NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani received backlash for their comments on the Black Lives Matter movement over the weekend.
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To underscore the vulnerability of people of color in such confrontations, a movement called “Black Lives Matter” arose.
The mayor praised the Daily News’ front page of Giuliani, which featured a photo of a girl with the headline: “Is SHE likely to kill, Rudy?” The mayor and First Lady Chirlane McCray appeared on CNN’s New Day where the mayor credited the Black Lives Matter movement with starting an important conversation.
The child was the 4-year-old girl in the vehicle with her mom when a Minnesota cop shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop. He said the White House should reexamine how extensively cops are trained – especially on de-escalating conflict – and additional equipment they can receive from the military. Not once does he concede that maybe, just maybe, Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean only black lives matter.
Bratton added that the effort “is attempting to portray the American police profession as hostile to blacks, which it is not”.
His comments came in the aftermath of the shooting of Dallas police officers last week, in which gunman Micah Johnson targeted officers patrolling a non-violent Black Lives Matter march against the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of law enforcement. All lives matter: “black lives, white lives, all lives”. Eaton hosts an Internet radio show in Tulsa talking about issues relating to the black community, including what happened in Dallas and how the event is continuing to shape race relations in Tulsa and across the country.
“It is not engaging in dialogue, instead they’re engaging in protests where there is a lot of yelling and screaming”.
“Look what the president said when the Black Lives Matter people in one demonstration said, ‘kill the police, the sooner the better, ‘ or some phrase like that. Yelling and screaming doesn’t resolve anything, doesn’t solve anything”, Bratton said.
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“It’s inherently racist because, number one, it divides us. He is, of course, entitled to his opinions and his beliefs, and plenty of people find resonance in them”.
