“We’ve also heard from law enforcement leaders, including the FBI Director and many police chiefs, that something is changing in policing. They tell us that in this age of viral videos and targeted killings of police, many of our men and women in law enforcement are becoming more cautious. They’re more reluctant to get out of their squad cars and do the hard but necessary work of up-close policing that builds trust and prevents violent crime.”
- Jeff Sessions (DOJ)
Police Brutality, Accountability & Crime Rates
"I've done that as united states attorney to prosecute police officers who do wrong, but we need so far as we can in my view, helpful police departments. Get better, not diminish their effectiveness. And I'm afraid we've done some of that."
On Tuesday Attorney General Jeff Session made clear that he wants less police accountability and wishes return to the days of law enforcement that decimated the Black community. He talked about how our actions to get justice those who have fallen prey to the violent hand of racist, rogue cops. He makes his feels that "we undermine the respect for our police. And made often times their job more difficult and it's not been well received by them."
When In the hell did holding pigs accountable undermine policing???
Sessions is taking a different direction from that of Lynch and Holder, "We're going to try to pull back on this and I don't think it's wrong or mean or insensitive to civil rights or human rights." He honestly thinks the concern should be "to make the lives of people in the the four minority communities to live a happier and safer life." But, he said this while him and the Trump administration has vowed to attack minority communities. How can we be able to have children outside and in safety when children like Tamir Rice are gunned down for being a child while Black? His concern about being able to "go to the grocery store in safety and not accosted by drug dealer" are laughable. Try shopping while Black in any venue that practices the exchange of good and services. The only "gangs and cross fires" we need to worried about are the police and white men like Sessions.
While taking his pro police stance he spoke of a time when "People never locked their doors before." Invoking the 1950s which was before things like civil rights legislation, Voting Rights, interracial marriage and desegregation were commonplace. A time where we were still openly called niggers, hung, raped, violated and forced to live in shacks. A time when overt racism was the norm and police brutality was a standard expectation for Black folks. That period when women and especially Black women worked in conditions and live under societal standards that today is illegal in some cases.
He means these 1950s:
In his nostalgia for the 1950s he rambled on an on about how there was a period of time where things got bad as it pertains to crime. One could guess that he was referring to the era when the Civil Rights movement kicked into high gear and slowed down during tenures of presidents from Nixon to Bush 43. It was during that era that drugs and the war on drugs was used to attack the Black and activist communities which created crime. This led to the incarceration of Black men at an exponential rate and Black women (while the rates are smaller, must be inclusive. The 1980s and 90s saw the highest spikes of mass incarceration, which heavily affected the Black community. Sessions framed that period like this:
"...and so this was a big change. We began to focus on how to improve law enforcement. Something I've just kind of watched. I've had an interest in over the years. And it took some time, maybe 20he years, but the murder rate was half in America than what it had been. Drug use was down among kids. We had prevention programs in every community and many of you and I spent a lot of my time working, try to create a message of the danger of the illegal drugs and the crime does tend to follow drug use, anybody observed history, they know that's true. So we made progress.
And then we got better policing techniques. You know, new york still incredibly effective reversal of the crime rate in new york city. Community policing, broken windows, all the new techniques that came along that put police in the streets out there doing the things that are necessary. But now we are at a time, it seems to me, crime is going back up again. Overall crime rate increased 3.5%. One of the bigger increases since 1991. Murder rate up 10.8% Nationwide and if you've seen in the papers, "the wall street journal" had a big article about it. Major cities see dramatic, I mean really dramatic increases in murder rates. Chicago, Baltimore. New Orleans. It's lots of this out there that's driving a sense that we're in danger. I say we need to return to the ideas that got us here, the ideas that reduce crime and stay on it. Maybe we got too confident. You've been part of the movement that's made our communities and counties safer and we save how many thousands of lives have not been lost."
The Broken Windows Theory:
A criminological theory of the norm-setting and signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments to prevent small crimes such as vandalism, public drinking, and toll-jumping helps to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes from happening.
Racial Profiling:
The use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense.
Implicit Bias:
Is the bias in judgment and/or behavior that results from subtle cognitive processes (e.g., implicit attitudes and implicit stereotypes) that often operate at a level below conscious awareness and without intentional control.
"How many thousands of people have not been injured? How many people have not seen their financial situation damaged severely by crime? We've done a lot of good. We need to not give up on that progress. That is the thing that's concerning me the most. I do not believe, maybe I'm wrong, but I do not believe that this pop in crime, this increase in crime is necessarily an aberration, a one time blip. I'm afraid it represents the beginning of a trend and I think what really concerns me in the bottom of all that is also the increase in drugs in America. So they tend to follow one another. That's what happened in the '60s and '70s. And I think it could happen now. I think while we all have a charge to do better, President Trump issued an order. He doesn't issue modest orders. He said to the attorney general, he said, the policy of this executive branch is to reduce crime in America. That's a pretty good goal. I like that."
"Dubious About Marijuana"
Dubious: hesitating or doubting.
"I am dubious about marijuana. States can pass whatever laws they choose but I'm not sure we'll be a better healthier nation if we have marijuana being sold at every corner grocery store. I just don't think that's going to be good for us and we'll have to work our way through that." That's what sessions had to say about Cannabis this guy missed the bus for continuing education, findings, research and common sense in general. Never mind the existence of substantial evidence that cannabis can be used in treatments for HIV, chronic pain, prevent nausea in cancer patients under chemotherapy, and etc. Instead Sessions' "... best view is we don't need to be legalizing marijuana and we need to crack down for effectively on marijuana and fentanyl and other drugs and part of the federal leadership will be drug distribution networks, cartels that threaten the very government of nations to our south and less money they extract out of American, less danger they present to their governments and their people and fewer people that are addicted."
The Drug Thing & Xenophobia
I will just sit his problematic words right here:
"The drug thing, the president also given me a direct order to take charge and lead an effort against drug cartels, international drug cartels and they are growing in strength. And we got so much of it coming right across the Texas border and all across the Mexican border and we can do better there...We can do better attacking the the distribution networks and we have to start generally from my experience as a federal prosecutor, with state and local cases, where someone catches a person and turns out, they identify them as a major part of an organization and the federal government, DEA, and other agencies have subpoenas and follow up on leads at the local sheriff or police chief can't do and we work together to achieve progress. I am fully aware that, what, 85% of law enforcement in America is state and local. We're not going to fight effectively just from Washington, DC. That is obvious to anybody who can see that the sun is shining. So this is a big deal for us to work together. We have had tremendous partnerships over the years. It started, actually, excuse me, when I became united states attorney in 1981, Rudy Giuliani was the associate who had supervision over U.S. Attorneys in those days..."
"I believe there's nothing wrong legally, morally, or intellectually with a lawful system of immigration. It serves the national interest. What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't we aspire to that good goal and the president made clear his view on it and it's been mine for some time and we're going to make progress about that and then in particular, people who come here unlawfully who commit crimes are going to be out of here...The law says they have to be deported and we're going to insist that that happens and some of these countries that are refusing to take them back, we have the ability and the power and the legal requirement to confront them and take action against them if they don't take them back, we're housing a lot of people who committed serious crimes who entered the country unlawfully and long since due to be deported. We're told we're holding them because these countries won't take them back. There's a lot of things we can do in that regard."
The Conclusion...
We have a fight on our hands in Black (& Brown) community and it will require an "all the above" strategy to defeat this resurgence of white male fuckery. Part of that fight is with the Department of Justice and its new Confederate Attorney General...
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