"Killer cops" and "Kill a cop" are VERY different. Don't conflate them.

Let's get one thing very clear:   The brutal, assassination of two New York City police officers last weekend by a mentally disturbed man with a long record of arrests, who first killed his ex-girlfriend before turning on the cops, is a completely separate issue from the non-violent protests against excessive use of police force against unarmed, young black men.

Unfortunately, both sane elected officials and rabble-rouser nuts are mixing up the two.   Those who want to call off the protest rallies mean well and want to show respect for the officers' families.   But they need to use the teaching moment to clarify that the issues are quite different and may co-exist -- even while asking for a moratorium to show respect.

Once again, we need to turn to the comedians for the truth.   Here's Jon Stewart:


So much wiser than loud-mouth ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani, who blabbed on Fox News that “We’ve had four months of propaganda, starting with the president, that everybody should hate the police.”   Which is totally false, of course.   Obama said exactly the opposite.

Other conservative politicians have made similar -- or worse -- comments, such as former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) saying that de Blasio, Eric Holder, and President Obama “have the blood of those two NYPD cops . . . on their hands.”

A spokesman for one of the police unions also spoke of "blood on the hands" starting at the steps to City Hall.    Others blamed the demonstrators protesting police killings of unarmed young black men.

Not content to just talk about it, a Fox affiliate in Baltimore, WBFF, Fox 45, wanted to run a story portraying these protests as "kill a cop" rallies.    The problem was that they couldn't find any videos or anyone to back that up.    So they manufactured one -- starting with footage from a CSPAN video of the Washington D.C. rally -- which they edited to make it sound like the people are chanting "kill a cop."

This was quickly exposed as a fake, but not until WBFF-Fox had shown the tape several times, with one of their reporters solemnly referring to the protest march as referring to "cop killing."   Then they play the video of people chanting:

"We won't stop.

"We can't stop.

"So kill a cop."

Here is what the unedited CSPAN video shows people actually chanting:  

"We won’t stop.

"We can’t stop. 

"Until the killer cops

"Are in cell blocks.”

 
The further irony is that the woman leading the chant in the real video is Tawanda Jones, the sister of a Baltimore man who was killed by police while in their custody last year.

Once the false account had been exposed, WBFF pretended that it was just an honest misunderstanding of what people were chanting and apologized to Ms. Jones for the "mistake."    I have not seen what WBFF aired, but from the description on several sites, there is no way this is simply a mistake.   The tape shown on air has definitely been edited, compared to the full tape from CSPAN.

Contrary to the way WBFF portrayed Tawanda Jones as the "kill a cop" chant-leader, ever since her brother's death in 2013, she has been holding weekly nonviolent days of action to call for justice and accountability in the Baltimore Police Department.    Far from wanting to kill cops, she feels the urgent need for accountable cops.  Here is what she said:   "You'd have to be an idiot -- someone that hates -- to say 'kill somebody,' especially some cops that I need to protect my family.""We need the cops. My community needs the cops." 

Maybe we should stick with the comedians.   Fox News and its affiliate stations can't be trusted to tell us the truth.

Ralph