May 28, 2015

On The Kelly File, racist ex-cop Mark Fuhrman encouraged Baltimore police to “do more of the same” with its alleged slowdown and complained about the “animals” they have to deal with. He also took a swipe at #BlackLivesMatter while he was at it.

It's bad enough that Megyn Kelly keeps turning to Fuhrman as a neutral commenter on racially sensitive issues. But in this discussion, which presented a rumored police slowdown in Baltimore as fact, Kelly repeatedly put her own thumb on the scale to help promote the same side Fuhrman was already promoting.

Unlike "straight news anchor" Kelly, at least Fuhrman didn’t pretend not to be biased against the Baltimore police commissioner and for the police officers recently indicted over the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody.

FUHRMAN: Cops are the same everywhere. They bleed blue and they understand the whole system. They don’t care what politicians think, what they do or what they say. When their chief becomes a politician, now they know they have no leadership. When you start indicting people for doing their job, they understand the writing on the wall and what they’re gonna do is, they’re gonna go out there and answer the radio, they’re gonna go out there and follow the rules, they’re gonna do what you need to do according to the book and then they’re gonna go home.

Kelly offered no challenge to Fuhrman’s argument that, essentially, amounted to penalizing an entire community because the cops are angry at a few. But she also offered no challenge as Fuhrman went on to suggest the community deserved what they are getting.

FUHRMAN: If the people in the community don’t care that they’re killing their neighbors, their children, people standing on the corner, really, why should (police) put their life, their families’ life and why should they be sent to prison trying to get out of the car, chase somebody down an alley, get involved in an altercation and have somebody surround you and beat you to death? It’s ridiculous.

Kelly made a disingenuous show of balance by playing a clip of Police Commissioner Anthony Batts arguing that police should “remember why” they became police officers, “for the grandmothers, for the babies, for the little ones.” But Kelly gave a wink, wink to her audience by gratuitously sneering that the commissioner “clearly does not have the confidence of many of his men and women.”

Fuhrman called the commissioner’s words “so Pollyanna.” He then explicitly encouraged any slowdown to continue. Fuhrman showed very little concern about the safety of the black community in the meanwhile.

FUHRMAN: You can tell he’s (Batts) never been on the street and actually done the job. Because you don’t see the grandmothers, and you don’t see the babies and you don’t see the children ‘cause you’re there in the middle of the night, you’re chasing a gang member down the street… You don’t see the good citizens, you see the animals that are on the street, and this is what the cops are not engaging because nobody’s got their back.

Don’t blame ‘em. I say they need to do exactly more of the same because if the people in the community are so outraged, black lives matter, well, their neighbors and the kid on the corner and the gang member next door is killing black lives and they don’t care.

Kelly did not challenge a word. Instead, she agreed that police “don’t want to police more aggressively because they’re worried they’re gonna get arrested and thrown in jail.”

Kelly also hinted – without actually coming out and saying so – Baltimore’s (black) mayor is the other guilty party. Her voice rising in indignation and disgust, Kelly said, “The mayor! Her solution for this? Was to come out twice and issue the identical statement, that she’s disheartened and she is frustrated. That’s what she said two weeks in a row now. And then what does she do? She called a meeting with the police commissioner who they do not trust.”

Fuhrman assured her that nothing would come of such a meeting, “Because you can’t make a police officer see what you want him to see.”

He did not sound at all disappointed.

Kelly closed the segment by saying, “Mark, it’s always great getting your perspective.”

(Crossposted from Newshounds.us)

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