"If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon."

[heironymouspasparagus]

There usually are not riots for murders. There are almost never riots for murders that result in a swift investigation, transparency, and arrests of bad people within days. What would people riot about?

Yeah...kind of what I was getting at.  Doesn't make sense.  Much like it doesn't make sense to have riots for the other direction.  Protests, agitation, and even civil disobedience (emphasis on the civil).  But not riots.  So when it does happen that a cop is killed (just as bad as unjustified cop killing of someone), it is disingenuous of Sharpton, et al to ignore it completely and miss an opportunity for an 'object lesson' commentary in the other direction.  He should be condemning violence of all kinds in both directions.  But that isn't what we see/hear.

Now, if police officers were regularly abused and even killed, and no one did anything about it - then you would see the police out in force demanding action. Instead, violence like this against police is exceptionally rare, about 40 per year. That's down from 120+ in the 1970s.

Sense of perspective moment here - true, there are very few cops killed each year - out of that 800,000 or so.  Taken individually, and viewed one at at time the 40 is just as bad as the 1,000+ "civilians" killed improperly by cops each years - not the justified ones.  Total of 1,040 is just a tragedy.

The fact that there are tens of millions of criminals, drug cartels, and physchos in the USA who can get guns at anytime, and 800,000 law enforcement who are usually very easy to find, and officer deaths by firearms are that rare is a miracle. We expect bad people to do bad things, we often expect the worst based on TV, movies, and media. But in reality, its fairly rare.

I am presuming a little hyperbole here... tens of millions??   You wouldn't be lumping the tens of millions of law abiding gun owners in that would you?


However, we expect more from police than for criminals. We expect them to protect and serve, we expect professionalism and restraint. Yet police shoot and kill someone more than once a day. Hundreds more each day have their civil rights violated. In any conflict where the good guys slaughter 10x the number of people than the bad guys - someone is going to get upset.

People should be upset - WAY more than they appear to be.  Cannot really understand that except for the tendency to people to just not even think about this kind of thing unless it happens to directly impact them - affecting them or someone in their family or circle of friends.  And it's not just cops doing unjustified violence against people - the court system itself is wracked with similar problems of what is "correct action" - the full weight of the court too often lands on people like a ton of bricks, way out of proportion to the severity of the crime.  I remember a case a few years ago of a young mother who was sentenced to 15 years just for possession of 1 joint.  Or at the other extreme, gives preferential treatment to members of the "special" people group - I suspect Judge Glassco and everyone in Tim Harris' office would have different attitudes about a perpetrator if one of their kids or grandkids was attacked by a drunk criminal trying to kill one of them.  Bet that assailant wouldn't get preferential, "good buddy" consideration and treatment - like is given to the "Chosen Ones".


Finally, protesting individual criminals is utterly pointless. The point of protesting is to have your voice heard and effect change. Redress directed at the government or some organization. Hence, when the government is perceived to be a bad actor - there are protests. When some low level criminal murders a police officer, we recognize it for the crime it is- but there is no point protesting a death row inmate.

I agree.  Exercise in futility with no real meaning.  Circles back around to the start - Sharpton, et al.