10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

[GRG55]

At least 10 officers shot, 3 dead after attack at Dallas protest

10:49 PM. CDT July 07, 2016

DALLAS -- Dallas Police Chief David Brown has confirmed at least 10 police officers were shot and at least three were killed in an attack by two snipers in downtown Dallas at a protest of officer-involved shootings across the country.

"Tonight it appears that two snipers shot ten police officers from elevated positions during the protest/rally," Brown wrote in a statement. "Three officers are deceased, two are in surgery and three are in critical condition. An intensive search for suspects is currently underway. No suspects are in custody at this time. We ask that any citizen with information regarding the shootings tonight call 214-671-3485."

The shot officers include both Dallas police and DART officers.

It remains an active-shooter situation. Police have asked everyone to get to safety and avoid downtown Dallas.

[shiny!]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

This is just awful beyond words.

[Southernguy]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Typical urban guerrilla warfare operation. Is it an isolated act of a couple of people gone mad by the systematic murder of black people by police forces or is it part of an organization which will carry on with the fight?

[Mega]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Very, very sad to see this, my all surpise is the time its taken to happen..............30 years of "Rap".....telling everyone to go shoot your way there.

What is next?

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

It is not so black and white. Where was the outrage over David Kassick? Who was unarmed and shot and killed by a female police officer in PA?

The reality is, it is not that they are black or white or hispanic, it is that they did not comply with police when ordered and in that high pressure situation where the officer thinks they are reaching for a weapon they shoot.

It is extremely hard to train for any instance where you think your life is in danger, the body just reacts. I train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the way new people come in and react when they are in a situation where they know their life isn't in danger but are threatened astounds me. They freak out and do anything not to be choked or arm bared. Even after months of training the majority have not learned to control their emotions/adrenaline when in a disadvantaged position or under threat of being tapped.

I can't imagine what it is like when you fear your actual life is in danger, for anyone, cop, bystander or victim.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/inv...t-nearly-1000/

1000 people were shot and killed by police in the US in 2015. Over 50% of them were white.

"Mearkle, who would later express regret for Kassick’s death, testified that she had “no doubt” that Kassick — who was a heroin addict, though the officer didn’t know that when she gave chase — was reaching for a weapon when he moved toward his jacket pocket as he squirmed in the snow. “There was no reason for him to reach into his frigging pocket!” she yelled in court."

[Mega]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

[lakedaemonian]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Typical urban guerrilla warfare operation. Is it an isolated act of a couple of people gone mad by the systematic murder of black people by police forces or is it part of an organization which will carry on with the fight?

Far from it in my opinion.

The offenders thankfully did not possess the training, planning skills, and/or common sense to conduct an exfiltration plan to survive and fight another day.

Thankfully, these criminal morons will not be able to murder anyone else ever again.

No persistant/resilient/credible domestic or foreign threat can possibly emerge if its members consist of "one hit wonders."

I can assure you that if the offenders were well trained in unconventional warfare they would have escaped and not left such a forensic neon superhighway to follow.

Amateur hour with a carbine and improvised device.

[BK]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Prodigy. +1 Sadly the average person doesn't get that America is safer than it was one hundred years ago and a lot safer than 200 years ago. sadly, Cops with guns are people and they make judgement errors constantly. Some cops are bad guys - but, many cops are good guys/gals working under tremendous pressure and now wearing a bullet proof vest every day they work. Try wearing a bullet proof vest on a day when it is 90-100 degrees and then throw in a 8-12 hour shift.

Funny story - I drove a 68 Buick in College and in summer time with my dark hair + dark tan I would get pulled over by cops in the nice town I lived in. Often it was under the guise of an out of date inspection sticker which was never out of date. So, I know what its like and you need to be smart /polite every time a cop pulls you over no matter how angry it makes you.

[Woodsman]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.
Those binoculars are also stories, bad stories, biased stories, harmful stories, about how black people are lazy, or dumb, or slick, or immoral, people who can’t be helped by the best schools or even God himself. These beliefs don’t make it into contemporary books, or into most classrooms. But they are passed down, informally, from one white mind to the next.
The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much. You think we have been handed everything because we have fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be yours first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.
So you demand the Supreme Court give you back what was taken from you: more space in college classrooms that you dominate; better access to jobs in fire departments and police forces that you control. All the while your resentment builds, and your slow hate gathers steam. Your whiteness has become a burden too heavy for you to carry, so you outsource it to a vile political figure who amplifies your most detestable private thoughts.
Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.
If you do not know us, you also refuse to hear us because you do not believe what we say. You have decided that enough is enough. If the cops must kill us for no good reason, then so be it because most of us are guilty anyway. If the black person that they kill turns out to be innocent, it is an acceptable death, a sacrificial one.
Terror was visited on Dallas Thursday night. Unspeakable terror. We are not strangers to terror. You make us afraid to walk the streets, for at any moment, a blue-clad officer with a gun could swoop down on us to snatch our lives from us and say that it was because we were selling cigarettes, or compact discs, or breathing too much for your comfort, or speaking too abrasively for your taste. Or running, or standing still, or talking back, or being silent, or doing as you say, or not doing as you say fast enough.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/what-white-america-fails-to-see.html

[jk]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Louis CK - I Enjoy Being White

[lakedaemonian]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.
Those binoculars are also stories, bad stories, biased stories, harmful stories, about how black people are lazy, or dumb, or slick, or immoral, people who can’t be helped by the best schools or even God himself. These beliefs don’t make it into contemporary books, or into most classrooms. But they are passed down, informally, from one white mind to the next.
The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much. You think we have been handed everything because we have fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be yours first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.
So you demand the Supreme Court give you back what was taken from you: more space in college classrooms that you dominate; better access to jobs in fire departments and police forces that you control. All the while your resentment builds, and your slow hate gathers steam. Your whiteness has become a burden too heavy for you to carry, so you outsource it to a vile political figure who amplifies your most detestable private thoughts.
Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.
If you do not know us, you also refuse to hear us because you do not believe what we say. You have decided that enough is enough. If the cops must kill us for no good reason, then so be it because most of us are guilty anyway. If the black person that they kill turns out to be innocent, it is an acceptable death, a sacrificial one.
Terror was visited on Dallas Thursday night. Unspeakable terror. We are not strangers to terror. You make us afraid to walk the streets, for at any moment, a blue-clad officer with a gun could swoop down on us to snatch our lives from us and say that it was because we were selling cigarettes, or compact discs, or breathing too much for your comfort, or speaking too abrasively for your taste. Or running, or standing still, or talking back, or being silent, or doing as you say, or not doing as you say fast enough.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/what-white-america-fails-to-see.html

Stereotyping white people and their perspectives is no less condescending and wrong as stereotyping black people and their perspectives.

[shiny!]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Stereotyping white people and their perspectives is no less condescending and wrong as stereotyping black people and their perspectives.

Indeed. The Sweeping Generalization is a popular propaganda technique lately, a comforting substitute for the difficult task of thinking. All the cool kids are doing it!

[llanlad2]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

[QUOTE=ProdigyofZen;304856]It is not so black and white. Where was the outrage over David Kassick? Who was unarmed and shot and killed by a female police officer in PA.
It made it in all the newspapers in the UK. Maybe there was no outrage because there is an acceptance that poor white people are worth less. Maybe someone should start up a Poor Lives Matter campaign.

The reality is, it is not that they are black or white or hispanic, it is that they did not comply with police when ordered and in that high pressure situation where the officer thinks they are reaching for a weapon they shoot

So homicide is justified purely on the grounds that you don't comply with a police order? The reality is that poor less educated people are discriminated against and for reasons of history blacks are more likely to be poor.Would a well spoken, middle-class male be shot for a faulty tail light (or ever been shot for a traffic offence)? I'm pretty sure if educated white people were targeted for traffic offences then there would soon be uproar. Hell, white collar-crime is perfectly acceptable, you steal billions and get a fine, and that's if you're unlucky. No wonder poor people (and consequently black people) hate the police and law enforcement. It's biased against them.

It is extremely hard to train for any instance where you think your life is in danger, the body just reacts. I train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the way new people come in and react when they are in a situation where they know their life isn't in danger but are threatened astounds me. They freak out and do anything not to be choked or arm bared. Even after months of training the majority have not learned to control their emotions/adrenaline when in a disadvantaged position or under threat of being tapped.

If that's the case then higher standards of training need to be employed. Or higher expectations. "Freaking out" because someone is scared does not justify homicide. And remember who has the advantage in these situations? In England and Wales (population 55 million) there have been 55 police shootings in 24 years. It took 24 days for US police to reach that figure in 2015.

I can't imagine what it is like when you fear your actual life is in danger, for anyone, cop, bystander or victim.

I imagine that is how black people feel when they are pulled over. After all it is them that are the most likely to die in a police confrontation isn't it? Can that justify me shooting the police just because I have a gun in the car and I'm scared of the police. There is severe mistrust on both sides which is probably reinforcing. It is the police (whose role is to protect the public after all) that need to demonstrate higher standards first. The USA is the outlier when it comes to "justifiable homicide" in the developed world. Why?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/wp/2015/12/26/2015/12/26/a-year-of-reckoning-police-fatally-shoot-nearly-1000/

1000 people were shot and killed by police in the US in 2015. Over 50% of them were white.

That is disingenuous to say the least. Blacks make up significantly less of the population but are 5x more likely to be shot (by the police) than their white counterparts.

"Mearkle, who would later express regret for Kassick’s death, testified that she had “no doubt” that Kassick — who was a heroin addict, though the officer didn’t know that when she gave chase — was reaching for a weapon when he moved toward his jacket pocket as he squirmed in the snow. “There was no reason for him to reach into his frigging pocket!” she yelled in court."

Ineresting that "heroin addict" is mentioned here. Where is the relevance unless it is to make the action of the police seem more justifiable? Heroin addict=poor, thief, scum. Result = Justifiable homicide.


[QUOTE=BK;304875]Prodigy. +1 Sadly the average person doesn't get that America is safer than it was one hundred years ago and a lot safer than 200 years ago. sadly, Cops with guns are people and they make judgement errors constantly. Some cops are bad guys - but, many cops are good guys/gals working under tremendous pressure and now wearing a bullet proof vest every day they work. Try wearing a bullet proof vest on a day when it is 90-100 degrees and then throw in a 8-12 hour shift.

And their judgements are coloured both by race and status. The media and society colour the judgement. I agree that many police are doing the best they can and that they are only human but clearly something is wrong that is peculiar to the USA. The numbers are staggering.
Funny story - I drove a 68 Buick in College and in summer time with my dark hair + dark tan I would get pulled over by cops in the nice town I lived in. Often it was under the guise of an out of date inspection sticker which was never out of date. So, I know what its like and you need to be smart /polite every time a cop pulls you over no matter how angry it makes you. And that's the kicker. Poor, less educated people than you (or less well brought up) maybe can't hold their temper or not show they are frustrated especially as a ticket is likely to have a greater impact on them. Showing frustration in this situation would not be unusual and nor should it ever result in homicide in my book.

[dcarrigg]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

Stereotyping white people and their perspectives is no less condescending and wrong as stereotyping black people and their perspectives.

I never fully understood the group "white." It seems to be a lot more important to people south of the Mason-Dixon. Up this way, we've bot Brahmins and Swampers (cash rich/land rich and cash poor/land rich English), Greeks and Armenians and Russians (Orthodox), Italians and Irish and Portuguese and Puerto Ricans and Polish and French and Quebecois and Guatemalans (Catholics), and the occasional Germans and Dutch and Swedes and Scots other assorted Protestants. Then there's the different Jewish neighborhoods. And there's Chinatown, and Koreatown and Cambodiatown, and other Asian enclaves, along with towns full of Lebanese and Syrians and Egyptians and various other Middle Eastern peoples. Then you have your African Americans with some very old traditions and neighborhoods, and your newer African immigrants from Nigeria or Kenya or maybe somewhere in the Caribbean who from communities as well. And there are many more people I'm neglecting to mention.

I remember in college--and I think this is a trick much older than me--there were Young Republicans agitating to start a scholarship for "White Kids." They were angry because the NAACP had scholarships exclusively for African Americans. But the University didn't want to let the scholarships exclusively for white kids to happen. I got in an argument, which was normal for me, with the kids when I told them the whole problem was the label "white." You could have a scholarship from the Holy Ghost Society that goes only to Portuguese-American kids, or the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick that goes to Irish-American kids or from the Order of the Sons of Italy in America for the Italian-American kids, etc. There were plenty of ethnic scholarships that were available to white kids. I snagged one or two myself. They're just not listed under the label "white."

And in truth, we all had our own neighborhoods. It's hard to grow up in a shithole in Boston and imagine that you're "white" just the same as the masters of the universe in the Brownstones on Beacon Hill. Nah, you know you're Catholic and you're way lower down on the totem pole than the English whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. The average among them go to Harvard and stay in a dorm named after their grandpa. Only the best and brightest in your neighborhood might make it to Boston College. And of course things are different for everyone in every neighborhood. And Lord were we privileged compared to the folks in Roxbury, who always seem to end up at the bottom of the totem pole no matter what happens or who else moves in...

But I suppose I simply don't now, nor have I ever really, felt like I was on any sort of team labeled "white." Maybe if I was jolted by life circumstances into another situation it would happen. I don't know. But I kind of doubt it. Even today, as I think about the people I've either chosen or ended up by chance spending my life around, the vast majority of them--probably better than 80%--are Catholics and Jews. This is partly an artifact of Northeast US demographics, partly an artifact of my own upbringing and ethnicity, and partly an artifact of class and the fact I'm only 2 generations removed from the old country. But I never did feel any affinity with the men in the Brownstones or the Plantations, even if our skin-shades might match up. I've spent more of my time hunkered on the stoop of a triple decker with my buddies munching on someone's mother's Arroz Con Gandules, or getting introduced to rare steak through Lap Khmer.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: 10 Dallas Police Officers Shot

So homicide is justified purely on the grounds that you don't comply with a police order? The reality is that poor less educated people are discriminated against and for reasons of history blacks are more likely to be poor.Would a well spoken, middle-class male be shot for a faulty tail light (or ever been shot for a traffic offence)? I'm pretty sure if educated white people were targeted for traffic offences then there would soon be uproar. Hell, white collar-crime is perfectly acceptable, you steal billions and get a fine, and that's if you're unlucky. No wonder poor people (and consequently black people) hate the police and law enforcement. It's biased against them.

Don't make the mistake of thinking I am justifying anything. I am simply saying that it would be much better to "comply fully" with an officer who has his gun drawn on you. Even so called "poor uneducated" can understand that point.

And for that matter the majority of poor uneducated people in the US are white, more than the black and hispanic poor combined. Granted whites are the majority.

If that's the case then higher standards of training need to be employed. Or higher expectations. "Freaking out" because someone is scared does not justify homicide. And remember who has the advantage in these situations? In England and Wales (population 55 million) there have been 55 police shootings in 24 years. It took 24 days for US police to reach that figure in 2015.

It sounds like you have never been in one of these situations. I have been in many, it is not easy and until you experience the "fight or flight" first hand I believe it is hard to pass judgement.

That is disingenuous to say the least. Blacks make up significantly less of the population but are 5x more likely to be shot (by the police) than their white counterparts.

This is completely true. The narrative around African Americans needs to be changed, the same as the one around Muslims, the same as the one around Appalachian whites, the "poor and uneducated." The whites of Appalachia seem to be the other group of people it is politically acceptable to make fun of on national tv and in daily life. We all know prejudices exist and will never be eliminated from a humans mind, no matter what color they are because it is innate to our make up. At least I do not believe it can be eliminated.

But the simply fact is, black males have committed the majority of violent crimes: New Observer Data on Crimes and Race Statistics. And the other fact is there is negative bias against African Americans by the police and others but also bias in favor of African Americans in many aspects of society.

I searched for this online and most of the crime statistics came up on racial websites so please do not associate those with me. We also all know that the media reports what they want to report.

Either way, the elites continue to force the plebeians to focus on issues of race, abortion, class, poverty in order to keep the eye off of what is really going on, the rentieration of American productivity and income by the 1% in a system designed for capital to accumulate at the top.

No one really wants to discuss facts, only emotions and irrationality. I am 100% guilty of this as well, but I strive for the quest of truth, but what truth?

There is a fragility to Democracy that occurs when we move away from the rule of law as we have been doing for the better part of 50 years, from top to bottom of the political food chain.

We should practice a life of observation, silence, meditation and serenity (conditions which are proscribed by today's society) and a life centered on the quest for truth no matter the cognitive dissonance it creates.