.
D’Zhane Parker, of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, one of the organizations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, renewed a call to defund the police, releasing a statement that said the video of Mr. Nichols’s beating “affirms what we’ve known all along: Reform doesn’t work. Incremental progress is too slow. Diversifying a police department will not work.”
Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, a national law enforcement organization, called the reported failure of other officers to intervene in the fatal beating of Mr. Nichols “sickening,” adding: “The event as described to us does not constitute legitimate police work or a traffic stop gone wrong. This is a criminal assault under the pretext of law.”
Late Friday night, the group that represents Memphis police officers offered condolences to the Nichols family but did not specifically address the actions of the officers.
“The Memphis Police Association is committed to the administration of justice and never condones the mistreatment of any citizen nor any abuse of power,” a statement from the association read.
Many police reform activists say diversifying police forces, especially in leadership, has made a difference and remains a worthy goal. (Mr. Nichols himself once considered becoming a police officer as a way of changing policing from the inside, a friend said.)
The fact that Mr. Nichols was assaulted by Black officers “doesn’t mean that we should abandon what’s critical like diversifying police departments,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former prosecutor who is now executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution.
“Individuals who come from communities that are most policed and at times over policed have a right to expect that those who we charge to keep them safe and build their trust come from, and have a connection to, those communities.”
Still Ms. Krinsky acknowledged that police reform has to go beyond diversity. “Because if we hire the right people, but then the culture of the organization, and how they’re trained, and the tone and values that are modeled aren’t the right ones — just having the right people alone isn’t going to be a solution to some of the concerns about police behavior.”
For some Black police reform advocates, the fact that the officers involved are Black has been especially wrenching.
“I think it is really hard to stomach as a Black person when you see everyone involved in the situation is Black,” said Max Markham, of Center for Policing Equity, a group that addresses racial disparities in policing. “Not that it would make you feel better if they were white,” he added.
He is glad the officers were charged swiftly but is disheartened that they may add to the number of incarcerated Black men.
“We have so many Black folks in jail. We have too many Black folks who have been killed,” Mr. Markham said.
Even the speed with which the five officers were charged has elicited complex reactions of both applause and concern that white officers have been treated differently under similar circumstances.
“Let’s be honest, let’s think about this — this is not the first time we saw police officers committing crimes and engaging in excessive, brutal force against Black people in America who are unarmed, but we have never seen swift justice like this,” Mr. Crump, the Nichols family attorney, said.
“We have to make the point exceedingly clear: We now have a blueprint, America, and we won’t accept less going forward in the future,” he said. “We won’t have Black officers treated differently than white officers. We want equal justice under the law.”
Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis’s decision to fire the five officers within two weeks and quickly release videos represents a strategic change in the police response to such incidents. Chief Davis has described the officers’ actions as “horrific, alarming, disappointing” and “sad.” In the past, law enforcement leaders have waited months to pursue charges, if they did at all, and video footage was not always released to the public.
Black leadership is no guarantee that law enforcement will have credibility with the communities they serve. The former police chief of Minneapolis, Medaria Arradondo, who is Black, had criticized his own department over racism and vowed to change it, yet he presided over the department during the murder of George Floyd at the hands of his officers. He fired the officers but could not quell the outbreak of mass protests and the department’s deep rift with the community.
White officers historically “don’t get prosecuted as much” as Black officers, said Sarnie A. Randle Jr., a lawyer in Houston who has handled police abuse cases for decades. “Those are just the facts. Until we see all officers treated equally, I fear we’re going to be here for generations to come.”
Ms. Sherman, the activist working with the Nichols family, supports the prosecution of the officers. But, she says, it is also another way that she sees racism at work.
“At the end of the day, the city and the Police Department reminded them that they are Black men,” Ms. Sherman said, “and they will treat them less than, just like they treated Tyre, and make sure they fire them immediately and prosecute them.”
In downtown Memphis on Friday, Darell Johnson, a contractor, was using a drill to attach plywood to the windows of a loan agency building in case protests took a destructive turn, but by late Friday night they had ended peacefully. Mr. Johnson, 44, who is Black and has lived in Memphis for two decades, said that he was more focused on the tragedy of Mr. Nichols’s death than the fact that the five charged officers were Black.
“The color doesn’t matter,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s just that you had officers taking a guy’s life.”
Robert Chiarito, Douglas Morino, Mitch Smith, Vik Jolly, Jessica Jaglois, Rick Rojas, Remy Tumin, Michael D. Regan, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.
From The New York Times, January 28, 2023