Rees Lloyd’s Caustic Commentaries: Where did “Equality” go?
Why is there so little attention given in the Garner case in New York by the media, and in remarks by government officials from Obama on down, all of whom are otherwise so exercised about racial inequality, about the fact that the supervising sergeant at the Garner take-down was a black female, a key fact which is rarely even mentioned let alone focused upon despite its essentiality?
Why this apparent “unequal” treatment, compared with how the supervising officer, Sgt. Stacy Keen, was treated in the infamous Rodney King case in Los Angeles?
That is, I remember being interviewed years ago during the Rodney King case and riots in Los Angeles by the late broadcast legend George Putnam on his Original Talkback Show in L.A. (now hosted by his longtime producer and sidekick, Chuck Wilder). I was interviewed as a civil rights attorney about the vilification of Sgt. Stacy Keen by the media, and demands by liberals, race hustlers, and rioters for Keen to be criminally prosecuted, all apparently happy to toss away his and other cops’ presumption of innocence in the name, hypocritically, of “equality.”
The contrast between the treatment of Sgt. Stacy Keen, white male supervising officer at the scene in the Rodney King case, and Sgt. Kizzy Adoni, the black female supervising officer at the scene in the Garner case, is as manifestly unequal as, for instance, “black and white.”
Sgt. Stacy Keen was vilified although he never punched, kicked, or clubbed King. Keen in fact used a “taser” on the out-of-control King rather than beat him down or shoot him.
However, the taser had no effect on King, which is some indication of what the cops were dealing with when trying to arrest out-of-control convicted felon Rodney King. So Sgt. Keen tried a second taser before resorting to batons and “swarming” the huge Rodney King as officers are trained to do.
Again, the second taser didn’t stop King, who was desperate not to be arrested because of his criminal record, which might mean a return to prison. It was only after that failure of the second taser to stop King that Keen instructed subordinates to swarm King and use their batons to control King.
The famous video showing batons being used on Rodney King were edited by the media to show the beating, but not the preceding conduct of King that necessitated the use of those batons. Television news edited the tape to eliminate King’s conduct; Spike Lee did the same, beginning his movie on Black Muslim Malcolm X with the video–stripped of King’s acts prior to use of the batons.
The world was informed by the media through the video that out-of-control white cops were furiously beating with clubs a black man concerning a traffic offense.
Rodney King was thereafter sanctified as innocent black victim of white racism. Sgt. Stacy Keen was simultaneously vilified in the media as a white racist cop, including for tasering King, although the same media, black hustlers, white revolutionists, and self-righteous rioters today wail that Garner should have been tasered rather than taken down physically.
Sgt. Keen, despite trying to control King by taser, twice, was criminally prosecuted, as were his subordinates. In fact, Keen was held out as the most guilty because he was the senior officer at the scene.
However, the jury — which considered all of the evidence, including all of the video showing not just King being beaten with batons but the actual beginning of the video showing the out-of-control actions of King which brought on the use of batons — acquitted all the officers of criminal charges, including Sgt. Keen.
That brought on the Rodney King riots. Fifty-three people would be killed in the Rodney King Riots by rioters, mostly blacks and Hispanics, aided and abetted by white self-declared “revolutionists.” Those people died in vain. To the best of my knowledge, there was not a single prosecution, let alone conviction, for murder, in any degree. The apparent reason for non-prosecution was not to disturb a black community so easily moved to riot to get its way, and not to be subject to equal application of the rule of law, while demanding equal application.
Meanwhile, Rodney King was elevated from his well-earned status as a lowlife black habitual criminal, wife and woman beater, later arrested aficianado of alley-love with transvestite male prostitutes, into a sainted icon of innocent black victimization by white racist cops. This same elevation to iconic black “victim” status — in complete defiance of all facts and evidence to the contrary — has been similarly accorded in the contemporary “post-racial” (sic) presidency of Barack Obama first to Trayvon Martin; then to Brown in Ferguson; and now to Garner in New York.
After Sgt. Keen’s acquittal in the criminal prosecution, the federal government in the Rodney King case, desperate to avoid even more rioting, then brought the second prosecution of Sgt. Keen and the other white officers in federal court for violations of Rodney King’s “civil rights.” That jury found Keen and all but one of the others guilty, and King was awarded some $3-million dollars, proving crime does pay.
The career of Sgt. Keen, branded an evil white racist, was, like that of officer Wilson in Ferguson in the Brown Case, ruined–despite Keen’s outstanding record as law enforcement officer.
There is a little publicly known fact about Sgt. Stacy Keen that should convince even the most diehard black race hustler, e.g., Sharpton, Jackson, Farrakhan, or self-righteous white progressive liberal, e.g., Obama, DeBlassio, Pelosi, or “revolutionists,” that Stacy Keen was no racist. I was interviewed by George Putnam about that fact years ago during the Rodney King case–but the other media somehow did not find it important to print or broadcast.
That fact is this: There was in the Ramparts Division, one of the worst in L.A., a frequently arrested, lowlife black career petty criminal who was known to be infected with AIDs, which didn’t stop him from engaging in various criminal acts but was wasting him away on the way to killing him. One day, as he was brought in on yet another arrest, he fell to the floor writhing in convulsions. One cop, who knew well he was infected with AIDS, rushed over to him, and saved his life by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That white cop was Stacy Keen.
Now, consider: Would a “white racist” really act immediately to render mouth-to-mouth resuscitation knowing the the recipient was Aids-ridden criminal on a death track from Aids? That was what Sgt. Stacy Keen, alleged “racist white cop,” did to save a black criminal dying of Aids. Not to put too fine a point on it–would you?
Not withstanding that evidence that Keen was definitely not a racist, Keen was the supervising officer at the scene in the Rodney King case, and, must therefore be branded as a white racist cop. Although Rodney King was not killed, and had no permanent injuries from being batoned, Sgt. Keen was vilified in the media as a racist white cop doing harm to a black victim, Rodney King, out of racist animus.Sgt. Keen, therefore, had to be criminally prosecuted, and, when the liberal California government couldn’t convict him on criminal charges, the feds had prosecute him a second time in federal court for violating Rodney King’s civil rights because King is “black.” The “black community” would stand for no less, equal application of the law notwithstanding.
Now, comes another Rodney King-type case, the Garner case in NY. The NY York police are branded as white racist cops just as in the Rodney King case. Now, however, the supervising officer in the Garner case in New York is a black female sergeant.
Now what? Well, what is happening is that the role of the supervising officer is not treated as it was in the case of Sgt. Stacy Keen in the Rodney King case. Instead, the black female supervising officer is hardly even mentioned as playing a role in the Garner case. Is this “equality” as defined in practice by progressive liberal media and government?
Although Sgt. Kizzy Adoni didn’t try to taser Garner when he resisted arrest, and although she never ordered the officers at any time to stop doing what they were doing, and although there are riots, and although the “post-racial” (sic) First Black President has gravely intoned what we, meaning America, must act to deal with the problem of unequal treatment of blacks who are being killed by racist white cops, which Obama informs has been going on for generations, no one is accusing the black female Sgt. Kizzy Adoni of being at fault in the Garner case; no one is holding her responsible, vilifying her, calling for her termination, or prosecution. Indeed, she is hardly mentioned at all in media reports, or in the spouting of government or other officers, television talking heads or print media pundits.
Why not? If it is all about treating blacks equally with whites, then why is there hardly a mention in the media that thesupervising officer in the Garner case, equal to Sgt. Stacy Keen in the Rodney King Case, is a black female, Sgt. Kizzy Adoni? Is she to be held to a lesser standard? Is holding blacks to a lesser stand not racism?
I am not at all suggesting that black female Sgt. Kizzy Adoni in the Garner case should be treated equally with the way that white male Sgt. Stacy Keen was treated in the Rodney King case–because what happened to Sgt. Stacy Keen was a manifest injustice that should not be inflicted on anyone, white or black.
I am suggesting, however, that it should be explained by the media, Obama, DiBlassio and other spouters of platitudes of equality, why so little attention is being paid to the fact that it was a black female sergeant who was supervising the officers who took Garner down, and who did nothing to order otherwise.
It is, however, indisputable that if black female supervising Sgt. Kizzy Adoni is not guilty of “racism” in what happened to Garner, then no officer is. Perhaps that is an “inconvenient truth,” so to speak, that the media and the government under the progressive liberal racialist rule of Obama nationally and DiBlassio in NY would rather the public not know about.
Indeed. The media, and Obama as President, Holder as Attorney General, DiBlassio as Mayor of New York, and all those self-righteous rioters, race-hustlers, and self-defined white “revolutionists” are once again proving they have no real interest in “equal treatment,” or “justice,” or “an honest dialogue about race,” and that what they are doing is once more providing clear and convincing evidence of their hypocrisy, lack of integrity, and unfitness to govern.
(Rees Lloyd is a longtime California civil rights attorney, a veterans activist, and a member of the Victoria Taft Blogforce.)
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