Pusillanimity Appears to Have become the New American Watchword — Lou Turco’s Asinine Statement that “Main job is to ensure the safety of yourselves and your officers” — A Comment Regarding the Predictable Emergence of the Racio-Neo-Fascist Political Right — after the Murder of NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos

© 2014 Peter Free

 

22 December 2014

 

 

Stupidity, bigotry and excess emotionalism — fuel America’s love affair with our racio-fascist state

 

Two points:

 

 

(1) A crazy “black” man murdered New York City Police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos over the weekend. And now America’s political Right Wing is girding up to use that as an excuse to call for squashing post-Eric Garner protests against the racism that is institutionalized in our criminal justice system:

 

 

Critics blamed the mayor and his aggressive campaign to reform police practices for the shootings, with officers taking the extraordinary step of silently turning their backs on de Blasio as he entered the hospital where the two patrolmen died.

 

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R), known for his tough anti-crime policies in the 1990s, blamed not only the protesters for Saturday’s shootings but also the sympathy they have garnered from de Blasio and President Obama.

 

“We’ve had four months of propaganda, starting with the president, that everybody should hate the police,” Giuliani said on “Fox and Friends Weekend.”

 

“I don’t care how you want to describe it: That’s what those protests are all about.”

 

© 2014 Jerry Markon and Peter Hermann, In New York, rising tensions and calls for unity after two police officers are killed, Washington Post (21 December 2014)

 

(2) Some among the NYPD’s leadership, just as was the case earlier in Cleveland, are eagerly demonstrating the easily roused cowardice that fuels overreactions toward non-threatening black people and further builds impetus for implementing the totalitarian state:

 

 

“Make sure officers are backing each other up at all radio runs,” wrote Lou Turco, president of the Lieutenant’s Benevolent Association.

 

“Your main job is to ensure the safety of yourselves and your officers.”

 

© 2014 J. David Goodman and Al Baker, New York Police Add Precautions After Ambush, New York Times (21 December 2014)

 

 

Association president Lou Turco’s misunderstanding of law enforcement’s mission — parallels that earlier expressed by Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association

 

For Follmer’s brand of anti-constitutional stupidity, see here.

 

And contrary to Turco, law enforcement’s main job is not to ensure its own safety. It is to serve the public and to take some risks in doing so.

 

 

The moral? — Somebody in influential law enforcement leadership needs to get a grip

 

Cowardice and the inability to think and properly prioritize threats are not law enforcement virtues. The NYPD’s ranks are not drawn from the Six Year Old Girls School for the Protection of Pink Ponies.

 

Officers can still go out and serve the public in the manner that our Constitution requires. And one mentally ill person’s murderous acts do not constitute a violent social movement against uniformed police.

 

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton should try stepping up to the plate. Some among his people have demonstrated a willingness to kill innocents, twist their job descriptions into pure self-protection, and openly disrespect the constitutionally appointed authorities whom they are supposed to report to. Perhaps he is part of the problem.