Posted on 08/14/2014 4:22:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are weighing in on the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, staking out ground on a racially charged issue ahead of their possible 2016 presidential bids.
In a highly personal Time op-ed, Paul (R-Ky.) bluntly connected race to the treatment of African-Americans who have gathered in Ferguson since police killed teenager Michael Brown. Paul said that when he was young, he might have “smarted off” but he “wouldn’t have expected to be shot.”
“Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them,” Paul wrote. “This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.”
Paul, who has tried to broaden the GOP’s appeal to African-Americans, also joined Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and other leading Democrats in calling for the demilitarization of police forces in Ferguson, who have appeared heavily armed and used tear gas to disperse heated protests.
“There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response. The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action,” Paul wrote. “Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies.”
Cruz was more measured than Paul, calling the situation “tragic” and chastising police for arresting two reporters covering the city’s tension. The Texas Republican called for an end to the “unrest” in the city and urged demonstrators to reject violence.
“Together, we should all mourn the loss of life in Ferguson, Missouri, and work to keep our communities safe and free. Police officers risk their lives every day to keep us safe, and any time a young man loses his life in a confrontation with law enforcement, it is tragic,” Cruz said in a Facebook statement. “Civil liberties must be protected, but violence is not the answer. Once the unrest is brought to an end, we should examine carefully what happened to ensure that justice is served.”
Both Paul and Cruz lean libertarian on issues like criminal justice reform and government surveillance — and each found examples in Ferguson of government overreach in both areas.
Cruz criticized the detention of reporters Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post on Wednesday. The two journalists were arrested at a McDonald’s in Ferguson on Wednesday night in a high-profile fashion that has sparked heated reactions toward the police and the news media.
“Reporters should never be detained — a free press is too important — simply for doing their jobs,” Cruz said.
And through the lens of Ferguson, Paul said the civil rights and law enforcement communities’ posture towards U.S. citizens has now reached a “near-crisis point.”
“When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands,” Paul said.
This is all such a pile of crap. No one is being honest here. Rand Paul is now constantly kissing up to the black community, constantly. Blacks will still vote 90 percent plus for the Dems, and Rand will get nothing for his efforts. And Cruz is looking for some way to split the baby too. He’s fence sitting. Sounds like he’s saying wait for the outcome of the investigation, but, by the way the 2 reporters shouldn’t have been arrested (both totally lib reporters from the Huffington Post and the Washington Post, and a couple of liars about what went down in McDonald’s and why they were hauled off to the klink). So both Paul and Cruz make me sick here. Stop trying to protect Cruz. He’s been hanging around with the drama queen Glenn Beck at the border while kissing up to the “children” illegal aliens, and now this. He’s lost a lot of brownie points with me.
Meanwhile, in case some of you haven’t figured it out, these demonstrations in Ferguson are being egged on by the Obama Admin and his thug regime, while aided and abetted by Al Sharpton and the New Black Panthers to keep the rioting going. All in order to gin up the black base, whipping them into a frenzy so that they will all come out and vote in the November mid-term elections in a rage.
This “incident” couldn’t have come at a better time, and a variety of Dems (today it was that stupid Dem Congressman John Lewis, civil rights agitator) trying to nationalize this, hoping for riots throughout the fruited plain, hopefully in all the major big cities. Got to get that low information voter out to the polls in November.
If you look at the pics of the dead perp, he may have been 18 (of course he is being portrayed as but a child) but he was huge in size. A very very big “child”. And one of the black witnesses to the incident said the white cop was not very big, on the more slender size. I’ll tell you what happened (my female intuition here). This brute got in the squad car with the cop and started beating on him, while trying to get his gun. After all it was going to be the cop or him once he started slugging the cop. The die was cast. By the way, the cop went to the hospital with face wounds. That’s why there was one shot in the squad car, fired by one of them, undoubtedly the cop. Then the perp got out of the car to hightail it out of there, and the cop fired to kill him (as trained to do). After all this punk was trying to kill him.
I hope the various talking heads, both on TV and conservative talk radio, figure this out and that they all stop equivocating. I can’t stand the PC anymore. Just can’ stand it.
Oh really? Nice gratuitous slap in the face of your country's veterans, my draft-dodging friend. The problem with our law enforcement agencies isn't from veterans - we have proper training in the safe use of firearms and more than enough experience with difficult rules of engagement. The problem is with all of these imitation commandos running around with M-16s and flak vests and zero time in the services.
Love you guys with the "support our men and women in uniform" stickers but oh so quick with the sneaky stab in the back at every opportunity.
Exactly. Well said.
You said it. I wish more vets were cops. We probably wouldn't have nearly so many problems if that was so. One of my former Soldiers is now a cop in AL, and he's got a good head on his shoulders. Most importantly, he's not scared to death of anyone/everyone around him and acts accordingly.
He’s as dumb and naive as the rest of the GOPe.
All around ya everything is changing and the only players are rioters, lobbyist, insiders, and multinationals.
........with sincere respect, WHAT would you be able to cite tonight as facts upon which you can base such an assertion?
The only FACT I am aware of is that the kid got into a scuffle or fight of some kind inside a police car and the kid somehow got shot. That’s all I know. Can you share with us anything else (that is generally agreed to be factual by responsible people) you know?
Thanks.
Couldn’t agree with you more!
Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are opportunity seekers with very little substance as far as I am concerned. They will realize if they run in 2016 that most conservatives have got their number and will give their support to someone with a MUCH better track record for actually getting things done AND telling the truth....like Governor Rick Perry!
This one will fall apart just like the last one, but just like the last one it only has to hold together until the elections are over.
“The Saint Trayvon scam worked so well they decided to reprise it with the Saint Michael scam.”
In both cases there conveniently are no firsthand witnesses as to what happened at the time the initial incident occurred. With Trayvon/George and with this Ferguson shooting, no one knows who actually started throwing blows first. In both, IMO, it was the perps that started it by trying to beat the crap out of their victims (George/the Cop). So it becomes very easy to demagogue and paint the portrait whatever way one wants to, to serve political purposes as opposed to serving the truth.
I feel so sorry for this Cop as they could very well try to sacrifice him on the altar of political correctness, rather than going with the truth. Just like in the Trayvon case. In both cases, there were/are now black lynch mobs, payback for slavery don’t you know (Whitey will forever have to pay for that, there is no end date). White guilt forever. And the same group of poverty pimps showed up in both cases aided by their willing accomplices, the MSM.
Once again like with George Zimmerman, this Cop will end up charged with something, and some zealot Prosecutor, eager to make a name for him/herself will jump right in. Hopefully this Cop will have an honest jury, like in the Trayvon case, and will find the Cop not guilty. However, there will undoubtedly be more Blacks on this jury, being so near to St. Louis, and the alleged “crime” taking place in a 70% Black town of Ferguson. So more than likely it could end up a hung jury, which is okay, unless they try him again. I suspect as long as there are some intelligent Whites who aren’t liberals on the jury, it will continue to be a hung jury until they give up. At least I hope so.
He's got my vote.
Have any cell phone videos showed up yet?
______________________
I haven’t seen any. On another thread, there was a “witness” (Tiffany Mitchell?) who said she saw a struggle between Brown and the cop, through the window of the cruiser, and she planned to take video but it was over before she could and then she heard shots and ducked. It’s very strange that there are no videos, unless the police have them and are saving them for the Grand Jury. I suppose it would depend upon what story they would tell, whether or not the residents of the neighborhood would turn them over to the police. All anybody can do is wait and hope that in time we’ll learn the truth. If we’re allowed to learn it. Lawsuits already being threatened left and right for violation of civil rights. It’s going to be a mess. Spreading to NYC, I hear. Police overreaction, that is.
Oh, wait. I did see a video somewhere that was allegedly of the cops putting the body into an SUV. I don’t know if it was legit or not.
The investigators said the other day that they know of people claiming to be witnesses and people on social media posting things, but it’s hard to track them down and people aren’t turning them over to the police. With the fiasco surrounding the Trayvon Martin case, who knows if the evidence will get to the right people, if it will be shared with the defendant’s attorneys (if there is a defendant), or if it will be edited first or hidden. It all depends upon what the evidence shows. Bob McCulloch, the county prosecuting attorney, is a Democrat and was on the infamous “Obama Truth Squad” prior to the 2008 election. Remember that? Prosecutors and sheriffs in MO who were going to make sure that people didn’t spread lies about Obama, such as he’s not a citizen or is a Muslim? It’s all political now and it’s spreading across the country. The plan is already taking shape to use this incident and the mobilization of Obama’s base to swing the November election. Or at least to use this as an “explanation” for how the election turns out, against all odds, when, perhaps, the funny business starts with the vote counting.
“Then the perp got out of the car to hightail it out of there, and the cop fired to kill him (as trained to do).”
Cops are not trained to “fire to kill” fleeing perps. If the incident happened as you described it, then it was a bad shoot.
Word up. It begins to come together. The person who was walking with Brown down the middle of the street said to Al Sharpton in an interview that the cop passed them, told them to get on the sidewalk instead of walking down the street, then he drove on. THEN he backed up fast and accosted them again. At that point, as he was getting out of the car, the friend said the car door “ricocheted” off Brown’s body and (remember, this is his story) hit the officer and that probably upset him. That’s when the cop then, while sitting in the car, reached through the window and tried to strangle the 6 foot, 4 inch tall Brown. Here’s where it gets interesting, in light of the two stories above: Brown’s hands were full of cigarillos, according to his friend. He turned to the friend and handed him the cigarillos, presumably to free up his hands. Now, why might the cop have backed up after seeing these two and why might they perhaps tried to run away?
Thank you!
The shoplifting allegation explains so much. For example, why QuikTrip is “ground zero” for the protests; why graffiti saying “snitches get stitches” was tagged onto the side of the building; why the employees ran into a back room, locked themselves in, thought better of that and so then escaped out the back way after making sure to disguise their QuikTrip uniforms; why the QuikTrip employee who was interviewed by reporters afterwards was afraid to show his face; and why the building (alone among the others that night) was burned down. Can store video survive a fire like that?
“Cops are not trained to “fire to kill” fleeing perps. If the incident happened as you described it, then it was a bad shoot.”
If he was in the Cop’s squad car and was trying to wrestle the Cop’s gun away, and a shot was fired inside the car, and the Cop’s face was bruised and swollen from the Perp’s beating on him, then indeed he had every right to go after the Perp and shoot him dead. They had the Ferguson Police Chief on Fox saying his Cop had every right to shoot the perp.
Wrong. The Ferguson police chief said no such thing - he has consistently said that the investigation is ongoing. And police don’t have the right to shoot at a fleeing suspect just because the suspect attacked the cop before fleeing (if that is what happened). Police can only shoot at a fleeing suspect if, at the time of the shooting, the police have probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant risk of death or serious bodily harm to the officers or others. That is a very difficult showing for the cops to make when a suspect is unarmed and (allegedly) verbally surrendering to the police.
Cruz was more measured than Paul, calling the situation “tragic” and chastising police for arresting two reporters covering the city’s tension. The Texas Republican called for an end to the “unrest” in the city and urged demonstrators to reject violence. “Together, we should all mourn the loss of life in Ferguson, Missouri, and work to keep our communities safe and free. Police officers risk their lives every day to keep us safe, and any time a young man loses his life in a confrontation with law enforcement, it is tragic,” Cruz said in a Facebook statement. “Civil liberties must be protected, but violence is not the answer. Once the unrest is brought to an end, we should examine carefully what happened to ensure that justice is served.”
good
Most MSM and politicians seem to be attacking the police and not mentioning the violence, looting and rioting going on
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