CNN anchor Don Lemon woke up the Twitter beast after proffered support for New York’s reviled stop-and-frisk policies and they quickly proceeded to peel off a few layers off his backside Tuesday afternoon.
And he deserves the verbal lashings for capitulating to the arbitrary, racist and Constitutional-violating “stop-and-mistreat-and-beatdown” laws in effect in the Big Apple that are enforced based on ethnicity instead of probable cause. .
Lemon, a regular contributor on the legendary “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” partially endorsed the reviled local laws enabling the NYPD to use their own judgement to stop whomever they wish, when they wish, without probable cause or provocation. Event though Lemon said that police aren’t always very respectful of the people they stopped, he believes that tampering with the “formula that has reduced crime in New York City” could have very adverse effect and cause crime to skyrocket again.
“[I]f you question many people in New York City, even some black and Hispanic people,” Lemon began on the TJMS show, “they will tell you that on the surface they don’t really have an issue with stop-question-and-frisk. Not the idea of it, at least. Not if the controversial policy was conducted like the occasional, random airport screening.”
Lemon noted that minorities want to believe that officers would stop someone and “politiely” say, “Sir, I’m sorry, but I need to check your bag and your person,” but, he lamented, “they know that that’s not the reality of things on the street.”
“They know that in reality they will probably be ordered to put their hands up, spread their legs, or lay on the ground and be handcuffed while an officer or officers have their ways with them,” the CNN host said, “touching them wherever they’d like or handling them however they’d like.”
Lemon asserted that there are many among the minority community who believe “in theory” that “we’d rather be inconvenienced by being stopped by police than shot by gun-wielding criminals on the street.” However, he said, it’s become too easy for police to become “so drunk with power that they abuse it.”
“So goes New York City, so goes the rest of the country,” he said of stop-and-frisk, adding his suggestion that if a new mayor “alters the equation of the formula that has reduced crime in New York City to its lowest in decades,” it could result in the “creeping back up” of crime rates, the reduction in tourism, and the suffering of “international consequences.” He posited that other major cities could follow suit.
“Whatever the mayor here decides will be reflected in your city, reflected in your crime rate, and in your economy,” Lemon concluded. “So the question is: would you rather be politically correct or safe and alive? That’s the real issue facing the citizens of New York and, pretty soon, ultimately you.”
Well, that didn’t go so well with people. There was even a hashtag created, #DonLemonOn, and people sounded off on the news personality.
Take a look at some of the acerbic and pointed comebacks to Lemon’s assertion that New York maybe should consider keeping the laws.
#DonLemonOn prisons: At least blacks get a roof over their heads.
— ’91 Dan Marino (@Phil_Cosby_) November 5, 2013
#DonLemonOn slavery: “It wasn’t all bad…it made us big and strong, and now we can excel in pro sports”
— GirlGetALife (@GirlGetALife) November 5, 2013
