Having read little more than some screen shots of the Bible, Princess Karen version, also known as White Fragility by marketeer Robin DiAngelo, the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t self-flagellate with sufficient vigor. And, I’m told, I should because of my “white privilege.”

We are determined to do that work and determined to let everyone know we are doing it. This work is deemed necessary so we can become better allies for black people in the fight for racial justice. There are so many anguished conversations among white people taking place right now about what to write on our protest signs, about that time we said that thing to a black friend and it changed the energy in the room, about whether rewatching the movie “The Help” counts as progress.

There is a frantic race to catch up, and that’s got to be the correct instinct, right? I mean, look at this moment in history. I swear, if I don’t do it right I’ll ask to speak to my own manager.

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The New York Times writes that Attorney General Bill Barr “tried to fire” Southern District of New York United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman, but that’s not quite right.

Attorney General William P. Barr on Friday night abruptly tried to fire the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who has investigated several of President Trump’s closest associates, but Mr. Berman said he would not leave.

Barr issued a press release stating that Berman was “stepping down,” which was news to Berman, who wasn’t stepping anywhere. Continue reading →

A 73-year-old woman was punched on a subway platform in the Bronx. This didn’t catch much interest for lack of a video, but assuming it happened, it doesn’t fit the narrative.

A 73-year-old woman was punched in the face by a stranger on Wednesday night while standing on a subway platform in the Bronx, sources said.

The Queens woman was on the platform of the D line at the 174 street station at about 7:20 p.m. when a man attacked her before fleeing the scene, according to law enforcement sources.

The victim was taken to Bronx care hospital with pain to her face. The suspect was described as a man in his 20s.

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In the heat of Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced that fired Police Officer Garrest Rolfe would be prosecuted for felony murder in the killing of Rayshard Brooks. As with charges against fired Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin a few weeks earlier, people cheered the charges, and again the upped charges, notwithstanding their dubious nature and, as reflected by the final results of the Medical Examiner’s autopsy, the serious doubt that Chauvin’s knee was the cause of death.

But surely Rolfe, who shot Brooks in the back three times. will be convicted? Don’t be too sure. Continue reading →

There’s a joke: What do you call 1000 good cops and ten bad cops? 1010 bad cops, because those ten couldn’t be bad, couldn’t persist, but for the acquiescence of the good cops. There is a well-known phrase, “the blue wall of silence,” referring to the police historically protecting their worst and themselves from outside scrutiny. If you’re a cop, ignore the wall at your peril. Ask Frank Serpico how that works.

But these are cops, not criminals, and rather than characterize what they do, and don’t do, as a pejorative like “snitching,” it should be viewed as a positive duty to maintain the law, their integrity and the virtue within their own ranks. Continue reading →

Since no one seems to care much about the presumption of innocence these days, it’s unsurprising that the brief mentions only the presumption of detention for people the government deems too dangerous to let out. But two lawyers accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail into an empty police car rather than use their license to accomplish whatever it is they believe to be justice?

After being released on bond by the district court, the accused went back into the can after the Second Circuit said “nope.”

Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, both lawyers, had been freed on home detention, on $250,000 bonds, collateralized by family and friends, until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit revoked their bond on June 5 pending a decision on whether bail should be reinstated following a strong push by the government on the basis that the defendants were a continual danger to society. They were taken back into custody that day.

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Have you ever wondered why a sneaker named after Michael Jordan costs between $150 and $500? Is there platinum in the sole? While they’re worn by people of all colors, they’re particularly prized by black kids, for whom sneakers have long held special status, and so Nike has milked them for all it could for a pair of sneakers that do not guarantee you’ll be drafted for the NBA or suddenly become inexplicably attractive to others.

Yet, at this moment of racial obsession, Nike stands with its customers, even if it hasn’t reduced the price of its sneakers. That’s what it means to fight “systemic racism,” which is great since people keep saying that phrase without any clue what it means, whether it’s real or what to do about it. Continue reading →

New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that the plain clothes “anti-crime”** units of 600 officers will be disbanded.

The New York police commissioner announced on Monday that he was disbanding the Police Department’s anti-crime units: plainclothes teams that target violent crime and have been involved in some of the city’s most notorious police shootings.

On the one hand, the nature of the assignment tended to explain why its members were involved in most police shootings. On the other hand, it was absolutely notorious, bordering on a rogue squad of armed people, indistinguishable from the criminals they were supposed to police, usually unnecessarily violent in their dealings and utterly callous in their actions. Continue reading →

It’s hard to fault Justice Neil Gorsuch’s textualist logic, even if he felt compelled to repeat himself a few times for clarity. The holding of Bostock v. Clayton County* is clear: firing gay and transgender employees, where “but for” being gay or transgender they would not have been fired, is unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As outcomes go, it’s a policy that should have been done a generation ago, had Congress ever had the guts to do its job.

And while many are in shock that this 6-3 decision included the hated Justice Gorsuch, usurper of the seat from Merrick Garland, and Umpire C.J. John Roberts, it’s a lesson to all that justices rarely fit into anyone’s political paradigm, whether thrilled by the decision or outraged.

When Congress enacted Title VII, it used the word “sex” as a shorthand, a word intended and universally understood to mean “male and female.” The notion that this would someday prove to be inadequate to express its scope would have been absurd at the time, as the law routinely still criminalized gay sex and transgender people didn’t exist in the popular mind. The Court dispensed with this argument. Continue reading →

Remember “don’t taze me, bro“? Good times. Over the years, we’ve watched cops deploy their Tasers and, on occasion, people die. It got so bad that Taser International had to revive a debunked cause of death to explain it. Tasers characterization was changed from “non-lethal” to “less-than-lethal,” because while they weren’t as deadly as guns, they weren’t undeadly either.

It got so bad that Taser International had to change its name to Axon.

But now, Tasers aren’t deadly anymore, and Taser has Rayshard Brooks to thank.

A taser is not a deadly weapon. A gun is.

Adrenaline and irritation are not the same as mortal fear.

Running away should not be punishable by death.

Public safety must mean the public is safe. All of us.#BlackLivesMatter #AtlantaShooting #RayshardBrooks https://t.co/44ReSLU4Ev

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) June 13, 2020

It’s not that a Taser is a deadly weapon. It’s that it isn’t an undeadly weapon. It’s not that a Taser is as deadly as a gun. It’s not. But it’s not incapable of causing death or serious bodily injury. What it is, however, is that we’ve just flipped the narrative because this time, this one time as opposed to all the other times, the Taser was taken from the cop and, while Brooks fled, fired at the cop. The cop shot him. The cop killed him. The cop had a gun. Brooks had the cop’s Taser. And now a Taser is not a deadly weapon.

Graham v. Connor controls the use of deadly force by a police officer, giving rise to the “Reasonably Scared Cop Rule.” The fear is not just one of death, but serious injury. Can a Taser cause serious injury? If it can cause death, then it would not seem much of a downward stretch to conclude that serious injury can occur as well. Even if a Taser isn’t a deadly weapon, that doesn’t mean it falls outside the scope of the Rule.

Still, there are significant doubts as to the legitimacy of shooting Rayshard Books, whose identity was know to the police. Let him run, catch him later. No, it’s troubling that some would expect a cop to take a potential taze from a stolen Taser, and the less passionate might recognize that the expectation that cops would let a fleeing defendant taze him without taking action is unrealistic. What’s a cop to do?

Then again, a tazing might hurt, even kill, but shooting a guy three times in the back is surely a more definitive use of deadly force. Once the Taser was fired and the cop wasn’t harmed, was there still a need to fire? There might have been a second set of prongs in the Taser, with 50,000 volts of their own, but if he stayed out of range, any potential harm would have been avoided. There are a lot of moving pieces to what happened, and there is a very strong argument to be made that killing Rayshard Books wasn’t justified.

But in the process, we learned that the Taser was no big thing. Why did we spend all those years, all those words, all those lives, thinking it was a bad compliance tool and one that could very well kill people only to learn that it was no big deal?