Surreal

 --Orangina vintage advert, 
Bernard Villemot

 If they say,
Why, why, tell 'em that it's human nature
Why, why does he do me that way 
--Human Nature,
Michael Jackson

{This event is so absurd, pathetic, tragic and needless, 
we are going with a graphic neither black or white, 
a visual with a lot of holes,
as it is unknown whether race is a culprit.}
____________________

A day after we began our Black History month here at RAW, the November 2016 shooting of the murdered black Florida cop beater 53-year-old Edward Strother was back in the news (the shooter had been cleared by prosecutors).

It is not exactly a race story, but it is, sort of.

To wit: 53 year old Edward Strother is seen in a witness's phone footage in November (2016) whaling on Deputy Dean Bardes as he sits astride the deputy in the road. Ashad Russel, 35, happens along, strapped and possessing a concealed carry permit. Bardes, in extremis, calls to Ashad, "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

[Note: several witnesses are on the sidelines, watching and filming, but not calling 911 for assistance.]

Composed, Mr. Russel warns Strother, "Stop, or I will shoot." When Strother fails to cease beating the policeman, Russel fires three shots, killing Strother. Both the assailant and his killer were black; the policeman, white.

Following firing the shots, Mr. Russel throws the gun on the ground and walks away a la the film "High Noon", when the Sheriff throws his badge in the dirt with utter disgust for his fellows and his society.

So what prompted this absurd, violent event? Some backstory:

Both the assailant and his victim shared a job history -- both had been security guards in the Northeast; Strother in Connecticut, Bardes in New Jersey. Strother worked in the field for 22 years; Bardes left after five and became a Deputy in 2005

The only personal data on Strother are reports from his neighbors that odd and loud sounds had been reported coming from his residence late at night over the last few months.

On the day of the incident, Strother was reportedly traveling over 100 mph on Interstate 75 in Estero, Florida, when he almost struck patrolman Bardes' vehicle as the deputy was assisting in a separate incident.

News reports state that Bardes felt targeted when Strother almost hit his vehicle, and he then gave chase.

Strother pulled off on an exit ramp and as the two men approached, Strother reportedly punched Bardes, who then landed on the pavement. It was then that Strother straddled the officer and began "raining down punches" on him according to a witness, also slamming the officer's head on the pavement.

So what triggered Strother? If his 22-year history as a security guard was a fairly consistent and uneventful one, what changed to make him violently target an officer of the law?

Emergent mental illness? Drug use? Personal trauma? A combination thereof? Whatever the cause, Mr. Strothers was killed in a pathetic, tawdry and sorry event.

Liberals will cry "gun control", but the man whaling on the cop did not use a gun, nor did the cop use a gun on Mr. Strothers.

Others will cry, "It is the paramilitary police", but Deputy Bardes did nothing untoward. The only way in which this is racial would be if the assailant had targeted the white policemen for his race, alone. This is unknown.

But if that is so, then what predicated this episode of racial rage?

The media was awash in news of racial violence prior to Strother's attack. The events spooling out in Ferguson, MO, was a fairly regular presence on the evening news. Then there was Freddie Gray, the youth in Cleveland, and the Charleston church shootings, among other incidents.

Also, what predicated Mr. Strother's release from his security job? Did he retire in good standing?

My construction of events is as good as any, and until further data is revealed, my diagnosis is:

Mental illness, exacerbated by an incessantly inflammatory press. Why else would a black man beating a white cop not cease his actions when a large and younger black man is standing in front of him in a full Weaver stance shouting at him to stop?

Mr. Strother must have suffered some extreme mental duress (possibly situational, possibly resulting from an organic mental illness, possibly, a combination of the two.) He may have suffered some personal affront from either a policeman or a white person.

After several years of exposure to incessant and salacious media coverage of prior racial events involving the police, Mr. Strother became vicariously, personally involved as a Person of Color (write large).

Possibly, he was on Molly or bath salts; if performed, a toxicology report was not printed. Possibly, there was no predicating event.

In what became a sad case of death-by-cop (sort of), Mr. Strothers lost his life after deciding that policeman Bardes was his enemy and beginning his brutal assault on the officer.

I contend that the two primary culprits in this pathetic and tragic event were severe mental distress or illness on Mr. Strother's part, and a complicit media organization which exploited racial events beyond their usefulness for their gratuitous ratings hunt.

Untreated mental illness and a media circus which promises fifteen minutes of fame, dead or alive. It is a toxic but heady combination in our frontier world lived on the flashy ground of social media.

Whenever acute distress meets with mediocre capabilities, tragedy is often the result. Mr. Strother was violating the law, and Deputy Bardes had demonstrated weakness with the issue of criminal containment (he had undergone remediation after a suspect once fled his patrol car.)

We can expect more Strother's and Cho's Adam Lanza's and James Holmes, until we figure out how to identify and treat vulnerable people, and how to live sanely in a world in which the itchy trigger finger is occupied scrolling through endless media feeds, and the mind attached to that finger can be roused to an immediate and visceral violence.

Moreover, the individual now lives in a vicarious relationship to those viewed events, being installed as he is in the immediate commentary (feed) to the viewed events. If you are one of the Twitterers, your shock and rush to commentary after such predictable events is disingenuous.

In this tragic event, as in most which preceded it, mental illness is the probable primary and proximal causative factor.

A fatted and goading media is the distal one.

Rush to Judgement

 I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh 
--A Day in the Life, The Beatles 

Ebony and ivory 
live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, 
oh Lord, why don't we?  
--Ebony and Ivory, Paul McCartney 

There are a thousand hacking at the branches
of evil to one who is striking at the root 
--Walden, Henry David Thoreau

_____________________

I opened the paper this morning to see the lede: Black man shot by white officer. Apparently the victim was shot while running off with the officer's Taser gun.

I thought about a similar shooting in our town last month that should have gotten press, but didn't. The man killed was a casual associate of Ranger's.

Garland Wingo, white male, age 64, was felled by three bullets fired by a black Tallahassee Police Department (TPD) officer while walking away from him down the street. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. It was a bright sunny early evening around 7:00 at Lake Ella, the favorite park in our area for socializing and walking after work.

On a nice day Lake Ella is always a popular place. Not really a lake but a drainage pond housing monster carp which seem to thrive on the effluent, but it is as close to a nature park downtown as Tallahassee comes. All ages and colors mingle freely at all hours of the day in this outpost of general safety in a town growing increasingly unsafe. The park abuts the police department, adding to that sense of security.

On 18 March 2015, someone is said to have reported Mr. Wingo as having a gun on his person to the police. At that time, he was reported as sitting on one of the many benches surrounding the lake.

Mr. Wingo was a long-time fixture of the Lake Ella area, as he usually took advantage of the Wi-Fi at the nearby Publix grocery food court. He was always neat and tidy, and fit-looking -- a bit quiet, but friendly when spoken to. No one recalls him as ever being loud, hostile or out of line.

The regulars say he had a concealed carry permit. Many people do in this area. It is not unusual to sit down to a meal at a restaurant and see a civilian's gun peek out from under her clothing. That is just how it is in these parts.

The only report with any details was given on 19 March by the Famuan, the campus paper of Florida A & M University; still, it wasn't much. They reported, according to TPD spokesman David Northway, 

“At approximately 6:55 p.m. Wednesday evening, TPD received a call about a man with a weapon at Lake Ella sitting on a park bench.”

"(Zackari) Jones, who was the first officer on the scene, found Wingo walking in the roadway on the south side of the lake. Jones went up to Wingo. Officer Northway said, the two 'made contact with each other.'  At some point, Jones had to draw his weapon and fire, striking Wingo. Emergency medical services were applied but Wingo died at the scene.

"TPD officers came to the scene to assist and section off the scene. The Homicide and Forensic Units collected found a handgun on Wingo’s body."

There are no details given regarding what was said, or why the officer felt he had to fire three shots into 64-year-old Mr. Wingo. What is certain is that no witnesses reported that Mr. Wingo was brandishing a weapon (though the headline in one news outlet said just that.) One woman reported seeing the officer fire three shots and then standing over Wingo's body.

I guess Mr. Wingo's killing at the hands of a black police officer doesn't merit national coverage because ... maybe it doesn't happen that often (except in the case of now-dead Mr. Wingo.) It must be that white people just don't get killed at the hands of officers of the law, and certainly not black officers.

Perhaps it is that Tallahassee is not that big a deal being a rather uneventful place, though it is the capital of the state. Surely it is as important as Ferguson, Missouri.

There are those who will say, "Carrying a gun is just asking for it," but it is legal to do so in Florida with a $135 CCW permit, which Mr. Wingo is said to have had. Surely it is no more egregious than reaching into an officer's car and grappling for his weapon. Probably less so on the measure of threat level.

But alas, the white-on-black meme will run 'round the globe via 100's of thousands of social networking posts. They won't accomplish anything beyond allowing the poster to expulse some of his or her bile for the moment. "Look for another such killing in a few more months," Chad Lorenz, Slate's news editor and Cassandra hopefully extolled today.

What comes of this fixation? Surely we continue to have a racial problem in the U.S., but are we seeing the whole truth? Are we understanding it? What are we not focusing on when we vent our holy outrage at the shooting du jour? What do we gain by our collective cognitive dissonance?

Our social platforms require speed over rigor, and we will suffer ignorance due to our addiction. Anger and outrage are the things that gain readership, and isn't one's number of followers the only metric for success today?

In Tallahassee two weeks ago the city held a forum to discuss the problem of crime in the predominately black South side of town. There will be grants awarded, but the police are not hopeful. A TPD spokesman speaking on the local NPR radio station said the problem was too complex to be fixed with one approach. Basically the grant would be a fallow gesture, is what he was saying.

White Mr. Wingo is still dead. The TPD Public Information Officer declined to return my call. Almost one month on, it is unlikely we will receive further.

Meanwhile, keep tuned for the next black man to be jumped by a white officer. Slate has promised it.

A little something to keep you occupied.

______________________________


Correction: The video appears to show the victim, Walter Scott, did not have the officer's Taser when he was running. Still missing is film showing the period of time between the officer's dash cam showing the traffic stop and when the bystander began shooting his video of Mr. Scott and the officer getting up off the ground and Mr. Scott running prior to being shot by the officer.


UPDATE: Sgt. Bossio of the TPD returned my call today and said, though he could give me no further details, I could come to the station and view the incident report after the Grand Jury convenes 6 May 15.

License to Kill

 The personal is the political
--Carol Hanisch

That second dose of soma had raised
a quite impenetrable wall between
the actual universe and their minds 
--Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
______________________

A few additional thoughts on the recent mass killing in Aurora, Colorado (Spree Killers follow-on):

The main question that should arise from such events is not, "Why are we so well-armed?" but rather, "Why are we so violent?

From that compelling and inscrutable question to some particulars, the answers to which have also been kept opaque.

[1]  News accounts say shooter Holmes  possessed "explosives", but give no details.  There are allusions to "fire works" rigged as booby traps, but fireworks are not "explosive devices"; fireworks and gunpowder (propellants) are not even close to being explosives, so why the hyperbole?

This crazy could have done just as much damage with his shotgun or pistol alone, yet the press fronts the assault rifle angle, adding to and exploiting the mystique of a tragic situation.

[2] It is reported that Holmes possessed a "gas canister" but what exactly was this cannister?

[3] If Holmes was kitted out in body armor and helmet, then why did he not engage the police in a gun fight? Why wear armor to kill soft targets?

[4] Holmes' AR-15 assault rifle jammed, preventing him from emptying its 100-round magazine. Ranger consistently writes that people who use hicap magazines are amateurs, and this situation bears this out.

If 100-round magazines were reliable than the military would use them.  Losers like Holmes do not know this fact.

[5] The Denver Post reported that the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) that expired in 2004 would have prevented the sale of the AR-15 rifle used in the shooting, and the 100-round drum magazine attached to it.  In fact, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is a cruel hoax played upon the American people -- there has never been a viable assault weapons ban.

The Executive Order (under George H.W. Bush) banned only the import of assault rifles.  Additionally, assault rifles are like pornography in that they both defy description and logic in U.S. Code.  Until 1994 there was no assault weapons definition in U.S. Statutes.  They were still produced domestically.

The 1994-2004 AWB was a cosmetic ban only which did NOT remove AR-type rifles from the marketplace; manufacturers simply removed the telescoping stocks, sometimes pistol grips, bayonet studs, flash hiders and grenade launching capabilities.  (Incidentally, assault rifles historically were by definition selective fire, which means "auto-semi-or safe"; U.S. law ignores this fact.)

The 1994 AWB applied only to the citizenry, and not to police or security agencies, a bit of hypocrisy.  As well, the AWB did not remove "kill your neighbor" weapons from gun shops, so the law did not do much to keep us citizens "safe" from weapons harm.

The usually incendiary William Saletan of Slate online wrote that "Someone pulling a firearm on Holmes could have triggered an even wilder shooting spree," a totally useless bit of baseless conjecture.  A trained gunman with a concealed carry permit (CCW) could have neutralized the gunman.  Or not.

We cannot know since it did not happen.  However, a cinema showing a midnight film not equipped with an off-duty police presence for security detail is a real failure, with a real tragic outcome.

The AWB of 1994 was ineffective in terms of reducing gun-related crime.  Historically, the AR15-type weapons constitute less than 2% of gun crime statistics, so it is hard to understand the argument against black rifles.  They can be had for $200 and are cheap and prolific; the cheap SKS rifles are not assault weapons by U.S. standards, anyway -- they just look the part.

It is the ubiquity of cheap weapons which is the key to gun control, since most criminals cannot afford expensive weapons like the AR-15, at $1,200 to $3,000.  If they could afford fancy guns they would be collectors, and not criminals

Again the question, not "Why are we so well-armed?" but rather, "Why are we so violent?" As on the national, so on the personal level.

Million Man Permits

 Breakin' rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won
I needed money 'cause I had none
I fought the law and the law won 
--I Fought the Law, 
The Clash

Pancho was a bandit boy,
his horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants 
For all the honest world to feel 
--Pancho and Lefty, 
Townes Van Zandt

 The right of the people to keep and bear...
arms shall not be infringed 
--James Madison
 _______________

Florida just issued its millionth Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) permit, which means it has charged 1,000,000 people $135 each to exercise their constitutional right to carry a weapon.  

For that, they get a laminated card saying they may legitimately tote their guns (independent of the cost for the required class and fingerprints, which are also required.)

Is it even a right if you have to pay for it?  What is next -- Freedom of Speech permits?  CCW's create two classes of citizens -- those who can afford to exercise their constitutional rights, and those who cannot.  Members of one group may pack heat legally, while those in the other are in criminal violation of the law for doing the exact same thing.

If our vaunted Rights are accorded to all citizens, regardless of race, creed or economic level, then why are some rights abridged on any of those criteria?  How is this democratic?