They're a small portion of the cops mostly focused on their competition and other criminals. They'll attack the competition, seize peoples' drugs, and charge to look the other way. Most cops just give us tickets and such. Additionally, the people they arrest at 201 Poplar were (last I heard!) getting an evidence kit to see what prosecutors would bring up at trial during plea bargain. The article, "Why Innocent People Confess," ssys 90+% of cases never see trial partly since defendents dont usually have that. They also usually get out on bail to with some knowing bail bondsmen really well. The cops want our money.

Now, enter BLM. Those stories hit Facebok and Twitter. The black folks from Memphis to North Mississippi reading that stuff say a cop killing them is their biggest worry. That they're getting killed disproportionally everywhere with every stop maybe they're last. Some laid siege to I-40 and the airport to protest police killing black people. Police and protestors got through that without incident despite protestors aggressively marching at police to incite them.

Now for reality: almost all murders here are black civilians kiling other people, mostly black. We have latino gangs and cartels here, too. Mostly, but not entirely, gang members doing murders. Mostly in same hood neighborhoods. The police usually try to arrest, not shoot, them (see First 48 Memphis episodes). BLM might have prevented murders by blocking off those areas instead of the police and public (major Interstate on busy day) who were not killing innocent black people.

Although some cities need a protest, BLM and its supporters in Mid-South were totally full of crap scapegoating cops as main threat to black people when it's actually black and latino thugs. And cops stay trying to catch them, either for justice (good cops) or to eliminate competitors (bad cops). It's telling that the black guy talking about it most on local media always brings up number of black victims, but omits perps. They'll get further addressing real racism and police issues if they stop repeating lies in their media. Makes audience assume they crying wolf again.

"BLM and its supporters in Mid-South were totally full of crap scapegoating cops as main threat to black people when it's actually black and latino thugs"

I don't claim any particular knowledge of what's wrong with the police anywhere, but when cops or people who identify with them say reflexively "well, we'll just stop defending you from the thugs if you don't like us" my gut tells me that it means they already were deliberately enabling "thugs"; the declamation sounds like something that people have repeated to themselves for years, bottled up the justification for corruption and the protests just give permission to let it out.

You missed what I said about them to focus on a hypothetical. I told you that the people sharing and discussing BLM stuff from their media said they believed police were killing black people all over the place with the posters or people talking to me constantly at risk in our areas. Yet, the data of those areas consistently over time was that police were mostly going after the people who were killing black folks. Who were almost all black civilians with mix of gang members and individual thugs. So, if by data, they should be afraid of and decrying actions of violent, black criminals who are biggest threat to black lives in that area. If anything, they should grudgingly thank the cops for getting people off the streets who were killing black people while calling them out for whatever bad things they're actually doing. Instead, they're telling the police black lives matter as if they aren't protecting them, dodging the rebukes pointing out whose killing black people, and so on. They're full of shit. The result was their movement was rightly ignored by its target audience out here.

This isn't a black problem so much as an asset turned liability in human nature. Bruce Schneier wrote about it before where people are more likely to believe anecdotes, especially scary ones (eg worst-case scenarios), from their peers than objective data collected from either peers or other side. The hypothesis at the time was that its a trait that helped early humans survive against threats that killed them (esp ate them). The people that listened to a story about what came before a death (eg animal attack) might survive more often than those who dispassionately collected and analyzed data before committing to something. Over time, the ones that were left were more likely to believe what the group was telling them focused on the same risks, esp extreme ones that rarely happen but result in death.

So, that's what the BLM folks were doing. The people they identify with were making these claims. They supported them using far-away examples like Ferguson and Baltimore. They believed them going with the flow. It's the same effect behind the many Trump voters out here worried everyone that's Middle Eastern might be a terrorist that might take lives. Although, they do hardly anything like better diets or extra vigilance behind the wheel to avoid the leading causes of death of Americans. They're also not looking at every right-wing, patriotic person despite such people committing acts of terrorism in the past or collecting lots of guns planning for... something. Jump on and defend anything from in-group while excluding, perverting, or reflexively dismissing out-group.

Human nature I'm afraid. Everyone doing this needs to learn to knock it off since it just makes us fight for nothing. More important, we miss opportunities to discuss what's really going on to improve our circumstances. The BLM people's BS is easily called out with the middle and right-leaning folks reacting as "You can't trust any of this stuff. People just bullshiting for attention to their causes." We can't stop racism creating reactions like that. Sadly and unfairly, we have to be better than most people in accuracy making sure we consistently build our interpretations on solid data with no misdirections or lies. Especially selective stuff. Consistently good use of data, civil interpretations, and pre-packaged solutions are the right combo to get more people onboard fixing things. Fortunately, there's quite a few of us down here trying to do that with many more just trying to get along despite our differences. The peaceful results of the I-40 protest in a often-racist, often-murderous area confirm how well we do this I think. We were all so worried shit would happen but it didn't. (slow, long sigh of relief)