Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: I want to sincerely thank police department, law enforcement partners;For what does she thank the Police Dep't., murdering her constituents & causing violent demonstrations? Throwing rocks & bottles at the people of Baltimore? Just being their murdering pig selves?
Good illustration of what's wrong, not just w/ the Mayor, who would appear to have been sitting on her ass as all this crap happened before Freddie Gray was murdered under color of authority, but w/ the whole fucking city & gov't. like this, why shouldn't it be burned to the ground?
Imagine instead if Lemon had taken a moment to ask Rawlings-Blake to account for the fact that the city she runs has paid out millions of dollars in settlements to (mostly black) victims of police brutality. Or grilled her on just why she thought Freddie Gray had wound up with his spine almost completely severed while in police custody. Or why Gray’s so-called “rough ride” fits so neatly into a long-running pattern of police misconduct. Or what Rawlings-Blake and Hogan planned to do to curb an apparently out-of-control police force. Or even why the two most powerful public officials in Maryland thought that their biggest city was in such a deeply combustible state, and why a large swath of Baltimore’s citizens so clearly regarded the police as an enemy.Instead, she kisses up to the real criminals. Pathetic.
Also from Salon:
Confront them at gunpoint,The police are the problem: Why it’s time to take on Maryland’s cop unions
If lawmakers in Baltimore are serious about reform, they'll have to confront tyrannical police unions first
3 comments:
Or even why it is that Gray was apparently beaten to death in police custody in a vehicle and all the leadership is claiming to have no idea what might have happened.
I'm sure their investigation will get to the bottom of things, and soon.
At some point they'll scapegoat a couple of the cops, make sure they're financially taken care of for keeping their mouths shut and everybody will be back to business as usual...
To my non-surprise, Baltimore police are represented by a Fraternal Order of Police and Police Benevolent Associations, not by organizations within the labor movement. As in Ferguson, Cleveland and New York, etc. The Baltimore FOP is currently congratulating itself over Maryland's Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, which is doing great service in preventing city officials from investigating the murder of Freddie Gray. I'm as much of a knee jerk whatever-the-union-says guy as anybody, but this is no union. Just saying
Level Playing Field Editor:
Not even beaten; transported unsecured in a vehicle deliberately driven to slam him around inside an unpadded benches-only interior. Hard to imagine anything more chickenshit.
Mayor Two-Surnames on the telly claimed to have tried to do something about the Porcine Bill o' Rights. (Nice link. Gaaahh ...)
Which is unbelieveable. If police are suspected of/witnesses to criminal activity they should be treated just as any other slob would be. Brutally. Like the soldiers they no doubt imagine themselves to be. And if they are to be so militarized, why should they have any more rights than soldiers?
NO PRIVILEGE FOR COPPERS!!!
At best the Benevolent Police Order of Elks is a guild, not a union.
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