Darkness falls on St. Louis

See "'Mayhem': 4 police officers shot during long night of violence and destruction in St. Louis", St Louis Post-Dispatch 2/6/20.

Justice for Zemir Begic!

You think "the truth is out there"? Hah! If by "out there" you mean "in the mass media", you are sadly mistaken. All you're going to get from the lamestream media in the USA and Canada is "all the truth that fits"  into their secular humanist, politically correct template. Anything that doesn't fit, that contradicts political and social orthodoxy, will be ignored.

Case in point: the murder of Zemir Begic, beaten to death by hammer-wielding assailants on Sunday morning in... wait for it... St. Louis.

You didn't hear about it? Gee, what a surprise! The story has been notably and woefully under-reported by the American meeja. Why? Because Mr. Begic was white -- a Bosnian immigrant -- and the killers were... wait for it... black.

Mr. Begic was driving his car with two passengers, including his fiancée, when something hit his vehicle. When he got out, he was confronted and assaulted by several dark-complected attackers. He was unconscious when emergency personnel arrived on the scene, and later died at a local hospital.

Police have arrested three teenage suspects and charged them with murder. They are still looking for a fourth. Although the suspects are black (or at least non-white), and the victim was white, a St. Louis police spokesthingy says that they have no indication that race was a factor in the attack. And if you believe that, he has some nice bottom land on the banks of the Mississippi he'd like to sell you.

Given that the attack occurred less than 14 miles from the town of Ferguson, which has been under a bright media spotlight since the August shooting of a black teen by a white police officer, local residents have been quick to draw comparisons.

In "The protesters near Ferguson who are begging for more police", a member of the city's small Bosnian community is quoted thus. "In Ferguson, they want to make a protest about nothing and yet that attracted attention across the nation. We're just trying to keep more police down here because of these little thugs."

The Post's reporter observes that it's police inaction, not action, that has demonstrators angered. He describes the scene at the protests, drawing an implied comparison to the occasionally violent demonstrations that took place after officer Darren Wilson was cleared by a grand jury last week in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

"The protesters did not chant," writes Todd Frankel. "The protesters didn't hurl insults at police. Some huddled around a bonfire on a garage's parking lot. A memorial for Begic with stuffed animals began to take shape in a corner. The protesters only edged into the street whenever police showed signs of losing interest and departing."

Outside of St. Louis, the murder of Mr. Begic has gone largely unnoticed. However, the story has gained traction among conservative commentators and bloggers, who view it as an example of media and liberal activist hypocrisy.

Why is there nation-wide outrage over the death of Michael Brown -- shown on video to be one of the "thugs" from whom the larger community wants police protection -- but silence on the murder of Zemir Begic -- by all accounts a law-abiding immigrant trying to make his way in a land he came to to escape just such race-based violence?

If the episode can somehow be linked to the Ferguson demonstrations, that fact could be used to discredit the protest as a whole. Some might even think that the looting, the vandalism, the mindless violence and attacks on white people are somehow related -- the criminal acts of a lawless and violent... and black... underclass.

St. Louis cop shoots unarmed (?) teen II

Walt is going to write this very carefully, so that his dear readers don't jump to any conclusions.

On Wednesday night, an off-duty St. Louis MO city policeman shot and killed a young male suspect. Here is how it all went down, according to St. Louis Police Lt. Col. Alfred Adkins. He told reporters that the officer approached four men on the street to question them. Then, "as [the officer] he exited the car [I believe he means "got out". Ed.], the gentlemen took off running. He was able to follow one of them before he lost him and then found him again as the guy jumped out of some bushes across the street. The officer approached, they got into a struggle, they ended up into a gangway, at which time the young man pulled a weapon and shots were fired. The officer returned fire and unfortunately the young man was killed."

Teyonna Myers, 23, of Florissant MO, has a different version. She said the deceased, her cousin Vonderrick Myers Junior, 18, had only been carrying a sandwich. "He was unarmed," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "He had a sandwich in his hand, and they thought it was a gun. It’s like Michael Brown all over again."

Oops. Looks like Teyonna let the cat out of the bag. Walt was just testing to see how long it would take you to conclude that the hooter was white and the shootee black. And so they were.

The Post-Dispatch reported that dozens of protesters assembled shortly afterwards in the Grand and Shaw area of south St. Louis. That's only a few miles from Ferguson, which has been the scene of the customary protests -- looting and rioting, you might say -- nearly every night since the fatal shooting in August of Michael Brown, also 18 years old, also unarmed, and also an innocent boy who was getting his life together, yada yada yada.

Memo to Ed.: Save this copy for future use. I'm getting tired of writing the same story over and over again. Walt.

Paramilitary police rule the Paranoid States of America

Walt is a year older. [Than what? Dirt? Ed.] I'll answer that... I'm so old I can remember when people could write and speak grammatical English. I can remember when popular music had melodies you could hum and lyrics you could sing in decent company. And I can remember when children were taught that policemen -- there were no policewomen or policepersons in those days -- were our friends, human and caring people, the sort who would take a runaway kid back home. [Remember the kindly beat cop in Going My Way? Ed.

But times have changed. Cops have changed. Now, whether as a result of the War on Drugs or the War on Terror -- or the War on Poverty ?? -- North American police see themselves as warriors, "serving and protecting" by keeping "law and order" in our cities by using deadly force against terrorists, criminals and, errr, the rest of us... whenever and wherever they feel like it.

Why do they do that? For the same reason a dog licks his balls. Because they can! Police in the Paranoid States of America [Canada too! Ed.] have been thoroughly militarized. What the lamestream media are now calling the "unrest" in Ferguson MO is just the latest example of how that militarization can play out in city streets.

The cops occupying the St. Louis suburb are -- like most state and local police forces -— outfitted with the armoured vehicles, battering rams and flashbang grenades once reserved for troops. Police and "protesters" have clashed every day and every night since Michael Brown, an apparently unarmed black kid, was shot by an as-yet-unnamed policeman on Saturday. Vandalism and looting broke out the next day. A store was set on fire. Al Sharpton arrived.

As noted here two days ago, police responded in full riot gear. Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly shut down the airspace above Ferguson as a precautionary measure. Against what, for heaven's sake?! You'd think war had been declared. Oh, wait... Surely a more appropriate response to riots -- for that's what they are -- would be officers armed with pistols and billy clubs, not M-16s and grenade launchers.

Writing in Business Insider, Paul Szoldra, asks "Why do these cops need MARPAT camo pants?", referring to the pattern designed for the US Marine Corps, or MARine PATtern. When he was serving in Afghanistan, Szoldra says, they used big trucks and uniforms intended to project an image as occupiers. When, he asks, did this became OK on domestic soil?

As Walt told you last spring in "SWAT teams abuse your right -- 1000s of times a year!", studies by Prof. Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, show that between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the percentage of cities of 50,000 or more, like St. Louis, with a paramilitary unit almost doubled to 89 per cent.

Smaller cities, with populations of 25-50,000, saw an even greater jump –- from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. "These trends would mean little if these teams were relatively inactive," he wrote, "This was not the case."

Once the police are equipped and trained in the ways of the military -- the art of war -- they naturally want to put all that training and all those big-boy toys to use. Cops like bullying people! Cops like shooting people! It is their nature... like the dog mentioned above...

Prof. Kraska found that between 1980 and 2000, there was a 1,400% increase (!!) in police "paramilitary deployments". The majority of the deployments were for drug raids in private homes, not the intended goal of a SWAT team, which is emergency situations like hostage takings and shooter scenarios where the extra weaponry might be required.

Two months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report ominously titled "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing". Their statistics for the years 2011-2012 confirm the trend identified by Prof. Kraska.

Of more than 800 SWAT deployments in those two years, 79% were to search the homes of private citizens, largely in drug probes. If it hadn't been the police carrying out these operations, we'd call them "home invasions", for that's what they are -- "legalized" home invasions.

The ACLU criticizes US policing for becoming unnecessarily and dangerously militarized. "Neighbourhoods are not war zones, and our police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies," said the report. Any further comment from Walt would be superfluous.

St. Louis African-Americans protest racist police brutality

Summertime...and the lootin' is easy... This AP photo was taken in Ferguson, Missouri, a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis. The thief pictured is protesting in the traditional African-American manner and against the racism of American society and the brutality of the local police.

A white police officer shot non-white Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday afternoon, after encountering Mr. Brown and another man on a street in Ferguson. According to County Police Chief Jon Belmar, one of the non-white men shoved the cop into his cruiser and a struggle began. At least one shot was fired inside the cruiser, presumably from the cop's gun, since the black kids were unarmed. Several more shots were fired, as a result of which Mr. Brown died from exsanguination.

Mayor James Knowles said he understood that people of the African-American community would "want to vent their frustrations. We understand they want to speak out." Quite right. It only took a couple of hours for John Gaskin, speaking for the NAACP, to shout "We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement."

Following the ensuing candlelight vigil, people of the darker persuasion looted shops, vandalised cars and stores, and set a gas station on fire as police tried to block off access to several areas of St. Louis. Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to arrive today to urge his people to even greater feats of peaceful demonstration. Stay tuned.

Notes from Ed.: (1) Walt has been waiting for decades to use the word "exsanguination" in a sentence. (2) If you can't remember what NAACP stands for, please rest assured the first word is not the N-word. Anyway, as demonstrations such as this show, the NAACP doesn't stand for very much.