Who is Al Sharpton Blaming Now? pb

“OFTEN HE CONDEMNS SUCH ACTS…”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 26, 2014) — Following the murders of two New York City police officers on December 20, the Rev. Al Sharpton called for people to “come together” to “protect both police and citizens.”  Sharpton prominently announced that he would be praying for the slain officers along with the mother and widow of Eric Garner, who died as a result of his apprehension and physical restraint by a Staten Island police officer on July 17.

Sharpton prominently protested the grand jury decision not to indict the officer involved in Garner’s death and a similar decision by a Missouri grand jury declining to indict former Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, who reportedly charged at Wilson after trying to wrest his gun away from him last August.

Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) advocates for Obama, the Affordable Care Act, and “justice for all.”  Sharpton is also host of the show “Politics Nation” on MSNBC, which identifies itself as left-leaning by its “Lean Forward” slogan.

However, prior to the officers’ deaths, Sharpton organized rallies in New York and Washington, DC held on December 13 during which marchers in New York could be heard shouting, “What do we want?  Dead cops!  When do we want it?  Now!”

Sharpton has visited the White House scores of times since Obama has been in office in the capacity of an adviser on “race relations.”  He reportedly owes as much as $5 million in delinquent taxes to the IRS.  The tax agency has targeted “conservatives” in various ways since at least 2010 and reportedly stole $30,000 from former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell last month.

Obama has spoken at Sharpton’s NAN’s conferences.

On December 23, Vanderbilt University law and political science professor Dr. Carol Swain posted a video from her “BethePeople” newscast in which she described Sharpton as having “perfected the game of standing with the grieving parents of dead black men. More recently, he has surrounded himself with mobs carrying signs like ‘Real’ thugs wear flag pins and those who advocate death to police officers. He pontificates at great length about how the problem lies everywhere but in the black community where too many people are making bad choices.”

“Blaming everyone and everything does nothing to improve conditions in black communities, nor does it prevent similar deaths in the future,” Swain contended.

Swain reported that Sharpton “led” the New York City march in which protesters called for “dead cops.”  She called upon Sharpton to “put down his megaphone, pay his legal taxes, and exit the scene.”

A communist group, the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP), was a visible supporter of the New York march which protested “racist cops and courts” allegedly “enforcing the capitalist system” and “choking Blacks & Latinos, the Working Class & Youth.”

Two days after the events in Washington and New York, Sharpton wrote at The Huffington Post:

On Saturday, the entire world watched. They watched as tens of thousands marched peacefully in the nation’s capital. They watched as both old and young, Black and White, and Americans from all stripes joined the families of Eric Garner, Michael Brown Jr., Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, John Crawford III, Amadou Diallo and Trayvon Martin. People around the world watched as similar demonstrations were held in New York, Boston and elsewhere to demand reform. It is clear, that despite distortions and distractions, there is a strong determination among many diverse Americans that policing must be dealt with in this country. And it appears the international community agrees. Justice cannot be reserved merely for the privileged; justice for all is what we want and we want it now. Thankfully, we are closer than perhaps ever before.

In the same piece, Sharpton denounced a Fox News video montage which he claimed was “deceptively edited” in order to “include a chant for ‘dead cops.’  It is disgusting, outrageous, despicable and pathetic,” Sharpton said.  It is unclear if he was referring to the alleged “deceptive edit” or the chants themselves.

In his column and in public statements, Sharpton advocates abandoning the grand jury system enshrined in the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights and turning over the investigation of “police-involved shooting deaths of unarmed civilians” to “state attorney generals” [sic] “rather than local prosecutors and grand juries.”

The loss of a legitimate grand jury system in Tennessee has resulted in hundreds, and most likely thousands, of individuals having been committed to jails and state prisons without proper constitutional review before being charged.  In Tennessee, de facto grand juries are instead used as tools by the government, which includes prosecutors and judges, to target individuals they dislike, fear, or against whom they wish to retaliate for whistleblowing, as in the cases of CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) and George Joseph Raudenbush III, among many others on which The Post & Email has reported over the last five years.

Connecticut and Washington State no longer use grand juries to review evidence before charging a person with a crime.

The U.S. Justice Department under Eric Holder is attempting to identify ways in which the relationship can “improve” between “young people, people of color and people in law enforcement.”  At a commencement ceremony in May of this year, Holder indicated that he believes the U.S. “criminal justice system” is rife with “disparities” in its alleged treatment of blacks and whites.

In 2009, Holder referred to blacks as “my people.”  Holder refused to prosecute several members of the New Black Panthers on a clear case of voter intimidation from November 2008 but denied that “race” was involved in the decision.  He opposes state voter identification laws which he claims disenfranchise minorities and “vulnerable populations.”

Attorney and former U.S. DOJ Voting Rights Section employee J. Christian Adams, who resigned his position early in the Obama regime and wrote a book in 2011 about his experiences under Holder, said that the “once-storied federal agency, the DOJ’s Civil Rights division, has degenerated into a politicized fiefdom for far-left militants, where the enforcement of the law depends on the race of the victim.”

On December 18, the White House announced the formation of a “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” to study “how to build public trust and foster strong relationships between local law enforcement and the communities that they protect, while also promoting effective crime reduction.”  Some believe that Obama seeks to ultimately nationalize all police.

The nominees for the task force include community organizers, university professors, the head of the Police Benevolent and Protective Association of Illinois, Philadelphia Police Department Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, and an Arizona police chief, among others.

According to the World Socialist Web Site, “Obama backs continued militarization of local police forces.”  It describes Ramsey as being “notorious for trampling over democratic rights.”  It further reported:

Accompanied by Rev. Al Sharpton, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Ferguson protest leaders anxious to be integrated in the president’s plans, Obama suggested that the further integration of police forces, community policing programs and sensitivity training could overcome “the simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.”

Well aware of the deep skepticism of minority and working class youth, Obama concluded his remarks with a “cautionary note.” He acknowledged that “there have been task forces and conversations before and nothing happens. Why is this different this time? Because the president of the US is deeply invested.”

On December 21, Sharpton said that he had received death threats over his perceived role in the killings of the NYPD officers the day before.  Former New York City Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik claimed that Sharpton and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio “have blood on their hands” as a result of the officers’ assassinations resulting from what Kerik described as their promotion of an “anti-cop, racist mentality.”

On December 22, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated that DeBlasio had fostered “an atmosphere of police hatred in certain communities.”  “There is not a systemic problem with police racism,” Giuliani said on the daily morning show, Fox & Friends.

As DeBlasio prepared to give a statement on the officers’ killings on December 20, members of the NYPD turned their backs to him.

In mid-November, DeBlasio had said that he believed that “retraining in the use of force” of the 35,000 officers employed by the NYPD was necessary to prevent future incidents similar to that which caused Garner’s death.

Following the officers’ deaths at the hands of a black male with apparent Muslim connections, Sharpton said, “To blame the mayor and others is not what we need. The blame game will only lead to further kinds of venom and further division.”

On December 22, the New York Post Editorial Board wrote that “Throughout Sharpton’s career, from the Freddy’s Fashion Mart killings to the ambush of these officers, his causes have been attended by violence. Often he condemns such acts. But Sharpton remains stuck in a narrative where New York is 1960s Alabama and our cops are all Bull Connors.”

Holder, Sharpton and Obama have said nothing about the deaths of dozens of whites, including a five-year-old girl, at the hands of blacks over the last several years, or the hundreds of blacks who have killed other blacks in repeated waves of violence in Obama’s home city of Chicago during his residency in the White House.