{"id":27349,"date":"2020-05-31T08:28:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T12:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=27349"},"modified":"2020-05-31T08:28:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T12:28:51","slug":"we-need-to-have-a-real-talk-about-race-and-the-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=27349","title":{"rendered":"We need to have a real talk about race \u2014 and the police"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, The Times<\/em> @mikemcgannpa<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It was a quiet night in Chester County, last night. Thankfully.<\/span><\/p>\n

But all around America, angry protests \u2014 and yes looting, burning and violence \u2014 broke out for another night over the police killing of George Floyd, captured on video that literally made it around the world. One of the officers involved was ultimately arrested and charged with third degree murder, but other officers involved or who stood by watching for six minutes have not been charged.<\/span><\/p>\n

People of color are angry. Whether it was a black jogger, Ahrmaud Arbery, murdered \u2014 again on video \u2014 in Georgia or the paramedic, Breonna Taylor, murdered in her bed during a police raid on the wrong home, it is hard to blame them. <\/span><\/p>\n

When people like Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid attempted to peacefully protest a previous wave of wrongful killings of POC by police \u2014 such as Eric Garner \u2014 they were vilified, and in Kaepernick\u2019s case, it cost him his career.<\/span><\/p>\n

When peaceful protest is cut off \u2014 and anger is sparked by a racist President and his White Nationalist supporters \u2014 it is inevitable that protest becomes less than peaceful. It is in the DNA of the United States \u2014 the Boston Tea Party was not a quaint tea party, but the culmination of a series of violent protests and threats against the British authorities by angry colonists feeling oppressed.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t condone violence, the burning of businesses and the looting by opportunists \u2014 watching the white faces opportunistically looting on Market Street in Philly last night disgusted me. <\/span><\/p>\n

But I understand the anger.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from being in the middle of a pandemic and a wrecked economy with a grossly incompetent federal government, we have two serious problems: race and a minority of police officers that are out of control. And yes, these tensions are being aggravated on social media and elsewhere by foreign powers \u2014 Russia to be specific, according to US Intelligence estimates \u2014 but the tensions are real.<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to race, I could write dozens of books on the subject and not scratch the surface. We are still, in the whole, a racist nation \u2014 and people of color do not have the same lives and liberty that we, the white privileged class, enjoy. It may hurt your feelings \u2014 but it is the truth and until we all admit it, we\u2019re not going to fix it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, as for the police, that, too is a complicated issue, with causes from race, an over-militarization of police, poor training and management, and justifiable fear.<\/span><\/p>\n

You may not want to acknowledge it, but some \u2014 a small minority \u2014 white police officers are racist, consciously or unconsciously. They are much more likely to look hard at a POC than a white person. My own, completely unscientific sense is that there appears to be a much higher percentage of local arrests of POC than the population would seem to merit, from seeing the police blotter reports. Maybe \u2014 and I hope so \u2014 I\u2019m wrong about this, but others have made the same suggestion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like it or not, we\u2019ve overly militarized our police, which sets up the kind of gung-ho madness we saw Friday and Saturday night, when a CNN news crew was arrested in Minneapolis, a local news crew had an officer fire pepper spray rounds at them for literally no reason, other journalists were arrested or shot at with rubber bullets, including an MSNBC anchor \u2014 elsewhere journalists were tear gassed and harassed.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was in Philadelphia, last night:<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/UR_Ninja\/status\/1266913490301792257?s=20<\/span><\/p>\n

We in the media need to reevaluate our relationship with the police. <\/span><\/p>\n

For too long, too many outlets have been little more than stenographers for police \u2014 telling one side of the story, blindly trusting the reports. That trust has been broken and we must treat all information from police with a skeptical eye \u2014 in other words, we have to be less lazy, less willing to run for clickbait. Prosecutors and police love to see arrests reported in the media as proof of how valuable their work is \u2014 and I\u2019m not suggesting otherwise \u2014 but it is high time we in the press stop taking them at face value. There are always two sides of the story and we\u2019ve been reporting just one for too long.<\/span><\/p>\n

We need to be prepared to hold police accountable when they break the rules \u2014 too often we look the other way as media members. We cannot any longer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings us to the militarization of police. In too many cities, last night, we didn\u2019t see police \u2014 we saw black-clad combat troops, in some cases, spoiling for a fight.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason we ended up with an arms race with police are the number of insane, military weapons on the streets. Police get geared up because they literally don\u2019t know what they\u2019re going to face on a traffic stop \u2014 while we remember the officer-involved deaths, we often forget how many officers we lose in the line of duty every year. Too many.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to blame police for being afraid that they might not make it home after their shifts \u2014 and that fear drives some of the aggressive overreaction in some situations. <\/span><\/p>\n

Unless we can get some of these crazy weapons off the streets \u2014 and keep guns out of the hands of criminals through enhanced background checks \u2014 this is going to continue to be an issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

We need to have frank, honest conversations about race and how we police. Until that happens, this cycle will continue, with more ruined lives, more anger and destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Until things got out of hands this week, I had planned to write asking how Republicans let their party get hijacked not just by immoral, unprincipled people, but frankly, stupid people.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not always so, of course \u2014 the GOP could always depend on evil genius\u2019 from Roger Ailes to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove. You could \u2014 and should \u2014 question their ethics, but man, they saw the political chessboard like grand masters and knew exactly the right moves and which fictions to spin.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a generation, Democrats often spun their wheels with having facts on their side \u2014 seemly unable to cope with a fictitious narrative (like say, Supply Side Economics) because they figured the truth would win the day. It didn\u2019t. It still doesn\u2019t, sadly.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess, though, what we\u2019re seeing is what happens when liars start to believe their lies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with Donald Trump\u2019s attempted assault on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me be up front: I actually support withdrawing it, which would require an act of Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like would have to moderate all posts and be responsible for the content on their pages (which would vastly change the media landscape in favor of traditional publishers). I am willing to add that responsibility for my sites \u2014 we\u2019ve always moderated comments, although with no Section 230, there are a lot of comments, mostly from right-wing kooks that would just be deleted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before you scream \u201cFirst Amendment!\u201d let me remind you: you have no First Amendment rights on this site, Twitter or Facebook. None. In the case of The Times<\/em>, what appears here is solely my call, period. I own this site \u2014 if you want to express your opinion, go start your own site, that\u2019s the extent of your First Amendment rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rest assured, I\u2019m going to be a lot less lenient from here on out when it comes to idiot right-wing comments spouting fictional arguments.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, why is Trump\u2019s take stupid? Well, without Section 230 protection, Trump would basically have to be banned from social media \u2014 he has libeled multiple individuals, advocated for violence and ignored the Terms of Service for each publisher. The same holds true for a lot of trolls, left and right.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m fine with it, but it would deprive Trump of oxygen, which is, well, pretty stupid from his standpoint.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s move on to the subject of mail in voting. While the Pennsylvania GOP has been promoting the use of mail in absentee ballots, Trump has been blasting it, falsely claiming widespread corruption with mail in ballots (ironically, most of the documented abuse with mail in ballots was done by Republicans, such as the recent case in North Carolina).<\/span><\/p>\n

The fallout? According to numbers I saw Friday, Democrats have sent in about 1.3 million ballots by mail for the primary election. Republicans have sent in a little more than 500,000. Yes, some of the difference is a number of contested races on the Democratic side \u2014 but not all.<\/span><\/p>\n

With no-excuse mail in ballots good to go for the November election, it looks like the crusade against them will cost the GOP crucial votes here this fall \u2014 and without winning Pennsylvania, Trump probably can\u2019t win reelection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once again, stupidity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, the entire story with State Rep. Andrew Lewis testing positive and House Republicans not bothering to tell their Democratic colleagues is both mendacious and stupid.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s bad enough these idiots \u2014 a majority of House Republicans \u2014 are running around, refusing to wear masks, calling, essentially for armed insurrection against Gov. Tom Wolf over the shutdown. But lacking the basic humanity to share the fact that Democratic lawmakers might have been exposed to COVID-19 shows something beyond stupidity. It reveals a deep and abiding lack of any moral core, any acknowledgement of the humanity of the Democratic members.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, for Pennsylvania, the people of Pennsylvania aren\u2019t as heartless \u2014 or stupid \u2014 as many of these GOP elected officials. They see what is happening and will be voting in November.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa It was a quiet night in Chester County, last night. Thankfully. But all around America, angry protests \u2014 and yes looting, burning and violence \u2014 broke out for another night over the police killing of George Floyd, captured on video that literally made it around the world. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6683,4515,7813,3912,9714,186,9860,755,9859,9861,9862],"class_list":["post-27349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-anger","tag-donald-trump","tag-fear","tag-featured","tag-mail-in-voting","tag-police","tag-race","tag-republicans","tag-rioting","tag-section-230","tag-white-nationalists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27350,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27349\/revisions\/27350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}