Teach black youths right way to swagger

Teach black youths right way to swagger

BY JAMES B. EWERS JR.

The year 2015 was a challenging one for African-American males. We were shot, killed and seriously injured at record rates, according to some reports.

There were national cases that caught our attention and made headline news. The relationship between black men and the police has soured to a point where we must be careful and cautious about our every move. Many African-American men like me have often said that when we leave home in the morning there is no guarantee that we will return home in the evening.

If you live in a major urban area, you see the murder rate among African- American males spiraling out of control.

While an argument can be made about strained relationships between law enforcement and black men, the overwhelming majority of these murders happen because of us.

We as black men are killing and maiming other black men. This is a fact that is painful yet indisputable. However, this black-on-black crime epidemic seemingly does not get our full attention. Where is our outrage as black people when black children bring guns to school in their book bags?

Why is there not equal disgust when rival black gangs indiscriminately shoot into unsuspecting crowds of innocent people?

Well, 2016 is here and we as black people put the responsibility to stop this violence upon ourselves.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a black congressman from New York, liked to say “keep the faith, baby.” So it is that we must keep the faith in 2016.

Let us keep the faith in trying to help young black men find their way in life. Being black, male and aged 18-30 brings unwanted challenges.

This age group has a certain swagger, yet too many in this age range have the wrong type of swagger.

They have the swagger of not listening to good, old-school advice. They have the swagger of not having a job. They have the swagger of thinking that using violence to solve disputes and problems is the only answer. Let those of us who know the swagger of success help these young brothers change their social paradigm. Let us show them through our volunteerism and taking care of our families that we have the swagger of social responsibility.

Let us show them that getting an education, going into the military or getting a job with training will help them with the swagger of taking charge of their lives. Let us be good listeners and give them support as they develop their swagger of self-confident young men.

We must help them to take school more seriously. We must teach them to obey school rules so that teachers can impart knowledge and wisdom. The old axiom that children represent our future is as true today as it was in my day.

As black men and women, we must make a difference in the lives of these young black boys.

If you are white, you, too, can make a difference in the lives of these young people. Reach out and they will reach back as caring, not color, will win them over.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Keep the faith.

Who’s really responsible for creating these fears?

Who’s really responsible for creating these fears?

By Walter E. Williams

Hillary Clinton told a mixed audience, “I mean, if we’re honest, for a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear” (http://tinyurl.com/ojxsrhm). Before we get into the nuts and bolts of that observation, I’d like to ask a question. Would well-meaning, open-minded white people have a similar fear at the sight of an elderly black man using a walker and wearing a hoodie?

Whether we like it or not, easily observed physical characteristics – such as race, sex, height and age – convey information. That’s because there is often a correlation between those characteristics and other characteristics not so easily observed. Say that you’re a police commander faced with the task of finding vandals responsible for slashing car tires and smashing windows. How much of the city’s resources would you expend investigating 60- to 70-year-old Chinese men? You probably wouldn’t spend resources on any men in that age group. So who is responsible for your decision not to investigate 60- to 70-year-old Chinese men and other men of the same age? If you said it’s the behavioral reputation of that demographic as a group, you’d be absolutely right.

When I had nearly completed my doctorate at UCLA, Mrs. Williams and I purchased a home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a high-end, exclusive suburb of Washington. Our house was on the corner, and motorists often tossed debris on our lawn adjacent to the street. A Saturday chore was to pick up the trash. One Saturday, an elderly white man offered, “When you’re finished working here, can you come to work at my place?” I responded that I’d be busy putting the finishing touches on my doctoral dissertation and would not have the time. The man was embarrassed and apologized profusely.

The man took for granted, with a high degree of probability, that if one saw a black man picking up trash in Chevy Chase in 1971, he was a hired hand. The man’s action may have been annoying, but it would be an error to classify it as racism.

When I was awarded a national fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1975, we moved to Palo Alto, California. I was determined to lose weight and shape up during my year at Hoover. I visited Stanford’s basketball court. White guys argued with one another to have me on their team, but that was the last time. I could barely run up and down the court, much less do anything constructive upon arrival. They appeared angry with me. No doubt their displeasure was, “How dare you be a 6-foot-5-inch black guy and bad at basketball?!” So who is responsible for such an expectation held by whites? If blacks didn’t have a reputation for basketball excellence, I wouldn’t have suffered the scorn. By the way, 10 months later and about 15 pounds lighter, I returned to the basketball court with my former excellence, dignity and racial pride.

So what are we to make of Clinton’s observation? Who is responsible for “a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people” experiencing a “twinge of fear” at “the sight of a young black man in a hoodie”? Before coming up with your answer, know that in cities such as New York, Chicago and Washington, black taxi drivers often avoid picking up young black males.

A black female commissioner in Washington once warned cabdrivers against picking up “dangerous-looking” characters – for example, a “young black guy ... with (his) shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, (and) unlaced tennis shoes.”

A black and Hispanic president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers told his drivers to “profile” their passengers. “The God’s honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics,” he said.

So we have black taxi drivers who get the same “twinge of fear” as Hillary Clinton’s liberal white people. Who is responsible for creating that fear? I hope you won’t say black taxi drivers and well-meaning white people.

A public killing, a mother’s pain

A public killing, a mother’s pain

Khanita Maston, the mother of the man who killed Cincinnati Police Officer Sonny Kim in an ambush before another officer fatally shot him, sat on her front porch Sunday morning, her dog Blue at her side, a smoke in her hand.

She is a grieving mother, at one point collapsing in tears when talking about never being able to see her son again.

But she’s also witness No. 1, a woman who tried to stop the ambush as it unfolded and the citizen who was with Officer Kim as he lay dying, telling him to “just hold on.”

“I understand what happened,” she said. “I know what my son did was wrong. But I am a mother.”

She wants people to know, this was out of character and nobody who knows Trepierre Hummons saw this coming.

As police have already reported, Hummons, who lived with his mother in her Madisonville house, fought with his girlfriend in the wee hours of Friday morning. A woman, who police are not identifying, filed a sex assault complaint against Hummons.

Before he went to bed, at about 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., Hummons asked his mother: “How am I supposed to live the rest of my life as a sex offender when I didn’t even do nothing wrong.”

Hummons woke up before Maston; they bumped into each other in the hall.

Hummons: “I love you mom.”

Maston: “I love you more.”

Hummons: “I don’t think so.”

Maston: “How much do you love me?”

Hummons: “I love you more than oodles of noodles.”

Hummons said he was going to sit on the porch.

But when Maston went outside to walk to the dog, he wasn’t there.

What she didn’t know: He had posted a cryptic Face book message at 8:55 a.m., “I love every last one of y’all to whoever has been in my life ... you’re the real MVP.”

And then minutes later he sent a text to several friends, saying, “I really love you and thank you for all you’ve ever done for me.” 

On the walk, as she reached Roe and Whetsel, she spotted Hummons. But she was taken aback. He was drinking from a “jug,” smoking a Black and Mild.

“This don’t look good, what are you doing?” she asked.

“Have a drink with me,” he encouraged.

No, no, let’s go home, she told him. She loosely linked her arm through his.

At that point, she says a probation officer pulled up, one who works in Madisonville, someone they both know.

The Enquirer is unsure about this man’s name, and from police accounts it’s unclear when he arrived on the scene.

Maston said the probation officer encouraged Hummons to go on home.

What is clear is that before he saw his mother and maybe the officer, Hummons made two calls to 911. “Someone’s walking around belligerent with a gun,” Hummons told a dispatch officer on his first call.

The second call came from the corner Roe and Whetsel. “I just called about a guy with a gun... Please get to Roe and Whetsel as soon as possible.”

As Officer Kim pulled up, Hummons let go of his mother’s arm, handed her his wallet, and beckoned to Kim, waving him over with two hands. And then Hummons pulled out a gun.

Maston said Kim warned her son to put the gun down or he was going to be shot.

“Tre said ‘shoot me,’ ” Maston said.

Kim fired. Hummons fired.

Kim fell, then Hummons ran and jumped on the officer. Maston pulled him off.

“I think he was gone at that point, he was not my son at that point,” Maston said.

Officer Tom Sandmann pulled up, boxed them in and fatally shot Hummons.

Maston said she called for help on Kim’s radio. They Enquirer could not corroborate that claim Sunday.

Paramedics arrived on the scene in seconds.

“I want people to know it was me who called for help for the officer,” she said. “Even though it was my son, I called for help.” 

Paying the Price

Paying the Price

A Commentary By Thomas Sowell

Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters.

Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.

Various other communities across the country are experiencing very similar explosions of crime and reductions of arrests, in the wake of anti-police mob rampages from coast to coast that the media sanitize as "protests."

None of this should be surprising. In her carefully researched 2010 book, "Are Cops Racist?" Heather Mac Donald pointed out that, after anti-police campaigns, cops tended to do less policing and criminals tended to commit more crimes.

If all this has been known for years, why do the same mistakes keep getting made?

Mainly because it is not a mistake for those people who are looking out for their own political careers. Critics who accuse the mayor of Baltimore and the Maryland prosecutor of incompetence, for their irresponsible words and actions, are ignoring the possibility that these two elected officials are protecting and promoting their own chances of remaining in office or of moving on up to higher offices.

Racial demagoguery gains votes for politicians, money for race hustling lawyers and a combination of money, power and notoriety for armies of professional activists, ideologues and shakedown artists.

So let's not be so quick to say that people are incompetent when they say things that make no sense to us. Attacking the police makes sense in terms of politicians' personal interests, and often in terms of the media's personal interests or ideological leanings, even if what they say bears little or no resemblance to the facts.

Of course, all these benefits have costs. There is no free lunch. But the costs are paid by others, including men, women and children who are paying with their lives in ghettos around the country, as politicians think of ever more ways they can restrict or scapegoat the police.

The Obama administration's Department of Justice has been leading the charge, when it comes to presuming the police to be guilty -- not only until proven innocent, but even after grand juries have gone over all the facts and acquitted the police.

Not only Attorney General Holder, but President Obama himself, has repeatedly come out with public statements against the police in racial cases, long before the full facts were known. Nor have they confined their intervention to inflammatory words.

The Department of Justice has threatened various local police departments with lawsuits unless they adopt the federal government's ideas about how police work should be done.

The high cost of lawsuits virtually guarantees that the local police department is going to have to settle the case by bowing to the Justice Department's demands -- not on the merits, but because the federal government has a lot more money than a local police department, and can litigate the case until the local police department runs out of the money needed to do their work.

By and large, what the federal government imposes on local police departments may be summarized as kinder, gentler policing. This is not a new idea, nor an idea that has not been tested in practice.

It was tested in New York under Mayor David Dinkins more than 20 years ago. The opposite approach was also tested when Dinkins was succeeded as mayor by Rudolph Giuliani, who imposed tough policing policies -- which brought the murder rate down to a fraction of what it had been under Dinkins.

Unfortunately, when some people experience years of safety, they assume that means that there are no dangers. That is why New York's current mayor is moving back in the direction of Mayor Dinkins. It is also the politically expedient thing to do.

And innocent men, women and children -- most of them black -- will pay with their lives in New York, as they have in Baltimore and elsewhere.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Obedient black lives matter, too

Obedient black lives matter, too

By Walter E. Williams

Before we examine the issue of police shootings of blacks, I would like to start the conversation with another question. Here it is: If a person chooses to stand on railroad tracks in the face of an oncoming train, who is responsible for his being run over? And if many people meet their maker this way, what would you recommend as the best way to reduce such deaths? Would you focus most of your efforts on train engineers, or would you counsel people not to stand on railroad tracks in the face of an oncoming train?

In principle, the answer to these questions might help with the issue of police shootings in general and particularly those of blacks. First, the Ferguson, Missouri, case: Having robbed a liquor store, the person is walking in the middle of the street and blocking traffic. A police officer tells the person to get out of the street. What would you suggest the person do? Would you suggest that he ignore the police officer’s instructions, push the officer as he attempts to get out of his vehicle and afterward attempt to take the officer’s pistol?

In the case of the New York City death of Eric Garner, what would you recommend? A person is illegally selling cigarettes. The police try to effect an arrest. What would you recommend that the person do? As the police try to take the person into custody, would you advise the person to swat away the arms of the arresting officer, to tell the officer “Don’t touch me!” and to continue resisting arrest?

What about the shooting of Walter Scott by a North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer? If an officer makes a traffic stop, would you advise that the driver flee so as to avoid arrest?

Let me be clear: I am justifying neither the behavior of police officers nor the deadly outcomes of their confrontations with these three black men. Similarly, I would not justify the behavior of a train engineer or the outcome a person experiences standing on the train tracks in the face of an oncoming train. I would counsel a person not to stand on railroad tracks in the face of an oncoming train. Similarly, the advice that I would give to anyone of any race in dealing with police is: Follow the officer’s instructions. Do not resist arrest or attempt to flee. Do not assault the police officer or try to disarm him. Had this advice been taken, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Walter Scott would be alive today.

Criminal activity is a major problem in many black communities. That means many black citizens will have some kind of contact with police officers, either as victims of crime or as criminals. One of the true tragedies is that black politicians, preachers and civil rights advocates give massive support to criminals such as Brown, Garner and Scott. How much support do we see for the overwhelmingly law-abiding members of the black community preyed upon by criminals?

The average American has no idea of the day-to-day threats and fears encountered by the law-abiding majority in black neighborhoods on account of thugs. In addition to giving threats and instilling fears, criminals have turned many black communities into economic wastelands where there is a lack of services that most Americans take for granted, such as supermarkets, other shops and even home delivery. Black residents must bear the expense of having to go out of their neighborhoods to shop or shop at high-cost mom and pop stores.

The protest chant that black lives matter appears to mean that black lives matter only if they are taken at the hands of white police officers.

Wisconsin State Trooper Trevor Casper shot dead by a thug

#TrevorsLifeMatters, #PoliceLivesMatter

BY TIM SCHMIDT

• A crowd of thousands won’t chant it, so I will: Justice for Trevor. 
• A nation won’t hashtag it, so I will: #TrevorsLifeMatters. 
• A president won’t say it, so I will: If I had a son, he’d look like Trevor Casper.” 

If the above words don’t send shivers down your spine, you probably haven’t heard the story of Wisconsin State Trooper Trevor Casper. 

Trevor Casper: 

21 years old. 2011 graduate of Kiel High School. December, 2014 graduate of the Wisconsin State Patrol’s 60th recruiting class. Beloved son. Beloved brother. 

Trevor Casper: 

Deceased. Shot and killed on Tuesday, March 24th in an exchange of gunfire with a bank robber...on his very first day of solo patrol. 

Trevor Casper: 

Undoubtedly one of the good guys. 

You know, I’m not going to waste a single second talking about the bad guy here. That might be the mainstream media’s mode of operation, but it’s not mine. 

I’m sticking with Trevor Casper. After all, his is the name we should remember. 

Yes, I’m sad and I’m angry. But I’m also grateful. I’m grateful that in the midst of a period in history where the actions of our nation’s law enforcement officers are questioned at every turn, there are people like Trevor Casper willing to stand up for what’s right. 

Irish orator Sir Edmund Burke once said that "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." 

Well, not on Trevor Casper’s watch. 

Trevor died doing what he was sworn to do—what he claims he was “born to do,”—and his story serves as a reminder to all of us just how incredible the sacrifice “to serve and protect” really is. 

I simply cannot fathom that there are people out there who protest the justified defensive actions of our nation’s law enforcement officers—actions that few understand and even fewer are willing to carry out. 

I simply cannot fathom that there are people out there who refuse to acknowledge that a police officer shares in the natural-born right to defend his or her OWN LIFE. 

And I simply cannot fathom that there are people out there who continue to ignore the bottom line: evil exists in this world...and it always will. But remember, if there were no bad guys, we wouldn’t have good guys—heroes—like Trevor Casper. 

Trevor Casper: 

Protector. Purveyor of justice. 

He undoubtedly saved countless lives with his heroic actions...and he paid the ultimate price. As Wisconsin mourns and the thin blue line gets a little thinner, the least we can do is remember his name: 

Trevor Casper. 

Prayers to his family, to Wisconsin State Patrol, and to all law enforcement officers who, like Trevor, wouldn’t hesitate to lay down their lives to keep people like you and me safe. 
Take Care and Stay Safe, 

Liberals’ use of black people for own agenda, part II

Liberals’ use of black people for own agenda, part II

 By Walter E. Williams
Last week I focused on the ways liberals use blacks in pursuit of their leftist agenda, plus their demeaning attitudes toward black people. Most demeaning are their double standards. It was recently reported that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House majority whip, spoke at a 2002 gathering hosted by white supremacist leaders when he was a Louisiana state representative. Some are calling on Scalise to step down or for House Speaker John Boehner to fire him. There’s no claim that Scalise made racist statements.

Hardly anyone blinks an eye at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s racist statements, such as: “White folks was in the caves while we (blacks) was building empires. ... We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was. ... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”

Sharpton again: “So (if) some cracker come and tell you ‘Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold your pocket. That ain’t nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks.” Sharpton also offered, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

Despite such racism, President Barack Obama has made Sharpton his go-to guy on matters of race. But not to worry. Obama himself spent 20 years listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Semitic and racist sermons. The news media and intellectual elite don’t condemn Sharpton or Obama, because they have two standards of behavior: one for whites and a lower one for blacks.

The news media’s narrative about the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, is that a white cop shot and killed an unarmed black man who was holding his hands up. Their New York City narrative is that a white cop used a chokehold that killed a black man. The news media people and their liberal allies know the facts, but they need to promote the appearance of injustice to keep black people in a state of grievance.

During grand jury testimony about the Ferguson incident, seven black witnesses testified that Michael Brown was charging the policeman when he was shot. The autopsies, performed by three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Brown’s family, confirmed Officer Darren Wilson’s version of the event. The news media’s narrative of Eric Garner’s death in New York is that he died because a chokehold had stopped his breathing. He actually died later, in an ambulance, where his heart stopped while being taken to a hospital. The chokehold was instrumental in triggering Garner’s pre-existing health problems of acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and heart disease, but he was not choked to death as claimed by the media. Both Brown and Garner would be alive today if they had not resisted arrest. But pointing that out would not serve the purpose of keeping blacks in a perpetual state of grievance.

I’m old enough to remember the racist lynching mentality of yesteryear. Regardless of the evidence, if a white woman merely accused a black man of raping her, the man was all but dead. Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, during the summer of 1955, was accused of flirting with a white woman. Klansmen took him to a barn. They beat him and gouged out one of his eyes. Then they shot him in the head and tossed his body in the Tallahatchie River.

The New York Times published the street name on which Officer Wilson lived. Had the frenzied mob caught up with him, regardless of evidence, he might have suffered the same fate as Till.

Multiethnic societies are inherently unstable, and how we handle matters of race is contributing to that instability. Decent Americans should see the dangers posed by America’s race hustlers, who are stacking up piles of combustible racial kindling, ready for a racial arsonist to set it ablaze.

The news media and intellectual elite ... have two standards of behavior: one for whites and a lower one for blacks.

Liberals are using black people as stalking horses

Liberals are using black people as stalking horses

Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on the opposite side of the horse until they were close enough to place a good shot on whatever they were hunting. A stalking horse not only concealed them but also, if their target was an armed man and they were discovered, would take the first shot. That’s what blacks are to liberals and progressives in their efforts to transform America – stalking horses.

Let’s look at some of the ways white liberals use black people. One of the more obvious ways is for liberals to equate any kind of injustices suffered by homosexuals and women to the black struggle for civil rights. But it is just plain nonsense to suggest any kind of equivalency between the problems of homosexuals and women and the centuries of slavery followed by Jim Crow, lynching, systematic racial discrimination and the blood, sweat and tears of the black civil rights movement.

The largest and most powerful labor union in the country is the National Education Association, with well over 3 million members. Teachers benefit enormously from their education monopoly. It yields higher pay and lower accountability. It’s a different story for a large percentage of black people who receive fraudulent education. The NEA’s white liberals – aided by black teachers, politicians and so-called black leaders – cooperate to ensure that black parents who want their children to have a better education have few choices.

Whenever there has been a serious push for school choice, educational vouchers, tuition tax credits or even charter schools, the NEA has fought against it. One of the more callous examples of that disregard for black education was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s cutback on funding for charter schools where black youngsters were succeeding in getting a better education. That was de Blasio’s way of paying back New York’s teachers union for the political support it gave him in his quest for the mayor’s office.

White liberals in the media and academia, along with many blacks, have been major supporters of the recent marches protesting police conduct. A man from Mars, knowing nothing about homicide facts, would conclude that the major problem black Americans have with murder and brutality results from the behavior of racist policemen. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are about 200 police arrest-related deaths of blacks each year (between 300 and 400 for whites). That number pales in comparison with the roughly 7,000 annual murders of blacks, 94 percent of which are committed by blacks. The number of blacks being murdered by other blacks is of little concern to liberals. Their agenda is to use arrest-related deaths of blacks to undermine established authority.

Liberals often have demeaning attitudes toward blacks. When Secretary of State John Kerry was a U.S. senator, in a statement about so many blacks being in prison, he said, “That’s unacceptable, but it’s not their fault.” Would Kerry also say that white prison inmates are also faultless? Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin told us: “It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes. ... (The problem) is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income.” The liberal vision is that fathers and husbands can be replaced by a welfare check.

Liberals desperately need blacks. If the Democratic Party lost just 30 percent of the black vote, it would mean the end of the liberal agenda. That means blacks must be kept in a perpetual state of grievance in order to keep them as a one-party people in a two-party system. When black Americans finally realize how much liberals have used them, I’m betting they will be the nation’s most conservative people. Who else has been harmed as much by liberalism’s vision and agenda?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a syndicated columnist.

Black Lives Matter?

Black Lives Matter?

Maybe not to Blacks

"I find it very disappointing that you're not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks," Giuliani said in an appearance on television. His point was that the death of a black teenager at the hands of a white cop was "the exception," and if the country is concerned about black homicides, then it would do better to focus on African Americans.  That is 9,000 African-Americans killed each year.

Any candid debate on race and criminality in the United States must begin with the fact that blacks are responsible for an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes, which has been the case for at least the past half a century.  Today blacks are about 13 percent of the population and continue to be responsible for an inordinate amount of crime; blacks commit more than half of all murders in the United States. The black arrest rate for most offenses — including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes — is still typically two to three times their representation in the population. Blacks as a group are also overrepresented among persons arrested for so-called white-collar crimes such as counterfeiting, fraud and embezzlement.

Blaming decades-long, well-documented trend on racist cops, prosecutors, judges, sentencing guidelines and drug laws doesn’t cut it as a plausible explanation.

What is happening to the black culture?

Of the 27 industrialized countries studied by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. had 25.8 percent of children being raised by a single parent, compared with an average of 14.9 percent across the other countries.

In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household. What is happening to these children? Turning to crime? Joining gangs? Blaming others on the plight of their lives?

Ambush cop killings not uncommon

Ambush cop killings not uncommon

Fatal ambushes, similar to an attack this weekend on two New York City police officers, have been among the leading causes of firearm-related police deaths for the past several years, according to data maintained by a national law enforcement group.

At midyear, an analysis conducted by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which closely tracks officer deaths, found that ambushes were the second-leading cause of firearm killings. As recently as 2012, ambushes accounted for the most fatal shootings involving police: 30% of the 50 firearm deaths that year were attributed to such attacks.

Though officer deaths, including fatal shootings, have been subject to dramatic swings over the years, one analysts say ambushes have remained among the most persistent and hardest threats.

“It really is all about awareness and paying attention to your surroundings,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “There is an emphasis on being hypervigilant just because this threat is out there, but the ability to sustain that ... is very difficult.”

Stephens, a former Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., chief, said authorities have attempted to bolster their defenses by drawing from a series of incidents.

Among them: the sniper attack in September on a Pennsylvania State Police barracks that left one trooper dead and another wounded. The alleged shooter, Eric Frein, was elevated to the FBI’s list of most wanted suspects before his capture in October.

“We have learned a lot, but I don’t think we can prevent it altogether,” Stephens said. “It’s a big challenge.”

Following a rash of violence against police, Attorney General Eric Holder in 2011 created the National Officer Safety and Wellness Group to review incidents, including ambush attacks.

What we can expect is the hypervigilant police officers are going to hypertrigger pullers. Split seconds matter and if it is me or you....well we all know the answer to that.