A year-long investigation of private Facebook hate groups by REVEAL
finds close to 400 current and retired law enforcement officers are
members, including officers from small towns as well as big cities –
including NYPD.
David French served as squadron judge advocate for the Second Squadron,
Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, stationed at Forward Operating Base
Caldwell in Diyala Province, Iraq; he walked patrol with other soldiers,
during which he and his colleagues confronted routine armed aggression
from insurgents out of uniform, who used IEDs as well as firearms in
their fights with US soldiers.
During his entire deployment, amid hundreds of firefights, French’s unit
killed two civilians: “one to small-arms fire and one to a wayward
artillery shell.”
So French has a question: how is it that US soldiers stationed in
hostile territory – where enemy forces mingle with civilians, where the
soldiers and the civilians don’t even share a common language – are
able to avoid killing civilians, while US police officers – whose
on-the-job mortality is far lower than HVAC repairers and construction
workers – shoot unarmed civilians, especially black people, all the
goddamned time?
French is responding to “Jack Dunphy,” the pseudonym used by a retired
LAPD officer who says the cops just can’t be blamed for murdering
unarmed black people.
