Domestic American Threats: Real & Perceived

Bad haircut showdown: Kim Jong-un & Donald Trump

Truth be told, the possibility of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordering his military to lob a mostly-untested intercontinental ballistic missile (with a nuclear weapon they may or may not actually possess) across the Pacific at America's west coast seems pretty slim.

It's doubtful that using a nuclear weapon against the globe's only remaining nuclear superpower over economic sanctions makes much sense, even to the North Koreans.

Especially considering that their recent grandiose posturing and cryptic-but-vague military threats cost them about a third of what is largely considered an already meager global export business courtesy of the harsh package of new economic sanctions overwhelmingly approved by the U.N. Security Council on Saturday.

To me the greater concern in this overblown geo-political hissy-fit is the erratic, narcissistic POTUS, whose tanking poll numbers, growing unpopularity and chaotic crisis-prone White House make pointless macho sword-rattling seems like a golden opportunity to try and kickstart his anemic approval numbers.

With Kim and Trump arguably amongst the most widely-despised leaders on the planet, the bottom line is that, from a PR standpoint, they kind of need each other right now - and melt-downs is what they both know best.

Remember, these are basically two unpopular, authoritarian man-boys with really bad haircuts who were both raised in the isolated cocoon of privilege under authoritarian, domineering fathers.

Kim Jong-un poses with a mobile missile launcher

Neither Kim nor Trump had a lick of political, military or diplomatic experience before assuming public office.

So all their blustery flag-waving and tough talk about unleashing their toys on each other's countries to vent their contrived rage is like global amateur hour rather than seasoned leadership guided by shrewd diplomacy and statesmanship.


Trump's threat to unleash, "fire and fury", issued from the comfy confines of his exclusive 600-acre country club in Bedminster, NJ on day four of a controversial 17-day vacation, (where he's holed up like some golf-junkie on a binge), seems like it was hastily scrawled on a cocktail napkin by his apocalyptic chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Rather than inspire fear, it only seems to have reinforced Trump's reputation as diplomatic neophyte who is so easily goaded and provoked that it'd be laughable if he wasn't the commander-in-chief of my country.

As Republican Senator John McCain observed, "The great leaders that I have seen, they don't threaten unless they are ready to act, and I'm not sure that President Trump is ready to act,"

But to pivot from our not-ready-for-prime-time-president, there are events happening that actually do represent a threat to American's domestic security.

As you may recall, last month the Bakersfield, California chapter of the NAACP utilized a social media campaign to bring global attention to an egregious case of police brutality committed against an innocent 19-year-old girl named Tatyana Hargrove.

Kern County District Attorney Lisa Green

The video interview, in which Hargrove described having been attacked and beaten by members of the Bakersfield Police Department (who claimed to have mistaken the 5'2" girl for a 5'10" machete-wielding bald man with a goatee), which was posted on the Bakersfield NAACP's Facebook page, has been viewed over 7.6 million times by people around the globe.

As MIC.com reported last Wednesday the Kern County District Attorney, Lisa Green, announced that the bogus charges filed against Hargrove by the same Bakersfield PD officers who beat her would be dropped.

The fact that the charges against her were dropped and that public pressure forced the Bakersfield PD to initiate an internal investigation is a reflection of the power of social media and grassroots activism at a time when the White House and Department of Justice have abdicated their responsibility for oversight of local and municipal law enforcement agencies engaged in clear and consistent patterns of bias based on race and ethnicity.

Over 47,000 people signed the Change.org petition calling for the Kern County DA to drop the charges.

But unfortunately, DA Lisa Green also announced that no charges will be filed against the Bakersfield cops who clearly used unjustified and excessive physical force on Hargrove for no reason.

That's a problem that reflects a broader domestic security concern.

Not just for the citizens of Bakersfield, but for Americans around the country of all races and ethnicities.

Because when local prosecutors refuse to bring charges against police officers who violate codes of conduct and use unjustified force to injure or kill innocent civilians, it sends the signal that such behavior is tolerated and acceptable.

People in Minnesota are still absorbing that lesson.

Jordan Norris being tortured with a taser by Cheatham
County deputies while strapped to a chair in 2016

After years of protests and outrage over the unjustified shootings of innocent African-Americans (cases where no charges were filed or officers found liable for taking the lives of civilians), Minnesotans were shocked when Justine Damond, a 40-year-old blond woman from Australia who'd called the cops to report an assault, was shot and killed at point-blank range when she went out and approached their vehicle to speak with the officers.


Did you read the story about 19-year-old Jordan Elias Norris?

After being arrested for felony possession of marijuana for resale, theft of under $500 and vandalism in November of 2016, three Cheatham County Sheriff's deputies (pictured above) strapped the then-18-year-old to a chair and tortured him with a taser multiple times.

On the surveillance video of the incident (it's not that long but it's hard to watch) the sadistic deputy using the taser can be heard telling Norris, "I'll keep on doing that until I run out of batteries."

And, remarkably, he keeps telling Norris to "stop resisting" as he tasers him even though the 18-year-old is strapped to a chair and also being restrained by two other deputies.

Cheatham County Jail

As the Daily Mail reported, the incident occurred in the just-under two weeks that he was being held in the Cheatham County, Tennessee Jail in 2016 before he was able to pay bond and be released - he had more than 40 taser burns on his body when he got out.

Norris has since filed a federal lawsuit against all three deputies, who've all been suspended pending an investigation.

I'm not citing those two cases to indict the thousands of police officers who risk their lives to protect and serve.

Men and women who do it by following the law, respecting people and conducting themselves as law enforcement professionals.

But the reluctance of the justice system to hold the small fraction of police officers who violate people's rights and injure or kill them literally puts innocent American lives in danger.

And that's far more of a threat to domestic American security than a despot in North Korea.

Overzealous police officers have taken more American lives than Kim Jong-un will - but don't hold your breath waiting for Donald Trump to order the DOJ to crack down on bad cops.

We know how he feels about cops who hurt people, but it probably ignites his increasingly narrow base of supporters more to turn Kim Jong-un into the boogeyman.

Let's just hope the military professionals on both sides are smart enough to keep their respective leaders from actually ordering the use or deployment of weapons of any kind to solve this tiresome international pissing contest.

Between the healthcare debate, the opioid crisis and lagging wages for the middle and working class, Lord knows we have enough fish to fry here in the U.S. without getting bent out of shape about a dictator from a failing state who starves his own people, lives in luxury and has turned obtaining a viable nuclear weapon into some kind of fetish.

Bias and Brutality In Bakersfield

19-year-old Tatyana Hargrove: Misidentified, 
beaten & bitten by Bakersfield PD

The reluctance of the mayor of Minnesota, the Minnesota PD and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to release more details about the killing of 40-year-old Justine Damond by MPD officer Mohamed Noor on Saturday night has drawn even more global media scrutiny on the epidemic of American law enforcement killing innocent civilians.

The officer is now claiming he was "startled by a loud sound" before shooting and killing Damond.

While we wait for more concrete details to emerge from the city of Minnesota (including why both officer's body cameras were conveniently turned off at the time of the shooting), let's turn our focus west to the city of Bakersfield, California and the disturbing case of a 19-year-old girl named Tatyana Hargrove.

Another case of egregious and unnecessary police violence committed upon an unarmed woman that happened five weeks ago, but only began receiving national media attention after the Bakersfield chapter of the NAACP posted a video of Hargrove describing the incident (including being punched by at least one cop and bitten by a police K-9 dog), in detail on the group's Facebook page.

This is another case of social media driving a story that flew under the radar of mainstream media.

Granted it happened on a Sunday during a summer Father's Day weekend in which the horrific news about the Grenfell Apartment fire in London, a brutal heat wave in the Southwest U.S. and the latest news about Trump's ties to Russia were dominating the headlines here in America.

As CNN reported last Friday, the story really didn't start gaining serious media traction until early last week as the NAACP's Facebook video started racking up millions of views and people began to learn her horrifying account of the encounter that Bakersfield PD officials initially tried to dismiss.

Bakersfield PD officer Chris Moore and Hamer, the
K-9 police dog he unleashed to bite Hargrove

By the time you're reading this, you've likely heard about, read or seen something about Hargrove's story, and the specifics once again shine a spotlight on the reality of racially-biased policing in America.

Part of what's particularly disturbing in this case is that with 3 police cruisers and multiple officers on the scene, Officer Chris Moore instructed his police K-9 dog to attack and bite a lone, unarmed 19-year-old woman on her bike.

A citizen who was not breaking the law at the time she was stopped.

The use of the dog is reminiscent of police sicking dogs on peaceful African-American civil rights protesters in the 1950's and 60's - images which shocked the nation and the world.

Granted, the Bakersfield PD officers were responding to a report of a 5'10" bald black man with a goatee wearing a white shirt who was between 160 - 170 pounds who'd threatened a store employee with a machete.

According to an article published on Tuesday on Bakersfield.com by Harold Pierce, Moore was the officer who initially questioned and tried to detain Hargrove; who asked him why she was being stopped and justifiably asked if he had a warrant to search her backpack before the situation escalated and got physical - so presumably he was the one pointing a weapon at her.

He later claimed to have mistaken Hargrove for the bald man with the goatee because she was black and wearing a white shirt - but she is 5'2", weighs 120 pounds, has hair, no goatee and, obviously, is not a man.

A photo of the K-9 dog bites on Hargrove's leg 

So why didn't Moore, or Officer G. Vasquez, the man who got into some kind of physical tussle on the ground with Hargrove, bother to ask her name and request some ID?

What confuses me is how this escalated so quickly into this violent physical confrontation.

She'd taken a pause on a really hot day to take a drink from her water bottle when they saw her.

Wasn't it obvious she wasn't wielding a machete?

I mean, not to be flippant, but this was a 19-year-old girl who'd biked to a local store to get a Father's Day present for her dad, found the store was closed, and turned around to bike back home.

On Sunday June 18th the temperature in Bakersfield hit a sizzling 105 degrees, so it was probably at least 100 degrees outside when they stopped her - it's not like she was wearing a bulky overcoat that made it seem like she was hiding a machete.

And it doesn't take extensive police work to see that she could't have grown hair, grown 8 inches, shaved off a goatee, put on 40 to 50 pounds and changed sexes from the time they received the police description of the "transient type" who'd pulled the machete.

Hell, the local store owner who'd reported the apparently elusive, bald, machete-wielding transient ran out and told the cops they had the wrong person, but they told him to go back inside the store and kept right on pummeling Hargrove.

Were the Bakersfield cops just cranky and short-tempered because it was so hot outside?

It just seems like a few questions, a measure of common sense, some patience and a little bit of respect might have solved this in a peaceful manner.

Bakersfield PD Chief Lyle Martin

It was only two weeks before the incident that a Stanford University report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offered clinical evidence showing that American police officers (regardless of race) tend to treat people of color with less respect than whites in identical situations.

Hargrove's treatment certainly bears that out.


But there are some positives to come from this still evolving incident.

In an interview with The Californian Bakersfield PD Chief Lyle Martin did acknowledge some wrongdoing on the part of the officers:

"From the policy and technique standpoint, in my opinion, I think we missed on this one in regards to the use of the K-9," 

And to his credit he did calm some community tensions by having the respect to call Hargrove's parents to personally apologize for the incident:

"I told them that I think we as an organization are better than this, and if we're not better than this, then it's my job to make it better."

Time will tell, as a troubling 2015 report from The Guardian reveals, the Bakersfield PD was considered one of the deadliest in the nation per capita in terms of police killings of civilians.

So in light of that history, it's a positive that Hargrove was not killed - and I know it sucks to say that but it's true given what's taken place in this country between some police and people of color.

The Bakersfield PD have also initiated an internal investigation of the incident, but given their violent history as a police department, it's unlikely anything of consequence is going to come of that.

But you never know.

Minneapolis PD officer Mohamed Noor

Pressure from civilians, legal rights groups and outside organizations including the NAACP for  the officers to be reprimanded and disciplined is growing and a GoFundMe page set up to help Hargrove and her family with legal and hospital costs has already raised over $12,000 in just 7 days from people from around the world.

There's also a Change.org petition demanding that the ludicrous charges that the 5'2" Hargrove assaulted the officers be dropped.

Anyway, be sure to keep an eye on this story, particularly in light of developments in the investigation into the shooting death of 40-year-old Justine Damond by Minneapolis PD officer Mohamed Noor on Saturday night.

Based on the many cases of use of deadly force by police that I've read and written about over the years, to me it's a troublesome sign when the very first comment from a police department about a flagrantly unjustified killing by a police officer is something about what the officer's justification was.

In Moore's case, the Minnesota Bureau of Crime Apprehension is now claiming that a loud noise startled him just before Damond, who'd dialed 911 to report a possible assault, approached the police cruiser in her pajamas and was shot and killed;

(The Daily Mail is reporting that Noor is also being sued by a woman named Teresa Graham for false imprisonment, battery and negligence.)

For the sake of justice, many are hoping that such an admission by BCA officials is not the cornerstone of the same kind of "Oops!" defense that allowed former NYPD officer Peter Liang, (who was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide for shooting and killing unarmed Akai Gurley in the stairwell of the Brooklyn housing complex where he lived) to walk away with five year's probation for taking the life of a man who was simply walking with his girlfriend Melissa Butler.

In light of the recent high-profile deadly shootings of innocent people by Minnesota police officers, if Noor is found responsible for wrongfully killing Justine Damond, let's hope the justice system issues more than a dismissed case, hung jury or probation.

The value of a human life merits more than that.