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Let's see now ... if I were black and I got stopped by the police, what could I do to limit the possibility of getting killed? Wait a minute now, let me think. Hmmm. Just a sec, I'm mulling over the possibilities on this thing. This is a tough one. Well, I might run away as fast as I can.
Or I could scream profanities at the cops and give them a hard time putting the cuffs on me. Well, perhaps I could simply try to grab the cop's gun. Gosh, so many options. So, what should I do?
How about none of the above. How about DON'T RESIST ARREST. How about doing what you're asked to do. How about just obeying police orders. And especially if you think you might have outstanding warrants, how about not escalating the situation by fighting with the police. How many black lives would be saved if every black person who was pulled over just quietly and respectfully went along with the program and didn't resist?
Are the police always right? No, of course not. But are the police all racists who are out to kill blacks? Only an idiot would think so. Police work is complicated and dangerous, and never so much as it is now. Most police are good people who want to do their job and enforce the law as written. Most of them don't want violent confrontations, let alone any reason to shoot somebody. The vast majority of police officers just want to work their shift and get home safely to their families at night.
This latest shooting in Minneapolis is not as cut and dry as the media and the BLM Marxists would have you believe. First of all, the young man, Duante Wright, was pulled over for expired license tags (not for a hanging air freshener on his rearview mirror as reported by liars). The police ran a check on him and found that he had a felony warrant for possession of an illegal firearm.
As they attempted to arrest him (outside of his car) he resisted, fighting the cops and twisting out of their grasp. He forced his way back into his car and it was then that a female officer shot him. She thought she'd grabbed her taser but pulled her pistol by mistake.
The police body cam and accompanying audio shows the whole thing. On the audio you can hear the officer shouting ÒTaser! Taser! Taser!Ó which is how they alert their fellow officers to get out of the way when they are about to shoot their taser. After the shot you can hear the audible gasp from the female officer when she realizes her mistake.
A horrible thing that never should have happened, but it could have been avoided if the suspect had not escalated the situation by resisting the police, jerking his arms out of the handcuffs, and trying to get into his car to flee. I'm a white man, an old white man, but I guarantee you if I had a felony warrant out on me for possession of an illegal firearm and I resisted the cops, pulling himself free of the cuffs and attempting to jump into my car to escape, I would have been treated the same as Wright was.
Does anybody really think, especially given where this incident transpired and the volatile times in which we now live, that this veteran (20 plus years) female officer PURPOSELY took out her gun and killed the man because he was black?
If she hated blacks so much why did it take her 20 something years on the force before she killed one? Common sense tells us this was an accident, a terrible accident.
But common sense doesn't matter anymore. We live in a time where facts, details, and mitigating circumstances are not considered. Benefit of the doubt is no longer given to our law enforcement officers. And the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" is ignored or scoffed at.
The mob goes onto the streets immediately, rioting, burning, looting and attacking anything in their path.
Barack and Michelle Obama and other race-baiting political hacks who delight in dividing us jump on the bandwagon, condemning the cops, siding with the rioters and overall making things even worse. The news media helps stoke the flames by repeating rumors, innuendo, and the mantra of BLM and never, never offering another side to the story.
And here we go again. It's only mid-April but I sense a summer rerun of 2020 is on its way. I hope I'm wrong.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. He's been a JWR contributor since 1999.