Early this year, Megan E. Green, a St. Louis alderwoman, met with officials of a local police union to discuss a proposal for a civilian oversight board that would look into accusations of police misconduct. After Ms. Green refused to soften her support for the proposal, the union backed an aggressive mailing campaign against her.
But Ms. Green won her primary with over 70 percent of the vote, and the Board of Aldermen approved the oversight board by a large margin. “All that stuff backfired,” Ms. Green said. “The more they attacked me for it, the more people seemed to rally around me.”
Nonviolence as Compliance
Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Gray’s death, and so they appeal for order.
.. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
F.B.I. Director Speaks Frankly About Police View of Blacks
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on Thursday delivered an unusually frank speech about the relationship between the police and black people, saying that officers who work in neighborhoods where blacks commit crimes at higher rates develop a cynicism that shades their attitudes about race.
He said that officers — whether they are white or black — who are confronted with white men on one side of the street and black men on the other do not view them the same way. The officers develop a mental shortcut that “becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights” because of the number of black suspects they have arrested.
Why We’re So Mad at de Blasio: The N.Y.P.D. Protests: An Officer’s View
But the time has probably come for the Police Department to ease up on the low-level “broken-windows” stuff while re-evaluating the impact it may or may not have on real, serious crime. No one will welcome this more than the average cop on the beat, who has been pressed to find crime where so much less of it exists.
.. He should have been acknowledging our accomplishments months ago, instead of aligning himself with grandstanding opportunists. His words and actions before the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos showed a contempt for the police all too common on the left, and it is this contempt that the officers who have turned their backs to him are responding to.