LET'S TAKE 10 MINUTES OF SILENCE, NOT 8 MINUTES 46 SECONDS

We ought to memorialize all the police officers that have been murdered by blacks and the countless white people murdered by black criminals

By Howie Katz

Big Jolly Times
June 14, 2020

During the George Floyd memorial service in Minneapolis, Al Sharpton called for 8 minutes 46 second of silence, the amount of time the cop who murdered Floyd kept his knee on the neck of the career criminal.  Sharpton also called for the broadcast networks to go silent for that amount of time.  And at the beginning of Floyd's funeral in Houston, the New York Stock Exchange went silent for 8 minutes 46 seconds.

The whole nation has been conned into believing that whenever blacks are killed by cops, they are killed only because they are  black.

The murder of Floyd was unforgivable, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the Minneapolis cop who killed  him was a racist.  A bad cop yes, but not a racist.

Did George Floyd deserve all the attention he has been getting?  Sharpton called him an "ordinary brother" during the funeral.  And during the visitation ceremony, Philonise Floyd said his brother was a huge role model for a lot of people.

An ordinary brother?  A huge role model?  God forbid!  George Floyd was a career criminal with a long wrap sheet.  He was twice convicted of armed robbery and served time in prison.  He was murdered while being arrested for trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.  And an autopsy showed that at the time of his death, he had fentanyl and meth in his system.

While I abhor the police-hating Black Lives Matter movement, I most certainly agree that black lives do matter.  But so do all lives, including the lives of the police!

Yes, cops do shoot people, most of the shootings being justified, some not.   And yes, there are some racist cops.  But we are talking about only a handful of the 800,000 law enforcement officers in this country who experience 375 million annual encounters with citizens while protecting and serving the people, be they white, black, Latino, or Asian.  

In 2019 police officers shot dead 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous.  Of that number, only 235 were black.  In other words, about a quarter of those killed by the police were black.  While blacks constitute only 13 percent of the population, the killing at double that rate is easily explained by the fact that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of of crime.

The Black Lives Matter movement is only concerned about the occasional killing of black men by white cops.  BLM has kept silent about the daily killings of black men by black men in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities.  It is bad enough that politicians support BLM, but it is absolutely revolting to see police officials supporting a group that thrives on spreading hatred of the very cops they lead.

In stead of taking 8 minutes 46 seconds of silence for a career criminal, we ought to take 10 minutes of silence in memory of all the police officers that have been murdered by blacks and the countless white people murdered by black criminals.