Mayor Ballard's Friend Amos Brown

You reap what you sow. The administration of Mayor Greg Ballard has bent over backwards to please radio talk show host Amos Brown as if he holds the keys to winning support among African-American voters at the same time he's done everything he can to shit all over the people who actually worked to put him in office, and despite the fact Brown's constituency typically votes 90-10 in favor of the Democratic candidate. Ballard appointed Brown to co-chair Indianapolis' census committee and he recently appointed him to a newly-created public safety advisory board, along with that other controversial radio talk show host, Abdul Hakim Shabazz, who admits he's not even a voting, taxpaying resident of Indianapolis, who has advocated police beatings as a way of deterring crime and who has done his best to denigrate Ballard's original supporters. I've commented how Brown would continue to club Ballard over the head with a baseball bat every opportunity he gets regardless of how much and how often Ballard bends down and kisses his feet and there's more proof of that. Brown hasn't disappointed me on that prediction.

A fact often overlooked in our local news media is how the Tea Party movement that has swept the country actually started right here in Indianapolis during the 2007 mayoral election. Ballard gladly rode that wave of voter discontent, jumped ashore the City-County Building upon arrival and then quickly cut the line mooring his ship of supporters to send them adrift at sea while offering safe passage to almost every miscreant who worked to elect his opponent in that election. Here's what Brown had to say about the Tea Party activists in his latest black versus white rantings about this year's election in the Indianapolis Recorder:

This time, segments of the Republican base are “fired up and ready to go.” But it’s an enthusiasm based on naked racism and the cold fear of the nagging “great recession.”


The tea party bigots pulling the trunk of the Republican elephant are moving the party of Lincoln into the sort of racist, xenophobic and demented hatred not seen in America since the Great Depression or even the Civil War.

The lies about Obama’s birth and his faith are emblematic of the tea party’s Obama hatred. A hate driven not by ideology, but by bigotry.

Our Black community must respond to the hate-filled attacks with our energy and our vote. But it doesn’t help when the president’s party and campaign machinery isn’t helping get our community “fired up and ready to go.”

Yeah, that's the kind of guy a Republican mayor who barely won election with the support of white independent voters wants tied to his ship.

On Mayor Ballard's recently-announced IMPD reforms, Brown had these kind comments to say:

But nothing the mayor said last weekend does anything to improve minority recruitment and promotion, or improve training or make Ballard’s police treat everyone like civilized human beings . . .

Mayor, when will your IMPD mess end? When will you get your act together, start exercising leadership and end this crisis? And when will you end your disrespect of ignoring of the institutions and people of the quarter-million-large Indianapolis African-American community?

In case Brown has forgotten, Ballard appointed one of his convicted felon friends as a deputy mayor in one of his first acts as mayor, appointed numerous other minorities to his administration who did nothing to help him get elected to satisfy the political correctness crowd, passed out millions of dollars in useless crime prevention grants to nonprofits controlled by African-American ministers and has awarded more contracts to minority contractors in the history of the City to the detriment of more qualified non-minority contractors. And Brown says Ballard is ignoring the African-American community? Like I said, you reap what you sow.

UPDATE: I know it frustrates Amos Brown to no end that civil rights laws protect all of us from discrimination on the basis of race, but a reminder of this basic notion had to be made by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals this week to our Indianapolis police department in Finch v. Bart Peterson, in which it was held:

This interlocutory appeal arises from a complaint filed against the City of Indianapolis, its law-enforcement Merit Board, and seven city officials alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs—three white police lieutenants—claim they were subjected to reverse discrimination because they were passed over for promotion to the rank of captain despite ranking higher on the Police Department’s promotion eligibility list than three African-American lieutenants who were promoted ahead of them. The individual city officials moved for judgment on the pleadings, claiming qualified immunity based on the terms of a 1978 consent decree entered into by the Indianapolis Police Department and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”). They maintained that the consent decree required them to make the promotions at issue here. A magistrate judge disagreed and denied the motion, and the city officials appealed. We affirm.

The 1978 consent decree does not operate to confer qualified immunity on the city officials who were involved in making the challenged promotions. Nothing in that decree required them to take race into consideration in making promotions. To the contrary,specific language in the decree required promotions within the Police Department to be made without regard to race or color.

Hat tip to Indiana Law Blog.