Howey
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- Mar 4, 2013
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That phrase has been attributed 43 times in the past few days on this forum to Black Lives Matters, with videos of thousands of blacks marching (purportedly and primarily in Dallas, but also in Baton Rouge and elsewhere), carrying a banner and so on...
So what's the truth?
Here it is.
Finally, just who and how many protestors out of thousands and thousands actually said those words?
A few dozen.
So what's the truth?
Here it is.
On 10 July 2016, Facebook user Wesley Scott Alexander posted a video supposedly documenting Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters chanting a demanding "dead cops" three days after a shooting in Dallas during which five officers were killed and several more wounded:
Alexander's plea for users to "share" the clip because "the media won't" furthered impressions that Black Lives Matter protesters had loudly called for dead cops, that at least two individuals had answered the call in the worst way imaginable, and that a media conspiracy sought to bury the ugly truth. Repeatedly, readers apparently unfamiliar with Baton Rouge and New York City asked if the clip was footage from July 2016 protests held in the former location following the shooting death of Alton Sterling.
In fact, July 2016 wasn't the first time this particular bit of footage caused both confusion and consternation. A Fox News video uploaded to YouTube on 15 December 2014, just before the ambush shooting deaths of two New York City police officers, documents that the protest it captured occurred on or before that date:
The earliest tweets about that video also appeared on 13 December 2014 (linking to a since-deleted page):
Finally, just who and how many protestors out of thousands and thousands actually said those words?
A few dozen.
This clip and some background information about it were referenced in another video debunking Black Lives Matter myths that was posted online on 10 July 2016. At approximately the three-minute mark, the narrator notes that the "dead cops" clip captured a small group of protesters who hung around after the end of the Millions March in December 2014 and were disavowed by the organizers of that event, while video of the official Millions March event shows that it was a peaceful protest:
And yet, evidence shows the group that engaged in the death chant against police weren’t part of Millions March NYC. And if they did indeed march on Dec. 13, they did so long after the larger protest had moved downtown. They were not part of the main group.
For one thing, according to the video, which was posted to Youtube the same day as the protest, the “dead cops” chant took place after sunset. You can see from the video that city lights are already on. The group starts by chanting “hands up, shoot back,” before switching to the death chant, and then an unintelligible chant at the end of the approximately 2 minute clip.
MSNBC reported that the Millions March protests officially concluded at One Police Plaza at 6:30 PM, when the permit to demonstrate expired. The nighttime clip was clearly unrelated to it, and while commenters in 2016 lamented that the "media won't" show the footage, it was clearly widely aired back in 2014:
The clip in question involving chants about "dead cops" was shot in New York City in December 2014, but contemporaneous reporting widely and incorrectly identified its source as Black Lives Matter and Millions March demonstrations taking place in different parts of the city at different times. After shootings claimed the lives of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge in July 2016, the clip resurfaced and was often mislabeled as occurring in one of those locations.