Fox and Friends has a knack for defending racially motivated cops, and today is just one of those days on the curvy couch. Steve Doocy takes the side of the McKinney, Texas police officer shown in the pool party gone awry video, and asks,
'are young Americans emboldened to confront the police?'
Recycling the language used by Bush 43 to fear-monger over terrorism in a post-U.S. Occupied-Iraq, Doocy tries to elicit the same panic in the Fox 'News' audience. He is posing his questions accompanied by the shocking video of blah people having the audacity to challenge a police officer behaving like a man in the grips of a serious roid rage.
The executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP a group committed to reversing the racial discrimination that arose from Reagan's 'war on drugs'), Neil Franklin explains that it's painfully obvious that the officer, Eric Casebolt, seems only concerned with the black children, never interacting with the white partygoers who instigated the fight with racial slurs.
They called police, and white partygoers said the officers ignored them and chased, tackled, and pointed guns at black, Hispanic, or Arabic teens.
Providing the unreasonable counter to a rational Mr. Franklin, Fox and Friends seeks one of its favorite police brutality-apologists, Lt. Randy Sutton of Las Vegas.
Doocy and Sutton aren't at all focused on the belligerent overreaction of the officer who has a YouTube channel that features videos brutalizing black people, they want the viewers to believe this is just a breakdown in societal order because of audacious people of color. While Franklin said the incident raises concerns about racial bias, he did mention that there is a disregard for authority, not just for police officers but for many adults, like teachers. He explained that this is exactly how his own generation was once portrayed and that kids generally mimic the adults they are around. There is a breakdown in respect for authority, but this is nothing new.
Randy Sutton sees things completely differently.
"What I see is an out of control situation, with a whole bunch of people acting very disrespectfully in a way that one officer, it's impossible to control, that many people. Now he's jumping right in, he's attempting to take control, and it's my understanding that he actually had a number of people in a controllable situation, and he was trying to sit that girl down, and she just wasn't going for it, she just wasn't going for it. And, he had to use..he used minimal force on her. Minimal force... I wanted to comment on something Neil said, I think what we're seeing something in society, as I call it, the surrender of civility. We're seeing it across the board, we're seeing it exploited by television and by movies. The worse you act, you get a reality television show.
Franklin explained that there's a way that you can talk to young people to get them to comply and this officer simply exacerbated the situation...
"you're supposed to bring calm and not excitement."
Apparently, Mr. Doocy disagrees, and he reminds the retired Las Vegas cop of an incident where he responded to a routine, loud music complaint. Upon entering an apartment filled with teenage party-goers, he focused on one guy who caught his eye. When the suspect moved his hand suspiciously, Sutton reacted and tackled him. Confirming his instincts, his partner found a firearm under the chair, which the guy recently used to kill three people.
By recapping that incident and comparing it to the pool scenario, Sutton explains how he has the utmost empathy for Officer Casebolt and the constant dangers police face daily. He left out the part where the teenage girl he threw to the ground acted suspiciously causing him to fear for his safety and Doocy didn't see the error
Not surprisingly, only Franklin understood that the overzealous Casebolt made matters worse, and there was absolutely no need to come unglued like he did. From Little Green Footballs:
This right wing counter-narrative is even weaker than usual; and let’s not forget the video of Officer Casebolt, clearly and obviously acting completely out of control.
Sutton believes that police officers are victims of a hostile environment, therefore they must ALWAYS be suspicious and assume the worst of everyone, especially darker-skinned people. That sort of attitude explains the recurrence of police brutality that goes hand and hand with a militarized police force.
In addition to their recent defense of a child molester, Fox 'News' waltzes into historical embarrassment by defending a clearly racist cop. Of course, this isn't the first time, nor will it be the last. Wrong Side of History Pot, Meet Fox 'News' Kettle.
