Article by Scott Morefield in "Townhall":
When George Floyd was allegedly killed by a callous police
officer needlessly placing his knee to his neck for several minutes, the
nation was united, for about a minute. Nobody in America looked at that
video and thought, “that guy got what he deserved.” Nobody. And yet,
leftist-led protests that quickly turned to lawless riots quickly turned
off a huge segment of law-abiding American society. Instead of a
rational, national discussion on police militarization, community
policing, use of force, proper de-escalation tactics, and other
common-sense reforms that would help ALL races in their interactions
with law enforcement, the ‘movement’ quickly became about defunding
police forces, creating quasi-communist policeless states in the middle
of major U.S. cities, and “dismantling systemic societal structural
racism,” or something.
Tragically,
what should have had absolutely nothing to do with race became ALL
about race as the chattering class used one example to ‘prove’ a point real data and statistics
can easily disprove. Instead of bringing in white and other color
victims of unjust police brutality to create a multi-racial coalition
against an evil that can affect anyone, and there are plenty such
examples, they literally canonized a career criminal who once did five
years in prison for holding a gun to the stomach of a pregnant black
woman while her house was robbed. No, there weren’t 18 funerals for Tony Timpa and Daniel Shaver,
much less a golden casket or a horse-drawn carriage, but those men also
died unjustly at the hands of police, and both of those incidents, when
you examine the details, were arguably more unjust than Floyd’s. The
difference, of course, was the color of their skin, which is probably
why you’ve never heard their names.
Instead of a wrongly killed career criminal, it would
be easy to wonder if George Floyd weren’t some otherworldly, Marvel
Universe-style combination of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.,
Gandhi, and Mother Theresa. Next, look for Democrats to move to place
his bust in the U.S. Capitol's rotunda. As angry mobs burned down
buildings, looted stores, vandalized property, assaulted and even killed
police, the rest of America looked on, aghast, wondering if the
entirety of Western civilization must burn because of the actions of one
police unit.
Then, Rayshard Brooks lost his life
Friday night and the mob again lost their ever-loving minds. Instead of
waiting for the facts and admitting the possible differences in the two
cases, they burned down the Wendy’s where Brooks refused to be cuffed,
fought police, grabbed a taser and ran. Brooks wasn’t on the ground, nor
was he handcuffed, yet the left is lifting up this criminal as a
martyr, just like Floyd, another example of police-gone-wild, roaming
around looking to kill innocent black men willy-nilly. Atlanta’s police
chief has resigned. Its mayor is condemning her own law enforcement, and
the officer who fired his weapon has been fired and will likely face
some sort of prosecution.
Yet, all this could have been easily avoided. In a telling segment
on Saturday night’s “Justice with Jeanine Pirro,” Former New York City
Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik offered a few suggestions
that “radical left-wing progressive mayors and governors” should give
petty criminals and even violent "thugs" in order to avoid fatal
confrontations with police. Because, despite what you’re hearing from
the mob these days, these things usually tend to be a two-way street.
“They
can start with reforms like tell the thugs in your community don’t
attack our police,” Kerik said. “Don’t assault our police. Don’t resist
arrest. Don’t obstruct or interfere with an arrest. Don’t run from the
police. Don’t run cops over with your car. Don’t take their tasers.
Don’t take their weapons. Don’t take their guns, because if you do,
we’ll use force. And we are not going to lose if we use force.”
Duh, right? That stuff used to be obvious anyone with
half a brain, but apparently it isn't anymore. Weighing in on the same
discussion, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino noted that it is, in
fact, “illegal” to run from police: “Resisting arrest is a crime. If
you don’t like that, change the laws and good luck having anyone
arrested in your community ever. I want to be clear what you are
suggesting if you are suggesting that’s not a crime. Do you think anyone
can throw blows at the cops and take their weapons and run from them?”
With
Floyd, conservatives weren’t completely sure what the left wanted, but
were nevertheless willing to for the most part be silent and put up with
a LOT of unrest in no small part because the sight of a human being
choked unmercifully like that touched us all. Now another man is sadly
dead by the hands of police in this heightened climate, but anyone who
thinks that Reyshard Brooks wouldn’t be alive had he not fought police
and grabbed a taser is drinking some strong Kool-Aid. It’s often been
said that if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes, and this man
was playing a really, really stupid game.
We’re told unarmed African-American men are literally
being hunted down and killed by police every day, when all of nine were
killed during the entirety of 2019, most of those arguably justified.
We’re told police are racist, but far more whites are killed by police
than blacks, and police have even been shown to hesitate when facing
black suspects in potentially deadly situations.
In
this climate, it wouldn’t surprise me if police officers don’t start
getting fired and even prosecuted for daring to defend themselves
against armed, active black shooters, much less those who steal their
tasers. Were I a cop, I think I’d rather just take a beating and let the
suspect run for the hills rather than become the next former-cop
mugshot. Wouldn’t you? I don’t care if you’re the KKKleagle or the head
of Antifa, nobody, and I do mean nobody, wants to be the next Derek
Chauvin. None of this, of course, bodes well for the state of law and
order in America. Criminals will run rampant, knowing they will get away
with everything short of outright murder or, heaven forbid, making a
mistake on their taxes. Minority communities will suffer the most, but
those victims are just collateral damage to the left’s culture war.
The
left thinks it has the national tide, and maybe it does now, but by
making this a race issue, leaving out other victims of police brutality,
and going hysterical over cases where police were clearly justified in
their use of force, that tide could quickly ebb. The left has exposed
itself here for the race-baiting, evil hypocrites they are. Mobs can be
powerful, destructive, even convincing in their own, Spanish
Inquisitiony sort of way. But rational they are not. Over the long haul,
let’s hope enough adults in the room can muster the courage to stand up
against this insanity, before it’s too late.