5 officers killed during Dallas protest by snipers

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More on Rep. Walsh's inciting tweet:

https://mic.com/articles/148139/dallas- ... .prnVyNusN

Here's my take: We are locked in a spiral of violence. Following senseless shootings of 2 black men by police officers, a militant took it upon himself to murder 5 police officers. Now, you have a group of people, mostly conservatives, who are trying to take advantage of the latter to try to invalidate the protesters of those senseless shootings and thereby their cause, which is to end the effective racial discrimination and bad practices in policing that have resulted in the needless deaths of many.

If these copycat shootings are any indication, then the violence is likely to continue and possibly even worsen and increase in intensity. If it gets intense enough, you may have other people, mostly conservatives, organizing to combat the former and the police are going to get more paranoid. Basically, more people are going to get killed, more people are going to get hurt. And we are going to lose our freedom.

We need to stop this cycle of violence. We need to stop innocent black men minding their own business from being killed by the cops and we need to stop these violent attacks on good cops doing their jobs. We cannot let this spiral out of control.

On Mark Hughes, a 2nd amendment supporter who police thought may have been one of the shooters (but it turns out he wasn't part of it at all):

http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/micah-xav ... s-suspect/

It looks like it's harder for blacks than it is for whites to exercise their 2nd amendment rights:

From the Rev. Dr. King:

It's a non-issue with that guy IMO. Walking around with a camo shirt and a rifle moments before a fight that involved someone with a rifle, is good enough for suspicion, no matter white, black or blue skin color.

I think it was pretty fair all things considered.

I also don't think the shooting of the first guy was senseless, rather it was all on Sterling. The second shooting looks senseless if the eyewitness is correct. This is one of those conclusion jumping thingies, though.

I'm not disputing the BLM marches are overreactions based on a narrow view of police actions...there's a disconnect when you have people like snoop dog trying to be representative of AA concerns. There's plenty of stirrers on both sides of the fence. However the conservative establishment in the US media dominates the airwaves and have a responsibility to not perpetuate social divisions...

That doesn't make much sense.

Why would say, right leaning people push a social justice narrative on events that aren't clear cut by any objective standard?

http://www.businessinsider.com/dallas-p ... ush-2016-7

I feel like people need to know this. Dallas police have done the right thing in recent years and tried to make reforms to reduce excessive force and complaints and at the same time reducing crime.

Have a look at Fox news on youtube and you'll see they are hardly objective on issues relating to social justice, guns and the economy. I'm not saying they can't report the news but should avoid tinging the issues with their own flavor of right wing rhetoric

Closer to home commercial TV (channel 9) and radio (3AW) also pander to bigoted/slanted views of social issues because that's what their viewers want. Would be good if they use more objectivity but we both know that's never going to happen...

Police haven't released the squad car camera video yet.

Perhaps, Philando had smoked some of the dope they found in his car, and his judgement was affected.

Likely the officer did tell the guy to "not to go the for gun" and likely he did.

Well, when you have 1 network providing for one demographic or slant, you'll have another for a different demographic. That's just business and ideology running its course. CNN, MSNBC and others give their own social liberal one.

I can't really see how they or anyone could be say biased against social justice here. BLM and its cohorts have been given free pass to control the narrative with the media, all the way to the leaders of the US. Fox was saying the same stuff as the others during the start of the Mike Brown incident--they only started changing stances when riots and property damage came into spotlight, especially later on with Baltimore.

Being objective here would be pointing out how it started over assumptions and a lack of objectivity itself, and how it continues to feed off story after story before full details, and if say the shootings are wrong, any justice is done (if a court finds them not guilty, then there you go). And continuing from here with why do they continue with the same, and how it could make things worst for everyone.

In addition to pointing out their grievances and what they want, of course. An equal amount of coverage for the good and bad.

Of course, they're allowed to protest whatever for whatever reason, but they can actually end up hurting civil rights if it's not done properly, especially if it gains popularity simply by group think and confirmation bias. It can push people that might be skeptical further away, and harden people that already have an opinion and won't change it.

He means white ones who vote Republican. This is what we call a "dog whistle."



No, they're based on centuries of oppression, of which unjustified killings of racial minorities by police are a very visible manifestation. Recent events have just pushed people towards a tipping point.



Stronger than any other editorial bias is commercial bias. News outlets will produce content that puts asses on the couch and keeps them there. Few things are more effective at this than fear and outrage.

Fox, CNN, MSNBC; they're all very mercenary about these things. It seems like you've noticed that.



The bias tends to be subtle. Some of it can actually be counterintuitive to some. But I've had indirect involvement with BLM (I do wish it had been more direct, but circumstances have not allowed) and no, the media don't tend to be fair about the whole thing. The way these sorts of movements are presented doesn't quite match their views. There's also a strong tendency for news outlets to focus on the worst scumbags in any given movement and present them as though they were representative of the majority. This happened for a reason.

It started in earnest with the Mike Brown shooting; which was shown to be completely justified by all objective measures, and the media sensation of the shooting was entirely inappropriate.

Yes, displaced Africans in the US have faced hardships through slavery, racism, and segregation. Many of these things have been fixed, however, and blacks have equal rights under the rule of law. Proactive policing is arguably the main problem that's facing them. However, BLM and its supporters have to realize that most police shootings end up being justified, and it's not because of "systemic racism", rather it's because the individual caused it themselves--it's "systemic racism" if a white individual wouldn't be treated the same in the situations involved. You can find white people being killed in the same manner as any black individual. Until they start only choosing cases that are clear police brutality/negligence, then they'll continue to have a large number of justified detractors that are by no means "extremes of society". Boy who cried wolf has a chance of ruining the real actual discussion of problems in the black community and proactive policing.

By my viewing of various open source media, they're keen to point out "outside agitators" for any of the violence shown at say, protests and rallies (back in Ferguson). That's more than fair treatment, and removing culpability from the rallies. I saw it just before on a Fox stream, where the people that started being rowdy were quickly called agitators and not a part of the peaceful protest (even though they were amongst the protestors).

Racism is still very much a thing, and equal rights in theory do not always mean equal treatment in practice. All things being equal, black people are disproportionately likely to face police violence, to be convicted, and to serve harsher sentences. They are disadvantaged in any interaction with the justice system. We can see that in the DoJ report on the Ferguson PD, which noticed that this is a pattern (I'm not going to get into Mike Brown specifically beyond to say that the way the grand jury was handled throws a lot of things into question).

You can find white people being killed, being murdered by police. This is true, and sadly expected given the way we've moved towards a police state over the past 10-20 years. However, suggesting equivalency here would be disingenuous.

Police culture is a big part of the problem, but so is prejudice that exists beyond it.

That's the chicken or the egg thingy

You can say the reason why so many blacks face those things is because:

they commit more crime (then targeted more by proactive policing)
police target them more due to racism; white [and Hispanic] people would commit a similar number of crimes, they just aren't harassed as much and subsequently caught

The easy way to show why, is to look at very serious crimes, such as murder; murder is something you can't explain away by poverty (stealing bread when you're poor without being violent = somewhat justified), social racism (you don't murder people because they say mean things), or racist profiling (I don't know how this would want to make you murder people other than the police, though).

Hence, BLM and its supporters have to show that it's not due to the black people themselves. Buzzwords and theories don't cut it. You need proper studies. I'm sure the justice department can do the studies just fine too. Looking into all the possibilities.

Not that I expect this to ever happen. It's generally easier to blame some other entity than to look inwards. Looking both ways is the logical choice, and it should be done.