Former Sheriff David Clarke: The Mainstream Media Will Not Tell the Truth About Black Lives Matter
Web Page Blurb: What the media won't acknowledge: Black Lives Matter fuels violent anti-police sentiment.
My Comment: This topic is the one that is the most volatile at the time of my adding it to the forum. And therefore I urge listeners and commenters to take special care to keep calm and look at all reasonable points of view.
I think the situation is more complex than David Clarke makes it - though I think his points are generally correct - but I think it's *way* more complex than what we hear from Black Lives Matter.
However, I've been a regular donor to the Institute for Justice, which is an organiation of lawyers who take cases pro-bono, paid for by private donations, to defend the constitutional rights of people in the USA when they are violated by government. I've paid attention to the kinds of abuses that have been occurring for decades, some of which are carried out by police.
Some of the cases they have taken deal with civil forfeiture laws. Here's IJ's eplanation of what that is: "...civil forfeiture does not require the property owner to have committed a crime. Anyone’s vehicle can be seized based on one police officer’s suspicion that it was, in some way, connected to a crime. Even being near an alleged crime is enough. And anyone’s crime will do. The vehicle owner does not have to be under suspicion, even when he or she could have done nothing to prevent the crime from happening." https://ij.org/case/detroit-civil-forfeiture/
IJ goes after many kinds of violations of constitutional rights, such as warrantless searches and eminent domain abuse. And one thing is clear: all these abuses happen to Americans regardless of race or sex or religion or sexual orientation.
I believe David Clarke is telling the truth as he knows it. But there are also other facts that come into play besides Black Lives Matter and other one-sided perspectives of cops that drum up hatred of police in general and make blacks fear and resist police.
I submit to you a video not by a black person but a white guy who has had plenty of experience on the wrong side of the legal system, the clear-thinking, deeply analytical Dr. David Wood:
I think all of that is a good start to getting this conversation started - a conversation that I hope will appreciate how difficult it is to be a cop, let alone a good cop, as well as how and why some cops go bad. Racism sometimes plays a part, but it's only one way a cop can become abusive, and sometimes the laws themselves are abusive. Police brutality and corruption should be considered in its full context, not reduced to a racist act where "black lives matter" is something separate from "all lives matter". If you are white and your loved one was wrongfully killed by police and nobody made a national deal of it, the phrase "black lives matter", in regard to George Floyd and other blacks, is probably going to ring hollow.
Web Page Blurb: What the media won't acknowledge: Black Lives Matter fuels violent anti-police sentiment.
My Comment: This topic is the one that is the most volatile at the time of my adding it to the forum. And therefore I urge listeners and commenters to take special care to keep calm and look at all reasonable points of view.
I think the situation is more complex than David Clarke makes it - though I think his points are generally correct - but I think it's *way* more complex than what we hear from Black Lives Matter.
However, I've been a regular donor to the Institute for Justice, which is an organiation of lawyers who take cases pro-bono, paid for by private donations, to defend the constitutional rights of people in the USA when they are violated by government. I've paid attention to the kinds of abuses that have been occurring for decades, some of which are carried out by police.
Some of the cases they have taken deal with civil forfeiture laws. Here's IJ's eplanation of what that is: "...civil forfeiture does not require the property owner to have committed a crime. Anyone’s vehicle can be seized based on one police officer’s suspicion that it was, in some way, connected to a crime. Even being near an alleged crime is enough. And anyone’s crime will do. The vehicle owner does not have to be under suspicion, even when he or she could have done nothing to prevent the crime from happening." https://ij.org/case/detroit-civil-forfeiture/
IJ goes after many kinds of violations of constitutional rights, such as warrantless searches and eminent domain abuse. And one thing is clear: all these abuses happen to Americans regardless of race or sex or religion or sexual orientation.
I believe David Clarke is telling the truth as he knows it. But there are also other facts that come into play besides Black Lives Matter and other one-sided perspectives of cops that drum up hatred of police in general and make blacks fear and resist police.
I submit to you a video not by a black person but a white guy who has had plenty of experience on the wrong side of the legal system, the clear-thinking, deeply analytical Dr. David Wood:
I think all of that is a good start to getting this conversation started - a conversation that I hope will appreciate how difficult it is to be a cop, let alone a good cop, as well as how and why some cops go bad. Racism sometimes plays a part, but it's only one way a cop can become abusive, and sometimes the laws themselves are abusive. Police brutality and corruption should be considered in its full context, not reduced to a racist act where "black lives matter" is something separate from "all lives matter". If you are white and your loved one was wrongfully killed by police and nobody made a national deal of it, the phrase "black lives matter", in regard to George Floyd and other blacks, is probably going to ring hollow.