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DEC 16 - DEC 24, 2014

Peaceful Falls Protest in Support of Criminals Does Society no Good

By Mike Hudson

December 16, 2014

In one of his last acts on earth, at 6’4”, 300 lbs, Michael Brown (left), was caught on video tape robbing a $48.99 box of cigars and strong arming a clerk (right), who tried to stop the thief from removing the stolen item from the store.


Last week in Niagara Falls, Niagara County Legislator Owen Steed helped organize a demonstration called "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," one of many protests organized around the country following a grand jury's failure to indict Ferguson, MO., police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, a 300-pound, 18-year-old that some witnesses said punched the officer in the head, attempted to grab his service automatic and then charged Wilson when ordered to stop.

The cop was white while the suspect he was trying to arrest and ended up killing was black.

A week earlier, in New York City and Los Angeles, freeways and bridges were shut down by hundreds of "peaceful protesters" alarmed also by the death of a black man, Eric Garner, who died as a result of being choked by a white police officer in New York and, in Ferguson itself, whole blocks of black-owned businesses were looted and burned by other blacks, presumably not business owners, who wished to demonstrate their outrage.

What is the mentality of people burning down their own neighborhood? Ferguson firefighters were unable to respond to the arsons and extinguish them because people in the neighborhood kept shooting at them.

Large, flat screen television sets, Adidas and Nike sneakers and other valuable yet easily portable items disappeared en masse from the burning buildings.

According to the Centers for Disease Control which – perhaps ironically -- keeps tabs of such things, 123 African Americans were shot dead by cops in 2012, the last year for which statistics are available. That same year, 326 whites were killed by police nationwide.

Also in that same year, 2412 African Americans were murdered by other African Americans, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports figures.

While some peacefully protested, others, criminals, used the killing as an excuse to steal and plunder.

And where was the outrage there? A black person in the United States was 94 percent more likely to be killed by another black person in 2012 than by a white person, police officer or otherwise, yet not a single protest, peaceful or otherwise, was reported.

You could look at this a different way, of course, you could consider the number of whites who get killed by blacks.

Again, according to the FBI, 431 whites were killed by blacks in 2012, compared to 193 blacks killed by whites. In other words, if you're white, you're more than twice as likely to be killed by a black person as a black is to be killed by a white.

The most celebrated killing of white people by a black was the O.J. Simpson case, in which the former football star allegedly hacked Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, O.J.'s ex-wife, to death. He was acquitted in 1995 after what was referred to in the press as the "Trial of the Century," and you'll look long and hard, unsuccessfully, to find any record of whites closing freeways, burning and looting stores or engaging in any kind of criminal behavior in outrage over that verdict.

Keyona Dunn, one of the organizers of the Falls demonstration, said the rally was held during the city council meeting in an effort to grab the attention of the lawmakers and citizens in attendance and let them know that they want to see more done to make sure that incidents like those that have sparked controversy around the country do not play out in Niagara Falls.

"Our basic concern is what are we doing to prevent this from happening here," Dunn said. "That's our number one concern."

It's wonderful to be concerned. But let's face it, in Niagara Falls and elsewhere, young black males are responsible for an entirely disproportionate share of crime, regardless of who the victims are. Why this is so may be debatable, but the simple truth of the matter is not.

What, exactly, is Dunn seeking to prevent? A young black male from robbing a store, assaulting a police officer, attempting to grab his gun and then charging when ordered to stop?

Our governor, Andrew Cuomo, is working along the same lines. Based on complaints filed by around 30 Niagara Falls criminals or family members, Cuomo, then serving as state attorney general, courted minority votes by getting the city to enter into an agreement to "govern police practices in the city in response to claims of excessive force and police misconduct."

"Claims," of course, being the operative word since no member of the NFPD had been found guilty of using excessive force.

The order led to the hiring of a company with a checkered past, Warshaw & Associates, to monitor city police activity, in 2011. For around $100,000 a year, the company has yet to issue a public report that would indicate it is doing anything other than feeding at the public trough.

In the meantime, rank and file city police officers have told the Niagara Falls Reporter that they feel hamstrung in their efforts to combat crime on the mean streets of the Cataract City, and police Supt. Bryan DalPorto said trying to operate under the agreement was challenging.

All across the country, cops just trying to do their job are being greeted with an increasingly hostile moral and political climate that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. So called peaceful protesters take up the cause of criminals at the expense of law and order.

The "victim" of the Ferguson shooting, a hulking 300-pound, 18 year old named Michael Brown, is just the latest poster boy for what has become a disturbing nationwide trend. Lawlessness begets lawlessness, after all, and when politicians and otherwise law abiding citizens begin taking up the cause of the thugs, there would seem to be little hope for society.

 


 

 

 

 

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