How’s That Anti-Cop Crusade Working Out? Rochester Edition.

Last year, a tedious brew of Occupy protesters and “Cop-Watch” activists took to the streets in Rochester, New York.  They mobilized behind a contemporary flower-child named Emily Good.  Good had been detained briefly after interfering in a police stop that occurred outside her urban hipster-neighborhood home.

After the actual subjects of the police stop slunked into the night, never to be heard from again (and doubtlessly grateful that Good’s hysterics had distracted the police), Good and her supporters tried to make hay out of her arrest.  She granted interviews to CNN and posed for pictures “doing ministry work” in a drop-waist dress, all the while denouncing the “horrors of police brutality” on Rochester’s violent streets.

Good on CNN

But it soon emerged that Good was not the earnest-random-citizen-witness-to-alleged-police-brutality she pretended to be.  Video showing her physically attacking an Olympic torch runner in Canada and feigning abuse at the hands of police during a violent squatter’s protest revealed her real identity as a professional anti-policing activist — one trained to incite and escalate conflicts with the police.  Luckily, the videos of Good’s prior activities were saved by a smart local blogger before Good and her supporters cleansed her Facebook page of evidence of her radical activities.

Good Pretending to Be Brutalized By Police

The Olympic torch video was particularly chilling.  Good and other “native Canadian rights” activists knocked down the woman runner, who was nearly ignited in flames from falling on the torch.  Rather than being chastened by the near-disaster, Good bragged about it online, gleeful that she had interrupted the “Gestapo” Olympic torch run.  She wrote:

The runner actually tripped over all of her security people who were frantically shoving us out of the way.  Anyway, the torch went down!  Hitler started that tradition for the nazi olympics — time to extinguish it!

What sort of person jokes about nearly setting another human on fire?  More importantly, who does such a thing while simultaneously believing she is on the side of angels, who sees herself not as a violent person but as a social heroine, feeding the poor and spreading justice to the dispossessed?  It is to our detriment that we have forgotten about the lost girls of the Seventies, those college-educated daughters turned glassy-eyed cultists who flocked to Charles Manson, shot at presidents, or blew themselves up wiring bombs in their daddies’ townhouses.

John Updike’s story, “The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd,” says something about the starting point of this sort of social disintegration.  Not precisely, but read it anyway.

Good and her compatriots were protesting the “imperial” Canadian state and the evil corporations hosting the Olympics.  That justified almost setting an innocent woman on fire.

In the mindset of activists like these, anybody who does not agree with their politics is an expendable dupe, and the police are no less than the Gestapo.

Emily Good with Hugo Chavez: Just Another Young Woman Who Cares About Justice

Bread Not Bombs 

Emily Good is a member of the radical activist group Food not Bombs.  Good even wore a Food Not Bombs t-shirt to one television interview in which she denied that she had ever been involved in anti-police activism.  “I have never agitated directly against the police . . . I wouldn’t say I’m an activist against the police at all,” she told the reporter, while wearing a t-shirt for an organization that agitates against police.

In recent years, Food Not Bombs Rochester has hosted events such as: “Open Mic Against Police Brutality and State Repression” and “Support the Police: Beat Yourself Up.”  The reporter didn’t ask Good about her t-shirt during the interview: the media has utterly failed to report credibly on the war on cops being waged by radicals ranging from activists like Good to national lawyer’s groups subsidized by billionaire financier George Soros.

Tampa, beware: the Emily Good story — the media’s epic failure to identify her, or to report on Food Not Bombs’ radical motives and training — is a cautionary tale for the city of Tampa, which is preparing to host the 2012 Republican Convention.  Food Not Bombs is planning to arrive in the city in advance of the convention and set up so-called “feeding stations” providing “vegan food for the homeless.”  These encampments will serve as cover for other radicals.  The local media is taking its marching orders from the A.C.L.U. instead of investigating Food Not Bombs’ tactics.  So the public remains uninformed, while elected officials pander to the professional activist classes instead of asking hard questions of the protestors, let alone holding them responsible for the trespassing and code violations they have committed so far.

 Nothing to See Here: Good Denies Anti-Police Activities While Wearing an Anti-Police  T-Shirt

The media’s failure to notice Good’s shirt would have merely been funny if the stakes weren’t so high.  Cities like Rochester are contending with exploding crime rates, while police budgets are gutted and police find themselves are under attack.

Rochester has been living through a 40% increase in homicides and a 73% increase in shootings.  Nevertheless, the A.C.L.U. keeps encouraging the public to resist all crime-fighting measures.  Through an initiative subsidized and orchestrated by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, A.C.L.U. activists advertise free phone apps that teach people to videotape police and interfere in crime fighting.  Meanwhile, Rochester burns.  Little wonder that people in high crime areas are less enthusiastic about A.C.L.U. lawsuits and anti-cop street-marches than the dilettantes who pack up after marching picket lines and return to nicer houses and safer neighborhoods.

Still, silly as they seem, there’s no underestimating the damage such people can do.

Last year, Emily Good and her trumped-up “persecution” cost the police time and money that could have been spent fighting real crime.  It also tied their hands, as activists descended on Rochester to take advantage of Good’s fifteen minutes of embarrasingly-non-vetted media fame.  Even now, as the murders and shootings pile up, the A.C.L.U. keeps playing by the script, accusing police of brutality no matter what they do to try to quell the crime wave.  But some residents are speaking out in support of stepped-up police protection.  Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Columnist Jermayne Myers recently wrote:

Kudos to Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard and the police department for shifting into over gear to help curb a recent spike in shooting, stabbings, robberies, homicides and other senseless acts of violence and crime in the City.

As I’ve said in the past, our city and its residents have been held hostage by the numerous senseless acts of violence and crime over the past two-three months. With 21 homicides and 95 gun assaults, and still counting as of last week, Rochester is on the path to seeing one of its worse and most violent summers.

One recent tool to help combat this rash of violence and crime is operation “Cool Down”. According to Sheppard, during operation “Cool Down”, additional officers will be highly visible, and engaging people on the street to prevent crime rather than reacting to its aftermath.

I commend and respect Sheppard for not being scared to use these tactics to target and make those that commit crime and violence in the city feel uncomfortable walking or riding around our streets, neighborhoods and communities.

As a young African-American man living in the city, I endorse these tactics (when used correctly) to help reduce violence, crime, homicides and keep our city safe.

I’m sick and tired of hearing about someone else getting shot, stabbed and/or killed on our city streets, and sadly both the victim and perpetrator are young African-American men. If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. Just cooperate with police, thank them for doing their job and keep it moving.

This sort of attitude is anathema to the Emily Good and A.C.L.U. lawyers.  Of course, they don’t spend their nights worrying about their families’ safety or hauling bleeding young men to emergency rooms.  As Rochester mayor Tom Richards wryly observed, in response to a predictable media question about the civil rights implications of stepped-up police patrols:

 “The ultimate violation of your civil rights is to be shot to death.”

Neighborhood activists — not radical activists like Emily Good — cheered the increased police activity:

When News10NBC informed her of the police department’s “Cool Down Detail,” [Doreen Brown] was thrilled. “I would be very proud for that to happen. We care about out neighborhood, we care about our neighbors and we would love to have more patrols around here there is too much violence.”

Brown said, “We have people that are terrified terrified. We try to stay together to keep peace. We don’t want it to seem like we just a bad neighborhood with crime, but if we don’t have help from the police, what are we to do?”

 Adults in Charge: Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard and Mayor Tom Richards

The adults solve the problems, while the activists destroy, no matter the human cost.

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More information about the radical anti-police movement:  The Soros-Funded War on Police