with a column for tomorrow's Washington Post titled Protesters aren’t to blame for NYPD officers’ execution. The entire column is worth reading. I will focus on only three passages, beginning with his response to the inflammatory language offered by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of the killing of the two NYPD patrol officers:
No, no, no. The demonstrations sparked by the exoneration of the officers who killed Brown and Garner were pro-accountability, not anti-police. As I’ve pointed out many times, no one better appreciates the need for an active, engaged police presence than residents of high-crime neighborhoods. But nobody should be expected to welcome policing that treats whole communities as guilty until proved innocent — or a justice system that considers black and brown lives disposable.
There is much more . . .
In response to the ire directed at the demonstrators, Mayor De Blasio, and Rev. Al Sharpton by current and former New York Police officials (and further inflamed by deliberately distorted editing of remarks of Sharpton by Fox News, a point Robinson does not mention), the columnist responds by noting that Sharpton had condemned the killings but was still receiving death threats, and then wrote
Those protest rallies were timely and necessary, however, as most police officials across the country seemed to understand. In New York, peaceful demonstrators marched while phalanxes of NYPD officers cleared the way. It should be obvious that hating perceived injustice is not the same thing as hating the police.
After placing the actions of the shooter in the broader context that has to include his shooting of a woman near Baltimore that lead the Baltimore police to notify NYPD of both his location and the dangers he represented, Robinson closes with two paragraphs I will share and then offer some of my own thoughts:
I don’t know the right way to make sense of such depravity. But I am certain that the way not to make sense of it is to blame nonviolent protesters, exercising their constitutional rights of assembly and speech, for the acts of a deranged killer.
Brinsley had somehow arrived at a day of personal apocalypse. He was beyond any rational search for reasons to commit a string of heinous acts. He needed only to give himself an excuse.
Some perhaps needs to be reminded that we placed our military under civilian control, and the fact that we have overmilitarized our police should in no way have them under any lesser civilian control. Whether or not some in or previously associated with NYPD like Bill De Blasio, perhaps they should remember that he was elected by the people of New York City in large part because of his opposition to the policies of a predecessor that targeted young men of color, a policy that, as Robinson notes, was found to be an unconstitutional violation of their rights. Officers who do not like the new policy always have the choice to resign and seek other employment: no one is making them remain as police officers.
The shooter was deranged. That may in part explain his actions even as it does not justify them.
What then do we say of those who seek to take advantage of his actions to further inflame passions in order to gain partisan advantage, thereby undermining the safety of the larger society - that they are only seeking to give themselves an excuse? They are not deranged, but their actions are potentially more damaging than the incident they are using as an excuse.
The moment police cease seeing themselves as a part of a community, they become a danger to that community. That is good neither for them or for the community, because police cannot merely rely upon the use or threat of lethal force if they are to be effective. We call that situation a police state for good reason.
We are a democracy.
We need police.
People in neighborhoods of high crime want police to protect them, not to treat them as part of the problem.
Those politicians who seek to divide Americans and our communities into us versus them are the real danger to liberty.
Read and pass on the Robinson column.