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PHOENIX | Decades of coaxing China’s rulers into moderating the communist system backfired and instead have produced the “greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s,” President Trump’s top security aide argued in a major policy address Wednesday.
White House National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien said the failure was the result of misunderstanding the nature of the Marxist-Leninist system that guides China’s rulers to this day.
The Trump administration has begun reversing past policies toward Beijing that it says ignored massive theft of data and technology and abuse of conciliatory American trade and other policies, he said.
“The days of American passivity and naivete regarding the People’s Republic of China are over,” he told a group of business executives at the Arizona Commerce Authority, in a speech introduced by Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.
The lengthy critique is the first in a series of speeches planned by senior U.S. officials laying out in greater detail what they say is the threat posed by China. Others will be given by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, Attorney General Bill Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Mr. O’Brien argued Wednesday that Mr. Trump’s tougher approach has led the way for the United States to finally realize the dangers posed by the China under complete control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “For decades, conventional wisdom in both U.S. political parties, the business community, academia, and media, held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and, then, politically,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Helping China by opening U.S. markets, investing capital in China, training engineers, scientists and even military officers was based on a hope that “China would become like us,” he said.
Under the old approach, China gained entry to the World Trade Organization that brought major concessions and trade benefits. At the same time, the U.S. leaders played down massive human rights abuses in China, including the 1989 Tiananmen massacre when Chinese troops suppressed unarmed pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds.
“We turned a blind eye to China’s widespread technology theft that eviscerated entire sectors of the American economy,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Assisting China to grow richer and stronger was aimed at pressing the Communist Party to liberalize and fulfill the growing democratic aspirations of the Chinese people.
“This was a bold, quintessentially American idea, born of our innate optimism and of the experience of our triumph over Soviet Communism. It also turned out to be naive,” he said. “We could not have been more wrong — and this miscalculation is the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s.”
To counter Chinese communism, the Trump administration is promoting diversity of thought and pushing back against all efforts to control speech or promote self-censorship, while sheltering Americans’ personal data and continuing to “proclaim that all women and men deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Campaign issue
The hard-line speech comes as the question of how to confront a more assertive China is expected to be a major presidential campaign issue. Both President Trump and presumed Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden are expected to make U.S. policy toward China a major campaign theme.
Mr. O’Brien outlined several major changes in U.S. policy toward China carried out under Mr. Trump, including sanctioning companies like telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies and imposing restrictions on the company to prevent U.S. semiconductors from assisting Chinese electronic spying.
The State Department has designated nine Chinese state-controlled media outlets as propaganda outlets in a bid to limit influence operations. Sanctions also were imposed on 21 Chinese government agencies and 16 companies for what U.S. officials say was their role in repression of Uighurs and other minorities in China.
The Trump administration has also pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council to protest Chinese efforts to co-opt the council, and terminated U.S. support to the U.N. World Health Organization, also citing its failure to confront Beijing.
To limit the Chinese military from benefiting from the U.S. education, visas are being refused for Chinese military students who are suspected of seeking to steal U.S. technology. The administration also pushed to halt the investment of federal employee retirement funds in Chinese companies, including military contractors and manufactures of surveillance equipment.
The president “is also examining the opaque accounting practices of Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges,” Mr. O’Brien said.
The Pentagon will submit to Congress this week a list of companies and operations in the United States with links to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in a bid to inform Americans about Chinese military firms.
“These steps are just the start as America corrects 40 years of a one-sided, unfair relationship with China that has severely affected our nation’s economic and, recently, political well-being. There is more to come soon,” Mr. O’Brien said.
On Chinese communism, the national security adviser said past policy failures were a direct result of misunderstanding the nature of the Communist Party and its ideology, which he described as a combination of Marxism-Leninism and coopted Chinese nationalism.
“Instead of listening to what CCP leaders said and reading what they wrote in their key documents, we closed our ears and our eyes,” Mr. O’Brien said. “We believed what we wanted to believe — that the party members were communist in name only.”
Mr. O’Brien charged that President Xi Jinping, the CCP general secretary and head of the Central Military Commission, “sees himself as Josef Stalin’s successor.”
Mr. O’Brien said the CCP is the among the last communist parties to embrace the Soviet dictator, with the partial exception of North Korean regime. Stalin remains a revered figure in China and his statue is in the PLA’s museum in Beijing.
“As interpreted and practiced by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, communism is a totalitarian ideology,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Outdated communist ideas originated in Europe 150 years ago and were rejected in Russia 30 years ago as “the most costly failed political experiment in history,” Mr. O’Brien said.
“But in China, these ideas remain as fundamental to the Chinese Communist Party as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are to Americans,” he said.
‘Ideological security’
The party in China is using propaganda to dominate political thought through aggressive policies, including what is called “ideological security,” the White House adviser added.
In April 2013, the CCP issued a new policy on ideological purity that called for “absolutely no opportunity or outlets for incorrect thinking or viewpoints to spread.” Mandatory study sessions are widespread and using modern technology require Chinese to study “Xi Jinping thought” on smartphone apps.
“It means complete state control of all media,” Mr. O’Brien said.
“Outside sources of information are banned—from foreign newspapers to Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp.”
Censorship within China is ubiquitous and citizen bloggers, reporters, lawyers, activists and religious believers are imprisoned for expressing views that go against the CCP.
Between January and April, nearly 500 people were charged with crimes for speaking out on the “Wuhan/COVID virus, its effects and the party’s cover-up of the disease,” the security adviser said.
On religious institutions, the party reinterprets texts such as the Bible to support communist ideology. Over 1 million Muslim Uighurs and other minorities currently are imprisoned in “reeducation” camps where they are forced to undergo political indoctrination and force labor.
“This process annihilates family, religion, culture, language, and heritage,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Americans need to be concerned since Mr. Xi is seeking ideological control beyond China’s borders, Mr. O’Brien contended, in a push to “remake the world according to the CCP.”
The outreach is well advanced and Chinese leaders have invested billions of dollars over the past decade in overseas propaganda designed to “eliminate ‘unfriendly’ Chinese media outlets worldwide.
Mr. O’Brien said the effort is close to succeeding, as nearly every Chines- language news outlet in the United States is either owned or works closely with the government in Beijing, and English-language media outlets are being targeted.
“More than a dozen American cities hear subtle pro-Beijing propaganda on their FM radio stations,” he claimed.
In one case in Maryland, “Chinese propaganda persuaded so many Americans that a U.S. solider brought the coronavirus to Wuhan — a complete fabrication by the CCP — that this soldier and her family needed a personal security detail to protect them from death threats,” he said.
The widely-used Chinese social media platform TikTok, which boasts 40 million American users, routinely removes accounts of members who criticize the Communist Party leadership.
Twitter announced last week that more than 23,000 CCP-linked accounts were removed for spreading propaganda on Hong Kong democracy protests and COVID-19. Earlier, more than 150,000 CCP-related accounts were removed for reportedly spreading anti-American disinformation and for creating the illusion of popular American support for Beijing’s policies.
“These are just the accounts Twitter caught. How many are still out there undetected?” Mr. O’Brien asked.
Hack attacks
China is preparing further controls in the United States through massive data theft, Mr. O’Brien said, including cyberattacks to gather personal and other data on tens of millions of Americans. Companies such as health insurer Anthem, credit company Equifax, and hotel chain Marriott have all suffered major data hacks from China.
“How will the Chinese Communist Party use this data? In the same way it uses data within China’s borders: to target, flatter, cajole, influence, coerce, and even blackmail individuals to say and do things that serve the party’s interests,” Mr. O’Brien said, adding that the activities are “micro-targeting beyond an advertiser’s wildest dreams.”
The CCP is also using trade as a political tool to “coerce compliance with its dictates,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Australia invoked Beijing’s wrath after calling for an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus outbreak that first emerged in China. Beijing responded by threatening to halt purchases of Australian agricultural products and to prevent Chinese students and tourists from going to the country.
As part of its global strategy, China has stepped up its campaign for more influence in key international organizations. CCP-linked officials now are in charge of four of 15 U.N. specialized agencies, more than the United States, Britain, France and Russia combined.
Beijing is accused of using its influence to shield itself from scrutiny in international forums. Critics say WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus refrained from criticizing Beijing’s response to the coronavirus outbreak for fear of angering Chinese leaders.
Mr. O’Brien said the new direction in U.S. China policy makes a clear distinction between the ruling Communist Party and the Chinese people.
“We want good relations with China but not on the terms currently on offer from Beijing,” he said. “As Americans, I am certain that we will rise to successfully meet the challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party, just as we have responded to all the great crises over our history.”
Despite what you hear from some, the polling in the 2020 elections is very likely not broken, biased or wrong.
For the last few weeks, there has been a fairly steady drumbeat from some of the president’s allies that the polling on the election is wrong — it is over-representing Democrats, or Trump partisans are refusing to participate, or opinion researchers aren’t catching the advantage the president has with respect to intensity.
Probably all three are correct. None are material.
Are certain surveys over-representing Democrats? Yes. Surveys of all adults usually mean more Democrats. Surveys of registered voters will also over-represent Democrats, although to a lesser degree. Surveys of likely voters are generally closer to the mark. The bad news is that even among surveys of likely voters, President Trump currently trails former Vice President Joseph R. Biden by amounts outside the margin of error.
Are Trump partisans refusing to participate in surveys and thereby skewing the results? Maybe some are; no one can say for sure. If they were, one would expect to see it in responses to other survey questions like approval or favorability ratings, which have been remarkably consistent over the last four years. It’s important to examine a range of surveys and results across time. Ultimately, attitudes and sentiments peek through in all kinds of responses, not just those directly related to voting preferences.
Is there some intense wave of Trump voters that is as yet invisible? Maybe. Those who intend to vote for the president are definitely more intense than those who intend to vote for Mr. Biden. But those who intend to vote against Mr. Trump seem about as intense as those who intend to vote for him.
The campaign itself knows these results, considered broadly, are legitimate. Their placement of ad buys in places like Iowa and Ohio clearly show they know those places are competitive. The campaign has also asked for more debates, which is odd for an incumbent and indicates the same degree of competitiveness as do the survey results. Finally, and most obviously, the campaign has not released its own survey results, either directly or through reliable media conduits. If they were convinced other survey results were wrong, they would do that without hesitation.
The simple truth is that there has been a remarkable amount of stasis in the race. Mr. Biden’s average lead has been as small as 4 points (in January) and as big as 9 points (last week). In the six dozen or so nationwide surveys done in the last 4 months, Mr. Biden has led in all of them except for two, in which the president and he were tied.
With respect to favorability, the former vice president’s favorability ratings have been consistently in the middle, with a current average of net unfavorable of 1 point. The president’s have also been consistent on the downside; his current average is net unfavorable of 13 points. For purposes of comparison, Hillary Clinton’s ratings at this point in 2016 were net unfavorable by 13 points.
In short, this campaign is very similar to the 2016 election, in which two candidates who have been very well known to the voting public for decades are facing one another. The difference this time is that the president is facing a relatively popular opponent at a moment when much seems to be going wrong in the nation.
Time is growing short for the campaign to get itself organized, and relying on Mr. Biden to make some sort of fatal mistake seems at best lazy and at worst morbid. Keep in mind, this cake starts getting baked in late September when early voting begins in earnest.
If the president wants to get re-elected which — in the wake of the ill-timed firing of the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, the listless performance in Tulsa, and the continued stream of directionless tweets — seems like an open question, he has about 60 days to right the ship.
Ignoring the numbers won’t change that.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
Senate Democrats blocked the Republican policing package Wednesday, setting up a stalemate over how Congress will address racial justice and police accountability for use of force.
The procedural vote, which would have allowed the policing bill to move forward failed 55-45, falling five votes short of the 60 needed to survive.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted no in a procedural move that allows him to later bring the bill back to the floor.
He said earlier this week that the issue wouldn’t be dead even if the initial vote failed.
Still, the Democrats’ rejection of the bill set up a stalemate on one of the biggest issues in the country this election year, as Mr. McConnell said the House Democrats’ police overhaul bill is dead on arrival in the Senate.
Democrats were confident, however, that Republicans would take the blame for not doing something about perceived racism and brutality at the country’s police departments.
They said they just don’t trust Mr. McConell to conduct a fair process.
“The political risk falls on Senate Republicans, not the Democrats. The failure of the Senate GOP majority to embrace major reform is just the latest in the long line of Republicans being on the wrong side of public opinion,” Brad Bannon, a strategist, told The Washington Times. “Endangered GOP Senators [facing] re-election run a serious risk of defeat if they fail to embrace comprehensive reform.”
The Republicans’ legislation stayed away from implementing national mandates on police departments, insisting they’re respecting states’ rights. Democrats accuse them of peddling a “watered-down” approach that collects data but doesn’t require real change.
Sen. Tim Scott, the sole black Republican senator and lead sponsor of the GOP’s bill, said Democrats were walking away from the table before negotiations really had begun.
“I offered as many amendments as necessary for this bill to be seen by the public in consultation with the other side,” Mr. Scott, South Carolina Republican, said. “I respect people that I disagree with. They have the right to disagree … but on this one, if you don’t think we’re right make it better. Don’t walk away.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said the bill is too fundamentally flawed to be saved by an amendment process and called it a “fig leaf.”
“Republicans came in here, dropped the bill on the floor and said take it or leave it,” the New York Democrat said.
“Mitch McConnell keeps saying you can cut the bill off when you don’t get your 60 votes. What kind of solution is that when it’s a junkie bill? When it’s a bill that doesn’t go far enough at all,” Mr. Schumer added. “Why don’t we put a good bill on the floor that can pass.”
Republicans argued there wasn’t a downside for Democrats if they allow the bill to advance, noting they have other options if they want to object later in the process.
Mr. McConnell said that by blocking further debate on the bill, the blame for any further violence would be on the Democrats.
“When our nation needs bipartisan solutions, they’re staging partisan theater. This is political nonsense elevated to an art form,” Mr. McConnell said. “The next time another appalling incident makes our nation sick to its stomachs in anger yet again, Senate Democrats can explain to the nation why they made sure the Senate did nothing.”
The GOP package ramps up requirements for police departments to report on use of force and “no-knock” warrants and provides incentives for chokehold bans. It provides grants for training resources and body cameras, with penalties for improper use of the recording devices, filing false police reports, or serious bodily injuries that lead to prosecution.
It also establishes commissions and invests in data collection to target new policies and where funds can be used.
Mr. Scott estimated there is about a 70% overlap with the Democrats’ bill, a statistic Democrats staunchly reject.
House Democrats are set to pass their policing package Thursday. The bill would create a national use of force standard, creating a national misconduct registry, and opening up officers to civil lawsuits for actions resulting from carrying out their duties by limiting qualified immunity.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said last week that she would be interested in going to a conference committee to work out a deal to combine the House and Senate bills, which would require passage of the GOP legislation.
But, on the eve of the Senate vote, she pivoted to back her Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber. She went as far as to accuse Republicans of “trying to get away with murder — the murder of George Floyd.”
The Congressional Black Caucus also urged senators to vote against the motion to proceed.
“Unfortunately, instead of engaging in a serious, bipartisan, bicameral debate to address the crisis of racial injustice in policing, the Senate is considering the Justice Act, a completely watered-down fake reform bill,” said CBC Chairwoman Karen Bass, the lead sponsor of the House bill.
President Trump late Tuesday expressed support for Mr. Scott’s bill.
“Will be great for both people of color and police – in fact, has major police support,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “Rebuilding trust and keeping communities safe! Hope to sign it into law ASAP!”
The killing of a young black man who was jogging in a Georgia town when he was shot dead has become a part of national debate
Ahmaud Arbery, was shot and killed in Brunswick, Georgia, on 23 February.
Photograph: Reuters
A grand jury has returned indictments on the three suspects in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man who was accosted and shot dead as he went for a jog in a Georgia town, US media has reported.
The killing sparked widespread outrage and has since become a key part of an intense national debate around racism and police killings of Black people in America.
Three white men – Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan – have been in custody since their arrests last month.
Prosecutor Joyette Holmes said the Glynn county grand jury had indicted the three on charges including malice and felony murder in the death of the African American man.
Arbery was slain 23 February when the Greg and Travis McMichael, a white father and son, armed themselves and pursued the 25-year-old Black man running through their neighborhood. Greg McMichael told police he suspected Arbery was a burglar and that Arbery attacked his son before being shot.
Bryan lives in the same subdivision, just outside the port city of Brunswick. Bryan said he saw the McMichaels driving by and joined the chase, a Georgia bureau of investigation agent testified earlier this month.
It wasn’t until 7 May, two days after Bryan’s cellphone video leaked online and stirred a national outcry, that the McMichaels were arrested by local police. Bryan was arrested on 22 May, and an arrest warrant said he tried “to confine and detain” Arbery without legal authority by “utilizing his vehicle on multiple occasions” before Arbery was shot.
In addition to malice murder and felony murder charges, the McMichaels and Bryan each are charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count each of false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
Earlier this month a state investigator in Georgia alleged Travis McMichael was heard saying a racial slur as he stood over the mortally wounded man, moments after hitting him with three shots from a pump-action shotgun.
Arbery’s death has become a rallying cry in the protests that have rocked the US – and abroad – after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman shot dead by police in Louisville, Kentucky, has also been a case highlighted by the protests.
McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, noted that in addition to being Trump’s 200th judicial nominee, Wilson’s confirmation means there will be no vacancies on the country’s influential appeals courts.
“As I’ve said many times, our work with the administration to renew our federal courts is not a partisan or political victory. It is a victory for the rule of law and for the Constitution itself,” McConnell said.
“If judges applying the law and the Constitution as they’re written strikes any of our colleagues as a threat to their political agenda, then the problem, I would argue, is with their agenda,” he added.
“In the hands of these many new judges, the future of American jurisprudence is bright,” he added.
Republicans have set a record pace at confirming Trump’s appeals court nominees, including breaking a record for the number of picks confirmed during an administration’s first and second year in office.
McConnell views the judiciary, and in particular the circuit courts, as the party’s best shot at having a long-term influence on the direction of the country.
Judicial nominees have increasingly become a lightning rod in recent years. The then-Democratic controlled Senate went “nuclear” to get rid of the 60-vote hurdle for most judicial nominees and all executive nominees.
Republicans then nixed the same roadblock in 2017 for Supreme Court nominees. They went “nuclear” a second time in 2019 to cut down on the amount of time it takes to confirm district court judges and most executive nominees.
Democrats have railed against the GOP tactics on judicial nominations, whom they view as out of the mainstream. In some instances they’ve refused to return a blue slip on the nominations, which indicates if a home-state senator supports it, but Republicans have moved forward with circuit picks even if home-state senators object.
“Judge Wilson has been an ardent supporter of restrictive voting measures, including voter ID laws, that disproportionately harm minority voters, and he has shown a pattern of dismissing legitimate concerns from voting rights groups,” they wrote earlier this week.
“Appointing someone to the Fifth Circuit who refers to the concerns of African American citizens and community advocates regarding the effects of voter ID laws as ‘poppycock’ is a slap in the face to Black Americans at a time when our country is working to take steps forward on racial justice, not backwards,” they added.
Democrats were referring to remarks that Wilson made in 2011 where he argued that concerns a voter ID law would suppress the vote were “poppycock, unless you count the dead vote,” according to The Washington Post.
“President Obama picked the most diverse judicial nominees in history, but Mitch McConnell blocked them with the fewest confirmations in generations, so he could leave more than 100 vacancies for Donald Trump to fill. Trump has done so overwhelmingly with young, white men who have done enormous damage to our courts’ diversity and legitimacy,” said Christopher Kang, the chief counsel for Demand Justice.
Richmond, Virginia, on June 14. Eze Amos/Getty Images
How cops are talking about George Floyd’s killing and the protests sweeping America.
This country is changing its mind about the police. Over the past few years, Americans have watched countless videos of police brutality against Black people. They’ve witnessed, or participated in, the formation of a massive social movement dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Black lives. And their perception of police forces has shifted: A Monmouth University survey conducted at the end of May found, for the first time in polling history, that a majority (57 percent) of Americans and a plurality (49 percent) of white people think police officers “faced with a difficult or dangerous situation” are “more likely to use excessive force if the culprit is black.” That’s an increase of 24 points among all Americans and 23 points among white people since Monmouth’s 2014 poll in the wake of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo’s killing of Eric Garner.
Police officers have been watching those cameraphone videos too. They’ve witnessed, or participated in, the formation of a movement for “blue lives” in response to the movement affirming Black ones. More recently, they’ve been confronting Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd, the widespread protests against racism and police brutality, and the calls to defund or abolish police that have entered mainstream policy discourse as never before.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a cop who thinks his job ought to be bound for obsolescence. But law enforcement officials are processing this moment in American history in a wide variety of ways. Some officers are beatingprotesters and journalists in the streets. Some are beseeching their colleagues to listen to what the demonstrators have to say. Some are defending their profession on social media to strangers who reject the idea of a “good cop.” Some are considering a career change. Some police officers are drawing on their experiences as Black Americans to explain the protesters’ grievances to their co-workers. Many remain convinced that, in most cases that aren’t as cut-and-dry as Floyd’s killing, civilians who end up injured or killed by police could have avoided their fate if they’d simply followed officers’ orders.
Over the past two weeks, I spoke to seven current and former cops about the protests and the future of policing. (They by no means constitute a representative cross-section of U.S. police officers; compared with the national police demographic breakdown, those who eventually agreed to speak with me were disproportionately people of color, women, and/or LGBTQ.) All strongly denounced Chauvin’s actions but disagreed on almost everything else: whether jurisdictions should divert funding from police departments toward other public services, whether law enforcement systems are peppered with a few bad apples or besieged by wholesale rot, whether claims of racism in police forces are substantiated or overblown. What follows are excerpts from our conversations, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jacob, 32, police officer in Georgia
I haven’t heard anyone in my department defend the killing of George Floyd. That’s how extreme the situation was with Floyd, between the fact that it was all recorded, to the total lack of humanity of the officers involved, to the eight to nine minutes of watching someone die, where you really can’t say anything in defense. And traditionally, as cops, we are defensive. But in this situation, everyone’s like, “Yeah, that was jacked up for sure.”
The protests have made us as law enforcement very uncomfortable—but it’s a necessary uncomfortable. My view on the protests is: We’ve seen the masses come out and say what they want done. And if it were a small group of people, you could kind of cast it off as “oh, this is just one fringe group.” But when you have police agreeing with it, and you have millions of people in the streets saying it needs to be changed, it’s kind of like, yeah, maybe we need to look in the mirror and change it.
“The protests have made us as law enforcement very uncomfortable—but it’s a necessaryuncomfortable.”
I have been offended by calls for the abolishment of police. I don’t want that message to dilute the real message of defunding police departments, because defunding police departments makes sense. In most jurisdictions, public safety expenses exceed other expenditures by a large margin. Those funds should be allocated to improve education and social services, and to assist the mentally ill and homeless populations. And the whole bad apple–versus–good apple argument is just tired to me. It deflects from the real systemic problems that exist. Without widespread changes, the apples don’t matter.
My wife and I have conversations every day about the protests. I’m white, and she is Black. We agree with their messaging and calls for dramatic reform. We do, however, disagree on one front: property damage. From my wife’s point of view, she has seen peaceful protests many times before in this country, and sometimes they bring about incremental change. But in this instance, she believes more dramatic changes are needed, so more intense protests are needed. My view is that property damage will give opponents of police reform a crutch to fall onto. It will taint the overall message in the eyes of our leaders.
I’ve seen a lot of pendulum swings. Departments will go through phases where officers are on board with reform, but then if some officers get hurt, you might see officers saying, “Hey, we need to get things back to the way they used to be.”We go through times when police enforcement is proactive, then it becomes reactive. We become experts in deescalation, then we have an incident and we refocus on harsh enforcement of laws. It changes for each department depending on how morale is in the community and what’s viewed as acceptable.
When I first started out in law enforcement, in Florida, that police department and academy were very paramilitary. You’re really conditioned for that warrior type of mindset. You get trained from a SWAT perspective; it’s totally different from patrol or community-oriented policing. In a class like that, we’re doing physical training, defensive tactics every day. They were emphasizing takedown maneuvers, how to use force. The training emphasizes having a plan and being firm in what you do, which is necessary. But you gotta know when to switch those hats. Because if you’re trained to be paranoid and always have a plan to kill somebody. … There’s a saying in police departments, “I’d rather be tried by 12 than carried by six.” That is a common phrase thrown around: “Hey, I’d rather be in court charged with manslaughter than be killed in the line of duty.” We all want to go home at the end of the day, but if you’re teaching people that mindset, it is devaluing the person on the other end.
In my department in Florida, it was mostly white police officers, and we were policing this very low-income African American neighborhood. You could see these officers that were not really from that sort of background— there would be communication issues. When you have that soldier mindset, you’re basically giving orders. There’s really no time for open dialogue to take place. It’s kind of, “I’m telling you to do this. Do it.” That kind of rubbed off on me early in my career. It really opened my eyes.
I’ve seen officers be abusive and escalate situations. One particular incident, an officer kicked a teenager in the teeth. He ended up getting terminated. One of my first nights out, with my training officer, we were patrolling one of the rougher neighborhoods in the city. We saw two black men with a pit bull walking on the wrong side of the street. In Florida, there’s a law that if you’re a pedestrian, you have to be walking opposite the flow of vehicle traffic. My training officer jumps out the car, so I jump out the car. The tone he used to simply confront them was—it shook me. We were stopping them for a pedestrian violation, but it almost seemed like we were at a robbery in progress.
I got so discouraged by what I was seeing and doing and not really liking the type of person I was becoming that I left policing entirely for a couple of years and managed retail for a while. It wasn’t until I met my wife and had a daughter and a stepdaughter when I felt I wanted to do something greater. I wanted to help make things better by getting back into policing.
Now, I’m about to get my master’s degree in criminal justice. In my classes, we’ve had to do deep dives on the Ferguson Police Department and CompStat up in New York and see how different methods of policing have certain repercussions, and why sticking to old methods is not going to work going forward. Look at Ferguson: The demographics of the police department were significantly different than the community it was policing. I’m trying to get into more supervision, to try to fix things going forward.
Atlanta on May 30.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Maurice Henry, 34, patrol officer, Kansas
The past few weeks have been really difficult for me, because I see both sides of it. I see that police officers are good people. Me personally, I haven’t seen any bad police officers—but I’m not saying there aren’t any in our department. But I also know what it’s like to be Black and for someone to call the police on you for no reason.
When I was growing up in Oklahoma, it happened a couple of times. We’d take a shortcut to my mom’s house, or we’d be outside playing basketball, and somebody would call the police on us. The police would show up, and we would have no idea what was going on because we were just being kids. They just told us that somebody called because they thought we were up to no good.
Why did I want to be a police officer? The simple answer is I thought there should be more Black police officers. Where I lived in Oklahoma, I don’t know if there were more than five [Black officers] in the department, in a city of close to 100,000 people. I would hear people talk about their interactions with the police, and I felt like the department really didn’t represent the population.
“Why did I want to be a police officer? The simple answer is I thought there should be more Black policeofficers.”
We’ve talked about [Floyd’s killing] quite a bit. Everybody agrees that it was the wrong way to hold him down. Everybody knows that would be a policy violation here. Our supervisors brought it up, and our interim chief brought it up. He usually doesn’t comment on things that happen outside the city. But he agrees it was bad, it shouldn’t have happened, and George Floyd should be alive. I do think Chauvin should be charged with murder, and everyone I’ve talked to agrees.
My department is mostly white, but there are maybe six Black officers and a couple of Latinos. I do feel like some officers don’t understand why people are so angry right now.A lot of the police officers take an us-versus-them stance rather than good-versus-bad or right-versus-wrong, just because it’s a tightknit job where everybody becomes like family. They’re more apt to defend a police officer even when, to me, it’s clear police are in the wrong. But I think it’s more of an issue of a few bad apples. I don’t think the system of policing needs to change, just that officers need to hold people accountable when they see something like this.
Some of my co-workers have been coming to me and seeing how I’m doing with everything. I explain to them different things in my life, like how the police would get called on us for playing basketball in the street. None of them have had that happen to them before. They don’t know what it’s like to be Black. But a co-worker having that type of experience might open their eyes a little bit.
I didn’t know how the department would react to me agreeing with the protests, and I didn’t know how my family would react with me being a police officer. I’ve had family members who have had bad experiences with police. But I’ve talked to my family, and they’re still happy with me being a police officer. And that has helped the most, that my family’s OK with it. They know that I’m a good police officer; they know that I’m a good person. They know that if anything like what Chauvin did is happening around me, then I’ll step in and make sure it doesn’t get to the point where somebody dies.
Ron* has worked at a police department in a major U.S. city for more than 20 years
I’ve not talked to a single officer who supported what happened in Minneapolis, yet every one of us is being painted with that broad brush. Everyone’s screaming about racism and racial inequality—but is that not what everybody is doing to law enforcement? With racism, people get in power and use that power against another ethnicity. Now, [activists] have a voice because of what happened to Floyd, but they’re using that power against another group. That group happens to be law enforcement. Within law enforcement, you’re starting to hear about, “Why are we being demonized and considered the bad guy?” COVID hit the U.S. and police were heroes. Then in one day, we became the worst things in the country. And what did we do? It’s what one person did. Every profession has its bad apples. Teachers have gotten arrested for having sex with kids, but are people saying “get rid of teachers”?
I taught a class on procedural justice for recruits and officers with a whole section on the African American history with police. I’m 100 percent understanding of it. I can have some empathy for that plight. What I don’t have empathy for is a failure of the movement to denounce … the riots, the property destruction. Is that what the movement wants to be known for?
These days, society is asking police to do more things that they’re not equipped to do. Forty thousand people in the United States commit suicide every year, and what are we doing about it? The answer is, equip a cop to deescalate somebody who’s ready to jump off a bridge? The cops have now become kind of a catchall for everything. Can every cop deescalate a mental health patient? No, even if they get training.
In my career, have I done some things that maybe I wasn’t so proud of? I can’t lie to you. But I also have to tell you there are people out there who have no problem trying to kill me. And how do I discern the difference? It’s all about the person’s behavior. A lot of people want to make cops out to be racist. But when they get in those tense situations, cops are reacting to behavior. There have been some people who have come out and said, “Hey, if you just follow the directions of a cop, you should be OK.” That’s not a bad piece of advice.
[George Floyd’s killing] is more of a clear case versus past examples where officers are struggling with somebody. It wasn’t a highly emotionally charged event. Chauvin was clearly calm, and it’s not like he was wrestling with the guy at that particular moment.
“In my career, have I done some things that maybe I wasn’t so proud of? I can’t lie toyou.”
I agree that Black people might be perceived as more aggressive for doing the same thing as a white person. The research shows even African American police officers see African American men as more aggressive. Where does implicit bias come from? Stereotypes, interactions. I’d advocate for this: Every cop who works in what they call a “fast district” or a “minority district,” they should be periodically rotated out to another neighborhood with a similar racial makeup but economically different, with less crime, so they can get some positive imagery of a particular minority group to help replace what they’ve seen. Because how do you counteract implicit bias? You replace the stereotype you have about a particular group of people with positive ones. But if you have an officer who sits in a high-violence neighborhood and the people who live there all happen to be African American or Latino, what’s naturally gonna happen? What’s his thinking gonna be?
Some of my friends have lost friends over this issue. It’s getting to that point. I’ve had to have lengthy discussions with my college-age daughter. She was asked to go protest by her friends. Her comment, and I gotta give her 100 percent props, was, “I’m against racial injustice and the things that have happened, but why do we have to protest against cops?” If I didn’t believe in good changes coming out of this, I’d probably be a very depressed person.
Natalie*, early 30s, a cop in Virginia
Me and my co-workers, we’re all on the same page about George Floyd. What bothers us the most is that the three sat there and didn’t do anything to stop Chauvin. So a lot of the cops were disgusted, and mad because that makes us all look bad. It makes it so people don’t trust the police. I can’t say I necessarily blame them.
Being a cop right now—it’s not good. When I try to defend cops on Twitter, where I like to talk to people about queer TV shows, no one responds. All them are saying, “Fuck the police, defund the police.” And I’m like: “Hey, I’m here, I’m queer, too, and I’m a cop. And I’m saying, some of the stuff those cops are doing, it’s not OK. It’s not all of us.”
A protester in New York City on June 19.
Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images
In real life, the “fuck the police” stuff gets to you. It’s really entertaining when people say that and then five minutes later they ask for help. I’ve seen that a few times. They’ll be like “Fuck the police!” and within the next day I’ll get a call. I’ll be like, oh, fuck me, right? We’re not appreciated until we’re needed.
I understand Black lives matter. Everyone agrees with that. That’s not an issue for me, and it shouldn’t be an issue for anybody else. But when you commit arson and start stealing stuff that doesn’t belong to you, that’s when it becomes a problem. We understand it’s not all of you, but you wanna sit there—I’m sure you’ve seen memes that people have sent around about 1,000 good cops, but if you have 10 bad cops, you have 1,100 bad cops because we’re not holding one another accountable. The same could be flipped, with 1,000 protesters and 10 agitators.
Some of the stuff I’ve seen cops do at these protests is unnecessary. Like, I understand this lady is sitting in front of you and you need her to move. You don’t have to kick her in the face, though. When it comes to enacting reforms [about the use of force by police], most of them have exceptions. So, for example, most departments already restrict shooting at moving vehicles. But if you are trying to run me over with a car, which could kill me, I’m authorized to use deadly force to protect myself or the life of another. In Virginia, we can use deadly force if we have reason to believe the person fleeing has just committed a felony and poses an imminent threat to us or another person. And if I’m authorized to use deadly force, which means it’s a life-or-death situation where I’m in fear for my life or the life of another, I can and will do whatever I have to do to stop that threat. That means I can shoot, stab, beat, strangle, choke—nothing is off limits at that point.
Ramiro Martinez, 41, detective, Temple, Texas
My last 17 years, I’ve seen a big change from when I first started in the attitudes and the culture of policing. It’s been good and bad. Now we’re definitely under the microscope more than we used to be. I wish police departments were a little more transparent in the sense of how we police our own. There’s always this theory that police take care of themselves and things get swept under the rug. In my years in this field, I’ve seen a lot of officers be terminated, a lot of officers be suspended for different violations and breaking the code of ethics. And I think if the public would see that, and we would be more vocal about that, that would kind of help show our community, “Look, we don’t tolerate this.”
When we see [police officers beating people] on the news, we sit there and just chat in the office like, “Man, really, again? What were you thinking?” When we hear about these cops who are slamming people on the ground who are handcuffed and their faces bounce off the concrete—I would vouch for all the guys in my office, none of us would treat somebody like that.
As far as hearing the Black Lives Matter movement, I do hear them. Where I separate myself is when I start hearing the anti-cop rhetoric, defunding the police. A movement that chants, “We want dead cops now,” or “The best cops are dead cops,” I can’t get behind. [Ed. note: When asked where he heard chants like this, Martinez pointed to a 2015 video of Minnesota protesters chanting, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”] And that’s not being a cop—that’s just being a human.
“I’ve had to pray. I’ve had to seek guidance from mypastor.”
I grew up in an impoverished neighborhood. My dad was an immigrant. There were six of us living in that home with one bathroom. I’m where I’m at because of hard work. And then I’m now told, “You won’t understand because you’re not Black.” But I’m being told this by Black friends who grew up in wealthy neighborhoods, friends who grew up with parents being very successful. We can go back and look at 100 years ago, and yes, if I was living in that time frame, I would be right there marching. But I’ve seen a Black president.
I’ve been struggling. Friends whom I know, whom I’ve grown up with, say I’m a racist because of the person I voted for, although I don’t agree with everything Trump says. I’ve had to pray. I’ve had to seek guidance from my pastor. After 17 years, I’m on the verge of just saying “I’m done” and turning it in. I never thought I would—I thought I’d be a 30-year cop. But I’m looking for other career choices. I’ve been very vocal with my kids: I don’t want them in this field. I want them to be something else. Because it’s only gonna get worse. They’re voting to [disband] the Minneapolis Police Department. I don’t want my boys to do this.
Katie Miller, 30, former officer at the Metropolitan Police Department in the District of Columbia
I’ve noticed a lot of my former colleagues with D.C.’s police department outright condemning Chauvin’s actions, which isn’t something that I had seen in the past, to be honest. Usually there’s a little hesitation about “Let’s wait and see where the investigation goes.” But when it came to seeing that video, I knew, and my former colleagues knew, that what they were seeing was enough to condemn him morally and obviously that criminal charges would be forthcoming. That vocalness among police officers is something I haven’t witnessed in the past that I find to be really encouraging.
When I was a cop, we’d have conversations about these shootings, focused on understanding the circumstances around them and what went wrong. There was some room for disagreement about whether an officer handled it in the correct way. Tamir Rice’s killing is a good example of that. There was a tactical mistake, and that was driving that car right up next to a person whom you didn’t know anything about. Why would you do that and basically plop your partner out right in front without any cover? In front of a person who allegedly has a weapon? It’s not smart police work. But there was another layer to that conversation that some of the Black officers brought up, which is: Would there have been the benefit of the doubt given to Rice if he were a white boy as opposed to a young Black boy?
“I think there are a number of issues where the old-school police officers are not seeing eye to eye with the rookies and the youngergeneration.”
Some violence stems from the fact that there’s a lack of manpower in a police department. If you don’t have enough people working your shift, these 911 calls don’t stop. They just keep building up. If you’re working an evening or weekend shift, you’re working those eight or 10 hours straight, responding from one call to the next call. There’s a sort of keep-it-moving mentality. I think that bumps up against a lot of the tactics advocates are calling for, such as deescalation. Deescalation takes time. That means you need to slow it down. When you get to a scene and someone’s upset, instead of having to worry about the three or four calls pending after the one you just responded to, you need to be able to stay and have the space and lack of pressure to say, “I’m gonna take my time and talk to this person and really figure out what the problem is.” A department that’s adequately staffed can afford to have a softer approach to these issues. So in order for calls for defunding police or reducing police budgets to be in the best interest of communities, I think those calls need to be accompanied by a radical rethinking of what we’re asking police to do.
I think the cops policing the protests are beat down, for sure. A lot of them haven’t had days off for a really long time since the protests began. So I think there’s a sense of exhaustion. But I think a lot of social movements in history would prove that these kinds of protests are necessary to change America’s relationship to policing.
I also think there are a number of issues where the old-school police officers are not seeing eye to eye with the rookies and the younger generation. When I was a cop, I had a friend who was new on the police force. He responded to a call, and somebody came up to him and pushed a finger into his chest, as a way to disrespect him. And my friend’s response was not to do anything. And the next day in roll call, which is where everyone gets dogged out for anything that happened the night before, somebody stood up and said something along the lines of, “Yeah, you’re a police officer, I get it. But you’re a man first, and you don’t let another man touch you like that.” That was a total generational divide. Like, there’s something about this man’s work that’s caught up in his gender identity. It represents a rather inflexible form of policing, I guess, to put it nicely.
When you walk into a roll call room, it’s all arranged according to seniority. So all the younger officers have to sit at the front, and the people who’ve been on for two decades, they get to kind of do what they want in the back. They’re smoking and joking, and the people up front are diligently taking notes in their uniform. Their shoes are still shined and everything. A lot of the older officers were working when crack hit D.C. really hard. They always bring up the tagline of D.C. having been the “murder capital.” Like, if they’re training somebody, they’ll say, “All right, you need to listen to me because I worked here when D.C. was the murder capital of the United States.” There’s a sense of pride associated with that. And a sense that some of the rest of us might be used to a safer way of life, to being pampered or babied.
With my family members, I think there was this idea that you need to “back the blue,” especially when I was actually on the police force. They want to support me, so they naturally think this is the side that I’m on, so this is whom you root for. I’ve worked hard with my friends and family to show them that this isn’t as binary an issue as that. I’ve been having conversations with family members about the protests, and especially about the nonpeaceful protesters. I can talk candidly about why that’s not something that upsets me terribly. It’s unfortunate, but also in the grand scheme of things it’s understandable—and effective, to be honest. I think my family can more readily hear that message from me, since I used to be a cop.
The bigger picture to me is the thoughtfulness this is really spurring among police departments and officers, because the situation unfolded as it did and there was space to ask why this happened to George Floyd, to ask why Chauvin felt he could treat this man this way, that undoubtedly keeps pointing back to racism. Police officers often do make split-second decisions, where if there’s any bit of implicit bias, it’s going to come out. There’s a difference between having implicit bias training and a police officer looking inside themselves and seeing that there’s a part of them that’s racist too, regardless of the training they have or how they think of themselves. That seems to be a more abstract but even more important transformation that I think is happening, I hope is happening.
D.C. on June 23.
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Jillian Hanlon, 54, police officer, upstate New York
I’m more optimistic about the future of this country than I have been in the past 3½ years. Because up until this point, there was so much apathy, so much frog-boiling going on. It was one outrage after another, people getting tired and numb to it. But [George Floyd’s killing] shocked the conscience so much that it woke people out of that torpor.
“We have to look at police culture, because that wall of silence gets us into an incredible amount oftrouble.”
I’m a liberal, transgender police officer. You aren’t going to find many of us. We know that public safety in general tends to attract people with more conservative ideologies. And part of being a conservative is you’re not so comfortable with change and new things. So if you’re taught police are always right, then all of a sudden when I say, “You know, I don’t really think we should be shooting Black kids in the back as they’re running away from us,” all of a sudden, it becomes a threat. It becomes, “Wait a second, are you really one of us?” It doesn’t mean that officers feel like “Yeah, we should be able to shoot Black kids in the back and get away with it,” but it’s more like “Yeah, that was bad, but look at all these contributing factors.”
I once got into an argument with an officer over nasal Narcan. He was a “let these scumbags die” kind of person. But part of the training [for Narcan, an emergency treatment for opioid overdose] is: We humanize people. One of the speakers in the training was a mother with three kids, and two of them had died from opioid overdoses. The third one was constantly also having problems overdosing. She pleaded with officers: “Please, this is my last baby. Don’t let my baby die.” And that was what changed that officer’s opinion. He came up to me later and said: “I was wrong. That really hit home. I’m a parent. I can’t imagine losing my child.”
I think the protests could have a similar effect. But it’s a bit of a razor and people can fall on one side of it or the other. Because if you look at some of the crap that went on in Minneapolis and St. Paul—police are using force to punish protestors. I think that right now, they have a siege mentality, and they are just hunkered down and angry and scared and they’re lashing out.
We also have to look at police culture, because that wall of silence gets us into an incredible amount of trouble. It allows us to justify behavior that we wouldn’t permit for anybody else. Those officers in Buffalo [who assaulted 75-year-old activist Martin Gugino]—when another officer tried to intervene and was pulled back, what message does that send? That message says, “We live, they die.” How do you say that you’re the good guy and yet you cheer on somebody who committed an unnecessary act of violence that resulted in a serious physical injury? That’s a police culture problem. The organizational structures of police agencies are very narrow pyramids. You can train out of a police culture problem, but it comes from the top.
EXCLUSIVE: Two federally-run Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals during the Obama administration used the term “Kung Flu” in official materials, along with imagery of a monkey in a karate suit and a ninja wearing a flu mask, Fox News has learned.
President Trump’s use of the term “Kung Flu” to refer to the coronavirus has drawn accusations of racism and insensitivity, but the use of the term under the Obama administration has gone unreported.
In 2015, the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System’s official website urged patients to “Become a Kung Flu Fighter! Get Your Flu Shot!” The website has been taken down, but a copy of it was retained by an Internet archiving website.
The text was accompanied by an image of a ninja wearing a mask in an airborne, flying-kick posture.
The VA further urged visitors to “Click here to print Kung Flu Fighter poster!”
Also in 2015, the Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center sent a mailer to patients reading: “Kung Flu — Knock it out before it knocks YOU out!”
The text is accompanied by a cartoon monkey in a karate outfit apparently kicking a virus molecule senseless.
It was unclear why the hospitals were referencing “Kung Flu,” other than to make an attempt at humor. Unlike now, the term was not used during a pandemic when an outbreak began in China, as it did with COVID-19.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnanysparred with reporters Monday about the term “Kung Flu,” declaring that the moniker was meant to link COVID-19 to its place of origin.
Trump referred to the coronavirus as “Kung Flu” on Saturday night during his campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla. McEnany was asked about the phrase multiple times during the briefing Monday.
CBS reporter Weijia Jiang first brought up the topic, asking why the president uses “racist” terms such as “Kung Flu.”
“The president doesn’t, what the president does do is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China. It’s a fair thing to point out, as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history… ridiculously blame the coronavirus on American soldiers,” McEnany said. “This is what China’s trying to do and what President Trump is saying, ‘No, China, I will label this virus for its place of origin.’”
Jiang pushed back, repeating she feels the phrase is “racist,” but McEnany again responded that Trump is simply “linking it to its place of origin” and dismissed concerns that the phrase will lead to discrimination against Asian Americans.
“The president has said very clearly, ‘It’s important that we totally protect our Asian community in the U.S. and all around the world. They’re amazing people and the spreading of the virus is not their fault in any way, shape or form,’” McEnany said.
McEnany then said the mainstream media condemned Trump for calling COVID-19 the “Wuhan Virus” and “Chinese Virus” despite the press using those terms themselves.
“It’s a separate category, Kayleigh. ’Kung Flu’ is extremely offensive to many people in the Asian American community,” Jiang said.
“To be clear, I think the media is trying to play games with the terminology of this virus… the focus should be on the fact that China let this out of their country,” McEnany said, adding that CNN called it the “Wuhan Virus” in January.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins then chimed in, saying the “media has never called it the ‘Kung Flu.’”
“Calling it the Chinese coronavirus and ‘Kung Flu’ are very different things,” Collins said.
“The media, and your network specifically, have repeatedly used the term ‘China Virus’ and ‘Wuhan Virus,’ and then gone on to deride the president,” McEnany hit back.
Collins repeated that the media hasn’t used the term “Kung Flu,” but McEnany attempted to move on to the next reporter.
McEnany then answered questions on a variety of other topics, but reporters continued asking about the “Kung Flu” and she continued responding by noting that coronavirus originated in China.
Community leaders and an activist whose brother was killed by Seattlepolice in 2016 are urging protesters occupying the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, to leave by Wednesday night.
In a statement addressed to “comrades in the struggle” posted on social media Wednesday, CHOP organizers declared, “It is time we shift to the next phase of our organizing and move from direct action to virtual activism.”
“The CHOP project is now concluded,” the lengthy message said. “While we expect a very small handful of holdouts may try to remain in the CHOP no further organizing will be occurring to support this presence and the number on-site will be too small to be more than an annoyance for pedestrians rather than a zonal blockade.”
“We have been briefed that full rehousing of the SPD East Precinct staff into the station will occur no later than early next week and will be preceded by the removal of barriers and the reopening of streets to traffic,” the statement said.
The statement then urged supporters to vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and to reelect Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, both Democrats.
Andre Taylor, who founded the organization Not This Time, which aims to reduce police violence, said Tuesday that the four recent shootings in the area protesters initially called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, distract from important messages about racial injustice. His brother, Che Taylor, was fatally shot by Seattle police in February 2016.
“If there was no violence you should’ve stood there for as [long as] you wanted to stay there, but the violence creates a different narrative where the people in authority have to look at it differently,” Taylor told KING-TV.
Tuesday marked the 15th consecutive night protesters have occupied the Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, which includes the abandoned East Precinct, which officers were ordered to pull back from following a week of clashes between police and demonstrators in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
People walk amidst barricades in what has been named the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone in Seattle Monday, June 22, 2020. For the second time in less than 48 hours, there was a shooting near the “CHOP” area that has been occupied by protesters after Seattle Police pulled back from several blocks of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood near the Police Department’s East Precinct. (AP)
Lorenzo Anderson, 19, was shot and killed in the CHOP early Saturday morning. A second man shot Saturday remained hospitalized in satisfactory condition. A third person, a 17-year-old, was shot Sunday night and has been released from the hospital. A fourth shooting early Tuesday morning left a man hospitalized also in satisfactory condition, KOMO reported.
“Our community does not support the violence,” Taylor told KOMO in another interview. “’Oh, somebody just got shot but Chop, Chop, Chop? Wait a minute, but you’re just going to look over this black man that got killed over here? This young baby; this 19-year-old? No. No. You’re going to pause and you’re going to think about this black man because that’s the reason you did it for.”
Mayor Durkan said Monday she planned to dismantle the CHOP after a weekend of violence in the area protesters deemed a “no cop, co-op.” Police Chief Carmen Best said that officers would soon return to the East Precinct, but Durkan vowed she would first work with community organizers to convince protesters to disband before using police intervention.
Taylor said Tuesday that he attempted to broker a meeting between Durkan and some of the CHOP organizers, but the organizers canceled at the last minute, KING reported. He said he planned to bring a group of pastors to the CHOP to convince them that their movement “won’t be stuck to a place.”
“CHOP is an idea and with that idea, you can take this idea around this country and then around this world,” he said. “Ideas can’t be killed.”
Police have said his brother, Che Taylor, a known felon, disobeyed commands to put his hands up before reaching for a handgun in his Ford Taurus when officers fired, KING reported.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said in January 2019 that charges would not be filed against the officers. He cited Washington state law that deems a police officer “shall not be held criminally liable for using deadly force without malice and with a good faith belief that such act is justifiable,” KIRO reported.
Taylor’s organization is advocating for Initiative 940, a bill that would make it easier to bring charges against officers who use deadly force among other police reforms.
