A man killed his girlfriend in Baltimore and then traveled to New York and killed two cops and himself. His instagram account strongly implies that these were revenge killings for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
This is especially not good because NYC Cops are angry that Mayor De Blasio criticized the Grand Jury decision in the Eric Garner case.
Update: The girlfriend was only shot, not murdered. When I wrote this post, reports were saying she was murdered.
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Yeah, this isn’t going advance the cause of taming the over top militarization and over use of force by cops.Report
@greginak
I think that the issue is that people who are concerned about police overuse of force don’t understand or vastly underestimate how much support the police have among the rest of the population:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/to-protect-you-from-me
I have no idea what to do with this situation. My facebook feed seems to be filled with people who are shocked that the NYPD are saying De Blasio has blood on his hands and people who are showing NYPD shields. Everyone is saying this is unjustifiable though. There seems to be an unending siege mentality in the United States and facts might be stubborn things but they are seeming to matter less and less. Policing is one of the safest professions around and crime is falling and falling but to vast swaths of America, the Bronx might as well still be burning.Report
Certainly most people don’t know crime rates have been dropping. Also most people are easily susceptible to fear mongering (Immigrants, EBOLA!!!!!, Immigrants with EBOLA, etc). But if people don’t realize how much support police have they haven’t been paying attention. I’d guess people in inner cities know how much staunch support the cops have. I’d even go as far to say that people in oppressed minorities are usually very aware the authorities are backed by many people.Report
I think that the issue is that people who are concerned about police overuse of force don’t understand or vastly underestimate how much support the police have among the rest of the population.
What the hell does this have to do with what Greg said or this situation?Report
greg,
nobody cared about Ebola, that I saw…Report
Yeah. It’s terrible all around. Most immediately because two officers are down and two families are grieving. But also because officers everywhere are going to be a little more fearful, which is not good for them and not good for anyone else. Not good for anyone.Report
“Yeah. It’s terrible all around. Most immediately because two officers are down and
twofourtoo many families are grieving.”Ugh… it’s still broken…Report
It would be churlish for me to remind everyone that when Gabrielle Giffords was shot, a bunch of people on the left were quick to attribute this to anti-government rhetoric, in particular Sarah Palin’s obviously metaphorical crosshairs map.
So I won’t.Report
To be clear, I’m generally sympathetic to arguments that the police may be too quick to resort to violence, and shooting in particular, and that in a lot of cases (e.g. Crawford), they were almost certainly wrong, perhaps even criminally incompetent.
But I think this “war on black men” rhetoric goes too far, and implies that police are running around killing black men just for the hell of it. I’m not saying I called this, or even that the rhetoric caused it, necessarily. But it doesn’t surprise me. Obviously the rhetoric didn’t cause him to kill his girlfriend and himself, but it’s not implausible that it inspired him to take some “pigs” down with him on the way out. He did make it pretty clear that it was revenge, albeit very poorly targeted.
I’m not saying we should take the heat off the cops, but maybe the rhetoric should be toned down to an accurate level.Report
Sure, liberals will stop the war on black men rant right after they stop the war on women rant. Dont hold your breath.Report
A better way to end the war on black men is to stop shooting unarmed black men dead. Extra points if you stop shooting twelve year old boys with toy guns from your car.Report
True Brandon our body politics hyperbole could use a serious turn down. That would go for everybody. Obama isn’t a dictator, the ACA isn’t the end of freedom, etc, etc. Every body could use a bit of chill.Report
A trigger is a trigger, and a loaded weapon is a loaded weapon.
Two separate occurrences need be taken into account.Report
greg,
and most importantly, John McCain ain’t dead!
See, the system works!Report
There are at least a couple people on my Twitter feed making or re-tweeting the argument from your first comment. (Note for all, not all white, not all conservative.) I don’t buy it any more than I buy the Palin/Giffords thing (even before the alleged connection became extremely tenuous).
There are inconsistencies with the “What did you expect when you say things like that?” argument, though, for sure.Report
Always someone who wants to make a political point out of death.Report
On Monday, a friend in a city I used to call home had just left the subway on his way into work, and very large black man cold-cocked in the side of the head and then attacked three other people; the other victims and witnesses say he was yelling racial slurs. My friend had several bones broken in his face, he had surgery to patch things back together yesterday; thankfully, the eye is okay and there are no bone shards in the brain. The fourth person attacked and a subway cop were able to drag the attacker down, and he was arrested. The police are keeping a lid on it; it hasn’t been in the news at all. My friend’s mother and brother (a cop from another city) said they’re considering charging him with a hate crime.Report
@zic
If you mean the NYC subway, I am going to have to call absolute bullshit on this story. The subways are always filled with people except every late at night and if there was a subway attack people would have been tweeting about it and it would have been picked up by the Post, the News, and Daily Intel at least. Also the NYC News Channel, NY1.
There is no way that a four person attack in the subway system can be kept under wraps.
If you mean the T in Boston, I also have my doubts about whether such a story can be kept under wraps.Report
Well, that’s not a response I expected. One of my oldest and best friend’s son just had major surgery to repair his face after an assault; I told you what she and her other son told me.
I thought it related to the OP because it will potentially be charged as a hate crime; something I suspect we’ll see used more and more. That’s actually a real concern, despite the horrors my friend’s child is going through.
I’ll post any links in the media if I see them; the assault hasn’t made the news yet other than just another random act of violence in the city.
But doubting what happened? Please, I have no freakin’ reason to make stuff like that up; I’m very, very worried about a fine young man I’ve known since he was born. I’d prefer this hadn’t happened to him, and I hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else. A few more random acts of violence like this, and I dread what might happen even more; which is partly why I suspect it’s being kept quiet; and so my friend’s other son suggested (plus the X-mas shopping spree; don’t want to dint the holiday tills).Report
@zic
I’m sorry. No one should be attacked like that and the incident you described is feasible except for this part partially:
“The police are keeping a lid on it; it hasn’t been in the news at all.”
Subways are crowded places and I suppose it is possible for this station to be relatively not crowded at the time but I’ve lived in New York for most of my life and I’ve been on the subway at all times of the day and there are very few times when subway stations are not relatively crowded. I just have a hard time believing that people wouldn’t have tweeted about seeing a guy go on a rampage in the NYC subway. Or that it wasn’t captured on camera and the footage was leaked. It almost always gets leaked.
It is plausible that the police did not want the news to get out but you have to arraign in a very short amount of time from an arrest.Report
It is plausible that the police did not want the news to get out but you have to arraign in a very short amount of time from an arrest.
The arrest for an assault on multiple people was easy; but I don’t think all charges need to be brought initially. My friend’s son was surprised by this; and he has some expertise and experience in these things.Report
Saul and zic,
it’s probably not the police. There have been two people shot at my local supermarket in the past year or two, but from looking at the local paper you’d never know it. (It shows up, but gets quickly moved off the page. by people With Influence).
Unless the guy was pushed in for a psych eval, in which case this may simply be “crazy homeless man did something stupid… again. Get him meds stat!”
Saul, if you think about it I’m sure you can come up with some crimes that haven’t been reported to high heaven in San Francisco.Report
Random tidbits…
Al Sharpton (among others) have strongly denounced the shooting: http://jezebel.com/letitia-james-al-sharpton-release-statements-after-kil-1673654680
Curious how that will be discussed as Sharpton is such a lightning rod and the right side of the aisle lives to pile on about all the things he doesn’t say. At this time, it seems he has said exactly what anyone would want him to say.
I’m tempted to compare this to Joseph Stack. It is still VERY early, but both guys seemed a bit out of their gourd with an axe to grind against a particular government agency and who took violent, deadly action in pursuit of their twisted goals.
I think the NYPD specifically and police in general have an interesting opportunity here. They could make a huge statement but not doing one thing different despite these heinous acts. No retaliation of ANY kind. No divisive statements. No “We told you so.” I recognize that expecting such responses from 100% of the thousands of police officers in the country would be to expect the impossible. But if the leaders amongst them stood up and said, “This was a disgusting act. We mourn our fallen officers. But we will continue to do our job to the best of our ability and not allow this senseless act to contribute to an ongoing and destructive cycle. We will be police officers. We will work in accordance with the law in order to enforce the law.” Something to that effect.Report
To elaborate a bit on the last point, it strikes me that this guy (who, again, seems at least a bit out of his gourd) might have wanted to start a ‘war’ of some kind (and I’m sure, were he still alive, he’d argue that he was responding to a war already started). By denying him this… by refusing to engage in the way that he wanted to be engaged, a powerful message can be sent.Report
@kazzy
Too late for the NYPD. They have already tweeted that De Blasio has “blood on his hands”
https://twitter.com/SBANYPD?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fdavidmack%2Fbed-stuy-nypd-shooting&tw_i=546472549589467136&tw_p=tweetembedReport
Of course he does. No one in America thought Garner’s death was wrong until Blasio opened his mouth.Report
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/brooklyn-police-shooting-live-blog/?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
For another version. Now this is not an official wing of the NYPD but it seems like the Sargents Benevolent Association jumped extremely quickly to go after De Blasio because he had the chutzpah to call the Garner decision racist. There is also a #bluelivesmatter tweet going on right now and this seems to be further going to cause divides.Report
Ugh. File this under “Don’t Tweet Angry”. Especially when you are speaking for more than just yourself.Report
@kazzy
I need to recant and apologize. The tweet could be a fake:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/bed-stuy-nypd-shooting#.mcoKm9oMq
The Pataki tweet does not seem to be a fake but a quick partisan potshot.Report
And I need to recant again. The SBA tweet is legit.Report
“Those who allowed this to happen will be held accountable.”
Interesting logic ya got there, Pat Lynch. If they didn’t have guns and DAs backing em up, I’d think these guys were a f***ing joke. Don’t disrespect a made guy, ya know?Report
I remember back when that guy from Imo’s* was caught munching on the juveniles there in St. Louis.
The police came out and asked the media not to give the matter much public attention, supposedly for fear there would be copy-cat killings (and subsequent cannibalism).
Which implies two things, both of which are deserving of consideration.
First, the police in St. Louis County can be stated, on the record, as really, honestly, and truly believing that the one and only thing that keeps people in St. Louis from killing and cannibalizing the youth of this nation is that the idea has never dawned on them.
I’m not sure if the cops there are yet aware of cable TV. Well, maybe they are now…
And the other, the more likely one, IMHO, is that when the police flub multiple investigations in a *HUGE* way, all that’s needed is to ask a compliant media to overlook it, and everyone walks along on their way.
“Hey, if you guys don’t mind not reporting that “Cops Screw Up Multiple Investigations for the Past Several Years” story, we sure would appreciate it,” is all it takes.
Reminds me of the line from Zorro: The Gay Blade”:
The turtle responsible for this has been executed.
They will probably find another turtle that led this man to kill in this case. Maybe it was the pizza.
* Imo’s is a chain of pizza joints around St. Louis County. It’s a really greasy pizza, made with cheddar cheese. The test of being a native St. Louisan is being able to eat Imo’s without gagging.Report
In Peoria, Imo’s is a chain of ice cream stands. Totally different Imo. No cannibalism.Report
I believe his ex-girlfriend is alive.Report
I’ll just note this again. I know this isn’t a news site, but getting the basic facts right seems important.Report
Agreed. @saul-degraw you should probably update the post.Report
@chris
I didn’t have access to OT yesterday just like everyone else.Report
It’s all good, I suppose, though a little care might be in order next time. That she was alive was being reported well before this post went up. (I only saw one story saying she was dead, in the NY Post I believe.)Report
I’m waiting for the NRA to tell us that the officer’s lives could have been saved if only they’d been armed.Report
We need more good guys with guns. Or maybe gooder guns with guns? Hey… maybe these cops WEREN’T good…?Report
Ugh… this is an awful comment by me. I know I could go in and delete it but deserve the lumps I’m going to take. My intent was not to disparage the victims of this awful act. I was attempting to riff the distorted logic employed by the NRA but, yea, foot… mouth.. ugh. My sincerest apologies.Report
Oh, don’t worry, you’re in good company. I’ve already seen people saying that white supremacists infiltrated the witness pool for the Ferguson grand jury to give false testimony and, therefore, these cops being shot is the fault of racists.Report
Jim,
you’ve been reading the FBI reports? Hmph. that’s more effort than you usually go to. I’m impressed.Report
Sigh…
I don’t have the energy to deliver lumps. All of the stupid flying around the internet over all of this since Ferguson has just plain worn me out.Report
Im waiting for the lefties to use this an an excuse for more gun control though im not sure this guy could legally own a gun anyway. We all know how well gun control works.Report
Any measure that prevented this guy from owning a gun would be a form of gun control… no?Report
Hold on: if we’re in favor of shooting cops, why would we do anything to stop it?Report
No i dont see stopping criminals like this guy from owning guns as “gun control.” To me gun control is restrictions on the rights of law abiding citizens.Report
Requiring private sellers to verify that the prospective buyer is able to own a handgun legally (as licensed gun sellers do) is considered “gun control” in that it’s strongly opposed by the NRA.Report
@notme
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/12/lets-blame-conservatives-all-killings-theyre-responsible
You are no conservative and no true ally of liberty. What you are is a snide, authoritarian, and fascist.Report
Saul
Apparently the anti police protesters decided to interrupt the nypd memorial service.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2014/12/22/report-protesters-yell-at-nypd-at-slain-officer-memorial/Report
Even the linked Breitbart piece emphasizes that only a small number of protestters interrupred the police memorial service. So if we’re calibrating, Notme is out past Breitbart.Report
LAPD had a party at which they sang a parody song (“Big bad Mike Brown”) that made fun of Mike Brown. And cops and their supporters have worn t-shirts celebrating the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. Who’s winning the battle for bad karma?Report
@chris
This is where the idea that you must either be for or against something really takes us to an ugly place.
You can believe Wilson was justified and still wish Brown hadn’t died. Similarly, you can believe Wilson or the SI cops should have been indicted and not think all cops deserve to die.
Celebrating death is an ugly, ugly thing any way you slice it. When you find yourself doing it, you should take a good, long look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Is this really what I stand for?”Report
Look, the LAPD has a tradition and reputation to uphold, it can’t let some Podunk town like Ferguson supplant it as the most clueless, corrupt PD in the nation.Report
Vince Staples’ “Hands Up” says what needs to be said about the LAPD, at the end there.Report
Can’t really overstate how bad this is for the cause of improvement in police conduct and accountability.
It’s just… that bad.Report
Donde esta the ACLU when a lunatic thug kills two police officers in cold blood?
Donde esta the left and their cries of racism when two minorities are killed on the job?
Donde esta Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson whenever non-black men are murdered by a thug on a rampage?Report
I didn’t realize the ACLU was a catch-all police force. I thought it was some sort of a civil liberties thingy.Report
I very much doubt those policeman were murdered for their race. They were targets of opportunity for someone determined to kill police.Report
@truth
Sharpton addressed the murders yesterday. Whoops…Report
As have many of the protesters.Report
Sure Sharpie made a self serving statement and others have agreed but ill know the lefties really mean it when they riot for the police and liberal college kid stage sit ins and need extra days off from class as well as grief counselers.Report
If justice for police killers, or any killers for that matter, is systematically denied, protesters will be out there.
What are you demanding they protest? Since the killings have been universally condemned, and since the killer, had he been caught, would no doubt have been indicted and ultimately convicted, the protesters preferred outcome for murderers, I mean. Or does trolling not allow you to understand simple realities?Report
Sure Sharpie made a self serving statement
Spoiler alert: I don’t much care for Mr. Sharpton.
That said, the conservative vitriol for the guy is really astounding. I had social media feeds crying about how Al Sharpton’s calls for violence were what led to this shooting in the first place.
Which is really quite deranged.
Somebody like Al, whatever he does, the Right has a ready-stamped criticism. He doesn’t say anything about the police shooting, it’s because he hates the police. He does say something about the police shooting, it’s self serving.
The Right on Al Sharpton really is the textbook case for epistemic closure on the Right. Whatever he does, it’s wrong (and it’s usually because he’s the true racist.)Report
@patrick
I am noticing a huge divide between what people like Obama say and what conservatives hear.
Obama: “in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color.”
What Conservatives Hear: Burn it all down motherfuckers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Report
Patrick,
the right has a ready answer for Everything Sharpton Says.
Funny, ain’t it?
Do you suspect collusion?Report
Saul: ah-heh.
Zimmerman: “I acted from justifiable and immediate fear for my own life and limb.”
What The Left Hears: “I’m a huge racist and I was just itching for the chance to shoot a black guy.”Report
Naturally, the closest analogy to a black politician is a white killer.Report
Zimmerman: “I acted from justifiable and immediate fear for my own life and limb.”
What The Left Hears: “I’m a huge racist and I was just itching for the chance to shoot a black guy.”
Hmmm…. Putting aside the questionable veracity of that statement, it really is a rather stupid analogy.
For one thing, Zimmerman did kill a black guy. As far as I know, Obama hasn’t thrown any malatov cocktails lately.Report
This is another problem with this very stupid analogy. Obama is, in fact, a killer. He just kills using the full might of the United States military and just about everyone he has killed has been brown and a Muslim, which points 180 degrees away from the Right’s picture of Obama as some sort of radical leftist.
The Right has been afflicted with some version of whatever Leslie Nielsen had in Soul Man. They see a centrist Harvard Law School grad, but can’t help picturing some guy with an afro and a dashiki throwing his fist in the air.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ki4YXMpSSY&w=420&h=315%5DReport
Waaaaaay off topic, but did anyone else who saw that movie wonder at how a movie supposedly meant to satire negative racial stereotypes relied so heavily on them for almost all the punchlines in the film?Report
1) It was the 80s
2) It springs from the same source that made Dave Chappelle quit the biz.Report
@jim-heffman : Zimmerman: “I acted from justifiable and immediate fear for my own life and limb.”
This should be a problematic statement even from your perspective given that just about every black male between the ages of about 12 to 40 can say the exact same thing wrt white cops. Do you actually want open racial warfare?Report
OT: webpage isn’t loading; got here from a comment response. So testing the OT systems, and asking if anyone else has issues?Report
I had a difficult time getting to the OT homepage this morning, but it is fine now.
I had trouble posting a reply earlier though.Report
OT was unavailable to me for most of the day. Mostly I got a generated page that said my browser was fine, Cloudflare was fine, but OT wasn’t responding to Cloudflare’s intermediary servers.Report
There has been a problem with the hosting provider; apparently there’s some sort of DDOS going on (although I don’t believe OT is the direct target).
Erik has been mucking about with DNS today and hoping things will resolve over the next few hours.Report
@patrick
Don’t make us sound so unimportant!
🙂Report
@patrick
By the way, I am still getting the same message that Micheal discribes above ( Mostly I got a generated page that said my browser was fine, Cloudflare was fine, but OT wasn’t responding to Cloudflare’s intermediary servers.) when I try to reach the page with firefox, or using the standard browser on my Android. I have to switch over to Chrome to get to the site. thought you might want to know.Report
@saul-degraw
This reminds me of the time that @will-truman and I singlehandedly convinced the Chick-fil-A Bowl to rename itself to the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl over at HitCoffee.Report
We make a hell of a team, Scarlet. A hell of a team.Report
Will Truman and I singlehandedly
We make a hell of a team
I would think good teamwork is mandatory, since between the two of you, you apparently only have a single hand. 😉Report
I had the same problem. I noticed it was working from a different browser, so I cleared the cache of the original browser and things are back to normal.Report
My stepfather, who parrots conservative talk radio nonsense, said this:
“These people need to stop resisting arrest. They don’t know if the cop is poorly trained or has a chip on his shoulder.”
When I pointed out that Rice was shot before even being engaged by police and OH YEA it’s the cops’ job not to be poorly trained or to carry a chip on their shoulders, it fell on deaf ears.
The Conservative Talking Points (TM) on these issues know no bounds when it comes to absurdity, offense, and irrationality.Report
Als, my mom said her sympathy goes out to NY storeowners whose business was interrupted by protesters.
Not the dead citizens. Not the store owners in Ferguson who were the victims of violence. Not even the dead cops. But the poor 5th Avenue boutique owners.
Sigh… Holidays with the family suck…Report
Are you really advocating that people resist being arrested? Garner would most likely be alive today if he hadn’t resisted arrest. As for Rice, i have yet to see any evidence that the cops shot him without talking first.Report
Just think, this is the man who does unspeakable things with your mom 😉
BTW, in the weekend thread I asked if you were going to the Bronx today.Report
So much for nonviolence
http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/protester-who-advocates-peace-charged-with-setting-fire-at-berkeley/article_ad4006c5-06ab-5b7e-8a7f-3fd2ed4dbbcb.html?mobile_touch=trueReport