Five ‘Teachable Moments’: President Obama And The Police
By Stephen Miller
America finds itself rocked once again by post racial violence in the era of “Hope and Change,” stoked by a president content to fan the flames before facts or motivations are known in ongoing investigations.
The nation then sat by and watched as police officers in Dallas were gunned down by a group of suspects, with one perpetrator reportedly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and angry at the shootings that led up to this.
Before the facts were determined in either St. Paul or Baton Rouge, President Obama was on television making broad statements about the practices of law enforcement nationwide. Not that allowing an official investigation to take its course has mattered much to him before. Here is a short history of Obama’s habit of jumping to conclusions when it comes to the police:
Beer Summit
The first instance where the media teed up a question on race for our first post-racial healer-in-chief came in 2009, when police were called to the home of Henry Louis Gates, a friend of Obama’s and a professor at Harvard, after a neighbor reported a break-in (when they saw Gates struggling to enter his own home). Police arrived on the scene, and Gates was arrested after he became uncooperative.
Obama, during a press conference two days later, was asked about the incident and famously responded, “I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”
It then came to light that Gates refused to give responding officers his identity and became belligerent with the officer on scene, Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested Gates for disorderly conduct.
When faced with criticism from law enforcement unions for his premature comments, Obama called the situation a “teachable moment” for the country (but not himself) and invited both Gates and Crowley to the White House for a “beer summit” to patch things up.
The punchline came when it was revealed Crowley taught a racial profiling course at the Lowell Police Academy and received high praise from officers of color that knew him.
Mike Brown’s Funeral in Ferguson
The police shooting that spawned Black Lives Matter and the media’s love affair with race riots. Brown was confronted by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson after Brown assaulted and robbed a local store. The confrontation became physical, and at the end of it Brown was shot dead by Wilson.
Wilson was cleared of any wrong doing by both a grand jury and Eric Holder’s Justice Department when both determined Brown had initiated the physical confrontation by attempting to secure Wilson’s gun. The incident and the protest riots that followed were covered heavily by activist, ear-plug-happy members of media who propagated the symbolic myth of “Hands of up, don’t shoot,” a reference to Brown’s supposed posture at the time of a fatal shooting (that theWashington Post deemed the biggest lie of 2015). The DOJ concluded that Brown did not have his hands up in a surrendering manner at any time during the altercation.
None of this, however, dissuaded the Obama administration from sending an official White House delegation to Brown’s funeral prior to the conclusion of the investigation. Wilson was given his walking papers and forced to move his family out of Ferguson.
Friends of Al
Obama makes no secret of his admiration for Al Sharpton. Sharpton is a frequent White House guest and advisor on policy. He also just happens to be one of the most notorious race-mongering police haters in modern American history, whether he’s calling for the murder of police at Keen College or leading protest marches with chants about wanting dead cops.
If there’s a grievance to be had and a dollar to be made, Al will always be there.
Protests in 2014 over the seemingly unnecessary death of Eric Garner at the hands of New York City police boiled over, culminating in the execution-style murders of two NYC police officers by someone who claimed to be motivated by the BLM movement. Their funerals were marked by almost the entire NYPD police force turning their backs on mayor Bill de Blasio who himself had not only encouraged protests and anti-cop rhetoric, but had questionable anti-policemembers of his own staff tied to Sharpton.
Obama & Deray (Oh Look There’s Al Again)
Black Lives Matter, the organized astroturf off-shoot of the Occupy movement, was birthed in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting and has managed to find itself a healthy following both in our national media and in the White House.
Whether it’s disrupting campaign events, blocking traffic on highways, or just flat out rioting, BLM is there — and so is their sort-of appointed leader, DeRay Mckesson, who has been able to spin the nice little gig into an advisory role at Twitter, a six-figure paycheck as an HR member of Baltimore schools, and as it turns out, a seat at Obama’s table.
Before facts are known in incidents involving officers and African-Americans, Deray is there fanning the flames and organizing mobs on social media with his fist in the air, except for the one time when the community of Charleston told him to take a hike.
Like Sharpton, or Bill Ayers before him, Obama plays the role of activist-in-chief and opens the doors of the Presidency to Mckesson, who makes a living demonizing law enforcement.
Statement from Warsaw
Videos of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, at the hands of two police officers who seemed to have subdued him, and the graphic video of Philando Castile after being shot by an officer during a traffic stop outside St. Paul, Minnesota rocketed to the top of trends on Twitter and Facebook, sparking mass outrage from every side of the political aisle and a ton of unanswered questions.
But, once again, unanswered questions and open investigations didn’t stop Obama from giving a late-night statement where he believed it was once again his duty to use his office to comment on two local law enforcement matters while overseas in Warsaw, Poland, where he is attending a NATO conference. He even declared he “could not comment on the specific facts of the case” but somehow was able to declare they represented broader disparities of institutionalized racism in the country he has been in charge of for the past seven years.
As Obama concluded his statement, organized protests started up across the nation in cities — one of which was Dallas, Texas, where the spotlight was violently removed from Louisiana and Minnesota. A gunman, ostensibly motivated by Black Lives Matter and the desire to kill white officers, opened fire on police during a Black Lives Matter protest which left 5 officers dead and 7 more wounded.
During a press conference, Dallas police chief David Brown said, “We don’t feel much support most days. Please we need your support, to be able to protect you from men like this, who carried out this tragic, tragic event.”https://heatst.com/politics/obama-hate-police/
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