Accommodating abuse: Critics of BlackLivesMatter# Practice Defiant Denial

By Linn Washington, Jr.

Over 1,500 miles separate Harris County, Texas and Harrison Township, New Jersey yet public officials in those two jurisdictions seemingly share a disdain for persons who protest against police abuse.

Recently Ron Hickman, the Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, blasted the Black Lives Matters movement blaming that surging anti-abuse entity for being an impetus behind the brutal murder of a Harris County deputy.

Although Hickman readily acknowledged that he didn’t have all of the facts surrounding the murder of Deputy Darren Goforth that didn’t stop Hickman from his hair-trigger blast aimed at Black Lives Matters for that murder committed by a man with a long history of mental illness who had no involvement with BLM.

Earlier this year, the governing Committee of Harrison Township, NJ approved a resolution “Recognizing and Honoring” the service of law enforcement officers, The resolution was riddled with false facts like the claim that critics of police brutality are “career criminals and agitators who seek to divide our nation…”

Suspiciously overlooked by the authors and endorsers of that resolution adopted in Harrison Township is the fact that persons who have led anti-brutality protests in South Jersey communities near Harrison Township have been respected members of the clergy, law-abiding community leaders and tax-paying citizens – not the “career criminals” referenced in that resolution.

While the Black Lives Matters movement certainly is not beyond criticism, it is disingenuous to pillory that social justice protest as provoking attacks on police.

‘Calling Out’ police abuse is not the same as issuance of a call to attack police. Black Lives Matter does ‘call out’ America’s failure to put a halt to police brutality but it does not call upon people to attack police.

Four police officers were killed by gunfire in December 2014 according to the Officer Down Memorial Page website.

Two of those slain officers were killed in New York City by a man with a history of mental illness who claimed he was reacting to the police involved fatal shooting of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri. The cop killers in the two other December 2014 fatal shootings were a fugitive seeking to escape a return to prison and a man involved in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend.

None of the three men responsible for those fatal shootings of police last December had any involvement with Black Lives Matter…

For the rest of this article by LINN WASHINGTON, JR. in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2848