The big story of the day continues to be the murder of two New York City Policy officers. Some say that Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the man who pulled the trigger, is the only person to blame in the murders. Others say the mayor, the New York city council, or the media have their own share of the blame. They all have their points.
It’s wrong to claim that the mayor or the city council or the media intended that police officers be murdered. But it’s also wrong to claim that once you’ve sided with the mob you can pick and choose the members of the mob you’re agreeing with. To re-purpose Mao’s apothegm on guerrillas, criminals move among the protesters as fish swim in the sea. New York Mayor de Blasio has apparently realized that:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio urged those protesting the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner to suspend activity until after the funerals of two police officers executed in the line of duty over the weekend.
The mayor’s call comes amid heightened tensions between city hall and the police department, with the city at the center of a heated debate involving law enforcement, race relations, and the justice system.
It has been known for two millennia that republican government requires a balancing of interests. That’s hard to do and it means that sometimes as mayor or legislator you can’t follow your instincts. If you absolutely, positively must engage in street protests and theatrics (as members of the New York city council did), it’s probably time you reconsidered that career in government. Acting on what you believe may gratifying but, frankly, it’s what Ismaaiyl Brinsley did. Whether what you believe is true and right is important.
If there were ever a case that someone was criminally insane, Ismaaiyl Brinsley is that case. He was a violent, crazy, career criminal with a score of arrests, many for violent crimes, a suicide attempt, and was institutionalized for some time. The question that we shouldn’t lose track of is why are we allowing criminally insane people to wander loose?
The media definitely bears its share of the blame. They’ve been keeping the ball up in the air for months without determining if there’s a there there. Do we really have an epidemic of murders of young black men by police officers? No one apparently knows because the data are just not available.
Is violent crime really decreasing as we’re told it is? Here in Chicago we know that the city has been fudging the crime statistics for years. There are two ways to reduce crime. Either you can engage in hard, dangerous, routine police work and determined prosecutions or you can just change the numbers. Chicago has elected to do the latter. They may have done the former as well but we’ll never know.
If we extrapolate that to the national level we simply don’t know the truth of the things being argued about. We can’t tell whether violent crime is going up, down, or staying the same because we can’t trust the veracity of the numbers that are being cited. There’s the real story but, sadly, today’s reporters just aren’t up to it.
… because we can’t trust the veracity of the numbers …
Numbers lie. They should never be trusted.
My first semester of physics broke me of the numbers habit. The professor refused to use numbers except for constants. On my first test I got a 29, but since he graded on a curve, it was a B. I have never looked back.
The definitions should be stated beforehand to allow them to be applied objectively, but the purpose of using numbers is to avoid objectivity.
There is no conclusive evidence Ismaaiyl Brinsley was a product of protests against police violence. I notice the girlfriend he shot has disappeared from media reporting on this story.
“Numbers lie. They should never be trusted.”
Tasty,
This might be an example of that statement: Here’s The Reason For The Q3 GDP Surge.
Ben, Brinsley certainly targeted police because of the Brown & Garner cases. The protests certainly kept that in the news, and the protesters that were chanting for dead cops were probably heard by Brinsley. Given what he said & did, it’s not that big a leap to make a connection.
Especially since Palin got blamed for the giffords shooting & the te a party for the Colorado movie shooting based on much less. Sauce for the goose….
And if you wawant to talk of forgotten victims, there’re all the others shoot in the Giffords shooting, including six dead and 13 nonfatal casualties who don’t get mentioned because they’re not as fabulous as a Dem Congresswoman.
Excuse me, make that twelve other nonfatalities as victims. The shooter also got injured that day.