Bullets ain't racial kid, they only hate you

UPDATE: I have one request guys. Please, please, do not respond to any trolls. You will only make it worse. Frankly, there's little that can be said to offend me--I grew up around people who would snap on your dead grandmother. But what I really hate is to see a conversation get eaten by two or three people who are attempting to argue with a guy who's basically just baiting them, and not really arguing in good faith. Have some sense, and don't fall for the con.

And now for your regularly scheduled post.

Excuse the headline, but any day I can make reference to Kool G Rap, is a good day. Anyway, here's a new one: In the wake of the shooting of Amadou Diallo back in the late 90s, the NYPD implemented an ingenious defense against the charge that they were disproportionately shooting black people--they simply stopped keeping stats on the race of victims:

The New York Police Department recently released 11 years of statistics on every bullet fired by its officers, including the reason for each shooting, the number of shots fired and how many bullets hit their target. But the reports stopped mentioning the race of the people shot after 1997 without saying why.

Testimony by a former police chief now offers an explanation. The former chief, Louis R. Anemone, said that while the data on people killed by officers were being compiled in 1998, the police commissioner, Howard Safir, ordered the department not to include the race of those killed by officers.

I know this is being pinned on Safir, but man it reeks of Giulianism. Let me be more specific. People think that black folks hated Giuliani out of some irrational antipathy for the police and a love affair with high crime. But as I believe my man Lester Spence once noted (hope I'm gettng this right Lester) black folks are especially sensitive to police shootings of innocents, in part, because they--more than anyone--need the police to do their jobs right. Most black folks want the criminals off their streets as much as--if not more than--the politicos of yore who once railed about law and order. Indeed in 1997, Giuliani got 20 percent of the black vote--pretty good for a Republican, who'd gotten only five percent in the previous election.




But Giuliani had an almost preternatural talent for turning natural allies into arch-enemies. So when Patrick Dorismond was shot, Giuliani didn't simply defend the cops who shot Dorismond, he released  the dude's sealed juvenile record, telling the assembled press that Dorismond was "no altar-boy." In fact, Dorismond had not only literally been an altar-boy, he'd  gone to the very same Catholic school as Giuliani.

I think that most black folks can do the math--if most of the crimes happen in black neighborhoods, a disproportionate number of the innocents shot are going to be black. Personally, I've always thought that it was much more troubling that the cops can shoot you for basically a thought crime--like I thought he had a gun, or I thought my life was in danger--and get away with it. But what really gets the conspiracy gears going is when the powers that be look like they have something to hide.The lie is always worse than the truth. I think, in part, that's why Bloomberg--while continuing many of Giuliani's policing policies--has had a much better relationship with the black community. Again, call me naive, but I'm surprised this is still going on under his watch.