Violence and looting overtook much of West Baltimore on Monday, seriously injuring several police officers and leaving a store and several vehicles in flames.
At least seven police officers were injured in a clash that began near Mondawmin Mall and spread toward downtown…
Demonstrators pelted officers with rocks, bricks and bottles and assaulted a photojournalist…
(The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015)
The above describes the still–unfolding fallout from the killing of Freddie Gray, a Black man who died last week, after having his spine “nearly severed,” while in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland.
But I’ve written too many instructive commentaries on the fallout from the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to count. Therefore, I fear writing another on this latest outbreak of misguided violence would be tantamount to beating the proverbial dead horse.
No case of police brutality justifies looting and vandalism. Period. Not least because the anger and frustration among Blacks today pale in comparison to that which simmered among Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the only barbarism on display during their protests came not from Black marchers looting and vandalizing stores, when they weren’t taunting the police, but from White cops willfully attacking them as they marched peacefully and non-violently.
Is there any wonder that people (Black and White) have as much contempt for these marauding Black protesters today as they had for those mauling White cops back then?
(“Killing of Michael Brown: as much about Resisting Arrest as about Police Brutality,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 12, 2014)
Not to mention that, far from having anything to do with outrage over police brutality, the violence in this case was orchestrated – through social-media clarion calls – to act out scenes from The Purge, a movie about what happens when people are given free reign to commit any crime without fear of arrest.
But imagine the mentality of knuckleheads using the menace of police brutality as a pretext to menace their own neighborhoods – by, among other things, looting and torching pharmacies and other businesses.
Worse still, imagine the state of anarchy when you have a mayor responding to their wanton destruction as follows:
We gave those who wish to destroy space to do so.
(WJZ Baltimore, April 27, 2015)
This, believe it or not, is how Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake responded. Hell, one could be forgiven the suspicion that it was she who initiated that clarion call to “purge”. Talk about the insane running the asylum. Nothing indicates how surreal/absurd things have become in this respect quite like Black leaders propagating the fiction that it’s racist to refer to the thugs who looted stores and assaulted the police as … “thugs.”
I fear that the lesson most young Black men are learning from this tragedy is that they can resist arrest — so long as they shout the newfangled slogan, ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ while doing so. Clearly, this will only lead to more of them ending up like Michael…
Instead of doublespeak that would make him a saint, those eulogizing Michael would honor his death far more by admonishing young Black men against the deadly hazards of resisting arrest and defying authority … merely as a misguided badge of honor or rite of passage.
(“Why Chastise the Times for Describing Michael Brown as ‘No Angel’? The iPINIONS Journal, August 26, 2014)
But am I the only one who wonders how the parents of these wilding kids are going to feel when it dawns on them that their prescriptions – for hypertension and other stress-related maladies – went up in flames with that CVS Pharmacy…? I cannot lament too often this self-immolating feature of the violence and looting these so-called civil rights protesters are perpetrating.
In any event, God help Baltimore: save it from its lawless youth … and clueless mayor.
NOTE: Every time a White cop kills an unarmed Black man in the United States these days, the media stoke passions … to generate ratings. (Oh right, “Black lives matter!”) But it might help to bear in mind that, according statistics compiled by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, White cops kill many more unarmed White men than unarmed Black men on an annual basis. (So, White lives don’t matter?)
Related commentaries:
From Michael Brown to Walter Scott…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Monday, at 8:13 p.m.
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