THE 'FERGUSON EFFECT' SPREADS: Alabama Cop Chokes, Beaten by Black Felon, Fails to Defend Himself

Frontpage Mag ^ | 08/25/2015 | Matthew Vadum

[SeekAndFind]

A white police officer in the South who was recently beaten bloody and unconscious by a black suspect now admits he failed to defend himself properly because he was afraid if he used force he would have been accused of racism.

This is poignant testimony to the tremendous damage that the racist Black Lives Matter movement has inflicted on the American psyche. Nowadays police all over the country are increasingly reluctant, or in some cases outright unwilling, to perform their duties as law enforcement personnel. They know that government officials, eager to pander to loud, angry lynch mobs in the street, don't have their back. The mainstream media has been playing a supporting role, turning every police shooting of a person of color into a cause célèbre, regardless of the circumstances leading to the shooting. So cops are taking unnecessary chances, ignoring police safety protocols and giving suspects the benefit of the doubt when it is not warranted.

This is the war on police that President Obama, Al Sharpton, and other racial agitators have carefully brought to a crescendo since the Trayvon Martin saga and the case of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black thug, who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, last year as he tried to murder white cop Darren Wilson. There has never been any credible evidence that race was a factor in the shooting yet the Black Lives Matter crowd and the rest of the activist Left continue to lie every single day about Brown's death. Brown tried to seize Wilson's handgun and the officer shot him in self-defense. The popular "hands up, don't shoot" meme was based on a lie a witness told in which it was claimed Brown tried to surrender to Wilson and was mercilessly shot in cold blood. Brown's body was autopsied three separate times to satisfy the angry mob and legions of left-wing conspiracy theorists. Wilson has been been vindicated in every official investigation. The local grand jury refused to indict him. Even Obama's race-obsessed, highly politicized Department of Justice cleared him. 

Yet left-wingers continue to portray Brown as an angel, and Wilson as a villain. Not surprisingly, many Americans of all colors are swallowing this leftist propaganda. Manipulated by the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, many black Americans falsely view themselves as victims of systemic discrimination. They no longer respect police and are willing to beat them senseless on a whim. The Black Lives Matter movement is there on the sidelines demanding "war" against police everywhere.

The drama in this specific case began August 7 when a plainclothes officer in Birmingham, Alabama, who has since decided to remain anonymous to protect his family, pulled 34-year-old Jenard Shamar Cunningham over for erratic driving. The detective reportedly ordered Cunningham, a felon with robbery and assault convictions, to remain inside his vehicle. Instead, the man got out of his car and became belligerent. He grabbed the officer's handgun and pistol-whipped him with it. Cunningham fled the scene but was later arrested and charged with attempted murder. The officer was hospitalized for head and neck injuries and then sent home to recover with his family.

The officer explained to CNN his irresolute actions when dealing with the suspect.

“A lot of officers are being too cautious because of what’s going on in the media,” he said. “I hesitated because I didn’t want to be in the media like I am right now.”

Heath Boackle, a sergeant with the Birmingham Police Department, sympathizes with his colleague. Cops are “walking on eggshells because of how they’re scrutinized in the media.”

Boackle, who is also president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 1, told Fox News Channel that the situation is getting worse:

Across the country local law enforcement – state, county, municipalities – the boots-on-the-ground officers are the ones dealing with these people in day-to-day operations,' and they're hesitant because they're always portrayed in the media here lately as the criminals, and the criminals are like the victims and the media is just taking it and running with it.

But the attack itself was not the only indignity the policeman suffered. As the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald writes at National Review Online:

Several witnesses to the beating posted photos of the bloodied, inert, and prostrate detective on social media, accompanied by celebratory gloating similar to the social-media triumphalism after two New York City police officers were assassinated last December. A typical post read: “Pistol whipped his ass to sleep,” under the hashtag #FckDaPolice.

Boackle said the cop's wife and children saw the unofficial crime scene photos on the Internet "before the department was ever able to notify the family that [the attack] had taken place."

The police officer's reluctance to use reasonable force or even to make efforts to defend himself in this case is an example of what St. Louis, Missouri, police chief Sam Dotson quite properly calls the "Ferguson effect." Police officers, particularly Caucasians, are becoming increasingly reluctant to do their jobs and follow proper police procedure when dealing with blacks because they fear their actions will be characterized as examples of race-driven police brutality. This bestows on some black Americans a kind of immunity from legal accountability, a condition David Horowitz calls "black skin privilege." (See my recent FrontPage article, Black Skin Privilege: To Be Above the Law.)

Police officers are laying off of discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Dotson said.

Virtually everything police do is now characterized as racist as police are routinely vilified and violent attacks on them are cheered on by the Left. Police are responding by doing less policing and avoiding neighborhoods perceived as hostile to law enforcement.

As Mac Donald observes:

In Baltimore, following anti-cop riots and the indictment of six officers for the death of drug dealer Freddie Gray, arrests dropped 60 percent in May compared with arrests the previous year. In New York City, criminal summonses, a powerful gauge of proactive enforcement, were down 24 percent through July, compared with the same period the previous year; total arrests were down 16.5 percent. Arrests in Los Angeles are down 8 percent city-wide, and even further in some of the highest-crime areas. In the LAPD’s Central Division, home to the chaotic, squalid Skid Row, arrests are down 13 percent, while violent crime is up 57 percent. 

In some cities, government officials have essentially ordered police to let black criminals run wild.

During the rioting that followed the suspicious April 19 death of career criminal Freddie Gray in police custody, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) ordered police not to enforce the law against black looters. The mayor infamously admitted after riots began that she gave space "to those who wished to destroy."

Of course, this police slowdown is going to hurt the poor and blacks the most.

If a cop knows politicians are ready to throw him to the wolves at the first sign of trouble, and he has a choice between patrolling a crime-infested inner-city neighborhood and an a relative tranquil suburban area, guess which area won't get patrolled.

Police are also justifiably "fearful of being caught on a cell phone video that will not show the full engagement with a resisting suspect," Mac Donald wrote previously. "And I think that they may be backing off on discretionary policing, the low-level misdemeanor offenses. They're still responding to 9-1-1 calls for violent felonies, but they're backing off, and criminals are getting emboldened."

“Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City cop confided in Mac Donald. 

When America's police officers are afraid of doing their jobs, the country is in deep trouble.

[Old Sarge]

H/T to our FRiend SeekAndFind for the post.

This is a most excellent presentation of the problem facing us. The Left feels they have reached critical mass, and the shock troops inside the urban kraals are briefed, prepped and at their lines of departure.

The only thing left is, what will be the go-code? These have been skirmishes and proof-of-concept events up until now. The first major battle will only end in fire and blood.

The last and only line of defense, as it has been in civil society, has been the thin blue line. The good cops are being run off, the bad cops are realizing they're being thrown under the bus as well

What does that leave, when the police won't do the mission? Who comes in to plug the line? The Feds? The Lynch Mobs? Obama's Touton Macoute?

For thus has the Lord said unto me:
“Go, set a watchman, Let him declare what he sees.”
Isaiah 21:6

The Watchman Ping List - FReepmail Old Sarge for details!

[gibsosa]

I dunno, I understood your first post quite well... too bad you had to say the same thing over again till somebody gave up responding... sheesh..

[archy]

Rohm GmbH (RG) does not sell guns in the USA anymore. It is hard to find a cheap $12.00 throw down pistol anymore.

I know a couple of guys who keep a cheapie but realistic-looking airsoft pellet pistol in their briefcases. *For defensive, hand-to-hand combat training.

One local PD had 4 cops empty their handguns into a tanked-up black guy waving a tire around, otherwise being completely naked [the nudie perp with the tire iron, not the 4 cops] Reason? *They thought he might be concealing another weapon....*

[archy]

The only thing left is, what will be the go-code? These have been skirmishes and proof-of-concept events up until now. The first major battle will only end in fire and blood.

That will be for each individual to determine for himself, with the flashpoint likely being multiple attacks by small mobile groups of 5 or 6, [carload] striking at a coordinated preplanned time, likely an hour or two before the hours of darkness, then following on through the evening. Next morning, as the TV cameras appear, they'll then reassemble to complain about how unfair it was that they were attacked when *they wasn't doin' nutthin'*

The situations will vary in different jurisdictions with differing laws, and with differing character and tolerance of different supervisory officials tolerance for that sort of thing. Expect a body count in the dozens, at least, probably fewer than a hundred- initially.

Likely triggers: uncontrolled flash mob looting, communications outages, natural or human-directed, that shutdown ATM and food stamp card machines, or the nomination or election of any white man to replace the present Black ruler. The likely response? Right here you go.

[Old Sarge]

To your entire post, I say:

[archy]

Rohm GmbH (RG) does not sell guns in the USA anymore. It is hard to find a cheap $12.00 throw down pistol anymore.

Got a 3-D printer yet?

[MeganC]

You’ve mistaken my post for someone else’s.

[PLMerite]

“I’m surprised the old tactic of carrying “drop guns” hasn’t made a come back.”

Too many cell phone and surveillance cameras these days. Just when you’ve got your story straight, up pops a video on YouTube or something.

[LucyT]

.

>>>>""The last and only line of defense, as it has been in civil society, has been the thin blue line. The good cops are being run off, the bad cops are realizing they're being thrown under the bus as well.

""What does that leave, when the police won't do the mission? Who comes in to plug the line? The Feds? The Lynch Mobs? Obama's Touton Macoute?""<<<<

From wikipedia: Touton Macoute:

After an attempted coup d'état against President François Duvalier in 1958, he disbanded the army and all law enforcement agencies in Haiti, executing numerous officers. He created a paramilitary force ... after he became president, that answered only to him. He perceived a threat to his regime from the regular armed forces.

Duvalier authorized the Tontons Macoutes to commit systematic violence and human rights abuses to suppress political opposition. They were responsible for unknown numbers of murders and rapes in Haiti.

Political opponents often disappeared overnight, or were sometimes attacked in broad daylight. Tontons Macoutes stoned and burned people alive. Many times they put the corpses of their victims on display, often hung in trees for everyone to see and take as warnings against opposition.

Family members who tried to remove the bodies for proper burial often disappeared themselves, never to be seen again. They were believed to have been abducted and killed by the MVSN, who were called the "Tontons Macoutes" as a result. Anyone who challenged the MVSN risked assassination.

Their unrestrained state terrorism was accompanied by corruption, extortion and personal aggrandizement among the leadership. The victims of Tontons Macoutes could range from a woman in the poorest of neighborhoods who had previously supported an opposing politician to a businessman who refused to “donate” money for public works (which were the source of profit for corrupt officials and even the dictator himself). Analysts estimate the Tontons Macoutes murdered more than 60,000 Haitians.

. . . . Check out article and # 21 .

Thanks, Old Sarge.

[Himyar]

If I were black, I won’t want to bet my life that the white person I was going to attack was too civilized to defend themselves. Might be a bad choice. If things continue people will start fighting back. I for one don’t plan to go down easily and I am an older lady. That carries and is a good shot. I have had to pull my pistol a few times in my life and so far the creeps have realized I’m serious.