Addendum on Comey's Invocation of Bill Bratton

This was originally included in my piece on Comey's speech, but it was too long as it was. That said, it's still worth noting. -JPB

That Director Comey decided to invoke NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton to invoke his "seeing" each other metaphor is telling. In the wake of the Garner no-bill, the shooting death of Akai Gurley, and the #BlackLivesMatter protests, Commissioner Bratton proposed a heavily armed force meant to fight terrorism and manage crowd control during protest. Bratton said,

“[The new unit] is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests....[Those officers will] be equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not. They’ll be equipped with all the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.”

Apparently, Commissioner Bratton "sees" people exercising their First Amendment rights the same way he sees murderous terrorism. Additionally, he wants to make resisting arrest a felony.

Nota bene: Resisting arrest charges are so flimsy and widely abused, they are used by criminologists to measure police violence against citizens.

If Director Comey is relying on Commissioner Bratton for guidance to fix police relations with minority communities, the situation will get much worse before it gets better.

bellum medicamenti delenda est