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Critics of Police Abuse Critics Practice Defiant Denial
Linn Washington Jr.
Over 1,500-miles separate Harris County, Texas and Harrison Township, New Jersey yet public officials in those two jurisdictions seemingly share a similar disdain for persons who protest against abuse by police.
Recently Ron Hickman, the Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, blasted the Black Lives Matters movement blaming that surging anti-abuse entity for being an impetus for the brutal murder of a Harris County deputy.
Hickman readily acknowledged that he didn’t have all of the facts surrounding the murder of Deputy Darren Goforth, particularly the motive for that murder. However, that lack of facts didn’t stop Hickman from his hair-trigger blast of Black Lives Matters for that murder committed by a man known to have a long history of mental illness who had no involvement with Black Lives Matter.
Earlier this year, the five-member governing Committee of Harrison Township, NJ approved a resolution “Recognizing and Honoring” the service of law enforcement officers. But that resolution was fraught with false facts like the assertion that most critics of police brutality are “career criminals and agitators who seek to divide our nation…”
Curiously overlook by the authors and endorsers of that Harrison Township resolution is the fact that the overwhelming majority of persons who participate in anti-brutality protests are law-abiding citizens opposed to lawlessness by law enforcers. Persons that have led anti-brutality protests in South Jersey communities near Harrison Township have been respected members of the clergy and prominent community leaders, not the “career criminals” referenced in that resolution approved on February 2, 2015.
Although the Black Lives Matters movement certainly is not beyond criticism, it is disingenuous to pillory that social justice protest as an initiator of attacks on police.
‘Calling Out’ police abuse is not the same as issuance of a call to attack police. Black Lives Matter does ‘call out’ the repeated failures across America to corral police brutality but it does not call upon people to attack police.
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Source: http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2848
