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11-22-06, Five today: #34 - 38: Liberals play Lucy with her football to African Americans, in and out of Congress
#40: MPD "payback purge" of top Black officers; Strib ignores it
#39: Police threaten Black City Councilman Remington
#38: Black Civil Rights Usurped Again: Liberals reduce Rosa Parks to being the equivalent of an airplane boarding pass
#37: CNN asks Ellison if he is "working with our enemies."
#36: Some say Congressional Black Caucus members are targeted for Committee Chair exclusion
11-22-06, Blog Entry #40: MPD "Bloody Tuesday" as "payback purge" of top Black officers; Strib ignores it
In the Peanuts cartoon, Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown to kick. She is always promising to hold the ball and every time Charlie Brown believes here, and then when he runs to kick the ball she yanks it away and he lands on his back. Democrats are constantly promising Blacks in general and inner city Blacks in particular. And when we show up for the promise they yank it away, especially in terms of equal access and equal opportunity for those in the inner city in terms of education, jobs, housing, and public safety. That is the theme of our book, our columns, and this blog. We are reminded of this by the five blog entries today.
And what event more symbolizes yanking the football than the Minneapolis Police Department's Acting Chief Dolan purging three top Black offices Tuesday from their positions in the department? It is a deliberate contestation between White and Blacks, between the Police and the PCRC (Police Community Relations Council), and between the Mayor/city and U.S. Department of Justice. We call it Bloody Tuesday. We will wait to see what the Justice Department calls it.
And of course, the Strib refuses to cover the story and disseminate its information to its readers. Unlike its promotion in its paper for its property it owns downtown to be for the new Viking stadium, its silence on this issue comes from the same reason: it is not in their self interest for they prefer that Blacks stay in their place.
Three Blacks were purged of their leadership positions: Deputy Chief Don Harris, the officer in charge of the Ethical Standards and Investigation, Inspector Don Bannon, 4 th Precinct, and Lt. Mike Davis, head of Internal Affairs. Inspector Bannon was replace by Black officer Lee Edwards, Head of Homicide. He will soon be replaced by a White officer, making 4 purged.
This is payback against former Chief McManus appointing them. It was this plan and its execution for diversity that kept the department from being placed in receivership by the Justice Department. Mayor R.T. Rybak and the police department believe they can thumb their collective noses and flip their collective middle fingers at the Jusice Department, at the Black community, and at the community justice issues of concern to the inner city communities of color.
Neither RT Ryback nor Acting Chief Dolan have a plan for diversity. They do for homogenization. They seem to have no plan for fighting crime other than roughing up Blacks. Rather than work with the PCRC and the community neighborhoods, they stay in their police bubble, so as they protect their internal turf, the criminal elements outside on city turf spread into the NE, that has had six recent homicides when before it didn't have six in six years. How soon before it spreads to the last inner outpost, the silk stocking area of S.W.
Last week there was a shootout on Marshall. One died, two were wounded. This week, in another shootout using heavy weapons, one more died, two more were wounded. As we state in our column today, it is like Prohibition, which ended when gangsters killed other than gangsters. It will be a sad commentary on Minneapolis if we have to wait for action in our inner city neighborhoods until after the homicides become common also in the NE and SW. When people, especially older ones, in both White and Black neighborhoods, are beside themselves with fear and with anger that such incidents happen, we know we have ceded too much to gangs who feel free to terrorize our neighborhood with impunity.
Some say this is the dark end of diversit in the police department. We know better. We know that if necessary, the Justice Department will place the department in receivership. Just because the elections were won by the Democrats doesn't mean the Justice Department will no longer pay attention to Minneapolis because DFLers in City Hall can call them off. Uh uh. Doesn't work that way. 58 homicides so far this year, 15 more than last year at this time, and the Mayor and the Department rearrange the deck chair on their community Titanic. The PCRC is here to help. We want to help make things work better for the police department. Why doesn't it? Why does it define "working better" as reducing its Black leadership?
Posted 11-22-06, 11:59 p.m.
11-22-06, Blog Entry #39: Police threaten Black City Councilman Ralph Remington; police step over civilian control line.
As noted in my column today, written last Thursday, " I live in a city where the members of the Police Federation invite a Black City Councilman to breakfast and then tell him his life expectancy could be short ["we will remove you"]. I was glad that Councilman Ralph Remington chose to go public with the threats made against him by members of the Police Federation (because he questioned the process and record of selecting the new chief designee). The Minneapolis Star Tribune suppressed (decided against printing) the threats against Councilman Remington, even though it had a copy of Councilman Remington's affidavit to the city council about the threats against him."
We are happy to announce that the Strib finally came clean, a week later, and published the story today: New Minneapolis council member says he fears cops, with the sub-heading, "Ralph Remington's revelation comes weeks after a "hostile" meeting on police reform with top officials of the police union." Actually he made in public one week later, although he wrote the Mayor and Council right away. Neither the Mayor nor the Council nor the Strib made a move. So he went public with his press conference.
As we have caught the Police Federation in incidents before where they were not truthful, and have never caught Councilman Remington in that way, we conclude that the Federation is hiding behind the "plausible denial" technique of "he said/she said," as it was not recorded (not unlike Bill Clinton's famous denial until the DNA on the blue dress proved he lied. As no recorder was going, the Federation can do this.
This raises serious questions:
11-22-06 Blog #38: Black Civil Rights Usurped Again: Liberals reduce Rosa Parks to being the equivalent of an airplane boarding pass.
As we all know, (Star Tribune here and here), and in the Pioneer Press, six imans (Muslim Mosque leaders) were removed from their plane scheduled to fly from Minneapolis to Phoenix, in handcuffs, when they refused to get off the plane when asked to do so.
They and CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) call this Islamophobia and are calling for an end to what they call profiling in airports. They say it was fear and prejudice. Others say it was due to their behaviors and refusal to cooperate.
We have a simple question: Why are liberals so eager to continue to demean the Black civil rights movement and kick us to the back of the line of minorities, again, as before, pushing the rights of new immigrants while continuing to deny those of ours, in terms of equal access and equal opportunity regarding education, jobs, housing, and public safety in the inner city?
MSNBC's Contessa Brewer volunteered the notion that the imans were like Rosa Parks (see clip here), even quoting her. None of the Muslims raised this point. MSNBC did, and then volunteered that the action of the imans was "civil disobedience" and thus was "a defense that could be used for these imams". In our view, an airplane, be it in the airport or flying 30,000 feet in the air at over 500 mph is not a place to enage in so-called civil disobedience. Calling it "flying while muslim" is a tremendous put down for the far many more who are harassed for "driving while Black."
Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "Since September 11, many Muslim Americans have been subjected to searches at airports and other locations based upon their religion and national origin. We must make it illegal." Why are American liberals so quick to make this a Rosa Parks moment? Rosa Parks did not have ties to terrorist organizations. Rather, she fought the terrorism of the Jim Crow South. The discrimination experienced by American blacks when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus was daily, 24/7, 365 days a year is very different from these imans not wanting to be deplaned. These imans are talking of one incident in one hour of one day. To compare these imans to Rosa Parks, and to use it canonize these six, is once again taking our eyes off the prize and dismissing Black history. There is nothing, absolutely nothing comparable for these imans compared to the treatment of Blacks during slave, Jim Crow days, and today in America's inner cities. No one has prevented them education, jobs, housing, and public safety.
To once again minimize our civil rights struggles like this is another example of putting political correctness ahead of history, ahead of paying attention to the continued struggles in inner city America. It takes the focus off how our inner cities are being terrorized by both gang bangers and over reactive police.
In light of what happened on 9/11 and with the recent plot to blow up planes headed for the U.S. from England, and in light of Osama bin Laded predicting that after 9/11 more planes would be used in their struggle, we can regret the treatment of these imans but still understand the reactions to their behavior.
We do not oppose civil disobedience. But airports and airplanes are not the place for them. We all know, long before 9/11, anyone making jokes about a bomb on a plane got pulled aside. It was reported that these imans were making anti-American statements in front of airport personnel and passengers. We're they purposefully tauting authorities to get this reaction? It doesn't matter. No one is allowed to yell "fire" in a theater.
Many share the concern that if political correctness holds and the result could be to criminalize such searches and leave airports and planes more vulnerable. The key is to strike a balance between the legitimate need of the many for security for all and the need of the many to be viglant regarding the civil rights of all, as the debate in the Strib (Imam incident rests on a raw nerve: Travelers, bloggers have plenty of opinions about clerics forced off a flight) shows.
If incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi follows through and asks for legislation to outlaw these kind of airport searches, wouldn't we be giving terrorists of any stripe a free hand to operate in American airports? This whole incident and controversy also leaves untouched the key question of why Nancy Pelosi and the democrats, for all their first 100 hours and first 100 days talk, are silent about the education, jobs, housing and public safety gaps of people of color in the inner cities.
Posted November 22, 2006, 11:55 p.m.
11-22-06, #37: CNN asks Ellison if he is "working with our enemies."
In what has to be one of the most disgusting displays of rudeness and disrespect, CNN correspondent Glenn Beck, on CNN's Headline News program on November 14, asked Keith Ellison, the first-ever Musim congressman, as well as the first Black to Congress from Minnesota, this question: "what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies' " And then this: "And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." We'll be keeping an eye on how our new Congressman is treated. We suspect that his Muslim beliefs will provide cover for their real problem: he is Black.
Posted November 22, 2006, 10:32 p.m.
11-22-06, Blog Entry #36: Are Democrats targeting Congressional Black Causus members for Committee Chair exclusion?
In our column of 10-25-06, we wrote of the gracious patience displayed by our Black congress persons having waited their turn. Thus we are concerned about a report that suggests others don't perceive patience as the virtue we do. It was reported on November 16, 2006, that "Nancy Pelosi's new Committee on Organization and Review of the Rules may target the House's seniority system, with long-serving members of the Congressional Black Caucus being in the crosshairs. In order to prevent any outcry from the Black Caucus, Pelosi has cleverly named South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, an African American and prospective Majority Whip, as the chairman of the new committee. The gambit is clearly an attempt by the Democratic Leadership Council and their congressional allies to bypass seniority to place their own people in key committee chairs."
This is not news. This is same 'ol, same 'ol, same old song, different verse. William A. Clay, former Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, covered such treatment in is book, "Just Permanent Interests: Black Americans in Congress 1870-1992." Many of the gaps in eduation, jobs, housing, and public safety are due to Democrats. who conrol the cities and the Republicans who let them.
And thus, we know that former Black Panther Bobby Rush was targeted from what is almost inconceivable, given this is Bobby Rush, the left, because he voted for the energy bill.
And Black Caucus member, Rep Wynn of Maryland, was also targeted by the left because of his record of voting 88% with the party was not considered good enough.
We know that there are many of the new generation of American blacks that have grown up and economically prospered without ever experiencing legal discrimination. A sign of his new affluence for many Blacks in the concern over estate taxes (what some call "death taxes"). We need our Black enterprises and Black newspapers. And yet in Chicago, the Chicago Defender had to be sold to meet its "death taxes." This is a legitimate concern of entrepreneurial and other prosperous Blacks when busineses they owned have to be sold (often at bargain rates) due to the taxes. Estate tax reforms are needed because the tax hits hardest at the newly prosperous, especially the newly Black prosperous. And who hammers those of us who are able to be successful in business? You know the answer: it is the largely white, affluent left wing of the Democratic Party.
Thus, many leading left wing Democrats "had the money and leisure to pursue political careers precisely because their own ancestors were able to avoid the grim reaper's favorite traveling companion, the taxman," Democrats such as Dean, the various Kennedys, Kerry, Dayton, Lamont, Rockefeller, etc.
This is why we need to consider candidates of other parties (Republican, Libertarian, Green, etc.) who will back our intersts too, not just their own. We need to stop giving our votes away on a silver platter and make them earn our votes.
Posted November 22, 2006, 10:32 p.m.
11-3-06, Three today: #33 - 35
#35: City finally opens up some of the metrics regarding police use of force; more are needed
#34: Police shootings: last resort or to "set examples"?
#33: John Kerry and the Democratic party's continued racism
11-3-06, #35: City finally opens up some of the metrics regarding police use of force; more are needed
The Strib reported late 11-1-06 online and 11-2-06 in its print edition ("Police use of force: Behind the numbers") that our Minneapolis Police Department "has rolled out its first-ever analysis of how officers use force." Amazing. First-ever . No organization can function well if it doesn't have metrics for after action review analysis in order to make adjustents and corrections for the future. We are supposed to have a system of checks and balances. The lack of such is one of the reasons leading to the formation of the Police Community Relations Council, which has provided that counter balance for the community.
We commend the department for conducting this study and recommend it be done regularly. But we don't have enough information yet, although this is a start. Only when knowing what force incidents have taken place and whether or not they were within the laws and statutes can we evaluate the police use of force.
The Strib reports that force was used in 543 incidents, 49% involving feet and hands, 5% with tasers and 3% with guns. What type of force was used in the other 43% of the incidents?
The Strib reports that "half of the 80 cases that received a full investigation resulted in discipline ranging from a letter of reprimand to termination." This shows the critical need for more information and the need for the department to work more closely with the PCRC to develop effective use of force protocols so that shooting citizens dead becomes the last resort rather than the first or second, and that when force becomes necessary for restraining the uncooperative, it is not an invitation to practice beating up someone.
Posted 11-4-06, 1:40 a.m.
11-3-06, #34: Police shootings: last resort or to "set examples"?
Last week Wayne Reyers, a relative by marriage of Clyde Belacort, Founder of AIM and co-chair of the PCRC (Police Community Relations Council) was gunned down by the police, shot at least 11 times (out of 43 shots by six cops firing away as if at the OK Corral). The police responded to a call about a domestic violence situation. Yes, the 42 year old man had been drinking. Yes he had a shotgun (although there is a question as to whether or not it was loaded). And yes, he was not cooperative. This raises, again, the question of the use of force. Knowing it was a domestic, not a drug bust or a gang related situation, and knowing domestics are often drunk and angry and clumsy, why weren't the police prepared to use bean bags, tasers, or shoot to bring him down without killing him? And shooting him 11 times? By six cops? Firing 43 shots altogether?
We ask these questions because in the situation of the White Richfield police officer, out on bail on drug charges, going berserk, he was only knocked down with a bean bag gun rather than taken down with 11 shots out of nearly four dozen fired.
To add insult to injury in the case of Mr. Reyer, not only did the police NOT notify the family, NOT show respect to Mr. Belacort, but it said things that sounded ominously like we were all targets. And indeed, Ralph Remington, Black DFL City Councilman from the 10 th Ward, was threatened with "we'll get rid of you."
Jim Michael wrote an email to the bar association expressing surprise that more were not killed, as doing so would send a message, and stating that what was needed is more shootings, as if all Blacks in the community were thugs and gang banging gang members.
The Black leadership is so terrified that they won't speak out against these shootings. Ditto the Mayor and City Council. We have said many times, there is a difference between young kids and domestic arguments and gang and drug deals. The police know this too. Hopefully the use of force review will lead to non-lethal means to take control of a situation.
Posted 11-4-06, 1:50 a.m.
11-3-06, #33: John Kerry and the Democratic party's continue their blatant racism
The great bruhaha over the prepared remarks John Kerry read from a campaign speech John Kerry delivered Monday to community college students needs to be thought about. He said: "You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well, and if you don't you get stuck in Iraq."
As Minneapolis based blog, Powerline , stated, regarding the Vietnam war: "It was an article of faith among ... many ... that the Army consisted largely of the poor--kids who couldn't get into college and thereby obtain a deferment. It was also an article of faith that non-white Americans died in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam." In other words, the Army was seen as made up of dumb Blacks kids. As we know, that was not true. There were no racial nor ethnic disproportion in the make up of the Army nor in those who died in Vietnam.
But Kerry and those like him have the stereotype that soldiers are poor, dumb, and Black. This shows again why the Democrats both can't and won't solve the problems of education, jobs and housing of the inner cities that they control, because, as we report in our book, they view Blacks as too poor and dumb on who to waste time and money.
Regarding Vietnam, Kerry used to say that atrocities " were not isolated incidents, but were crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
And on Face the Nation recently he said about our soldiers in Iraq: "there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, [and] women."
Kerry needs a reality check. Not many have very affluent parents as he did nor marry two heiress as he has to enable him to make it through to the end of the month. Our soldiers demonstrate their sense of humor as seen in this photograph on the front page of the New York Post, with this heading: "G.I.s DROP SMART BOMB ON KERRY. HILARIOUS HEROES FIRE BACK OVER DEM AND DUMBER CRACK ABOUT IRAQ." You will find that Minneaplis based Time Mag past Blog of the Year, Powerline, discusses this.
Powerline and the New York Post offer us a picture of Minnesota soldiers in Iraq responding to Kerry's insult with a robust sense of humor.
It is hard to get people to vote for you when you tell people they are dumb and that if they don't vote for you they are dumber yet. Posted 11-4-06, 1:50 a.m.
Ron hosts “Black Focus” on Channel 17, MTN-TV, Sundays, 5-6 pm. Formerly head of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission and the Urban League, he continues his “watchdog” role for Minneapolis. Order his book, hear his voice, read his solution papers, and read his between columns “web log” at www.TheMinneapolisStory.com.
Permission is granted to reproduce The Minneapolis Story columns, blog entires and solution papers. Please cite the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for the columns. Please cite www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for blog entries and solution papers.
