re: New York police: The press is vilifying us. Stop treating us like animals.

That baw needs to look up the meaning of the phrase "Collective Guilt" because the USA is about to embrace that universally rejected form of "Restorative Justice".

When the ole Republic hits its 300th Birthday, will it still be strong?

"Don't treat all of us as criminals."

But, it is ok to treat all cops as racists.

Good. Burn NYC to the fricking ground.

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Years and even decades of community meetings, marches, letters to the editor, working through the courts, and every other peaceful means you can think of haven't solved the issue.

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Are you suggesting that the Democrat’s in control of these large urban areas don’t actually give two shits about our African American community? And yet, in spite of the numerous atrocities that you listed concerning the police, our African American communities nationwide vote Democrat in astounding numbers year after year and election after election.

So doing the same thing again and again, all while expecting different results, can describe a circumstance I call...insanity.

FWIW, many posters on this board agree that major reforms NEED to be implemented and done so immediately (yesterday).

Unfortunately distractions such as BLM and their pie in the sky demands, ANTIFA and their naziesque brown-shirt tactics, looters, and vile government officials (here is looking at you Minnesota AG) and the trillions of white supremacy groups (at least as the MSM seems to tabulate things), have taken the focus away from what needs to be done. Social media branding everyone with white skin a racist isn’t helping matters either.

Honestly, I appreciate you returning the focus to where it should be. I admit that I too have been distracted (intentionally imho) and am not alone.

Hmmmm...who benefits from that distraction? Perhaps those in charge at the state and local level? Insanity indeed.

Congress should act, but their idea of acting involves costumes, not true government oversight.

Trump could formulate an executive order addressing some issues, but would probably be fought by the judiciary.

It is a conundrum and I wish their were an easier path. Just know that I agree with your assessment and would like to see change occur...immediately.

Come on Trump?

Peace.

They do not deserve any respect nor sympathy at this juncture. People are finally aware of how the police have been abusing their power. They are crying out with some bullshite. Zero fricks given about their feelings.

sounds like a sniveling snowflake

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I'm not sure you can have civil discourse with most of the people on the left. I e actually tried but their view is that if you disagree with them about something then you hate them and are personally attacking them.

Also, they are not into negotiating. It is their way or nothing. There can be no middle ground. I've never seen such blatant dishonesty from a group of people.

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I think that is true for all the fringe on both sides. The problem is often (the majority of) people that fall somewhere in the middle are quietly content with the status quo. If the non-fringe middle engages then things can change for the better. The problem is when this middle refuses to engage it begins to drive many farther from the middle and produces more fringe elements and continually widens the gap between the sides that are willing to engage.

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Are you suggesting that the Democrat’s in control of these large urban areas don’t actually give two shits about our African American community? And yet, in spite of the numerous atrocities that you listed concerning the police, our African American communities nationwide vote Democrat in astounding numbers year after year and election after election

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Some problems are just hard to solve, some politicians are self serving, and the Democratic Party absolutely does take the Black vote for granted. You can agree or disagree with this, but a really large part of the Black community thinks the GOP just doesn't care about them at all, not even enough to pay them lip service. The often racist abuse directed at Obama didn't help matters. (Clearly, there are plenty of ways to criticize Obama that have nothing to do with racism. He did a lot of things that people on both sides of the aisle can fairly criticize him for. But there were also a lot of conspiracy theories like Birtherism that pretty clearly were racist.)

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FWIW, many posters on this board agree that major reforms NEED to be implemented and done so immediately (yesterday).

Unfortunately distractions such as BLM and their pie in the sky demands, ANTIFA and their naziesque brown-shirt tactics, looters, and vile government officials (here is looking at you Minnesota AG) and the trillions of white supremacy groups (at least as the MSM seems to tabulate things), have taken the focus away from what needs to be done.

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In my opinion, the protests are pretty much the only reason anything is being done (or hopefully will be done in the future). Four years ago, both parties of Congress overwhelmingly rejected a measure to reduce militarization of the police. In January, nobody was talking about police brutality. Now the Democrats have introduced a police reform bill and Trump says he'll have one "sooner rather than later." There's no way this would be be happening without a movement that's brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets.

The larger Black Lives Matter movement (I have some serious issues with the organization that has branded itself "Black Lives Matter") isn't a distraction from a solution that was going to come along eventually anyway, it's the only force pushing a solution to problems that were otherwise going to continue on the same way they have for decades.

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You can agree or disagree with this, but a really large part of the Black community thinks the GOP just doesn't care about them at all, not even enough to pay them lip service.

True. Then again, it may be viewed as a wasted effort by the GOP. If we are being honest, the party of entitlement reform probably has no chance with people receiving (much needed in some cases) entitlement benefits. Still, the GOP has failed our African American community in terms of opportunity. Not to pimp Trump, but the economic opportunity zones designated for our poorest communities (many of them predominantly located in urban areas) was a common sense approach to a long-standing issue. IMHO, the Democrat’s want potential voters that are fully dependent on government services. The GOP wants entitlement reform, but never actually tied anything to realistic opportunity. Love him or hate him, Trump should be commended for implementing these zones imho.

The often racist abuse directed at Obama didn't help matters. (Clearly, there are plenty of ways to criticize Obama that have nothing to do with racism. He did a lot of things that people on both sides of the aisle can fairly criticize him for. But there were also a lot of conspiracy theories like Birtherism that pretty clearly were racist.)

Also true. However, IIRC, Hillary was the first to publicly bring up the birther issue. Again, if the discussion is an honest one, the whole birth certificate “validation “ actually left me with more questions than answers.

That being said, to deny that there were racist thoughts, leanings, and actions by some (many even?) towards President Obama would be disingenuous. I feel that those clearly occurred. However, President Obama was no saint. He is referred to by some as the “divider-in-chief.”
I am of the opinion that he earned that moniker with “elections have consequences,” “you didn’t build that,” and “if I had a son.” At no time during his tenure did I feel anything other than disenfranchised. As opposed to being unified (something that was eluded to in terms of his leadership), the country became as fractured as ever.

Still, if he were to say that he was vilified solely based on his race, I would suggest that his feelings would have merit. I thought his policy decisions were terrible. Then again I felt that way about Bush I and II, as well as Clinton. Policy, not race, was/is the focus for me. That obviously applies to current events. Trump can come off as sounding like a buffoon ( a correct description at times). He can also come across as acting like a petulant NYC billionaire. However, he is the first president in quite some time whose policy decisions I tend to largely agree with. As noted, congress is kabuki theatre. I don’t predict anything of substance from them. My take is that Trump will have to do something to enact reform. Time will tell.

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In my opinion, the protests are pretty much the only reason anything is being done (or hopefully will be done in the future).

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I would agree, as would most posters. I would also suggest that most posters want policing reforms. As noted, it is’t the protest that is the distraction, but the pie in the sky demands. De-funding the police etc. are non-starters and counter-productive to actually effecting change imho. FWIW, ANTIFA just put out their list of demands, and those make the demands from BLM seem somewhat reasonable. Context matters though. To me, it just goes to illustrate how deranged ANTIFA actually is.

It seems as though we have the same goals. Hopefully they can be achieved sooner rather than later, and amicably.

Peace