Balts Should Pay for Baltimore Riots!
The City of Baltimore wants the federal government to pay for the Baltimore riots, which it estimates to have cost the city $20 million. And the state of Maryland is begging to have Baltimore declared a disaster zone in a disaster entirely of its own making in order to qualify for government handouts. Such is the climax of our bailout culture.
The twenty-mil estimate does not include the physical damages to businesses or their loss of business or the city’s loss of revenue from taxes or events. It is just the claimed cost of riot protection equipment, police and fire department overtime, damage to city property and street cleanup. (See Fox News) So, it’s a plea for a blank check.
That annoys me enough to step out of macro-economics and into micro-economics for a moment.
Why should all US citizens foot the bill for Baltimore riots?
If the city pays for its own riots, perhaps it will recognize that its present government and culture are the true disasters. In seeking a federal bailout from paying for its own internal issues, Baltimore epitomizes the blame-everyone-else-for-your-problems mentality as well as the make-everyone-else-pay-for-problems mentality. If the US government pays for the riots, that creates a moral hazard because the city escapes the high costs of civil disruption that came from within. The hazard is that none of the right people will accept responsibility for the problems of their own culture if they are bailed out by others.
Normally, I think citizens of the US should stick together and help each other out, but not in this case. Baltimore’s own attitudes and citizen issues created its own problems. No one else is to blame. So, let’s break this down and make it clear where the problem lies and where it doesn’t:
If the Baltimore riots were a response to actual police bigotry, Baltimore should pay because this is the outfall of its own internal corruption. Is it not any city council’s responsibility and mayor’s responsibility to root out police prejudice if that was what the riots were about … as so many of the protestors claimed? Is it not the responsibility of the citizenry to get on top of that problem and elect a government that will root out corruption? So, why should the whole nation pay for the internal corruption of one city? If your city does not go aggressively after corruption, and the citizens don’t force the government to do so, then it seems to me you should suffer the cost of your own bad government.
However, contrary to what many protestors said to try to justify their violence, Baltimore has made great strides to make sure it’s police force is not racially prejudiced:
Here’s what the data shows about the racial makeup of Baltimore’s finest:
* Of the 2,745 active duty police officers in the department — 1,445 — more than half are African-American, Hispanic, Asian or Native American, according to data provided by the Baltimore police department to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
* Four of its top six commanders are either African-American or Hispanic.
* More than 60 percent of the incumbents at the highest command levels hail from minority communities.
* Among the 46 Baltimore police officers who hold the rank of captain and above, 25 are from ethnic or racial minority groups. That constitutes 54 percent of the command leadership.
In other words, Baltimore is a black-majority city led by a police force whose officers are mostly racial minorities as well.
…Under [Chief] Batts, Baltimore was one of eight cities participating in an experimental Obama administration police reform program run by the Department of Justice and its Office of Community Oriented Police Services, or COPS. The program was designed to provide policing that was less adversarial and emphasized a cooperative spirit in poor neighborhoods. (The Daily Caller)
If you still think bigotry in the police department was the cause of the Baltimore riots, then Blacks are entirely to blame at this point! This is a city with a Black mayor and a largely Black city council and a government made up almost entirely of Democrats. So, there is no hope here of blaming Whites or Republicans for Baltimore’s continuing problems. The city government has had major Black representation for thirty years while being all or mostly Democrat for as many years. Anyone who wants to blame Whites for this one, clearly has a racial prejudice of their own.
Suffice it to say, he mob that burned Baltimore had no legitimacy in claiming that it was protesting racial violence. Those in the mob who chose that justification were, in fact, perpetrating racial violence by making their anger illegitimately about race.
All of this is why you don’t hear the race card being played as loudly on this one. The primary phrase bandied about is just police violence. It’s hard to blame the Whites, as was done in previous incidents, when the police department is almost half Black. Even the police chief is Black, and half of the police officers who arrested Freddie Gray and who were, themselves arrested, were Black!
“The Baltimore department is representative of the community as a whole at every level of the organization,†said Darrell W. Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association in an interview with The [Daily Caller]. “It’s not just the command staff. It’s at all the way through.â€
Yet, here we are, the same kind of thing happened that we saw in Ferguson and New York City. Only this time the racial excuses for mob violence just won’t fit. The Baltimore riots prove the lie that any of the similar events in other city’s in the past year have really had anything to do with racial bigotry. There is nothing uniquely different about what happened in Baltimore with Freddie Gray, except that there simply aren’t many Whites to blame for the actions of the police.
As for the claims of police brutality, they may be legitimate. There is certainly some evidence to say so; but the police have been arrested. So, was the Baltimore riot really anything more than a hypocritical excuse to be violent? I would argue, in spite of the possible police brutality, that these riots got so far out of hand because of the city’s efforts to make the police less adversarial.
There is, I believe, a prejudice among the civic leaders that says violent protests should be handled with kid gloves because the citizens are expressing legitimate anger at being victims. There is a prejudice that assumes the mob is made up of victims and not simply violent people. Well, who are they victims of in this case, unless they are victims of their own thirty-year mostly minority, mostly Democrat government?
Baltimore should pay for the stupidity of its politicians. Baltimore’s politicians prevented the police from taking harsh enough action to be effective against people who were wrongfully protesting against a racial problem that did not exist or police brutality that was still under investigation and that led to the arrests of three white cops and three black cops. Yes, years ago, Baltimore had an infamously racially prejudiced police department, but it has had years of minority government now, and minorities are the new majority in the police department.
So, how was it legitimate for the mayor to press down on the soft pedal with the police department when the protestors were tearing up a city that has made great strides in eliminating racism in the police department and throughout government. Why would you instruct your own police department to stand down from taking aggressive action against rebels without a cause?
If the Baltimore riots were an over-reaction by a group of Baltimore citizens that were disenfranchised, then Baltimore should pay entirely for the actions of its own misguided citizens. Even if you try to justify these citizens of Baltimore for their angry rebellion on the basis that they were disenfranchised and impoverished, then, more than ever, Baltimore should be the only entity to pay for these riots. Having had a majority Black Democrat government for decades; Baltimore has no excuse for having disenfranchised and impoverished Black youth! If the youth are truly victims of impoverishment, one would have to conclude that Black government has no effectual answer to offer … even after decades! You either conclude that, or you conclude that the riots had nothing to do with impoverishment or victimization of a race and everything to do with a violent culture and a curtailed police response that allows that culture to gain control of a situation.
Is Baltimore bilking the federal government for its riots?
Seriously? $20 million dollars without including the costs of any damaged businesses or the loss of any city revenue? It appeared to me that most of the property damaged, other than cop cars, was business property, so how is there $20 million just in police overtime, fire overtime, damaged squad cars and street cleanup and maybe some damaged signs? I think the Baltimore government is looking for a chance to play the victim card and gather some major bucks from the federal government.
The micro-economic answer here is that people need to pay for the cost of their self-created problems, or we create moral hazard. So long as the federal government will pay, then the lie perpetuates that this is the federal government’s problem to solve — that this is a problem that in endemic to the entire US populace (therefore, the whole US should pay) — that this is not a Baltimore problem.
Blacks own the government in Baltimore. They own the police force. So, any racial problems that are endemic in Baltimore are problems that Blacks have been fully empowered to solve for a long time in this city. I’m not saying, that Black people could get rid of all racism in Baltimore. There are Whites living there, too, and without a doubt some of them are racist … as in any community. But majority power has been in the hands of Black Democrats for a long time in Baltimore. If the solution to what is usually reported as an economic problem in the Black community is political, then Baltimore has had ample opportunity to do something about it.
Is it any surprise that homicides increased after the Baltimore riots?
Since the riots, homicides have escalated in Baltimore to make this the worst month for murders in the city’s history. This has cast a pall over Baltimore businesses. While murders are way, way up, arrests are way down. I have been saying to friends that the hostility we see from the general public toward police in being so ready to assume their guilt is clearly going to cause police to back away from making arrests in violent crimes, so this comes as no surprise to me and should come as no surprise to anyone.
Is it any wonder that police would become very reluctant to take on violent criminals when they KNOW that the public will turn on them as a huge mob if they defend themselves in the manner they feel they need to? If I were a police officer, facing such hostile and overwhelming public reaction, I would resign. I would certainly not consider that public worthy of my risking my life to defend them when I know they will turn on me if I defend myself. They will assume I am guilty of police brutality if I have to shoot someone (especially if I shoot a black person) unless I can absolutely prove I was defending myself.
Rev. Jamal Bryant, (…“a close friend†of the Gray family) the Pastor of Empowerment Temple Church, added, “It’s almost akin to having a substitute teach in the middle of the semester who turns a blind eye, doesn’t know the students, and is not, in fact, giving a grade. And so it’s a very dangerous time in our city when crime is going up, but arrests are going down.†(Breitbart)
In other words, kids misbehave badly when they know the substitute teacher isn’t going to discipline them. Naturally, the Baltimore police are reluctant to use force when they see six officers charged on claims of excessive force and after seeing the riots in Ferguson and New York City.. In this case, the charges brought against these officers may be right, but I think in other cases the judicial system was right not to press charges. As the mayor of Baltimore says, it is generally the case that crime goes up in cities where police have been charged with violence. It’s body bags in Baltimore. I KNOW I wouldn’t put it on the line for communities that are so quick to become lynch mobs that assume cops are guilty outside of due process of law.
While the police might have been wrong in Baltimore, where they have been indicted, I don’t think the police used too much force in New York or Ferguson. There are many witnesses who corroborated the officer’s story in Ferguson that he was viciously attacked inside of his car and that the attack was unprovoked. I mean, who jumps inside of a police officer’s car and tries to wrestle his gun away from him just because the officer said not to walk down the center of the street? If I did that, I KNOW I would have a huge chance of getting shot from one very worked-up police officer, since the ONLY reason to do such a thing is intent to kill the police officer.
I’m White, and I would NEVER think of doing such a thing to any police officer. As far as I’m concerned that kind of action would amount to suicide by cop. I know that trying to get an officer’s gun would be the most brazen and stupid thing I could possibly do, so I think that level of viciousness in Ferguson shows some kind drug-induced lunacy was involved. A dozen witnesses say that, after attacking the officer in the car and then running from the car, Michael Brown turned back to charge the police officer and then turned again to run away when the officer started firing on him, getting a bullet in the back as he turned. Others say he rushed the officer and fell dead only a few feet in front of him. Yet, half the United States assumed in outrage that the police officer was guilt and racist.
If I were a police officer facing that kind of public attitude, even with so many witnesses on my side, I’d say, “to hell with it” and quit my job.
As for the fat Black man that died of a heart attack in New York City, what happened to him was entirely his own fault. The police were ordered by the mayor only a few days before this incident to arrest anyone selling untaxed cigarettes (“looses”). In case you’re ignorant and order for arrest, means Garner’s arrest was not optional on the part of the police. In other words, it doesn’t matter how insignificant his crime was, the police were ordered to arrest him, so they had a job to do.
Over and over I’ve heard people say, “It was too minor of a crime to justify such a hostile arrest.” The police do not have the option when ordered by the mayor to arrest people throughout the city who have been engaging in this crime, of saying, “Well, since this is such a minor crime and since you don’t want to be arrested, we’ll leave with the job undone.” That means they have to do whatever is actually required to complete the arrest. So, if someone resists, the amplitude of police aggression goes up to overwhelm their resistance. In the New York case, the police arrived in number to do the job because this was a huge man who was already known to have resisted arrest in the past and who had a record of assaulting people. So, the police weren’t going to take any chances of failing.
At the time of his arrest, Garner was out on bail after being charged with illegally selling cigarettes, driving without a license, marijuana possession and false impersonation.
The video edits out the part where officers order Garner to put his hands behind his back so they could cuff him for arrest (and the cuts in the edits are obvious). One video shows only the part where Garner kept saying, “Don’t touch me. I don’t have a gun” and raised his hands in the air. Those word are often pointed out in Garner’s defense, but that is ignorant. The police were not asking him to put his hands in the air to prove he didn’t have a gun. They told him to put his hands behind his back so he could be cuffed, and Garner had been around the block with the police enough times to know they couldn’t cuff him if he kept his hands up in the air, and height and inertia were clearly on his side. The police were telling him to get down on the ground while he exerted every effort he could to remain standing.
Having a gun had nothing to do with it, and Eric Garner knew this. That was a ruse. He was most likely playing the crowd to gain sympathetic crowd interference with the police based on what had just happened in Ferguson. He was also doing that to evade arrest by keeping his hands as far out of reach as possible. Keeping his hands from being cuffed by saying, “Don’t touch me, I don’t have a gun” was resisting arrest. You don’t get to tell the police who have come to arrest you, “Don’t touch me!”
Garner was told to put his hands behind his back, and he refused. He resisted arrest so intensely that one police officer hanging off of him was not enough to drag him down. It took another piling on to finally bring him down. The enormous man staggered and did everything he could to avoid going down to the ground and to avoid giving his hands to the police. Yet CNN assumed in its initial reporting that the officer who first tried to take Garner down was guilty of an illegal choke hold. Vast numbers of people all over this nation jumped in on accusing the officer of illegal violence ahead of any factual investigation.
In one video, Eric Garner says eleven times that he can’t breathe. Here’s the problem with that: he’s not gasping when he says it, and you cannot possibly say something over and over and over without taking breaths in between. Also, Garner’s voice is not the least bit hoarse or sounding choked off. The fact is that, if you can make a statement eleven times, then you ARE breathing. It is also almost universal that criminal (even the least of criminals) will complain the police are hurting their arm or hurting their neck.
Ironically, the video actually presents clear evidence of unrestricted breath after breath, since Garner spoke sentence after sentence with very little trouble, even while officers pressed down on him. We all know what a strangled person sounds like when they’re trying to talk with a choke hold on, and Garner doesn’t sound at all choked off. If a person is having their air choked off, it is just as hard to get the word out as to get the air in.
Feeling that one cannot breathe is a common symptom of a heart attack. Garner knew he had heart disease because of his obesity and knew he was asthmatic. His friends knew he could not walk a block without resting, had severe sleep apnea and often wheezed when he talked. He had to quit his job as a gardener because of his severely bad health. A man that cannot walk one block without stopping to catch his breath should not be struggling to keep his hands in the air when the police tell him to put them down and should not be struggling to stand when the police order him to the ground.
The troubling part here is that the coroner concluded that Garner died of asthma and a heart attack but further stated that the asthma attack and heart attack resulted from “Compression of neck (choke hold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.†The autopsy, however, revealed no indication of damage to the windpipe, but it did show bruising of the neck.
Police explain this by saying Garner was placed in a “submission hold,” which is not illegal but is designed to reduce the flow of blood to the brain enough to cause a person to pass out. The officer said he applied that pressure when Garner him back against a huge plate glass window. (At one point in the video, you can clearly see the window flex as the officer is pressed back into it.) The officer said he needed to get Garner down to the ground quickly at that point to avoid the possibility of being killed by huge pieces of plate glass coming down, should Garner press his weight back any harder. So, he applied pressure to Garner’s artery, not his throat.
When I look carefully at the video, I see that the back of the officer’s hand was initially to Garners chin and throat, and that the hand appears limp, while pressure is exerted on his chest the the officer’s forearm. Whether this slipped into a tighter close on his throat during Garner’s continued resistance is impossible to say from the video. What the grand jury was looking at, however, was intention to cause harm or reckless endangerment. Remember that an officer is allowed to kill if his life is threatened. So, is it reckless if the officer severely tightened his hold at the moment when he feels himself being shoved back against the large window? In my mind, it wouldn’t be. It would be self-preservation to get this huge man down before I go backward through the window with him on top of me and the broken glass under me and raining down on top of me.
While its certainly possible the hold slipped and moved directly over the throat, the grand jury did not think there was any malice or criminal aspect to his arrest. While the coroner called Garner’s death a homicide, “homicide” does not mean murder when a coroner uses the term. It simply means that a person died as a result of some else’s actions. No one doubts that Garner died because of his battle with the police, but even the coroner said he died because his battle with the police triggered his severe health problems. Whose fault was that? The police going into the situation, didn’t likely know how severe his health problems were, but Garner certainly did.
The heart disease was Garner’s own fault. Absolutely no one else’s. Garner’s struggle more than his heart could withstand, was also entirely his own fault. It is absolutely clear in all videos of the arrest that Garner was completely uncooperative with the police. Garner could have avoided all that strain on his heart by simply dropping to his knees and putting his hands behind his back as he was expected to do. He chose to struggle more than his heart and asthma could tolerate. He chose not to respect his own limits, yet the police were blamed by half the nation, and the city devolved into riots.
It is sad that a man died for selling illegal cigarettes — such a petty crime — but resisting arrest, even for petty crimes, can never be allowed by society to be an option, for where does allowing people to resist arrest stop. So, the more Garner struggled, the more he imperiled his life, given is very weak health.
So, will it be any wonder if police become highly reluctant to engage with violent people? I think we can fully expect to see a rise in homicides and violence and a drop in arrests as well as a drop in the number of people willing to serve as cops now that people have seen for the third time how quickly a very large portion of society is to to blame the police for violence every time they have to overpower an attacker or someone resisting arrest.
The longterm economic and social cost is that cities will get what they deserve for not having the kahones to capture or stop violent people with the amount of force it takes to subdue violent people.
Is this an economic problem? Absolutely. If we don’t allow our police to get tough on crime, then the amount of violence in our cities will grow unbearably expensive in terms of increased destruction, urban decline, lost business and lost tax revenue. Its a downward spiral. An even worse outcome will become evident when our economy crashes, as I have been saying will happen soon. Expect anarchy to break out in the streets as rebels have increasingly gotten up their nerve in the face of a weakened police response. In next economic collapse could turn into Baltimore on steroids everywhere.
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