New York City police pledge “wartime” response to killing of two officers

By Sandy English
22 December 2014

The fatal shooting of two New York City police officers on Saturday has been followed by a series of extraordinary statements from the police union and its political allies. Charging that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has “blood on his hands,” the police are demanding a crackdown on protests and the criminalization of all opposition to police killings.

Officers Raphael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were sitting in their vehicle in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn when, shortly before 3 pm on Saturday, the apparent shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, approached the car and killed both.

Brinsley, 28, had driven from a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland to Brooklyn after shooting and wounding his former girlfriend. The young man, who was clearly mentally unbalanced and evidently suicidal, seems to have been motivated in part by the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City.

After he shot Ramos and Liu, Brinsley was pursued by police into a nearby subway station, where he killed himself.

The response of the police has bordered on mutiny. As Mayor de Blasio walked to a press conference on Saturday, dozens of police officers demonstratively turned their backs on him.

Police have issued a series of denunciations of de Blasio for having indicated some sympathy for demonstrations against police violence held in the wake of a grand jury’s decision not to charge NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Garner.

The Sergeants Benevolent Association tweeted on Saturday, “The blood of 2 executed police officers is on the hands of Mayor de Blasio.”

Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), the police union, echoed these remarks while seeking to link the anti-police violence protests to the killings by a mentally unbalanced individual. “Those that incited violence on the street, under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day. We tried to warn—‘it must not go on, it cannot be tolerated,’” he said on Saturday.

This is nothing less than a call to attack and ban any public criticism of police abuse as an illegitimate incitement to violence.

“That blood on the hands, starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor,” Lynch declared.

A twitter post by a managing editor at AOL News reproduced a memo, attributed to the PBA, declaring: “The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words, actions, and policies. We have, for the first time in many years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly.”

A PBA spokesman has denied that the memo came officially came from the organization.

However, these remarks were immediately endorsed by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who declared on Fox News on Sunday: “We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police. The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged. The protests, even the ones that don’t lead to violence, a lot of them lead to violence, all of them lead to a conclusion. The police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong.”

In response to these fascistic statements, which reek of a police-state mentality, de Blasio released a tepid statement criticizing the “irresponsible, overheated rhetoric that angers and divides people,” while reiterating his support for the police and “the entire NYPD community.”

The pledge of a “wartime” response from the police should be taken as an ominous warning. It is yet another manifestation of the enormous power that has been built up in these state institutions and the deep decay of democratic rights in the United States, fueled by endless war abroad and immense social inequality within the country.

The police forces act more and more as independent sources of authority. They have been given the power to kill with impunity—in the case of Brown, Garner and countless others. In response to popular outrage over these killings, the ruling class has deployed its highly militarized police against demonstrations.

The police themselves work in close coordination with the military and the intelligence agencies. In response to protests in Ferguson, Democratic Party Governor Jay Nixon activated the National Guard, a branch of the Armed Forces, and declared a preemptive state of emergency.

On Saturday, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin activated the National Guard in preparation for further protests over the police killing of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed schizophrenic black man who was shot 14 times by a Milwaukee police officer in April.

De Blasio’s own position is untenable. As the New York Times noted on Saturday, he has been “engaged in a high-wire act of sorts,” seeking to balance between the anger of broad masses of New Yorkers over the Garner case and defense of the police. De Blasio’s supposed sympathy for the victims of police violence can only be hypocritical and two-faced, because he fully supports the state apparatus and the interests of the corporate and financial aristocracy.

Obama too has professed a degree of sympathy for protests against police violence, even as he promotes a further militarization of the police. Earlier this month, in the aftermath of the decision not to indict Garner, the Obama White House gave its full endorsement to the network of programs that have transferred billions of dollars in military equipment to police departments throughout the country, including assault rifles, armored vehicles and even combat aircraft.

Since Saturday, the media has been busy churning out the initial barrage of propaganda aimed at criminalizing opposition to police abuse and killings. In the coming days and weeks, the killing of Liu and Ramos will be used to justify a crackdown on protests in New York and elsewhere and an escalation of police violence.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/22/poli-d22.html

Police Killings Intensify Racial Debate

Execution-style slaying in New York fuels more racial division.

Marea Munro bows her head at an impromptu memorial near the site where two police officers were killed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014. Just minutes before a wanted poster for Ismaaiyl Brinsley arrived in the NYPD's Real Time Crime Center, he ambushed two officers in their patrol car in broad daylight, fatally shooting them before killing himself inside a subway station.

Marea Munro bows her head at an impromptu memorial near the site where two police officers were killed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014.

By Kenneth T. Walsh Dec. 22, 2014 | 7:51 a.m. EST + More

The killing of two New York City police officers this past weekend has created a backlash against critics of law enforcement, including President Barack Obama, and have made efforts to improve the nation’s racial climate more difficult.

In the aftermath of the execution-style murders, some political figures are assailing Obama’s recent criticism of law enforcement’s treatment of African-Americans, especially the racial profiling of young black men. The critics say Obama has made it seem that he is deeply unhappy with police conduct, and some are even saying his comments about improper police practices have added to anti-police attitudes across the country.

It amounts to an intensification of an us-against-them atmosphere, with African-Americans protesting police brutality, and police officers and their supporters protesting a lack of support from some political leaders including Obama and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The two officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn when they were fatally shot Saturday afternoon by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who traveled to Brooklyn from Baltimore. Brinsley committed suicide after killing the police officers, police said.

[READ: Jets Players Speak Out on Slain NYPD Officers (//www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2014/12/21/jets-players-speak-out-on-murdered-nypd-officers)]

New York police officials said Brinsley, who was African-American, had made anti-police threats on social media and expressed anger about the widely publicized cases of the killing by white police officers of unarmed African-Americans Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Grand juries declined to indict the white officers in each case, resulting in widespread protests and some violence across the country.

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said the officers “were shot and killed with no warning, no provocation. They were, quite simply, assassinated – targeted for their uniform and for the responsibility they embraced to keep the people of this city safe.”

Mayor de Blasio said, “It is an attack on all of us; it’s an attack on everything we hold dear.”

President Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, issued a statement that police officers serving their communities “deserve our respect and gratitude every single day. Tonight, I ask people to reject violence and words that harm, and turn to words that heal – prayer, patient dialogue, and sympathy for the friends and family of the fallen.”

[READ: Obama Offers Help to NYPD After 2 Officers Killed]

But there was outrage, too. “There’s blood on many hands tonight – those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protests, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day,” Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, told reporters, according to the New York Times. “…That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor.”

Former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly blamed de Blasio for contributing to anti-police attitudes. Kelly noted that the mayor said publicly that he told his biracial son to be careful when dealing with police. In an interview with ABC, Kelly also said, “And quite frankly, the mayor ran an antipolice campaign last year when he ran for mayor.”

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News, “We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police. The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged. The protests, even the ones that don’t lead to violence, a lot of them lead to violence, all of them lead to a conclusion: ‘The police are bad, the police are racist.’ That is completely wrong.”

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/ken-walshs-washington/2014/12/22/police-killings-intensify-racial-debate

Obama Approaches Race Issue Cautiously

President criticized by some for stepping too lightly on post-Ferguson issues.

President Barack Obama, right, seated with Charles Ramsey, Commissioner Philadelphia Police Dept., speaks during his meeting with elected officials, law enforcement officials and community and faith leaders in the Old Executive Office Building on Monday in Washington, D.C.

By Kenneth T. Walsh Dec. 3, 2014 | 7:20 a.m. EST + More

President Barack Obama is under increasing pressure to take more aggressive actions aimed at helping African Americans, especially in dealing with police, but so far he is adopting an incremental approach.

A case in point came at his meetings at the White House Monday with civil-rights leaders, law enforcement officers and others. The sessions were designed to be the president’s response to the rioting and anger that followed a recent grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri not to indict a white police officer for killing an unarmed African American teenager last summer.

[READ: Who Uses Police Body Cameras and What Happens When They Do?]

Obama’s message was to be patient and prudent. “In the two years I have remaining as president,” he told reporters after the meetings, “I’m going to make sure that we follow through, not to solve every problem, not to tear down every barrier of mistrust that may exist, but to make things better.”

Obama set up a task force to study police practices, and moved to reassess aspects of a federal program that provides military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. Obama appears to believe that the program leads to an unwise militarization of police and encourages overly aggressive tactics. Obama also proposed a three-year, $263 million plan to improve training of police and provide them with body cameras to better keep track of their response during confrontations.

This incremental approach disappointed many civil-rights activists, who expected more from the first African American president. “People want the president to be out front the same way he did with immigration, gay rights and women’s rights,” Leighton Watson, student body president at Howard University, told reporters after meeting with Obama. “They want him to make this an American issue.”

A demonstrator celebrates as a business burns after it was set on fire during rioting following the grand jury announcement in the Michael Brown case on Nov. 24, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo.

See Photos

Countrywide Protests for Ferguson

Separately, Jason Johnson, a political scientist at Hiram College who did not attend the White House meetings, told The Hill newspaper, “What he’s failed to do consistently is express the anger and frustration of a very important constituency of his own to not just cultural misunderstandings, but to structural oppression.” Johnson, an African American, added: “His failure to take a symbolic role initially is why there’s so much anger now.”

Others argue that Obama is making racial matters worse. “I think that things have gotten worse because of his unusual emphasis on race,” Ben Carson, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said on the “Hugh Hewitt Show.” Carson is African American and has a following among conservatives.

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that 52 percent of Americans disapprove of how Obama has handled the Ferguson episode and 39 percent approve.

[READ: Long Read: Run, Ben, Run]

Sixty-three percent of African Americans approve of his handling of Ferguson but an overwhelming 91 percent of blacks approve of Obama’s job performance overall, another Post/ABC poll finds. African Americans are one of Obama’s most loyal constituencies. This survey indicates that, even though some African American leaders are critical of Obama on the Ferguson issue, there has been no substantial backlash against him from the wider African American community.

Obama has consistently refused to adopt a “black agenda” for the nation. In an interview for my recent book “Family of Freedom: Presidents and African Americans in the White House,” he said he wanted to be president of all Americans, not just African Americans.

Ken Walsh covers the White House and politics for U.S. News. He writes the daily blog “Ken Walsh’s Washington,” for usnews.com, and “The Presidency” column for the U.S. News Weekly. He is the author of the book “Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’s Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership.” He can be reached at kwalsh@usnews.com and followed on Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/ken-walshs-washington/2014/12/03/obama-approaches-race-issue-cautiously

Freddie Gray death: Officer acquitted of four charges ; USA: the racial question ,i post

USA: the racial question ,collage

New York City police pledge “wartime” response to killing of two officers

By Sandy English 22 December 2014

Police Killings Intensify Racial Debate

Execution-style slaying in New York fuels more racial division.

Obama Approaches Race Issue Cautiously

President criticized by some for stepping too lightly on post-Ferguson issues.

Countrywide Protests for Ferguson

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By Sandy English
22 December 2014