Monday, July 24, 2017

The Murder of Justine Damond and Dealing With My Own Prejudice


On Saturday, July 15th, 2017 around 11:30 PM, two Minneapolis MN police officers responded to a 911 call reporting a possible sexual assault.  The caller, Justine Damond, met the officers in an alley behind her home.  She approached the patrol car and started talking to the driver, officer Matthew Harrity.  While she was talking to the driver, officer Officer Mohamed Noor, who was riding in the passenger seat of the police car, shot her to death.  Noor fired at least one shot, possibly more, across officer Matthew Harrity's chest and out the open window.

Two links to stories about the shooting that are fairly good are:


Mohamed Noor: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Update on BCA Investigation of Minneapolis Officer Involved Shooting

Justine Damond, who was shot to death for unknown reasons by police, was a white female, blonde, physically fit, reasonably attractive, and a law abiding citizen with no police record. Not even a traffic ticket.

Officer Mohamed Noor, who pulled the trigger and murdered Justine Damond in cold blood, is originally from Somali, is black, is a Muslim, is a citizen of the United States, has a college degree in business administration, and has spent most of his life in the United States.

Noor has been a police officer for about 18 months. His partner, driver Matthew Harrity, has been a police officer for one year.

I was never a supporter of the local constabulary until I did a ride along, which I wrote about here: Cops: My Ride Along, which you may read (or not) as it amuses you to do so.  Since that time I've been giving the benefit of the doubt to the police.  All that being the case, this kind of thing (murdering a civilian) makes me wonder just who the hell it is that's keeping an eye on the police department in Minneapolis, and how someone like Noor managed to get a gun and a badge in the first place.  Here's what I've managed to peace together so far, along with my own thoughts.

Mohamed Noor didn't follow the normal procedure to qualify and train for the police force.  He was put into a special, fast track training class.

Fast-track training put officer Mohamed Noor on Minneapolis police force by Jennifer Bjorhus

The officer who fatally shot Justine Damond graduated in 2015 from the city’s accelerated police cadet program. The seven-month training is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement.
On the night of the shooting, he was paired with officer Matthew Harrity, who had been a cop for about one year.
The entire fast track training program was conceived by the local government in an effort to make the police department more diverse.  Just what sort of diversity is needed is something commercial media isn't going to discuss at any great length, let alone spell out in plain English.  Other media sources have no problems, though.  Consider World Net Daily, who refuses to kowtow to the free speech juggernaut of political correctness: Killer Cop Mohamed Noor Was 'Diversity' Hire.  From the article:
Because blacks represent 18 percent of the city’s population, they should make up 18 percent of the police officers on patrol, according to the city’s Office of Civil Rights.
And right there is the error, and it's obvious enough for even a putz like me to see.  For instance, according to some possibly unreliable sources, 9% of the population of Columbus, Ohio are senior citizens.  Therefore, 9% of the Columbus police force should be made up of senior citizens - otherwise it isn't diverse enough.

Diverse.

Diverse how?  We don't have enough tall people on the police force?  How about short people?  Do we need more short people?  Or fat people?  Or paraplegics?  What's the percentage of paraplegics in Columbus, and are they represented on the police force?  How about Germans?  Swedes?  Czechoslovakians?  Italians?  Indians?  Native American Indians, like Apaches, for instance?  Are there any Indians in the PD at all?  Or Inuits?  Do we have any Inuits on the force, and if not, why not?  Or smart people?  Maybe we don't have enough smart people on the police force, and we need more.  Or better yet, dumb people?  I mean real retards.  The kind of high handed, condescending, grade 'A' number one asshole you often get to deal with in a government bureaucracy.  Do we have enough retards on the force?

Technically, we probably don't have any retards on the force, but just get a few experienced cops to talk honestly about the brass, and you'll find that topic real debatable.

So what happens when you can't find enough black cops to make the police force sufficiently diverse to keep the PC Police happy?  You're told to find 'em anyway.  That's what I think happened here.

Being a cop isn't easy.  To be a good cop you have to develop a set of skills that, if they were all listed, would disqualify pretty much everyone under the age of 40.  Then you have to have the patience of a saint, and the physical fitness of a professional athlete, and combine it all with the sensitivity and people handling skills of an experienced clinical psychologist.  Hell, just being a mediocre cop is challenging enough, and remember that the pay isn't all that great.

Training aside, a person has to be psychologically suited to be a policeman.  Which leads me to ask the obvious: What about this murdering Muslim?  What kind of man was he?  Like a lot of things in this world, it depends on who you ask.  If you ask CBS News, Who is Mohamed Noor, Minneapolis officer accused in Justine Damond's death?, you'll find that:
Records from the city's Office of Police Conduct Review reveal some details about Noor's background. They show that Noor has had three complaints against him. Two are pending, and the third was dismissed without discipline. Under state law, details of open cases and cases that result in no discipline are not released.
The officer was also sued earlier this year after a May 25 incident in which he and other officers took a woman to the hospital for an apparent mental health crisis. The lawsuit claims Noor and the other officers violated the woman's rights when they entered her home without permission and Noor grabbed her wrist and upper arm. Noor relaxed his grip when the woman said she had a previous shoulder injury, the lawsuit says.
The 32-year-old is among more Somalis hired in recent years as the [Minneapolis police] department continues its efforts to diversify.
What CBS isn't saying is that in the case of the mental health crises, the woman in question was released in an hour and a half, meaning that she waited to see a State licensed Psychiatrist or Psychologist and was pronounced safe and sane.  What Noor did in this case, along with two other thugs in uniform, was force their way into a woman's home, abduct her and take her to a mental health facility (AKA, lock up for crazy people).  When officialdom discovered that she was saner than I am (or half the people reading this tirade) they kicked her to the curb.  She filed suit, and she'll win.  The reason the police were at her home in the first place was because she made multiple calls about derelicts smoking pot in the alley behind her home, and would the cops please evict them.  She was a pest and got dealt with.  Good job, Noor.

Go outside commercial media, and you'll get a different picture of Noor.

This article, Minneapolis Muslim killer-cop’s NEIGHBOR says Mohamed Noor was “STRICT, ILL-TEMPERED,” “HE HAS LITTLE RESPECT FOR WOMEN AND BLACKS” by Pamela Geller, paints a much different picture of Noor, who is described as nervous and jumpy, and almost impossible to talk to without offending.  Another article published by an Australian newspaper is worth reading.

Neighbour of Justine Damond’s killer gives shocking new insight into his behaviour by Sarah Blake in Minneapolis, News Corp Australia Network

Forklift driver Chris Miller, 49, has lived next door [to Noor's family] for the past two years and said he wasn’t surprised to learn Noor was the policeman making international headlines for firing on Ms Damond after she called 911 about what she thought was a sexual assault in the alley behind her house.
“He [Noor] is extremely nervous ... he is a little jumpy ... he doesn’t really respect women, the least thing you say to him can set him off,” Mr Miller said.
“When they say a policeman shot an Australian lady I thought uh, oh but then when they said who it was I was like, ‘OK.’”
He said Noor, who has refused to explain to investigators what led him to shoot dead bride-to-be Damond, was a strict and ill-tempered presence in the townhouse block, where children play together in a playground in a small park between the units.
“He got into it with the kids, they were outside playing and something got stuck in a tree and he came out and he just started yelling at the kids because they were out here playing,” Mr Miller said.
“He has little respect for women he has little respect for blacks and kids,” said Mr Miller, who is African-American.
“He has an air like you just couldn’t really be around him.”
Clearly, Noor is not suited to being a policeman.  But they hired him anyway because, you know, diversity and political correctness.

What I have trouble imagining is Matthew Harrity's reaction to Noor right after the shooting.  Imagine, you're a cop.  You're in your patrol car, window down, talking to a civilian who is dressed in her pajamas and who called 911 about a sexual assault, when BLAM!  The POS riding shotgun torches one off right next to you, shooting right across your chest, and kills her.  Harrity would be deaf from the concussion of the gun going off, he'd have powder burns on his face and hands, and he'd probably need to change his shorts.

I don't know what Harrity did, ultimately.  I know that if it were me, I'd wait until things settled down a little, then I'd find myself a nice truncheon and beat that worthless son of a bitch Noor until he looked like road kill.

If I were in charge of the PD, I'd take every one of those police that slid in on the fast track and retrain them, and I'd make damned sure that they understood that the gun stays in the holster.  I would fully expect that some of them, mainly the Somalis, would fail the training course and be dismissed.

None of this will happen.  What is likely to happen is that Noor will be get some time off with pay, then be reassigned to a desk job until things cool off.  After that he'll be back on the street.  There will be a civil suit against the city for wrongful death, and the city will pay.  Quietly.  Very quiently.

What should happen is that the officers of the Minneapolis Police Department should publicly condemn Noor's behavior, and they should do so individually and collectively.  String Noor up by his thumbs and let him twist in the wind for a few months, and relations between the police department and the general populace might improve.  Prosecute Noor for murder one and put him in prison doing 25 to life, and relations probably will improve.  But of course that's unthinkable, because, you know... diversity.

6 comments:

CWMartin said...

Thank you for the added details, which dovetail quite nicely with what I had already learned. Here's the thing- you made the exact call on what groups need to be added to create "diversity'. The blacks who commit most of the crime, and the muslims, who commit most of the terrorism. That makes them liberal hand-holding clientele, and thus must be protected at all costs. Because it wasn't Noor's unfit-ness for his job that got her killed, it was our "hatred and bigotry".


And why do these PDs do this? IMHO it is just like why FTW won't patrol high crime areas like Bobby G's neighborhood. Too afraid of civil rights lawyers looking to make a quick buck. One city does it by foisting unfit cops on the honest people; the other by hamstringing the good cops they have.


Frankly I think the feds should step in and DEPORT Noor. Send a message to these namby pamby scared-of Rev-Al PDs that they still have to have qualified candidates.

But in the end, you are prolly right- some bleeding heart will tell a judge that even requiring "sensitivity classes" is too harsh, too bigoted.

Thankfully, there is a Higher Judge. And he knows all the scores.

Bob G. said...

Mad Jack:
--I can you certainly put a LOT of thought (and facts) into this post...and I commend you.
--I come from a police family (another lifetime ago), and before that, I was ALWAYS respectful and appreciative of police and the work that chose to do.
--I've also done a ride-along (in Ft. Wayne before they dropped that program), and I know what they have to face DAILY, good AND bad. So, my "respect-quotient" for our LEOs hasn't dropped a bit.
--You make an EXCELLENT point when it comes to diversity and population demographics...9% SENIORS...lol.
(that's the reserve officers, I guess...heh)
--Yet, when it comes to situations like MN and the PD there with officer Noor, there needs to be a lengthy and HONEST assessment of all this diversity (or as they used to call it back with the PPD - "affirmative action").
--Neither one is proving to be AS successful a program as the libtards would have us believe.
--Well, I've ranted a'plenty here...sorry.
Again, a very well-stated post.

Roll safe out there.

Glen Filthie said...

prej·u·dice
[ˈprejədəs]

NOUN
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience:
"English prejudice against foreigners"

It's not prejudice. The average African-American IQ is 85. Mohammed Ali had an IQ of 79 which is considered mild mental retardation. The average sub-Saharan black IQ is 65. Further: the third world is what it is because of the people that live there. People say that environment is a huge factor on culture and people - yet Whitey could go to Africa and thrive and build centres of international trade and commerce. After blacks inherited most of them they ran them into the ground. I don't like it either but the fact is that most blacks are not going to be fit for law enforcement because of their lack of intellect and impulse control. Throughout mankind's history, blacks have been servants, slaves, and criminals.

I don't like any of that either. I wish I was wrong and they were right, and that all a black man needs is a helping hand to get him on his feet. But hell's bells, when most of 'em run on their knuckles there's only so much you can do. Lowering the bar so blacks can get over it is going to result in all kinds of crap just like this. Most of it is hushed up and buried, this kind of thing is only the tip of the iceburg.

The answer to this is to raise standards, not lower them. We have to have good cops. We have to have good teachers and professionals. We have to have good doctors and good leaders. Blacks that make the cut should be entitled to the same respect anyone else does that makes the grade. Tokens should get fired, along with the idiots that hired them.

Until we grow up about matters of race and intellect and ability - we are dead in the water.

Mad Jack said...

CW: Thanks for your compliment. At one time equality and civil rights needed to be addressed in a major fashion. Not so much anymore. I agree that Noor should be deported back to Somalia, but only after he's finished his 25 to life in a maximum security lock up.

Bob G: Thank you for your kind words. I agree with you about the assessment of all affirmative action and similar programs, but these days where are you going to find the panel of objective people you need? Still, it needs to be done.

Glen: Stop confusing the issue with facts, especially anything that's common knowledge. You're quite right about raising standards. I'd raise the pay and the working conditions as well, if that were possible.

As far as IQ and culture go, just look at the 'music' and the volume it's played at. It's garbage. Want another example? Look at Zimbabwe and Mugabe. How's that seem to be working out?

And you're right about the tip of the iceberg. What we aren't seeing is the crap that doesn't involve murder, that only involves doing a poor job. The real solution is to institute a retraining program, one that works, and set the bar a good deal higher for graduation.

Mariner said...

Glad you opened the post and discussion MJ. The country is long over due to arrive at reasonable expectations based on reality not "enlightenment" or any other pollyanna thinking. Raise the bar to achieve excellence. If it can't be met then look elsewhere for fulfillment.

Mad Jack said...

Thanks Mariner.

We, the great unwashed, are forced to suffer through the blunders and unbelievable screw ups of the great exalted rulers of all they survey, all of whom are being coerced by professional victims. The political action groups and Special Interest Groups threaten bad press during the next election, and as a result we end up with bad governmental decisions. Now, as a result of these decisions, someone has lost her life. She isn't the first, and sadly won't be the last.

Another tragedy here is that the entire police department as well as police everywhere get painted with the same brush - less so this time, since we have a black officer busting a cap on a white civilian. Where is the outrage from commercial media?

Dead silence.