A Catalog Of Fail

Some people may think I go a little lighter on Hillary than Barack. If I seem so it’s purely by intention.

You see, we’ll never know what a Hillary Presidency would have looked like. It’s possible she’s the closet liberal her supporters claim. It could be that her war hawk foreign policy compensates for her perceived ‘weakness’ (Umm… guys? We’re the ones missing half a chromosome, not the ladies, and I invite you to try peeing a watermelon), and her apparent obligation to Wall Street Banksters a by-product of her New York constituency (Chuck Schumer has the same defects).

Like many (well, a 3 Million majority) I looked forward to influencing her in a mildly positive direction.

The Donald of course is hopeless, I actively fear for my life (no shit, I see Doctors) though among Republicans he is remarkable for his randomness and willingness to abandon decades of policy at whim, which while faint praise is more than you can say for most who are uniform in their destructive ideology as opposed to Democrats that rotate between lesser and evil.

But I’m not ready to proclaim Obama ‘The Bestest President Evah’ in contrast to W and Trump because ‘Lesser’ does not mitigate ‘Evil’.

In this particular instance I want to demonstrate Barack’s failure as a representative of the African-Americans who voted for him overwhelmingly, not just economically (which might be explained by a Neo Liberal bias for Banksters and the Black community’s poor and systemic racism induced economic condition at the start of his Presidency), but his unwillingness to do anything at all about a militarized and overtly racist Police culture.

Folks, I give you the Chicago Police Department run by Barack Obama’s friend, Chief of Staff, and fellow Democrat Rahm Emmanuel, unprosecuted despite clear and consistent evidence of murder and torture by Barack Obama’s friend, Attorney General, and fellow Democrat Eric Holder.

DOJ releases damning investigation of the Chicago Police Department
By Carimah Townes and Alan Pyke, Think Progress
1/13/17

The Chicago Police Department is infected with a dangerous cowboy culture, actively coaches officers to paper over abuse of force incidents, and fails accountability tests across the board, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported Friday.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch presented the searing findings of a 13-month investigation on Friday morning, announcing that CPD is systematically violating the U.S. Constitution.

“The Department of Justice has concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Chicago Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,” Lynch said. “It fails to properly collect and analyze data, including data on misconduct complaints and training deficiencies. And it does not accurately review use of force incidents to determine whether force was appropriate or lawful or whether the use of force could have been avoided altogether.”

The DOJ launched its investigation after video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting went public, but CPD’s systematic violation of civil rights was documented long before the federal government stepped in. During the 1970s and 1980s, the city’s former police commander, Jon Burge, waged a large-scale torture campaign in the Southside, beating, electrocuting, suffocating, burning, and caddle prodding at least 120 black men in a police station referred to the “House of Screams.” More recently, the Guardian discovered similar police torture occurring at a black site called Homan Square.

Since the federal investigation of the department was launched, additional patterns of misconduct have come to the fore. Officers destroy their cameras so they won’t be caught abusing their authority or breaking department protocol. The Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), which Mayor Rahm Emanuel now wants to scrap altogether, routinely covers up police complaints and kowtows to the CPD’s demands. Top prosecutors, including former State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, have also protected cops instead of charging them or intentionally under-charged them.
…
“It also appears that officers have been instructed on the language they should use to justify force,” the investigators report. Furthermore, the department gives cops a check-box form rather than requiring them to relay a narrative explanation of why they tased, hit, tackled, or used a baton on someone.

The feds reviewed a mix of paperwork from the department documenting use-of-force incidents, and videos of such encounters. The video evidence suggests problems with false justifications for abuses of force are even more widespread than the documents indicate, the investigators say.
…
Approximately half of all misconduct complaints aren’t investigated by Chicago officials, in part because there are established roadblocks that make it difficult to start the process. For an investigation to get off the ground, the person(s) filing a complaint has to make a sworn statement, in person. If they don’t, neither IPRA nor the police department’s own Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) will follow up.

“The City closes about 40% of all complaints (an average of 2,400 complaints a year) because the complainant did not sign an affidavit. A 2015 report showed that between 2011 and 2014, IPRA closed 58% of its total complaints for lack of an affidavit,” the DOJ writes.

Thanks for nothing Barack.