Obama administration seeks to contain anger over whitewash of police killings
Patrick Martin ■ The official reaction to popular anger over the whitewash of Eric Garner’s murder differs superficially from the militarized response to the November 24 decision of a grand jury in Missouri to bring no charges against the cop who shot to death Michael Brown. ● In the Garner case, where the cellphone video provided incontrovertible proof of the police killing of an unarmed man, the government and media response has been more cautious, expressing sympathy for the Garner family and calling for empty “reforms.” ● Above all, the Obama administration has sought to divert popular anger over the police killings into the blind alley of racial politics, by depicting the problem as limited to racial prejudice among individual policemen, to be overcome by better training and recruitment of more African-American cops.
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