• Mainstream media must have ulterior motive in focusing on rare cases of white police shooting black people while ignoring the massive number of black-on-white crimes.
By Patrick J. Buchanan —
We have found the new normal in America. If you are truly outraged by some action of police, prosecutors, grand juries or courts, you can shut down a great city.
On December 4, thousands of “protesters” disrupted the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, conducted a “lie-in” in Grand Central, blocked Times Square and shut down the West Side Highway that scores of thousands of New Yorkers use to get home.
That the rights of hundreds of thousands of visitors and New Yorkers were trampled upon by these self-righteous protesters did not prevent their being gushed over by TV commentators.
Watching cable, I saw one anguished man cry out from a blocked car that he was trying to get his sick dog to the vet. But his rights were inferior to those of protesters to block traffic, chant slogans and vent their moral outrage to TV cameras.
From New York to Washington to Oakland, crowds acted in solidarity to block main arteries at rush hour.
Has President Barack Obama condemned this? Has Attorney General Eric Holder?
Remarkable. Underlings of Governor Chris Christie have been under investigation for a year for closing off lanes to the George Washington Bridge. Contrast liberal media indignation at Christie with liberal media indulgence of the lawbreaking on December 4 and you will see what people mean when they talk of a moral double standard.
What were these protests about? A grand jury on Staten Island voted not to indict New York Police Department (NYPD) Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner last July. As the video that has gone global shows, Pantaleo sought to arrest Garner, a 6’5”, 350-pound man arrested many times before.
What was Garner doing? Selling cigarettes one by one on a main street, a public nuisance for the stores and shops in front of which he plied his trade, but not a felony and surely not a capital offense. A misdemeanor at most.
As Garner backed away and brushed aside attempts to handcuff him, Pantaleo grabbed him from behind by the neck to pull him down, as other cops swarmed in.
Repeatedly, Garner cried, “I can’t breathe!” On the ground he again cried, “I can’t breathe!” And he died there on the sidewalk.
Undeniably, terrible and tragic. Undeniably, not a natural death. And undeniably the way Garner was brought down and sat upon, an arm around his neck, contributed to, if it did not cause, his death. Yet Garner did not die by strangulation. According to the city medical examiner, he died from the “compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”
In short, the cops were holding him down by sitting on him.
As Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) said on December 4: “If [Garner] had not had asthma and a heart condition and were not so obese, he would not have died.” The Washington Post reports that the medical examiner seemed to confirm this, describing “Garner’s asthma and hypertensive cardiovascular disease as contributing factors.”
Why would a Staten Island grand jury not indict Pantaleo for murder or manslaughter in the death of Garner? In a word, intent.
Did Pantaleo intend to kill Garner when he arrived on the scene? Did Pantaleo arrive intent on injuring Garner? No and no.
Pantaleo was there to arrest Garner, and if he resisted, to subdue him and then arrest him. That was his job.
Did he use a chokehold, which the NYPD bans, or a takedown method taught at the police academy, as Pantaleo’s lawyer contends? That is for the NYPD to decide. The grand jury, viewing the video, decided that the way Pantaleo brought down Garner was not done with any criminal intent to kill or injure him, but to arrest him.
Garner’s death, they decided, was accidental, caused by Pantaleo and the other N.Y. Police Department cops who did not intend his injury or death, with Garner’s asthma and heart disease as contributing factors.
Now that grand jury decision may be wrong, but does it justify wild allegations of “racist cops” getting away with “murder”? This reflexive rush to judgment happens again and again.
We were told Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a white vigilante for “walking while black,” but later learned that Trayvon, when shot, had been beating a neighborhood watch guy nearly unconscious, “martial arts style,” while sitting on top of him.
We were told that Ferguson cop Darren Wilson gunned down an unarmed black teenager for walking in the street, but later learned that Michael Brown just robbed a convenience store, attacked Wilson in his patrol car and was shot trying to wrest away the officer’s gun.
Liberals [and the liberal mainstream media] are imprisoned by a great myth—that America is a land where black boys and men are stalked by racist white cops, and alert and brave liberals must prevent even more police atrocities. They live in a world of the mind.
The reality: As of 2007, black-on-white violent crime was nearly 40 times as common as the reverse. But liberals can’t give up their myth, for it sustains their pretensions to moral superiority. It defines who they are.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book THE GREATEST COMEBACK: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.
Open border a**holes are to blame for what is happening to the USA and it is almost funny watching them decry the police state they are responsible for.
Granted, police do protect us also, and we appreciate that, only the good cannot justify wrong. I see how young men put their lives on the line of duty as criminal offenses are increasing, but there is a great moral falling away and we must return to decency and order, to the golden rule, fatherhood of God and brotherhood of men. It is a choice each of us must make and then stick with it! A noble cause that’s worth living and dying for, not for hostility, control and law enforcement.
Most of us should not be treated as if we were criminals, even if we break the law unaware. It became the norm among police to assume evil intent of citizens, and from that position we might be able to prove our innocence and let go. Three police officers have landed on me arriving in two flashing police cars, and interrogated me for sitting down on a bench after business hours on a street bus stop. I wanted to sit for a few minutes to enjoy the city view on my way to a nearby store, walking from McDonald’s a block away. Turned out that I was trespassing. What king of a law is that? Surely it is not a common sense law. By the grace of God, I was let go and not arrested, after verifying my criminal records of no previous offense. Upon arriving to the ‘crime scene’ they cross-examined me about my business, intention, connections, and fanatically asked questions that they had no business to ask, thus I refused to answer. One stated,”I can ask anything I want, I am the police.” Shame on you, son! I lived long enough to say, I have never seen anything like this in my life! The result of this arrogant superior attitude is overpopulated prisons, increasing brutality and lawlessness. We either turn around or perish! We need Jesus, the one and only who can make this right! I am serious that following Him is the only answer. The world is rushing the wrong direction.
Sorry, man. Apart from the fact that shooting warning shots into the air is rather dangerous in a crowded metropolis (the bullet will land somewhere, after all), Pat argues pretty effectively that Wilson was in danger. 300-lb. thug was trying to take his gun when he fired. How is that not a grave situation?