Hanging from the Christmas tree inside a Minneapolis Police Department precinct were half-crushed cans of Steel Reserve malt liquor and crumpled bags of Takis chips and Funyuns. There was a cup from the fried-chicken joint Popeyes and two packs of Newport cigarettes — pieces of actual garbage accented by a single strip of yellow crime-scene tape that didn’t quite cut it as tinsel....Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are absolutely right.
“These pieces of trash were deliberately chosen to represent how certain officers feel about the community they serve: that black people are a stereotype to be mocked and the lives of those they serve may as well be reduced to trash in the gutter,” said City Councilman Phillipe Cunningham, who represents constituents in the majority-black Near North neighborhood where the MPD’s 4th Precinct is located.
The two Minneapolis police officers who created the display were placed on leave Friday in response to fierce backlash from both the African American community and public officials, including Mayor Jacob Frey, who described the tree as “racist, despicable, and well beneath the standards of any person who serves the city of Minneapolis.”
December 3, 2018
"These policemen are well familiar with what racism is. They knew exactly what they were doing when they ‘decorated’ the tree."
Said longtime civil rights activist Roy Edwards, quoted in "Minneapolis police decorate Christmas tree with racial stereotypes in majority-black neighborhood."
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149 comments:
Couldn't find any information in the article about the names or ethnicities of the policemen responsible. There were only two of them. Yet neither was named.
Imagine the trouble those cops would be in if they had put Christian symbols on that tree!
Maybe they were just celebrating diversity.
It's Christmas Outrage. The new black stereotype.
Or just a Christmas tree decorated with shiny objects obtained at no cost.
As they say, if you can hear the whistle, you are the dog.
It's stultifying.
What is racism, by the way.
White trash in trouble over black trash?
Funyums Still Outselling Responsibilityums.
The Onion, many years ago.
To detest and despise.
Not the right motto.
Popeyes is rascist? Their red beans and rice is quite tasty.
Having once lived near a black neighborhood myself, the display is probably a statement about terrible amount of litter there. It's also not "racism" but "culturalism".
"absolutely right" . Click baiting or cultural marxism?
"Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are absolutely right."
Althouse has a point, but...
But within hours, Frey walked back the statement after realizing “there is a legally required process that must be followed" before an officer can be discharged, his spokesman, Mychal Vlatkovich, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Let's now call it the "Acosta Defense".
Does the police department need to have written rules in advance about how NOT to decorate a Christmas tree?
Acosta has shown that enforcement of simple decency and decorum -- even non-tortious behavior -- now require written proscription in advance.
Not exactly in the spirit of Christmas.
Make them apologize publicly to the Department and to the community.
Then forgive them.
The Somalis on the force shot a white woman from the UK wearing a bathrobe, just to express their fear and anger.
Edwards... told The Washington Post that what the community needs to see is a black officer in charge of the 4th Precinct. Racial insensitivity training, he said, will only do so much.
That training could be... problematic
Does the police department need to have written rules in advance about how NOT to decorate a Christmas tree?
They need to not be morons. Racist or stupid, neither is desirable in a police officer.
Seems like political speech. Maybe the message to the black community is try good character, look what you've become.
The message back is we'll get you fired.
Who should win.
Trash is as you find it.
If you want PBR cans, you have to go to the hipster neighborhood.
I've been sensitivity trained. Also uninvited to following mandatory sensitivity sessions.
If you want CPUSA literature, you have to go to Cookie's house.
Maybe it's art.
While it was definitely directed at the population the officers spend the most time responding to and arresting, It is only racist if you view all black people as trash. When will blacks themselves and white leftists stop viewing blacks as a monolith. If cops in a white majority town decorated their tree with empty pill bottles, rusty cars and mountain dew cans would the rich leftists feel it was directed at them - no.
Blacks need to be sensitive to what disgusts police officers.
Yet neither was named. or described; tells you something, doesn't it?
What does the mayor think of Keith Ellison and Louis Farrakhan?
At first, [Mayor] Frey was so incensed that he vowed the officers responsible would be fired by the end of the day.
Termination, he wrote, “is necessary — both to discipline the officer and to send a clear message: [Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo] and I will not tolerate conduct that departs from our values.” But within hours, Frey walked back the statement after realizing “there is a legally required process that must be followed" before an officer can be discharged, his spokesman, Mychal Vlatkovich, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
What grandstanding nonsense! Is the mayor unaware of the fact that Police Union rules require an investigation before an officer can be terminated? If so, he needs to find another line of work. That's a standard FOP work rule basically everywhere.
However racist the tree was or wasn't, it seems by its location that it wasn't meant for "public consumption". The other question is what was the race of the officer or officers who hung the offending "ornaments", since the photo shows that there are lots of standard ornaments on the tree (which, BTW, the article never mentions). If the officer(s) was/were black, is it still racist? Or, does it then become an "in-group" joke, like rappers using the n-word?
My guess is that the tree started out with standard ornaments & then, as a joke, the officers added the trash items as they came across them in the neighborhood. My other guess -- this isn't the first time the cops have done this. It's the first time they've been called out on it.
Where did the Christmas tree come from?
My guess is that the tree also came for free somehow, and this whole thing just was an offbeat idea for taking advantage of the free tree.
If there was any more thought behind it, it might as well have been just a comment on what the officers think of their pay scale, or the janitorial services offered by the City in their work space.
And yes, it definitely is "art."
Trash is racist.
It needs a mayor effigy ornament.
It seems like you could spot racism in the police force by spotting racism in the police force without involving a tree. Otherwise who would care about racism, if you needed a tree to spot it.
I don't know, Ann. If you see a bunch of crushed malt liquor cans, fast food wrappers, and crime scene tape and your first thought is "black people," maybe -- just maybe -- the (race unspecified, as someone points out above) police officers aren't the only racists here.
As a matter of fact, people who throw their trash on the ground the instant they're done eating/drinking the contents are of all races. Victor Davis Hanson writes about the yards of the (mostly Hispanic) people among whom he lives, choked with wrappers. Theodore Dalrymple does the same for the half-mile or so walk up to a prison. He takes new physicians, mostly African, on this walk. The culprits here are essentially all white.
IOW, the distinction isn't among races; it's between people who are habitual slobs and people who are not. Both kinds come in all colors; the black people I know well wouldn't dream of behaving this way.
And it might surprise you, but even crime scenes occasionally are caused by non-black people.
The tree serves as a divining stick for racism. Dowsing for racism.
Here be racism.
Who decorates a tree with garbage?
Is the movie Undercover Brother offensive now?
It's unfortunate the police officers didnt follow obama's "Mao ornament" nor the clinton's "condom ornaments" on White House Christmas tree policies.
A police station in a "majority Black area" in this day and age is surely staffed with a large proportion of Black officers, and it is very likely that at least some of these were involved with the tree and its ornaments with no thought of it being anything "racist."
IOW, the City dignitaries - and Althouse - once again have mindlessly followed the MSM's war on cops and "leaped to concussions."
"Gallows humor: comic style that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo."
It's also known as dark humor or, whoops, black comedy, but that's pretty useless to note in this context.
Gallows humor has always bound workers, soldiers, any group - who found themselves in a tough stretch. Now, it's just another opportunity for sensitivity training. The tree is funny; the humorlessness of the bosses, regrettable, but predictable.
Or "leapt."
There's lots of trash in Hanoi. Watch the first ten minutes of the train out of Hanoi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT-YG0eytI8
particularly around minute 8 onwards.
Trash is maximized when the tracks are tossing close to people but not so close that somebody feels they own the space.
(Tracks go down the middle of alleyways at the start, where people apparently take an interest in what's outside their doorstep.)
Lots of jobs attending crossing gates there.
But the tree is still funnier than Saturday Night Live, right?
It seems to be less about diversity, than a testament to social classes and self-inflicted poverty. Perhaps lower economic classes, since upper economic classes can afford to decorate their shit, and hang euphemisms with a semblance of caring.
Making a big public deal out of this tree does far more harm than the tree itself.
the tree is still funnier than Saturday Night Live, right?
Not to the perpetually aggrieved.
Some years ago, a police rape investigation unit in Philadelphia got itself in deep trouble when it became known to the higher-ups that they had christened themselves "The Lying Bitches Unit".
I guess they weren't big believers in #BelieveAllWomen.
Althouse's error is treating police racism as a bug and not a feature, amirite guys?
To mock a tree... At worst, Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are indulging their inner diversitist, foment color divisions, because it's politically congruent. At best, they are trying to separate tree and politics. Perhaps they are just suppressing the voices of the people living in impoverished conditions.
Ha! That's hilarious.
The pointless, local shit that gets to be national news these days...smh. Thanks, internet.
It's hard to figure out exactly what's happening to my old home town.
And this seems bad . . . . .really bad, but I wonder what kind of reaction there'd be if instead of all that detritus as decoration in the 4th precinct, the tree at the 5th precinct had been decorated with Surly Liquid Stardust Brut IPA cans, Terra Blue Cornchips and Cliff bars from Whole Foods, Chipoltle Guacamole cups and Eucalyptus vape cartridges held up with a velvet VIP partition rope
Dowsing for racism.
Ah, diversity. The color judgments are clear and progressive. This is especially poignant in the wake of the warlock hunts and trials. #HateLovesAbortion
"Leaped" may be used to connote a general habit of "leaping to concussions" when certain subjects are brought up; "leapt" when referring to a specific instance.
What is the ethnicity of the Officers?
Are they white?
If so, why aren't we getting "White Policeman insult Blacks with Racist Christmas Tree" Headlines?
Sorry, Ann. I am certain... yes, certain... that the items hung on that tree are an accurate reflection of those who live in that precinct. And if the shoe fits, well, whose fault is that?
Also, Michelle Dulak Thomson, while it's true that people of all races are guilty of littering, there is no place where it happens without thought as often as in a predominantly Black city. Like Detroit. Where the car in front of you - at a stop light or in a drive through lane at Coney Island, for instance - is suddenly relieved of any and all trash on a regular basis. Try calling them out on it (at your own risk, of course) and the puzzled look on their face sums it up loudly and clearly.
"Termination, he wrote, “is necessary — both to discipline the officer and to send a clear message: [Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo] and I will not tolerate conduct that departs from our values.”
Yes, who cares what the law is!
This is a racist Christmas Tree!
Extremism in the defend of diversity is no vice,
Moderation in the pursuit of racists, is no virtue.
These guys won't be fired and I'm not saying that they should or shouldn't. The Union will stick up for them. That's what a collective bargaining agreement is for.
Now, if they had hung scalpels in place of icicles, and marijuana in place of holly, sprinkled with some freshly ground shells, that would indeed be diversity with a hint of genocide.
It's the cynicism of the season. Ha, ha, ha.
There were only two of them. Yet neither was named.
IOW, Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are absolutely wrong.
It reminds me of the two black kids and one each Asian and mestizo kids spelling out "COON" during some school ("brONCOs") band event.
Here it is, blurred out so your eyeballs don't burst into flame on your way down to hell for looking at it.
Obviously, the culprits should be punished.
But a reprimand and few days pay should suffice.
Blacks vote 85% Democrat.
The MSM *ALWAYS* has to keep racial tensions at a boil, otherwise black turnout in the next election will fall.
And that's bad for the Democrats.
Soon the robot police will be up and running. And the crime in these neighborhoods will be the same. The people who program the robots will be some the New Racists.
The people most indignant about this tree should be required to serve for a decade as a police officer in this district until the robocops are operational. Show everyone how it’s done.
The tree is a good distraction from reality. Virtue signaling.
Put down the malt liquor and menthols. And stop killing people. Racist police don’t cause this behavior. It’s not Whitey’s fault either.
These officers will be shitcanned and these communities will still be shitholes. Take some responsibility and improve your lives
The Popeyes Cajun fries dipped in pepper-ranch dressing are delicious.
"It's not funny and it's not a joke"
Well maybe that's why it's not funny.
"Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are absolutely right."
Of course they are. They reflect your racism perfectly.
When the Attorney General of your State is a cop-hating woman beater, who the Milllenial Mayor gives a pass to, who gives a shit what the Mayor has to say. No moral authority.
Edwards, the civil rights activist who has lived in Minneapolis since the 1940s, told The Washington Post that what the community needs to see is a black officer in charge of the 4th Precinct.
What nonsense. Lots of precinct captains in this country are black. Lots of police chiefs are black. Do those facts change the daily reality of blacks & their local police forces? No. I really get aggravated when these old civil rights dinosaurs crank out these answers from the 1970s like it's the latest & greatest. Been there, done that.
Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are absolutely right.
@Althouse, Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey — and you! — are viewing the residents of that neghborhood in the abstract. The officers who work that precinct don’t have that privilege. You, and Edwards, Cunningham, and Frey are wrong.
In fairness, anyone who signs up for the police department in big cities has been on notice for a long time that politicians are moral cowards. So anyone who joined in the last decade knew what they were signing up for. The smart people don’t apply to be police in these cities.
Let the Somali pirates keep joining the force.
Big Mike,
It’s Ivory Tower Virtue. The people indignant about this aren’t serving as police in high crime areas. That Millenial Mayor didn’t work his way through the police force to the mayors office. He was a typical Liberal. Big law firm associate instead of walking the beat. Typical White Democrat.
Why doesn’t he live in this neighborhood?
If liking Popeyes is black, I don't wanna be white.
#TreeToo
There was a demographic change in the early 1980's when Gary, Indiana emptied out and moved to the Twin Cities.
What that community neeeds is to start taking some individual responsibility instead of relying on the Store front Reverands who Represent the Community to White Liberals (and the White Liberals fund the Reverands, the “Community Leaders”).
Criminals aren’t taking or shooting g or robbing people because of the Racist Police. But they love when The Racist Police stand down do they can prey on the Community while the Charlatan “Leaders” get paid for nothing.
Earnest Prole said...
"Althouse's error is treating police racism as a bug and not a feature, amirite guys?"
No, you're wrong. Althouse' error lies in supposing it is a cause rather than an effect.
Highlighting Police Racism in order to downplay criminal and disfunctional behavior.
Typical White Liberalism. They don’t live on those neighborhoods and would never become a police officer there.
Wagging their fingers from the Comfort of their White Emclaves.
If there was no watermelon or chicken bones, then, no, it's not racism.
The next story is going to be that Christmas Trees are Islamophobic and Anti-Semitic and shouldn’t be displayed on public property.
Anything to distract from the total failure of liberalism to alleviate poverty and crime in The Community.
"What is racism, by the way." A hypothetical example : Prof Althouse uses lower standards for grading her black students than her white students.
Why doesn’t Minneapolis ban malt liquor, menthols, and fried chicken? Then the precinct will have no Christmas Tree ornaments
The tree is obviously bad. They should have known better. Good community policing doesn't involve using the Christmas tree to mock the community.
It's racist AND it's funny.
It's a strange story. I'm afraid the joke is a little impenetrable to me. Why did they put any kind of garbage on the tree? I don't quite get it.
But as far as the garbage being racist symbolism ... doesn't the article say it was actual garbage? Like, actually collected? So their little found-item artwork was dictated by what was there, and not by their stereotypes, right? Or are we suggesting that they ignored the Au Bon Pain cup to choose Popeyes?
"These pieces of trash were deliberately chosen to represent how certain officers feel about the community they serve: that black people are a stereotype to be mocked and the lives of those they serve may as well be reduced to trash in the gutter."
This assertion is not really backed up by anything other than the assertion. Scott Adams would call it mind-reading.
Police station in San Francisco Tenderloin gonna decorate wit used needles, vomit, human feces and dead junkies.
Turns out the racist decorations were collected from cops locker room.
Also, aren't we missing the true outrage here? Why is there a Christmas tree in a government facility? I didn't see the menorah or the kwanzaa kinara next to it.
There are more important things to worry about than some cops’ attempt at racial humor. Like high crime rates in black neighborhoods. Or high rates of illegitimacy. Or the fact that black kids, as a whole, do worse than white kids in school. And no, it’s not racist to point this out. If I were racist, I’d expect black people to do worse. I expect them to excel like anyone else.
I really don’t give a flying f&$# about this petty BS anymore.
When the lefty mayors of lefty towns like Minneapolis start really addressing those problems, then we can worry about a Christmas tree that doesn’t fit today’s politically correct mold.
White Liberals don’t get indignant over all the shooting, raping, and robbing in The Community. That would be Racist.
They save their Scorn and Indignity for stuff like this. A Christmas Tree decorated with the refuse of the skells and their families.
Police disrespect of The Community doesn’t cause the rape, murders, robberies, teen pregnancies, and high school truancy.
The Community disrespecting itself is the main factor at this point.
"It's not funny and it's not a joke"
Yes it is a joke. Your mileage of whether it’s funny or not may vary.
May need to add an “era of its not funny” tag to this one.
Earnest Prole said...
Althouse's error is treating police racism as a bug and not a feature, amirite guys?
Could you be a bigger caricature of yourself?
It's ok to be white.
It is not ok to make fun of the Negros.
They are a protected class like the cock suckers, the hairy armpit carpet munchers and the clit clipping sand monkeys. Or the chicks with a dick that want to follow your daughter into the bathroom. You can't make fun of them. Ever.
You need to fly under the radar and not let your contempt show. Otherwise the politically correct witches like the perfessor will destroy you.
So what. The race wolf has been cried so much that I don't give a shite. It's like the endless movies about prejudice, just not interested in the tired whiney story line anymore.
Yet trump brings more jobs to and helps tons of African Americans and it's just ignored. It's all about political power, I chose not to play anymore.
We've neither seen nor heard the other side of this story. But the verdict from Lily White Crackerland is Lock Em Up! Hey I like this world called Crackerland... smells like... Victory!
The intent may be to mock, and the target may be Christians, perhaps of a specific diversity class, but that is no self-evident. It could also be a copycat of the artistic work: Christ in Urine, and similar secular, or alternate faith, religion, tradition, maybe ethical, masterpieces.
It's hard to be less funny than the SNL sketch, but you've found an example here.
Althouse is becoming an absolute magnet for this stuff. An offer of an oval Rat window sticker will improve my overall humor. Maybe you can offer a 'products' link, professor.
An empire built on one rat. Inga will find it Trumpian.
When I was young and in the hood, it was KOOLs. Newports were for the "gays".
I never would have seen those things as specifically Black items, but I would have seen them as low life choices, of any color. Calling them Black is insulting to Blacks, but the cops aren't the ones who did that.
Blogger Darrell said...Trash is as you find it. If you want PBR cans, you have to go to the hipster neighborhood.
Sorry, Darrell, the hipsters in Mpls. only drink craft beer, the locally crafted stuff, the more expensive and foul-tasting, the better.
There had better not be a SINGLE non "black", good lord this is stupid, piece of trash on that tree or how many other ethnicities will be offended.
"Racist or stupid, neither is desirable in a police officer."
And yet, unfortunately, one or both traits are found in too many police officers, as well as cruelty and aggression.
(This is not to say all or even, necessarily, most officers possess these traits, but those who do not, and who do not speak out against their fellow officers who do, by their silence enable the worst among them to do as they will.)
this is the same department where the somali cop killed the Australian woman in cold blood right, I guess some sensitivities are more important than others,
BUMBLE BEE said... [hush][hide comment]
When I was young and in the hood, it was KOOLs. Newports were for the "gays".
Pro Tip, stay away from anyone smokes unfiltered Kools, they crazy.
Blogger rhhardin said...
"Seems like political speech. Maybe the message to the black community is try good character, look what you've become."
Nailed it.
The cries of "racism" just create an excuse for the people who behave badly. This was a form of free speech intended to say "clean up your act". The cry "racism" is an action intended to direct attention away from character issues.
"Racist or stupid, neither is desirable in a police officer."
And yet, unfortunately, one or both traits are found in too many police officers, as well as cruelty and aggression.
And human beings in general.
I'm willing to concede this was in poor taste. But why is it national news? We're supposed to learn that cops are racist, but what we might learn is that when two cops anywhere in the US maybe exhibit some racial insensitivity it's big news?
I've seen a lot of videos of cops being total assholes to citizens for no reason, and it really pisses me off, but I'm willing to bet that as a group they do far far more acts of unnecessary kindness to people on the street than they do things like this tree. I don't see much coverage of those positive actions, and I bet most go unnoticed and unmentioned. Every time they do something less than admirable it's national news.
"Racist or stupid, neither is desirable in a police officer."
Robert Cook responds: "And yet, unfortunately, one or both traits are found in too many police officers, as well as cruelty and aggression."
For your purpose as a statist, Cookie, wouldn't those last two--especially aggression-- be a good thing? You wouldn't get far trying to force your will on the rest of us if your enforcers were a bunch of Quakers. As I often say to anti-gun or "pacifist" statists (a philosophical contradiction, but never mind): "The people who enforce all those laws you want won't come armed with love beads and incense."
Could you be a bigger caricature of yourself?
Thanks, I like to play.
It's racially insensitive that they *hang* things on a tree anyways.
We need a new term for the Althouse deplorables as they have moved miles beyond
So, is the motive diversity, anti-Christian bigotry, or cynical speech?
If a neighborhood THOT asks me to buy her a pack of cigs, she asks for Newports. Tall and in the hard pack. When she has to pay out of her own pocket, she buys 305s green. All white girls excepting one with Guyana heritage.
THEOLDMAN
@Howard,
We need a new term for the Althouse deplorables as they have moved miles beyond
Ah, yes, Howard. Free free to lecture us from your Archimedean point of racial harmony.
How about you live like I do since 1979, in the DC suburbs? Watch as your liberal friends tut-tut about the shame of racism as they spend $50K per year to send their kid to a private school, where "private" means full of upper middle class whites like themselves. Or, look at the Yelp reviews of schools, & see how the perceived quality tracks directly with percentage of white & Asian students. Or, federal employees who bitch about "systemic racism" while going on for years & years about the black co-worker who does absolutely nothing for eight hours a day & that they have absolutely no way of getting rid of without getting sued. Or, read about how Dunbar High in DC, which had the honor of getting all of its students into college, was found to do so by massive fraud on grades & standardized tests. You know what happened to the people who perpetuated this fraud on the tax payers & minority students? Nothing. Waddya gonna do? Work through the union rules of firing a whole school's worth of teachers & administrators? That would cost tens of millions of dollars to litigate.
And that's not even getting into Marion Barry or District Council members who seriously believe that the Rothchilds have a weather machine that the Jews use to control the weather.
I'm surrounded by liberals who are happy to think their fellow Americans are racial troglodytes but who would never, ever stop to help a black guy with a dead car battery out of fear. Fuck you & your moral arrogance.
Yes it is a joke. Your mileage of whether it’s funny or not may vary.
It was way funnier than the SNL skit.
I'm about 40 to 50 miles from St Paul and Minneapolis MN. I subscribe on line to both newspapers. I can't remember when a "racial incident" happened when the perpetrator was a white person.
"The people who enforce all those laws you want won't come armed with love beads and incense."
Law enforcement officers do not have to come armed with love beads and incense. They do have to be strictly professional, abide by the law and treat all citizens with respect. (I had a roommate in college--down in Florida--who had grown up in the Bronx, where his father had been a career police officer. He said his father was proud that in 25 years on the force, he never had to draw his weapon on anyone.)
If we expect even lowly retail clerks to treat all customers with courtesy, no matter how obnoxious they may often be, we should certainly expect no less, and, in fact, far more, from those we arm with arrest authority, weapons, and the power of life or death over us. It seems odd that those most inclined to denigrate the possibility that government or its agents can ever perform well are most apt to ignore, justify, or even cheer the police in their most egregious derelictions of duty.
I Callahan said...
"There are more important things to worry about than some cops’ attempt at racial humor. Like high crime rates in black neighborhoods. Or high rates of illegitimacy. Or the fact that black kids, as a whole, do worse than white kids in school. And no, it’s not racist to point this out. If I were racist, I’d expect black people to do worse. I expect them to excel like anyone else."
You realize that what you are saying, is that your expectations are based on wishful thinking, while us racists are living in the real world.
Usually you can tell when the perpetrator is White.
The MSM headlines scream: "White man does X"
When its a POC, then the MSM is silent on race/ethnicity.
Not exactly my point, Cookie, but nice job pretending to miss it. Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.
"abide by the law and treat all citizens with respect" What law did they break? You do realize that rapists and murderers could be citizens.So do you want cops to treat rapists and murderers with respect?
I lived in The Bronx and if your friends father never drew a gun in 25 years he must have been on desk duty. To equate not drawing a gun for a policeman as a sign of respect is foolishness.
I'll channel my inner Instapundit here: the last Republican mayor of Minneapolis that served for more than one day left office July 2nd, 1961.
the Rockettes could use that tree onstage at Radio City
we're in a major Asian center and our police dept, though quite racist, didnt find much to hang on the tree
FullMoon said...
BUMBLE BEE said... [hush][hide comment]
When I was young and in the hood, it was KOOLs. Newports were for the "gays".
Pro Tip, stay away from anyone smokes unfiltered Kools, they
OMG unfiltered Kools are SO good! Don't seem to make them anymore sadly.
that black people are a stereotype to be mocked and the lives of those they serve may as well be reduced to trash in the gutter
This is the only part that I doubt. I doubt the Police officers in that precinct hold such a broadly discriminatory view. I suspect it is more they view the 4th precinct as a 'Ghetto' precinct, so they made a 'Ghetto-tree' for Christmas in the 4th precinct. It is still inappropriate though. It demonstrates actual disdain that the police hold for the community. It is like the police's own little 'basket of deplorables' comment.
Blogger I Callahan said...
"It's not funny and it's not a joke"
Yes it is a joke. Your mileage of whether it’s funny or not may vary.
I'll agree that it was a joke. But so was Hillary's "Basket of deplorables" comment. In fact her comment was tested and frequently used by her on fundraising parties. Just because something is a joke doesn't always mean it is appropriate, especially when it comes from a government official or institution. The police officers' tree shows actual disdain for the community they are supposed to police.
The old black counterman at the party store I used to go to smoked unfiltered Kools. His craggy black fingers stained nicotine yellow. Nails stained too. Smokes were $.22/pack. Good times.
Unfiltered Kools make Camels, Pall Malls, Luckys Chesterfield and all the rest seem like ladies cigarettes.
Rip the filter off a Marlboro, not particularly strong, simply disgusting.
Glad I quit but admire those who can smoke four or five a day.
Blogger BUMBLE BEE said...
The old black counterman at the party store I used to go to smoked unfiltered Kools. His craggy black fingers stained nicotine yellow. Nails stained too. Smokes were $.22/pack. Good times.
.22 cents a pack? You either 100 years old, or bought your smokes on the rez.
I have as little knowledge of what was in those cops minds as you folk. However, in ghettos that kind of debris they used on that tree blows around by the metric ton. You'd find that and more in the bus stop shelters, in/under any shrub that might have the sorry fate to be on a main street. To be sure, one could pick bushel baskets of that out of the weave at the base of any cyclone fence standing. Median annual income some of you take home in a month or two. Day in, day out. Junkies sleepin under warm cars... Christmas? Blood trails, find the gut-shot dude.
If there was any diversity, it was likely incidental. The simplest explanation is am an anti-Christian bigotry a la "Christ in Urine", intersectional religious/moral philosophy, etc.
The police officers' tree shows actual disdain for the community they are supposed to police.
It’s just an example of letting off steam. That’s all. It shouldn’t be treated like a federal crime, for Chrissakes. That said, it’s awfully easy for armchair quarterbacks to judge the way you have, because if you’d done the job (or been close to someone who has), you’d write this off as nothing important.
That “community” treats them like shit on a daily basis. They deal with people who purposely close their mouths when one of their own murders someone, purposely interfere in situations where they should step back, raise their own kids to hate them. This is the “community” of which you speak. If the worst thing they do is put up a slightly tasteless Christmas tree, I’m not whining about it.
In retrospect the point I was making with Robert Cook was sort of a paraphrase of that quote attributed to George Orwell. My version is: "Mild mannered, peace-loving, Kumbaya-singing 'liberals' sleep soundly at night, dreaming of their statist dreams, because rough men with guns and bludgeons are willing to do their the dirty work of aggression."
I Callahan said...
The police officers' tree shows actual disdain for the community they are supposed to police.
It’s just an example of letting off steam. That’s all. It shouldn’t be treated like a federal crime, for Chrissakes. That said, it’s awfully easy for armchair quarterbacks to judge the way you have, because if you’d done the job (or been close to someone who has), you’d write this off as nothing important.
That “community” treats them like shit on a daily basis. They deal with people who purposely close their mouths when one of their own murders someone, purposely interfere in situations where they should step back, raise their own kids to hate them. This is the “community” of which you speak. If the worst thing they do is put up a slightly tasteless Christmas tree, I’m not whining about it.
I think everything you said is more likely than not true. I also still think it isn't right for the police to do this. The general populace's view of the police is getting more an more negative, and while I do a lot of that is unfair, it still exists. And the police can do something about it. The relationship between police and the neighborhood or community or whatever you want to call it doesn't have to be so adversarial. When people in a neighborhood have credible evidence that the police hold the community at large in general disregard, it hurts that relationship. And ultimately the police work for the people, so my first instinct is that the police need to fix themselves.
I don't think the officers should have done this; but was it actually racist? Maybe it was; but maybe it was what we might call "culturalist." Personally I prefer my culture (Western Civ.) to what we might call Ghetto Trash culture or perhaps Housing Project Trash culture, which the allegedly racist Christmas tree was satirizing. (See Thomas Sowell's essay on "Black Rednecks" for more of what I'm talking about.)
"Not exactly my point, Cookie, but nice job pretending to miss it."
Your point was spurious.
"Your point was spurious." Keep telling yourself that, Cookie. You may actually come to believe it.
Yes, racism needs to be deniunced wherever it roots in cultural institutions.
The New York Times Book Review, for example.
"So do you want cops to treat rapists and murderers with respect?"
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Our system of justice was designed to protect the accused against the power of the state. No one is, legally, a murderer or rapist until they're convicted by a jury. A police officer's job is not be the jury or judge but simply to find and arrest those suspected of criminal activity. If the person being arrested--even if a murderer or rapist--is not resisting violently, such that that he or she must be forcefully restrained, (not beaten), then, yes, I do expect the police to treat them respectfully. The police do not know that person is guilty of a crime unless they witnessed the crime as it happened or until the jury says so. (And even if they witnessed the crime and do know the person they're arresting is guilty, they must still treat him with propriety.)
I just checked the officers' records.
Both are long serving veterans. One has received numerous commendations, undetailed. The other saved six children from a burning house, scaled an ice cliff without equipment to rescue a suicidal person, and performed numerous other acts of bravery to save lives.
Like all police, they have both dealt with the usual complaints from the public, but nothing serious or proven. In fact, one of them won a jury trial against a false complainer. Imagine the trauma of that.
Their commander, who has a long, glowing reputation for community relations, from the community, is being scapegoated and has been demoted by the sleazy Chief.
The Chief of Police is the usual identity politics political thug who has no respect for the people serving under him.
So these honorable men, who endured daily abuse at the hands of the public and their own command, and who have served with bravery and decency for decades, risking their lives daily to do so -- who also witness the sick double standards and hatred against police that permeates leftist media and elite enclaves as they mopped up blood and faced bullets -- will now be destroyed for a rude prank which is being treated like a national emergency.
Are you happy now?
.22 cents a pack? You either 100 years old, or bought your smokes on the rez.
In the late 70s, I bought Marlboros from a vending machine in Dublin, GA for a quarter.
A. The decorations DON'T represent or stereotype black residents in the precinct, so they have no business taking offense, OR
B. The decorations DO accurately represent the black denizens of the precinct, in which case, tough shitski.
Rules for Radicals number five: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
Could this be a First Amendment issue?
I live in the 4th Precinct and have for decades. I work downtown, so I ride the 5 Bus that goes through the north-side five days a week and I see these items being consumed all of the time. And while the decorations are in bad taste, they are spot-on with regard to what products people prefer in my neighborhood. To me, the decorations are free speech.
If you've ever decorated your Christmas tree with red Solo cups and shotgun shells, you might be a redneck.
Even if you haven't, you're probably a racist.
Minnesota is where Allen Scarsella is imprisoned for daring to defend himself against a mob of dindu nuffins.
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