Crime - Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter

• The diagnosis - that blacks are unfairly targeted by racist US police - is a lie and is not supported by the evidence.
• The "protests" about this fake problem - involving looting and rioting and arson and shooting police - are utterly evil.
• The "solutions" to this fake problem - like defunding the police - will make everything worse.
• The net effect of the "Black Lives Matter" movement is entirely negative - more crime and more suffering, especially for poor black people.

Parts of Minneapolis in ruins after the "Black Lives Matter" riots of 2020.
How does this help anybody?

The Ferguson riots, 2014

What was new about the 2014 Ferguson riots was that the US President supported the protesters and rioters against the police.

• The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Aug 2014.
  • Thug robs a shop, threatens shop owner. Could have escaped if he didn't act aggressively with a cop soon after. Assaults cop, tries to grab his gun, gets shot. Keeps charging at the cop. Gets shot dead.
  • Not very controversial, you would think. If the cop and robber were white, it would never have made the news. But the cop was white and the robber black, so a certain sort of person went insane.
  • The cop, Darren Wilson, was investigated, but no charges were brought. So the rioters went insane again.

• Ferguson riots, Aug-Nov 2014. Thug-lovers and cop-haters riot and burn businesses in Ferguson, and protest in other cities.

• We've seen this story before. But here's what's different:
  • The US President Barack Obama encourages the anger and rioting instead of siding with the police. He says it is "understandable" that people are "deeply disappointed, even angry" that the cop was not charged. He links the incident to "the legacy of racial discrimination in this country", despite the fact there is zero evidence the cop was a racist. Obama is just disgusting. If I was a cop I would be furious with him.
  • The Missouri State Governor Jay Nixon encourages the anger and rioting instead of siding with the police. He is angry that the video of Brown robbing the store was released. He says that "to attempt in essence to disparage the character [of Brown] in the middle of a process like this is not right". Pathetic. Why not side with the hard-working, tax-paying store owner and with the police who risk their lives to protect everyone?

• Blood on Obama's hands:
  • The shooting of Michael Brown in Aug 2014 and the death of Eric Garner in July 2014 caused a hysteria about "racist cops", fuelled by President Obama, which led inevitably to dead cops.
  • Salon, 25 Nov 2014, describes it as "sick" that anyone would support the cop in the Michael Brown case. In reality, Salon is sick. Encouraging criminal mobs instead of standing with the police.
  • Race-baiter Obama says cops kill blacks because "they look different". In an interview on 8 Dec 2014, Obama claims there is "a national problem" with racist cops, who target blacks because they have a "subconscious fear of folks who look different".
  • Two New York cops killed, 20 Dec 2014, in "revenge" for Brown and Garner. Blood on the hands of the US President and the New York City Mayor for not standing with the police.
  • Two cops shot in Ferguson protest, March 2015. President Obama, you helped cause this. Shame on you.

• The Ferguson cop, Darren Wilson, resigned in Nov 2014. His career was destroyed for doing his job.

• Smart comment here: "It's what Michael Brown would have wanted".
• And another: "Robbing that store was Michael's last act on this earth. This is like communion for the protesters."

Video of Brown robbing the store, and later, his supporters looting the store.
They tried to burn it but someone put the fire out.
They burned many other businesses.

• Michael Brown's stepfather Louis Head screamed "Burn this bitch down!" to the angry mob. So they burnt half the town.
• Someone burnt the Brown family's church during the riots, maybe in reprisal, though who knows.
• As an article points out: "Mr. Head never specified what exactly he wanted burned down".
• Photos of Ferguson: Before and After the Riots
• Smart tweet: "In about a year, the BBC lefties will be blaming American whites for the fact there are no jobs in #Ferguson b/c businesses have moved out".

From here.

The "Ferguson effect", 2014-16

• The legacy of the Ferguson riots and Black Lives Matter and Obama's passive-aggressive support of them was inevitable: Cops fearful of taking action. Killers freer on the streets. Increased murder rate. More dead people - mainly dead blacks.
• This was all predictable. And was in fact predicted by many conservatives.

• David French covers this topic:
  • #BlackLivesMatter Costs Black Lives, Sept 2015. Sudden, sharp rise in murders in major American cities, especially those cities where "Black Lives Matter" is active.
  • The "Ferguson Effect", Jan 2016. "Nationally, murders jumped by 6.2 percent in the first half of 2015. ... if the number holds for the full year, it would represent the largest single-year increase in 25 years. ... Murders in the nation's 50 largest cities rose by almost 17 percent."
  • The Cost of Radical Police 'Reform' Is Blood on Chicago's Streets, April 2016. Chicago's murder rate is up by 84 percent. "Rogue police officers must be prosecuted, but we are increasingly demanding the impossible from law enforcement - that they maintain order in the streets in a manner that looks great on camera and breaks down neatly along demographic lines."

• Obama's legacy: Less policing. More murder. More dead blacks. Well done, Obama.

• Baltimore riots, April 2015.
  • This is Obama's America. He helped make this happen.
  • Instead of providing leadership and spreading calm, Obama encouraged the anger behind the rioting.

• After some more controversial police actions in 2016, street agitator President Obama again stokes things up, rather than calms people down: Obama: All Americans should be troubled by recent police shootings, 7 July 2016. He attacks the police: "These are not isolated incidents. They're symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system."
• Massacre of police officers in Dallas, evening of 7 July 2016. Blood on President Obama's hands.

• Study of BLM protests 2014-2019. Report in Apr 2021. Places that had BLM protests in 2014-2019 had a 10 percent increase in murders. That means there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests.

The George Floyd riots, 2020

• Death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 2020.
  • Floyd was another useless criminal who dug his own grave.
  • Floyd, a black career criminal (armed robber), was stopped by police after using forged money while high on drugs. He physically resisted arrest and was held to the ground where he died.
  • He may have died from a combination of the drugs he was high on (fentanyl and methamphetamine) and being a middle-aged (age 46) man physically fighting with police when in poor health with heart disease.
  • The transcript of the arrest shows he is high on drugs: "You got foam around your mouth". He is incoherent and resists arrest. He says "I can't breathe" before anyone knelt on him.

• The bodycam video:
  • See full bodycam video of the arrest. First half shows view from one cop. Switches at 30:45 to view from second cop.
  • The bodycam video shows the unending stream of bullshit and gibberish from George Floyd from the moment he sees the police. His bullshit never stops. It is no wonder they did not listen to his "I can't breathe" after 10 minutes of relentless bullshit and gibberish.
  • While resisting arrest he yells "I'm not that kind of guy!" Forgetting that he served 5 years in prison for armed robbery.

• Prosecution of the cops:
  • Did the cops mean to kill him? Of course not. But were they negligent? Maybe so. One white cop, Derek Chauvin, a 20 year veteran decorated for bravery, was tried and convicted of murder. That seems very harsh to me, though manslaughter might be reasonable. If the cop was black and the suspect white, he would never have got a murder charge.
  • Chauvin got 22 years in prison, which seems insanely high. There is no evidence he wanted to kill Floyd. This seems like a political trial.
  • The other cops (a black, a white and an Asian) were charged with aiding and abetting murder.

  
  

  Update

  The other cops all went to prison:

  • Tou Thao (Asian cop) got just under 5 years.
  • J. Alexander Kueng (black cop) got 3.5 years.
  • Thomas Lane (white cop) got 3 years.

  The prison authorities utterly failed to keep Derek Chauvin safe in prison. He was stabbed 22 times by another prisoner in Nov 2023.

  
  

• The bigger story of George Floyd is not the incident but how insane much of America went afterwards.
• George Floyd protests quickly became riots of looting and burning across America.
  • The same pattern as before. Antifa and "Black Lives Matter" Marxist led riots, with regular criminals joining in the looting and arson.
  • As before, the mobs victimised many innocent people. As well as burning homes and businesses, there were many deaths. 30 people killed.

• George Floyd was a violent armed robber. He carried out a home invasion in Texas in 2007 and beat and robbed a female in her home at gunpoint. He got 5 years in jail for this (2009 to 2014).
• There are now even statues of George Floyd. Statues of this drugged up armed robber. Are people insane?

Irish state TV RTE describes the armed home invader as a "gentle giant", 20 Apr 2021.

"George Floyd Remembered As "Gentle Giant" By Victim Of Home Invasion".
From here.

The 2020 riots

• The George Floyd riots
• The Jacob Blake riots
• Study of all protests finds nearly 570 violent protests in May-Aug 2020, in nearly 220 locations across the country.

• Shooting of Jacob Blake, Kenosha, Wisconsin, Aug 2020.
  • A similar case a few months later. Cops called on black criminal by his ex, who says he sexually assaulted her and robbed her. Cops arrive. He resists arrest. Wrestles with police. Gets one in a headlock. Walks away from tasering. Gets a knife out and is trying to get in a car with his kids while his ex screams at cops to stop him. Followed by cops telling him to drop the knife, he reaches into car, as if for some hidden object. Police shoot him. (Not dead.)
  • Cops did their job. And yet the same old story: Politicians and media attack the cops as criminals. And another outbreak of riots, arson and looting by thugs, terrorists and criminals.

• Jacob Blake Criminal Complaint For Third Degree Sexual Assault, 6 July 2020.
  • The complaint is by his ex, the mother of his children. She alleges that in May 2020, she woke to find him in her bedroom saying "I want my shit". She says he sexually assaulted her, and then stole her car and debit card, which he used. She called the cops. She again called the cops when he turned up on the day he was shot.
  • Well done, Joe Biden. What a hero you have chosen to stand up for.

BLM is Marxist

• Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organisation with Marxist ideas:
  • Black Lives Matter UK say they want to "dismantle capitalism" and want "strategies for the abolition of police". They say it themselves. Why would anyone who is not a communist support BLM?
  • BLM UK: "We are however, all anti-capitalists, and are committed to dismantle class as well as gender and racial domination."
  • BLM UK hates Israel: "we stand with Palestinian civil society in calling for targeted sanctions in line with international law against Israel's colonial, apartheid regime." And more.
  • BLM USA attacks the traditional family: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and 'villages' that collectively care for one another". After criticism they deleted this bit. Best not to reveal all your cards too early.
  • BLM USA supports the communist police state of Cuba as it crushes pro-democracy protesters, July 2021.
  • Black Lives Matter USA blocks me.

• BLM = lots of things.
  1. Marxism. "Dismantling" capitalism.
  2. Nonsense analysis of crime and policing, based on bad stats.
  3. Nonsense solutions. Dismantling police.
  4. Hostility to the traditional family.
  5. Support for Palestinian cause (i.e. a racist cause). Hatred of Israel.
  6. Support for the communist police state of Cuba.

The "Floyd effect", 2020 on

• Rise in homicides in US in 2020
• Graphs of rise in murders and crime in St.Louis, Chicago and Portland

• George Floyd's city, Minneapolis, and state, Minnesota:
  • Minneapolis reeling from rise in violence, report, Nov 2020. "more than 500 people have been shot in Minneapolis this year - twice as many as 2019, while murders are up more than 50%."
  • Violent crime surges across Minnesota with record murders, report, July 2021. Minnesota recorded an all-time record of 185 murders in 2020. Up from 117 in 2019.

• Chicago reported more than 4,100 shooting victims in 2020. 491 homicides in Chicago in 2019. 768 homicides in 2020. "Most of the victims in Chicago are recorded as young, black men." Well done Black Lives Matter. This is your great achievement. Less policing. And more black deaths.

• Did the BLM Protests Against the Police Lead to the 2020 Spike in Homicides? by Wilfred Reilly, 27 Jan 2021. He answers Yes, with a number of reasons why, including:
  1. Less absolute police funding.
  2. Less police stop and searching. Less pro-active patrolling.
  3. More nervous police when dealing with suspects.
  4. Riots themselves caused lots of crime. Many shops were looted and even people killed under cover of riots.
  5. Riots showed you could commit crime and get away with it. This encouraged criminals to have a go in general. This is Broken windows theory.

• Ed West, 25 May 2021, sums it up:
  • "It is now known that the American murder rate increased sharply following the George Floyd protests, with an extra 3,000 homicides associated with the June 2020 protests, on top of the several thousand already linked with BLM and its influence."
  • "Urban America is incredibly violent by the standards of the developed world, and any reduction in policing is going to have extreme and terrible consequences, almost all of which will disproportionately fall on the poor and black people."
  • "Few political movements in recent years have been more closely associated with such catastrophic consequences for those it claims to represent as BLM."

• Black Lives Matter Killed 2,000 Black People, Daniel Greenfield, Sept 30, 2021.
• A brutal headline. But it's true. It is completely true. And we should care.

Comment on the idiots who want to defund the police.

By summer 2021, white support for BLM had collapsed.
Good.
From here.

There is no racial problem in US policing

1. The number of deaths are small. Police officers in the USA have 375 million annual contacts with civilians. The police fatally shot 9 unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019.
2. The 9 unarmed blacks represent 0.1% of the 7,407 black murder victims in 2019.
3. This site points out those stats are for fatally shot, not all fatalities. A site called Mapping Police Violence claims 28 unarmed blacks and 51 unarmed whites died at the hands of police in 2019. It includes officers who are off duty.
4. Blacks killing police is a much bigger problem than vice versa. A police officer is 18 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
5. Cops killed per year. 147 cops died in the line of duty in 2019. Though not all were murdered.
6. Are blacks disproportionally represented in the small number of police shootings? No. Blacks are responsible for 53% of homicides and 60% of robberies. Blacks are about 25% of those killed by cops. Why the difference?
7. Are white cops bad? Again no. Studies show white police officers are less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects.
8. Every part of the "Black Lives Matter" story is bullshit. It is a myth. A myth that fuels anger and lynch mobs and riots.

Some articles:

• Stories and Data: Reflections on race, riots, and police, Coleman Hughes, June 14, 2020, lays out the evidence that the police are not racist.
  • He says they are not racist, but it could be argued they are too violent. But the story is complicated by the fact that criminals in the US are far more violent and far more cops get killed.
  • He also points out that rare events get magnified by citizen cameras and social media into "trends" and narratives that may not exist.
• 7 Statistics You Need To Know About Black-On-Black Crime says:
  • Blacks commit 52 percent of homicides, despite composing just 13 percent of the population. Whites commit 45 percent of homicides while composing 77 percent of the population.
  • In Chicago, blacks commit 76 percent of homicides, despite composing 35 percent of the city's population.
  • In New York City, blacks commit 75 percent of shootings, 70 percent of robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime, despite only composing 23 percent of the population.
  • If any of this is false, I would love to hear it. These are not opinions. These are facts that can be checked.

Black Americans do not agree with BLM:

• Poll of black Americans, Aug 2020.
  • 81 percent of black Americans want the police to spend "the same amount of time" or "more time" in their area. Bizarre, if the BLM narrative is true.
  • 61 percent of black Americans are "somewhat confident" or "very confident" that in an interaction with police they would treat them with courtesy and respect. Yes the numbers are much lower than for whites. But still, this hardly supports the BLM narrative.

The media picks what stories to cover:

• White people killed by police. 2020 thread of stories. Most resisted arrest. But some were accidents.
• The big question: Why were none of these stories in the US national media or in the international media? Why were they not covered by the media? Why were there no protests? Answer that, and you understand this entire issue.

Blacks commit 53% of homicides.
From Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008.

The BLM madness explained in one chart.
The BLM hysteria happens because Americans do not have a clue about police violence.
54 percent of "very liberal" Americans think that the police kill about 1,000 (or more) unarmed black men per year.
Even 26 percent of "moderate" Americans and 20 percent of "very conservative" Americans agree.
The correct answer is 27 unarmed black men.
And this is how policy is made, not just in America but around the world. Based on lies and myths.
From Skeptic Research Center.

Leftists think the US is a racist country by global standards.
From here.
Conservatives are the reality-based or science-based community. Leftists live in a world of fantasy and myth. On this issue at least.
Anyone who answered purple should try to get educated about life in countries outside the West.

Blue Lives Matter