Clinton, Trump decry latest police shootings of black men
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waved as she boarded her campaign plane at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y. today.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump listened as he was introduced by boxing promoter Don King prior to speaking to the Pastors Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center, today, in Cleveland, Ohio.
CLEVELAND » Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton decried a fresh round of police-involved shootings today, with the Republican nominee saying he was “very troubled” by the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Oklahoma.
Courting black voters who have long spurned Republicans, Trump’s event in Cleveland Heights’ New Spirit Revival Center took a bizarre turn when he was introduced by boxing promoter Don King, who used a racial slur as he made the case for black voters to support Trump.
Trump’s latest foray into the black community not only sought to connect with voters in Cleveland, home to a large community of African-American voters key to Clinton’s prospects in Ohio, but also with moderate suburban voters, who frequently hear Clinton describe Trump as extreme.
King, introducing Trump, raised eyebrows when he said a black man is always framed by his skin color, recalling that he once told pop icon Michael Jackson “if you’re poor, you’re a ‘poor Negro.’ If you’re rich, you’re a ‘rich Negro.’” An educated black man is “an intellectual negro.”
King, who is black, continued: “If you’re a dancing and sliding and gliding n———- I mean Negro — you are ‘a dancing and sliding and gliding Negro.’” Gasps and laughs could be heard from the audience.
The King incident underscored the often clumsy way in which Trump has made his appeal to minority voters. Many black community leaders and voters have been offended by his dire depiction of life in minority communities. Trump’s outreach has also been viewed cynically as an attempt by his campaign to soothe concerns among more moderate, suburban voters.
At the end of the Ohio church event organized by members of his diversity coalition, Trump was asked about recent high-profile police shootings in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Trump said 40-year-old Terence Crutcher, who was killed in Friday’s Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting, “looked like he did everything you’re supposed to do. And he looked like a really good man.”
“This young officer, I don’t know what she was thinking. I don’t know what she was thinking but I’m very, very troubled by that,” Trump said, calling it a “terrible situation.”
But hours later he called for the expanded use of stop-and-frisk, a police tactic that a federal judge has ruled can be discriminatory against minorities. Trump said during a Fox News town hall taping that the tactic that gives police the ability to stop and search anyone they deem suspicious had “worked incredibly well” in New York, where it expanded under former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Clinton notably made no direct mention of Trump in a speech in Orlando, Florida, focused on helping people with disabilities thrive in the U.S. economy. She pointed to the Oklahoma and North Carolina shootings at the start of her remarks, saying it added two more names “to a long list of African Americans killed by police officers. It’s unbearable and it needs to become intolerable.”
Clinton has made curbing gun violence and police brutality a central part of her candidacy. She has campaigned alongside a group of black women called the “Mothers of the Movement,” who advocated for more accountability and transparency by law enforcement. The group includes the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, black victims of high-profile killings.
Trump, joined by running mate Mike Pence at the Ohio event, has routinely praised police officers in his speeches to supporters. But after reading from notes about the role of the black church in the civil rights movement and vowing to help struggling black Americans, Trump questioned the Tulsa officer’s reaction in shooting Crutcher, who was unarmed.
Video of the shooting, which Trump cited, shows Crutcher’s hands up as officers approach and Crutcher then appears to place his hands on a vehicle before the officers surround him. He then drops to the ground. Someone on the police radio says, “I think he may have just been tasered.” Then almost immediately, someone can be heard yelling, “Shots fired!” Crutcher is left lying in the street.
Trump’s meeting came after street demonstrations continued into the early hours today in Charlotte, North Carolina. On Tuesday, 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott was fatally shot by Charlotte police officer Brentley Vinson, who is black. Officers say Scott was armed and posed a threat. Police used tear gas to disperse protesters during the demonstrations that left about a dozen officers injured.
During the question-and-answer session at the church, Trump said he was a “tremendous believer in the police and law enforcement, because we need that for our society.” But he said law enforcement was also troubled by the police-involved shootings, adding, “People that choke, people that do that, maybe they can’t be doing what they’re doing.”
Clinton, meanwhile, has aimed to make a more proactive case for her election and not get drawn into daily skirmishes with Trump. Campaigning in Orlando, she pledged to provide more job opportunities to people with disabilities and get rid of the sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities.
While she steered clear of Trump — with the exception of her campaign mantra, “Love trumps hate,” — the topic was an implicit poke at Trump’s much-publicized mocking of a disabled journalist during a rally last year.
Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Orlando, Florida, and Bill Barrow in Cleveland contributed to this report.
41 responses to “Clinton, Trump decry latest police shootings of black men”
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It is insane that the word “negro” is considered a slur.
If anything, “Black men” is a worse slur since nobody is really black.
Allaha, I think you misunderstood the issue. It was not Don King’s use of the word “Negro, that some found offensive; it was the use of the so-called N-word used as a slur for Negro.
He or she misunderstand every issue.
No reason for this one to be any different than all the others.
I did not read anywhere that King used the N-word.
Allaha – Then have a literate friend read the article to you. Not surprising.
In the PC World it’s hard to keep up with what’s a slur. Years ago my sister who lives in California got really offended when she heard people here using the term “Oriental”. She explained that where she lived that term was considered offensive and the “correct” term is to call them “Asians”. Good grief, who makes all these PC rules?
You cannot understand why the “n” word is a slur? Are you eight years old? You think that’s “PC” – whatever that means in your brain?
Did you hear what Mr. King said?
According to SA article no N-word was used instead “Negro”.
Allaha – You’re lying or you can’t read. Please have a literate friend read the article to you.
“King, who is black, continued: “If you’re a dancing and sliding and gliding n———- I mean Negro — you are ‘a dancing and sliding and gliding Negro.’” Gasps and laughs could be heard from the audience.”
Gosh, do you have a fourth grade education: Asian referees to the continent and Oriental as to an object that is considered exotic.
What I really resent is that, according to the State of Hawaii, there is something called a “White Ethnicity.” Can’t for the life of me figure out what the cultural commonalities of that one are. “White” language? “White” costume? Wonder Bread and Mayonnaise? I always check “Other” and explain in detail.
This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges….true then, true today.
IRT Ike, please detail your legitimate discontent from American’s of African ancestry. Isn’t compliance to existing American laws apply equally to all citizens, no matter what ethnicity. Therefore, what justice are you posting about?
This is an excerpt from the Dr. MLK, its relevance and applicabilty is as true when he said it in 1963 as it is now. If you don’t get that, why don’t you explain to me and all of us, since you are so darn s,art,,why backs are three time more likely to be killed than whites, on a per capita basis.
I’m waiting…
Ike, it started when Crooked Hilliary, the southern belle put the super predators in jail leaving single mothers to raise their children in welfare. No education, no housing. Only drugs and violent crime. What you see today in the black community and the unrest in the World is the culmination of her moronic socio-economic policies.
She knew how to work the system until she ran into the whirling dervish Donald J. Trump. More Never Trumpers are becoming Storm Trumpers. In droves.
5 days to prepare for a debate? No wonder she threw her hands up and went to bed on Benghazi. Huma must have gave the old prune a rub down. She must have short circuited. Commander In Chief my okole.
Maybe you should explain why in the Tulsa case they already charged the officer with first degree manslaughter??
Ikefromeli – Relentless, merciless ignorance. It’s just breathtaking.
Ioho, past incidents like this one can lead to more violence. It also should provide a continuing conversation and actions to improve and assist law enforcement. police officers have a tough job. The question seems to be was excessive force used? Place yourself in that officers position. Ask questions like why did he continue to walk towards his vehicle? Did the police ask him to put his hands on his vehicle? Why did one choose to taser him and the other shoot him?
It would help if the police would stop lying. The excuse was that this man had reached into the car through the window. The problem now for the police is that the video shows the window was closed. Lying never helps in these situations.
We will never live in Utopia. Pity the innocent but also give thought to those of law enforcement that protect us from criminals. They never really know who is willing to engage and what they will actually do to escape…..until it is too late. Action beats reaction always.
Careful, those type of zealot affirmations usually pivot when the rabbit gets the gun. By way of specific example, . African Americans, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Washington Post recently noted that means black Americans are 2.6 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police.
IRT Ike, the investigations of more Americans of African ancestry being shot is because they fail to comply to the orders of the Police or Official. Also, those Americans of African ancestry were carrying some sort of weapon, mostly a gun.
That’s not true, of course. Keep up the Trump fantasy!
That actually goes against emperical evidence. You are speaking out of turn, and moreover you are flat out wrong.
18 independent studies say exactly the opposite of what you are saying: by way of specific example, UC Davis professor found “evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.”
Speak in facts, platitudes….
lkefromeli, could it be that unarmed whites are more likely to heed the warnings of police officers than are unarmed blacks? I don’t know, just asking.
Or that white cops are more fearful of black people?
Interesting that Trump has a convicted murderer, Don King, speak for him
Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods…they can’t speak for hiLIARy…or against.
Trump sympathizes with the Black men who were shot, fudging up the details. Then later supports stop-and-frisk, which is inherently discriminatory.
Trump is a hypocrite politician, no better than other hypocrites.
trumps leads in polls of closely contested states and is in a virtual tie in others.
what is the female felon’s plan:
a: isolation from publicity as she prepares for a massive intake of medications and blood doping in anticipation of monday’s grueling exposure during the debate with the orange one;
b: keeping her personal physician, lisa bardack, by her side to add credibility to bardack’s citing the female felon’s clean bill of health;
c: keeping her neurologist okunola by her side as he treats neurological disorders such as epilepsy and parkinson’s;
d: chart an approach and entrance to the debate that allows her phalanx of campaign staff to block out any media exposure in case of another stumbling fainting spell;
e: obtain the smallest electronic ear receiver to allow staffers and doctors to prompt the female felon whenever she lapses into “short circuit” blackouts or is startled into freezing in place.
That’s why I don’t want to renew my subscription. Sorry, but the comment moderator has an ego complex.
So in a state where polls show that Trump’s support among African-Americans hovers around 0%, Trump and Hannity held a meeting of white people at which Trump, the candidate of the white supremacists, announced what’s wrong with African-American communities. This actually happened.
The California Grand Dragon of the KKK endorsed Hillary.
No matter how many times this is debunked, you keep writing this. Do you ever write truthful thing?
“But the Clinton “endorsement” may have a simple explanation: Will Quigg is full of it. He can’t provide any details about his alleged donations to her campaign, his beliefs don’t line up with a single one of her policy stances, and even fellow Klan members think he’s bluffing.
On Sept. 17, 2015—the same month he created his Twitter account—Quigg tweeted a supportive message to Trump, one that has been echoed by a number of white supremacists over the past year.”
Perhaps you haven’t seen the video of him stating his support for Clinton. Go to youtube to be enlightened.
DPK – It’s a hoax. He lied about the donation and support to get attention from white supremacists. He did that, obviously .. just read your own comments. The whole thing has been repeatedly debunked. You can lie about it being real if you want. That would certainly follow your pattern.
Trump, in spite his sort-of, half-hearted rejection of his 5-year support of racist birtherism, has made it clear that his rejection of it was just something his campaign forced him to do, not something that he believed in.
Former RNC Chair Michael Steele said, “You cannot say to me that given the 400 plus years of this country, that at the very moment the country decides to elect the first Black man president of the United States, you going to ask for his papers? Seriously? Seriously? I can go all day long about what’s wrong with Syria and economic policy and foreign policy with this administration. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and say ‘You need to show me your papers first.’ That’s not how this works.”
So Trump calls for expanded stop-and-frisk, apparently ignorant of the fact that the practice was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in his home state. Also ignorant of the fact that it did not work “incredibly well in New York.
It’s only the Negro that trashes, loots and burns his own neighborhood using protests as an excuse. Protests of this kind only brings more shame and wipes out any hoped for sympathy to their problems. How many decades will it take the Negro to better themselves by hard work and getting educated so as to contribute to the workplace? I hold out no hope.
You ever hear of Appalachia–…..generational poverty that any white person can be proud of…..filled both with literal kissing cousins and Mountain Dew mouth.