In a horrific act of terrorism, five Dallas police officers were gunned down by a sniper armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle and a handgun. Police say 25-year-old Micah Johnson, a vet who served in Afghanistan, planned his mass murder after hearing reports of two black men shot dead by police earlier this week. Johnson, the domestic terrorist was killed when police unleashed an explosive device.
At this point, investigators say Johnson was not a member of Black Lives Matter or any other radical group. There were three other people taken into custody but police now believe they were not associates of Johnson - that he acted alone. President Obama responded to the acts while in Poland saying this:
“Let me just say that even as yesterday I spoke about our need to be concerned, as all Americans, about racial disparities in our criminal justice system, I also said yesterday that our police have an extraordinarily difficult job and the vast majority of them do their job in outstanding fashion.”
I believe the vast majority of American law enforcement are honorable people. Less than two percent of all interactions involve force by the cops, however, there are too many incidents where minority Americans are being killed or hurt over low-level beefs. That's the truth, and law enforcement leadership must compel their own agencies to act with restraint. I support the police and do not believe they are targeting blacks in general. The statistics show that. But again, fatal mistakes are unacceptable and there are too many of them. Any thinking person has to know that there is hate in the air,
CNN’s Don Lemon said this: “You don't have to be a black man in America to know we have a serious problem with police killing black men.” Hollywood Filmmaker Spike Lee said, “we're in the 21st century of high-tech lynching.”
Political Commentator Bakari Sellers defended the African American community saying, “I mean you're literally getting death sentences in this country for being African-American. I trust law enforcement to a certain degree, but my question is, can you please stop killing us?” Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, incited more hatred by asking:
“Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver, and the passenger were white? I don't think it would have. So I'm forced to confront and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, this kind of racism exists. And that it's incumbent upon all of us to vow that we're going to do whatever we can to see it doesn't happen it doesn't continue to happen.”
Dayton may be right but you don't throw a rhetorical bomb like that just hours after a horrendous death at the hands of police. That's just dangerous to law enforcement. It is Dayton's job to provide calm, not inflame the situation. Huge mistake on his part. While the Dallas protest was peaceful, at the same time the Black Lives Matters inflamers in Oakland were doing what they always do. So here's the truth in summation:
- Micah Johnson was a hater and a terrorist.
- Black Lives Matter inflames rather than illuminates. It is essentially a "hate America" group.
- Law Enforcement leaders should make fair dealings with minority Americans a top priority.
Finally, we as a nation need to fight the racial madness that is harming the USA by being fair ourselves and calling out the haters wherever they may be.