Mothers of black men and women killed in several high-profile police-involved shootings are taking aim at the national Black Lives Matter organization and its outgoing co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, for profiting off the deaths of their loved ones and then ducking accountability.
The mothers of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and others are lashing out just as Cullors steps down, accusing both BLM and Cullors of using their children&#8217;s deaths to raise money but failing to pass the money on to black families in need.
“I don’t believe she is going anywhere,” said Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Rice, who was shot by Cleveland, Ohio, police who mistook his toy gun for a real weapon, <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/05/29/mothers-criticize-blm-activists-for-profiting-off-their-dead-sons/">told the New York Post.</a> “It’s all a facade. She’s only saying that to get the heat off her right now.”
Lisa Simpson, whose son was shot in Los Angeles, California, added. “Now she doesn’t have to show her accountability. She can just take the money and run.”
Cullors <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-blm-co-founder-patrisse-cullors-resigns-amid-controversy">announced that she was stepping down from her position</a> at the helm of the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday, following news that she engaged in a &#8220;real estate binge&#8221; that saw the BLM co-founder splash out more than $3 million on four private residences.
The <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/06/patrisse-cullors-damon-turner-black-lives-matter-contract-payments/">Daily Caller also reported</a> that Cullors &#8220;had used her position as the charity’s leader to funnel business to an art company led by the father of her only child. Charity experts said BLM’s arrangement with the art company, Trap Heals, amounts to self-dealing and raises ethical and legal questions.&#8221;
Cullors, though, claims her resignation is not the result of these controversies, telling media that the allegations &#8220;were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me.”
Rice and Simpson, though, told the Post that Cullors has problems with more than just the right. Rice told the Post that &#8220;she first sought out Cullors to enlist the group’s help in re-opening a federal investigation into her son’s 2014 death. She said she exchanged a few emails with Cullors over the years, but had never managed a face-to-face meeting.&#8221; Simpson said that Black Lives Matter raised $5000 for her son&#8217;s funeral but never delivered the check.
In a statement posted in March, the two women lashed out at BLM for leaving them &#8220;clueless and broken.&#8221;
“We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police,” the pair said. “The ‘activists’ have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones’ images and names on their flyers. We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken.”
Last month, Tamika Palmer, Breonna Taylor&#8217;s mother, echoed the pair in a social media post of her own.
&#8220;I have never personally dealt with BLM Louisville and personally have found them to be fraud (sic),” Palmer wrote.

Patrisse Cullors

‘Benefitting Off The Blood Of Our Loved Ones’: Mothers Of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor Slam Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter

Breonna Taylor

Tamir Rice

Conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder of &#8220;Louder with Crowder&#8221; took a look at all of the high-profile cases of police-involved shootings that have been used by the Black Lives Matter movement to promote the narrative that racist police officers are deliberately targeting and murdering black people. In a 14-minute video, Crowder walks case by case through the facts and finds that the narrative repeatedly crumbles under scrutiny. But, as Crowder says, unfortunately &#8220;facts don&#8217;t matter.&#8221;
&#8220;The purpose of this video is not to justify nor condemn any of the deaths that occurred during these police-civilian interactions,&#8221; explains Crowder at the beginning, &#8220;but to provide you with the context that MTV News and Vox and HuffPo refuses to.&#8221;
He then moves into the facts that we know so far about the <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7268/7-things-you-need-know-about-philando-castile-pardes-seleh">Philando Castile case</a>, which is <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7263/alton-sterling-and-philando-castile-cases-why-cant-ben-shapiro">still under investigation</a> but which, Crowder highlights, is not simply a case of a man being &#8220;shot for a broken tail-light,&#8221; as some outlets have suggested. Rather it appears to have been a case of the officer believing that Castile was reaching for a gun and firing in self-defense. 
The Alton Sterling case, likewise still under investigation, Crowder underscores, was absolutely not a &#8220;man being shot for trying to sell CDs.&#8221; In fact, police were called to the scene because Sterling had allegedly threatened a homeless man with a gun, which was likely illegally obtained, as he had a lengthy rap sheet, &#8220;including being a registered sex offender and having done time in prison for violent crimes.&#8221; After being tazed, Sterling continued to resist arrest and appeared to be <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7388/breaking-louisiana-cops-say-alton-sterling-reached-hank-berrien">reaching for his gun</a>, at which point he was shot.
Crowder moves on to Jamar Clark, who had assaulted his girlfriend and evidence indicates was trying to reach for the officer&#8217;s weapon. Regarding the Walter Scott shooting, for which the officer involved has been charged with murder, Crowder exclaimed, &#8220;The system worked!&#8221;
Crowder then addresses the Michael Brown &#8220;gentle giant&#8221;/&#8221;Hands up, don&#8217;t shoot!&#8221; narrative &#8212; which has been thoroughly debunked and which even the Obama Department of Justice was forced to admit was utterly false, fully exonerating the officer involved, Darren Wilson. The commentator goes on to debunk the rest of the false popular narratives surrounding Sandra Bland, Corey Jones, and Freddie Gray, underscoring that while some of the deaths were not warranted and might have been avoided, that does not mean the victims were targeted by racist cops, as Black Lives Matter supporters repeatedly claim. 
Crowder&#8217;s findings align with those of recent studies, including a comprehensive Harvard study finding <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7343/new-study-no-racial-bias-police-involved-shootings-james-barrett">no racial bias against blacks</a> in police-involved shootings, a conclusion the study&#8217;s author, Prof. Roland G. Fryer Jr, called &#8220;the most surprising result of my career.&#8221; As the Daily Wire has reported, <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler">other studies</a> have likewise found that the narrative of racial bias in use of lethal force by police is largely based on de-contextualized data and false assumptions: 
<blockquote>
In 2015, for example, 50% of the victims of police shootings were white, while 26% were black. Some have tried to argue that this is evidence of racial bias against blacks because they represent only 15% of the population; however, as <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myths-of-black-lives-matter-1455235686">Heather Mac Donald</a> points out, blacks account for a disproportionate percentage of major crimes, including 62% of robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults. Another example of de-contextualized data is that showing a higher percent of unarmed blacks who are shot than unarmed whites, but as both Mac Donald and Fryer found, when the details of the cases are included, such statistics turn out to be <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler">misleading</a>.
</blockquote>
And it is not just researchers concluding that officer-involved shootings are often not cases of racial bias. So far most of the high-profile cases that have been tried have resulted in <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/07/19/judges-and-juries-keep-acquitting-the-cops-that-black-lives-matter-call-racist/">the officers being acquitted</a>, including the officers tried in the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Jonathan Ferrell, and Freddie Gray.
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DEBUNKED: #BlackLivesMatter Propaganda Exposed Case-By-Case [VIDEO]

Crime

Freddie Gray

Law Enforcement

Police

Race

Steven Crowder

Over the weekend, Grey&#8217;s Anatomy actor Jesse Williams gave a racially-charged acceptance speech, rife with victimhood rhetoric, outlandish claims of oppression, police-bashing and a demand that whites who criticize or offer meaningless support to Black Lives Matter shut up and &#8220;sit down.&#8221;
Of course, the media salivated over the speech; Williams received high praise from the <a href="http://www.etonline.com/news/191968_jesse_williams_delivers_impassioned_speech_at_the_bet_awards_calling_for_justice_and_equality/">usual</a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jesse-williams-bet-awards-humanitarian-award_us_57708cebe4b017b379f65077">divisive</a> <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/06/27/watch_in_a_just_world_jesse_williams_speech_at_the_bet_awards_would_break_the_internet/">suspects</a> on the left.
But outspoken conservative Stacey Dash was not having it. Dash called Williams&#8217; speech an &#8220;attack on white people,&#8221; blasted his victimhood rhetoric and reiterated her previous public criticism of BET, claiming that the network is &#8220;keeping racism and segregation alive.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;ve said it before and I&#8217;ll say it again: BET is keeping racism and segregation alive and this past Sunday&#8217;s awards show proves it,&#8221; wrote Dash in a <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/staceydash/2016/06/racist-speech-at-bet-awards-attacked-white-people/">blog post</a> on Wednesday. &#8220;Particularly the speech given by Grey&#8217;s Anatomy star Jesse Williams, whose tirade after receiving the 2016 BET Humanitarian Award for his black activism was nothing short of an attack on white people.&#8221;
The actress also slammed Williams for his attack on our police force: &#8220;What he said was straight out of the Black Lives Matter playbook,&#8221; she wrote, &#8220;reminding the audience that police do &#8216;not kill white people&#8217; and in fact, prefer pulling &#8216;a drive by on a 12-year-old kid [Tamir Rice] and then going home to make a sandwich.&#8217;&#8221;
Dash highlighted Williams&#8217; condemnation for &#8220;those white people who would dare reach out and empathize with the black &#8216;struggle&#8217; or offer meaningless support to the black community&#8221; and, more specifically, the Black Lives Matter movement&#8212;which she is not a fan of:
Black Lives Matter has &#8220;planted the seed of segregation and no longer want to live in &#8216;perfect harmony,&#8217; like the old song wished,&#8221; wrote Dash. &#8220;And if Michael Jackson once sang, &#8216;It don&#8217;t matter if you&#8217;re black or white,&#8217; well, it does now, at least from their perspective.&#8221;
But, according to the actress, Williams, &#8220;the son of a black father and white mother,&#8221; served up &#8220;his worst criticisms for whites who have committed so-called cultural appropriation of black culture and entertainment.&#8221;
Here&#8217;s the highly contentious part of Williams&#8217; speech Dash was reacting to:
<blockquote>
We&#8217;ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, and we&#8217;re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations, then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is, though, just because we&#8217;re magic doesn&#8217;t mean we&#8217;re not real.
</blockquote>
Yes, Williams did actually say that white people today discard black &#8220;bodies like rinds of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit">strange fruit</a>,&#8221; as in the reference to lynched blacks hanging from trees in the deep Democratic South. 
Dash called the Grey&#8217;s Anatomy star &#8220;the perfect example of a HOLLYWOOD plantation slave,&#8221; adding that he was only &#8220;spewing hate and anger.&#8221; 
&#8220;Because you my man are just like everyone else hustling to get money,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But your cognitive dissidents has you getting it from THAT BYSTANDER whom YOU DONT NEED. Yes. BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION is WHITE OWNED.&#8221;
The conservative said that the &#8220;chip&#8221; on Williams&#8217; shoulder &#8220;will weigh you down and keep you from flying free.&#8221; She continued, &#8220;But true freedom is never free. You have to know how to fly. If anyone is making you feel this way its you. Living in a psychological prison of your own making. If anyone is GHETTO-IZING anyone, it&#8217;s people like you letting the BETs and other media outlets portray us in stereotypes.&#8221;
Dash suggested Williams &#8220;get over&#8221; himself and &#8220;get on with it.&#8221;
&#8220;Maybe now people will see why I&#8217;m so against this racist network,&#8221; she said. 
Here&#8217;s the video of the highly successful black actor peddling victimhood to the black community:
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Stacey Dash BLASTS BET And Jesse Williams

Racism

Slavery

Stacey Dash

Two <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-reports-conclude-shooting-tamir-rice-was-justified-n442341">reports</a> from a former Denver prosecutor and former FBI agent conclude that the police were justified in shooting 12-year old Tamir Rice.
Rice was shot and killed by Timothy Loehmann, an officer in training, on November 22, 2014 after Loehmann responded to a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/11/26/officials-release-video-names-in-fatal-police-shooting-of-12-year-old-cleveland-boy/">911 call</a> of a &#8220;a guy in here with a pistol, pointing it at everybody.&#8221; While the caller admitted the gun was likely fake, he added, &#8220;He&#8217;s scaring the s*** out of people.&#8221; The caller&#8217;s description that the gun was likely fake was not relayed to the officers who responded to the call, and the gun turned out to be a BB gun.
Denver&#8217;s Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney S. Lamar Sims wrote in a report that the police shooting Rice was &#8220;objectively reasonable.&#8221;
&#8220;There can be no doubt that Rice&#8217;s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,&#8221; Sims <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/10/us/tamir-rice-shooting-reports/index.html">wrote</a>. &#8220;However, for all of the reasons discussed herein, I conclude that Officer Loehmann&#8217;s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.&#8221;
The former FBI agent, Kimberly Crawford, wrote that Loehmann&#8217;s actions fell &#8220;within the realm of reasonableness under the dictates of the Fourth Amendment &#8230; Loehmann&#8217;s attention would be focused on Rice&#8217;s hands as they moved towards his waist band and lifted his jacket. Unquestionably, the actions of Rice could reasonably be perceived as a serious threat to Officer Loehmann.&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;I conclude that Officer Loehmann&#8217;s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.&#8221;
Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney S. Lamar Sims
</blockquote>
In the video of the shooting, Rice reaches for his waistband when the police order him to put his hands up. He was shot within two seconds of the police arriving.
When the shooting happened, the media rushed to judgment on the incident and immediately blamed the police. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/02/its-tamir-rices-fault/">wrote</a> that &#8220;the Cleveland response to the Rice family lawsuit is but further proof that African American men and boys must live their lives beyond reproach, devoid of mistakes and bad choices at any age, if they are to avoid being blamed for their own death.&#8221;
Columnist Charles Blow echoed Capehart&#8217;s sentiments by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/opinion/charles-m-blow-tamir-rice-and-the-value-of-life.html">writing</a> in The New York Times the shooting was &#8220;an unconscionable level of human depravity on the part of the officer who shot him, a stunning disregard for the value of his life and a callousness toward the people who loved him.&#8221;
Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King- <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/19/did-black-lives-matter-organiser-shaun-king-mislead-oprah-winfrey-by-pretending-to-be-biracial/">who isn&#8217;t even black</a>&#8211; <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/02/1348833/-Tamir-Rice-The-story-behind-the-execution-character-assassination-coverup-of-a-senseless-murder">called</a> the shooting a &#8220;senseless killing.&#8221;
And yet, two separate reports from credible sources on the issue of law enforcement say that the Rice shooting was &#8220;objectively reasonable.&#8221; Rice&#8217;s family has dismissed the sources as &#8220;pro-police&#8221; without substantiating their claim. This incident, while tragic, shows that once again the media rushes to judgment before all the facts come out. We live in a country where we face trial by jury, not trial by media.

Two New Reports Say Police Justified In Shooting Black 12-Year Old

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Tamir Rice

‘Benefitting Off The Blood Of Our Loved Ones’: Mothers Of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor Slam Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter

DEBUNKED: #BlackLivesMatter Propaganda Exposed Case-By-Case [VIDEO]

Stacey Dash BLASTS BET And Jesse Williams

Two New Reports Say Police Justified In Shooting Black 12-Year Old