Pixiq

If it takes layoffs to bring back professional police behavior then by all means.

This was a time when the police were risking harm to themselves and they did a good job of keeping the peace and honoring everyones’s civil rights.

Nice job MPD

Not sure I can say good job! If those 125 laid off officers had been available, would we have seen this restraint? More likely we would have seen heavily armed, and armoured jack booted thugs taking in as many zipped tied lowly citizens as possible.

Instead of a couple arrests for misdemeanours, we would have seen arrests for felony assault against law enforcement officers, felony inciting a riot, and the numbers of arrested would be much greater whether deserved, or not. With 5 officers it would be to hard to do that, but 130 officers would have been cracking some heads, and keeping the peace.

This goes back to what I have said a million times. We do not need the police in the numbers we have today. I have had people tell me that if we did not have police then people would start raping, murdering, robbing, and assaulting like never before. I say that people who are going to do those things already do them daily, and most of them get away with it, even with all the police we now have. The rest of are not going to start being criminal just because there is not a cop around. I would not, and I’d bet you would not.

There IS hope. This cheers me up.

I heard the Herald reporter on WLRN yesterday and she said they had a steamroller ready to crush the Juanes cds but that the mob couldn’t wait and wound up destroying them with their own hands and feet.

Yet the Herald on Sunday said only one guy — one guy — was breaking up the cds:

In another a headline, La Jiribilla claims that Cubans in Miami “are breaking Juanes’ records with hammers.”

“What do they fear?” the headline says.

Fact: Only the leader of a tiny activist group, Vigilia Mambisa, broke some Juanes CDs in front of television cameras.

To the five: kudos

Carlos,

That article you wrote was dripping with bias. You need to learn to write more objectively.

Sydney,

Are you talking about the NBC article?

How was it “dripping with bias”?

Yes, I was referring to the NBC story. I think your liberalism shines right through. It’s fine if you want to write with an angle, but you should state your biases up front. Don’t act like the MSM and pretend that you’re neutral when you’re really not. It’s not going to fool people like me.

The problem with the story is that it doesn’t just provide the facts. You continuously toss up canards that old and outnumbered are hardline right-wingers. Yet, you don’t use the term “left-wing” to describe the opposition. You gloss over their threatening manners as “screaming, chanting and taunting.” You describe the opposition as fighting a “losing battle” when you have no evidence to back it up other than one concert crowd. One dot is not a trend or even a worthwhile statistic. You say “all the aging exiles could do…” as if their political efforts were worthless. You quote the taunters as authoritative voices on where the trends are going, but you don’t quote the opposition or provide an independent voice on whether the taunters are correct. You bring up the right-wing scare tactics, but fail to see that the taunting and mocking by the “left-wingers” (which you don’t characterize as such) could be seen as the exact same thing.

You have to decide if you’re going to report the facts or spin the facts.

Sydney,

I wrote the truth. If you can’t accept the truth, then the only person dripping with bias is you.

So drip on.

It’s that kind of attitude that suggests you’re not really interested in merely reporting. But whatever. It’s not like it’s subtle – it smacks you right in the face. No one is going to be fooled if you keep writing like that. And if this is how you respond to criticism, you’ve got a long tough road ahead of you.

I suggest you stick with the blog, where your personal opinions are untainted by any suggestion that you’re neutral.

Hey Sydney,

I do appreciate your feedback and suggestions but I am not going to let you manipulate me from telling the truth.

It’s as simple as that.

You can suggest all you want but I’ve been writing professional journalism a lot longer than I’ve been writing my blog (15 years compared to a little over 2 years).

We all have our biases. Anybody who says they don’t is a liar.

But you are the only person to suggest that I was not accurate in this story and there were loads of journalists at the protest, not to mention more than 600 protesters.

And I know you were nowhere around, so it’s hard for me to take your criticisms seriously.

But I do welcome them.

And if you want to get nitpicky, there is no evidence that the pro-Juanes supporters were “left-wingers” but there is plenty of evidence to suggest the anti-Juanes supporters were right wingers.

You obviously have no clue about Miami politics but this is where I live. This is where I’m from. This is where I work.

i don’t know which cop told you but, 125 cops were not laid off.. if the crowd were to get too hostile, everyone was standing by, ready to be deployed. but thanks for the kudos, because i was one of the 5 who was there that night. i believe people have the right to voice their opinions within the scope of the law.