CAIR and Ron Scott Want To Know: 'Where's Mike Nifong When We Need Him?'

The Detroit Free Press ran this last week:

Group slams U.S. report on imam's death
FREE PRESS STAFF

The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality today called the Justice Department announcement Wednesday that there were no civil rights violations in the shooting death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah “disingenuous and insincere.”

Ron Scott, the coalition’s lead spokesman, said the Justice Department released the statement clearing federal agents as acting appropriately in the Oct. 28 killing at the same time federal civil rights attorneys from Washington were meeting in Detroit with Abdullah’s family, Muslim and African-American leaders and the coalition.

“While we and members of the community were attempting to meet in good faith … they were already releasing a statement to the media that th actions of the law enforcement officers involved in the Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah killing were justified. This compromised any real sense of objectivity and consideration which may have emerged from our discussions,” Scott said in a prepared statement today.

“How can you discuss the sentiment of the community and its significance while a news release is presented which indicates that you have already made you’re your decision? This is disingenuous and insincere,” he said.

Investigating a possible civil rights violation is no different than investigating any other possible violation of law: the subject either violated the law or he didn’t. Investigative findings mustn’t go outside the facts of what happened, nor how the law defines a violation.

In other words, what the “community” feels about it all shouldn’t count for a damn thing.

Any society committed to the rule of law would recognize it as the worst possible injustice – far worse even than a sloppy investigation that overlooks actual evidence of guilt – to accuse an innocent person of wrongdoing just to satisfy some baying interest group’s appetite for raw meat.

Nothing in the response of CAIR or Ron Scott’s Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality has made any sense, but this response to the DOJ findings beats all. As he denounces the findings as “insincere” Scott asks the rhetorical question, “How can you discuss the sentiment of the community and its significance while a news release is presented which indicates that you have already made you’re your decision?” But unless the investigators’ decision about the facts was going to be weighted one way or the other based on community sentiment about what happened, there’s no reason at all not to make the decision and release it regardless of such sentiment.

Unless there’s a tacit understanding that the facts will take a back seat to mollycoddling a favored minority. (See Mike Nifong).

It’s not the job of the civil rights division to find out what makes X minority community ifeel mistreated and then dutifully find an example of X’s mistreatment to punish. Can Scott really be serious that the DOJ was supposed to let negotiations with Muslim leaders determine whether or not to charge federal agents with civil rights violations, regardless of what the evidence shows?

Their idea that “good faith” meetings between Justice Department officials and Muslim leaders to “discuss the sentiment of the community” could ever play any legitimate role in what is supposed to be a fact-finding investigation shows just how lacking in good faith these groups actually are.