FASCISM AT THE GOP CONVENTION

FASCISM AT THE GOP CONVENTION.  Donald Trump understands what it will take to make the United States safe again, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said in his speech Monday night before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.  Clark praised the acquittal of Baltimore Policeman on charges of murdering Freddie Gray.  The GOP convention broke into thunderous applause.

From Wikipedia:  “On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr., a 25-year-old African-American man, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department for possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade.^[2] While being transported in a police van, Gray fell into a coma and was taken to a trauma center.^[3][4] Gray died on April 19, 2015; his death was ascribed to injuries to his spinal cord.^[4] On April 21, 2015, pending an investigation of the incident, six Baltimore police officers were suspended with pay.^[3]

“In September 2015, it was decided that there would be separate trials for the accused. The first trial against Officer William Porter ended in mistrial in December 2015. Officer Edward Nero subsequently opted for a bench trial and was found not guilty by Circuit Judge Barry Williams in May 2016. In June, Williams also acquitted Officer Caesar Goodson who faced the most severe charges by means of a bench trial,^[17] and in July 2016 the judge found Lt. Brian Rice not guilty on all charges as well.^[18]”

Of course the verdicts are not surprising.  After all it’s ok for police to kill blacks in America.  When the officers who killed Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Mike Brown, or Natasha McKenna never even go to trial for what they did, seeing an officer indicted and charged with manslaughter or murder feels a little like fitting a camel through the eye of a needle. Of the 1,200 people killed by American police in 2015, only seven cases resulted in charges — a ridiculously tiny number. Six other officers were charged this year for deaths that happened as far back as early 2013 — as police investigations into their own wrongdoing have a dubious way of dragging on not weeks or months, but years.