Posted on 06/18/2020 3:58:38 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Will Atlanta find out what “Defund the Police” really looks like the hard way? – After the clearly politically-motivated Fulton County District Attorney, Paul Howard, heinously over-charged police officer Garrett Rolfe in the killing of Rayshard Brooks Wednesday afternoon, dozens, perhaps hundreds of Atlanta police officers either called in sick or walked off the job in protest.
Although the police headquarters denied the reports in an obvious effort to try to maintain order, the Atlanta Police Officers Union confirmed that officers in at least two of the city’s 7 police zones did indeed stage a walk-out:
The head of Atlanta’s police union confirmed Wednesday that officers from the Atlanta Police Department in Zones 3 and 6 walked off the job Wednesday afternoon.
Vince Champion, southeast regional director of the International Brotherhood of Police officers, said that police officers had stopped answering calls midshift, in response to charges against Officer Garrett Rolfe who is accused of murdering Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta.
“The union, we would never advocate this. We wouldn’t advocate a blue flu,” Champion said. “We don’t know the numbers. Apparently we’re learning that command staff are asking outlying counties for support and aren’t getting it.”
[End]
Should this police walkout continue and even expand, the people in Atlanta are about to be exposed to the chaos and brutality that would come from a real effort by craven Democrat political hacks to follow through on their sloganeering of “defund the police.”
" " In a softball interview with CNN earlier in the day, Atlanta’s Democrat mayor (the city has had nothing but Democrat mayors for 141 years now) Keisha Lance Bottoms noted that the morale of her police department in the wake of recent anti-police protests is not exactly high:
In an interview with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on Wednesday, the mayor said that police morale around the country is down.
“… and I think ours is down ten-fold,” Mayor Bottoms said. “This has been a very tough few weeks in Atlanta and with the tragedy of Mr. Brooks, and then on top of that the excessive force charges that were brought against the officers involved with the college students, there’s a lot happening in our city, and the police officers are receiving the brunt of it quite frankly.”
[End]
Oh. You don’t say. Wonder why that would be the case?
Later in the evening, after the police walkout had become apparent, Mayor Bottoms – who is rumored to be on the short list to become Joe Biden’s running mate – said this:
“There’s a lot happening in our cities and our police officers are receiving the brunt of it, quite frankly,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. She said the city has committed to the officers through a big pay raise, and “we expect that our officers will keep their commitment to our communities.”
Ok, so, after a near-month of bashing the police and failing to live up to her commitment to support them, Mayor Bottoms suddenly calls on them to honor their own commitment. As always, leftist Democrats want to have everything both ways. Frankly, it seems amazing that police all over the country haven’t walked out on their jobs after all the crap the Democrat Party and BLM have slung their way in the past several weeks.
I said it Tuesday and I’ll say it again today: Rayshard Brooks should not have died after getting drunk and falling asleep in his car. He was shot 3 times in the back. Regardless of his having waved a taser at the officer as he ran away, he should hot have been shot 3 times in the damn back. America no longer lives in an episode of Kojak – this simply cannot be standard police procedure in today’s United States.
But Rolfe was charged yesterday with felony murder, a charge that claims the act was committed intentionally and with forethought. While this was anything but a righteous killing, there is no question whatsoever that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision made in the heat of a violent situation, a situation that became violent only due to the actions of Mr. Brooks. A charge of manslaughter would have been far more appropriate and more likely to be successful in front of an impartial jury.
Of course, after DA Howard basically did his best to inflame emotions throughout the community by very misleadingly trying his case in Wednesday’s press conference, where will the state be able to find an impartial jury for former officer Rolfe? Certainly not anywhere within the confines of Fulton County
Interestingly, DA Howard is up for re-election this year and in obvious peril given that he only finished second in his recent primary election. That poor showing might be due to the fact that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched an inquiry in May into allegations that Howard illegally funneled $140,000 of city funds through a sham non-profit organization to supplement his salary.
In case you were wondering, DA Howard is, like Mayor Bottoms, a Democrat. Because of course he is.
One might hope that the voters of Atlanta might awake this morning to the realization that there are no Republican fingerprints anywhere on their city’s current predicament, and resolve to be more careful about how they cast their votes in future elections. But such hopes would be almost certainly futile.
The voters of Atlanta have a long and sorry history of electing corrupt Democrats, realizing later that they are corrupt, and just electing more corrupt Democrats to succeed them in the next election. It’s a vicious, destructive cycle that won’t likely change anytime soon.
That is all.
Change Atlanta to Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit - just about any city in the country. They continue to embrace the people and policies that lead to squalor. Forget the notion that somehow things just have to get "bad enough" for them to "learn.". It is not going to happen.
I said it Tuesday and I’ll say it again today: Rayshard Brooks should not have died after getting drunk and falling asleep in his car. He was shot 3 times in the back. Regardless of his having waved a taser at the officer as he ran away, he should hot have been shot 3 times in the damn back. America no longer lives in an episode of Kojak – this simply cannot be standard police procedure in today’s United States.
...
Disgusting virtue signalling on your part.
You should become a police officer and show us how it’s done. Atlanta will have plenty of openings.
If a social worker was sent instead, this could have all been avoided...
/s
Stop with the f#%&ing Monday-morning quarterbacking, Don.
I’m no fan of the police, but this is patently ridiculous. You can’t have a DA charging police officers in a separate case for using a Taser on a suspect and calling it a “deadly weapon” under Georgia law ... then turn around and pretend a Taser is as harmless as a water pistol when it’s pointed at a police officer in this case.
. She said the city has committed to the officers through a big pay raise, and “we expect that our officers will keep their commitment to our communities.”
Has or is? And since when
It ought to be clear to people that the police don't arrest people, drive them downtown, put them in a room, and then beat them to death with sticks. That's not what happens. What does happen is somebody resists the police and things get out of hand, and someone dies. The best way to prevent that is to stop resisting. So give people an incentive to play nice with the police.
Regardless of his having waved a taser at the officer as he ran away
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It is clear he did not watch the video. He did not “wave” the taser, he actually fired it at the officer.
history of electing corrupt Democrats
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Do we really know if the people are actually voting for Democrats, or could it be that those counting the ballots only count those for Democrats?
There’s a movement afoot on twitter to say there are piles of cash and gold at the CNN building. Use the leftist mob to destroy CNN’s building.
4chan guys know how to have fun...
Exactly.
Doesn’t Ted Turner still keep his gold and jewels at the CNN HQ?
Are we sure the guy was shot in the back?
So much of the initial reporting was based on rumors it’s hard to get a good perspective on the encounter.
Redundant phrase.
We have this thing called insurance. I'd hate to see the CNN building leveled only to have them relocate and rebuild in my city/town.
I’m not sure insurance pays out if the damage is due to a riot.
If the original author is going to condemn police, he should at least try to get the facts straight. Mr. Brooks didn't die because of "getting drunk and falling asleep in his car". He died because he fought with officers because he did not want to go back to prison, wrestled a taser away from one of the officers, fled on foot and fired said taser at the officers. The very same type of taser that the DA, one Mr. Howard just a week earlier said WAS a deadly weapon, prior to filing felony murder charges against one of the officers involved.
The sad part is that the people of Atlanta will blythly elect Democrats in future elections, then burn down their own communities as the very same Democrats screw things up even more.
“ Regardless of his having waved a taser at the officer as he ran away, he should hot have been shot 3 times in the damn back. ”
He didn’t “wave” it.
He fired it.
Who gets to say what is resistance? Any action by a suspect can be called resisting arrest, and so can inaction. What about when several policemen are screaming conflicting orders at a suspect?
I don’t mind the general idea of strong penalties for resisting arrest, but the devil is in the details.
That’s what courts are for. The central idea is to keep people alive. And with increased use of body cameras, if one police officer says “Don’t move” and the other one says “Get down” and a third says “Hands up” there will be evidence that the suspect could not follow all instructions.
But running away and/or wrestling with officers is bad. It should be fairly obvious who is resisting to that degree. That kind of resistance might get you shot. Or get you 5 years in prison.
We need to incentivize people to work with the police rather than fight the police. The police are not “bad guys” and they are not out to “get you”. Everything will go better if people behave and use common sense.
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