Another shooting in Minneapolis that spur violence. This time it looks like the police were at fault, sort of.

Really bad policing in Virginia caught on tape. But I’m pretty sure the blame could be spread around.

 

Bad, Bad, Bad Policing…If True

The Story So Far

• The suspect was a 20-year-old named  Daunte Wright.
• He had warrants for selling weed and a weapons charge.
• While the police were cuffing him, he got out of the cuffs and tried to re-enter the car. He was struggling with a male police officer.
• The female police officer pulled her weapon, thinking it was her taser.
• She yelled “taser” three times per protocol so her partner would back away.
• He backed away and she fired. It turned out to be her gun.
• Wright pulled away in his car.
• The female officer said, “I shot him” and dropped her weapon. (Show the video)
• Wright crashed a couple of blocks away and died at the scene.
• The police officer was a white female named Kimberly Potter, 48. She was on the force for 26 years. There has not been any other information out on her. She resigned today.

 

 

What I Think

I want to be sure everyone understands something. I feel confident that the story is right and it makes sense so I believe that this will be the story in the end.

Couple of things:

• Two things can be right at once.
• First, Wright resisted. If he just gave up, nothing would have happened. But he didn’t deserve to die.
• Two, the police officer is incompetent. She should be fired and charges should be brought against her (and probably will).
• This is not evidence of police brutality or systemic racism.

 

The Politicians and the Media

The politicians wasted no times at pushing their narrative.

Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz tweeted:

“I am closely monitoring the situation in Brooklyn Center. Gwen and I are praying for Daunte Wright’s family as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement.”

This son-of-a-bitch didn’t even have any details about the shooting.

Mayor Mike Elliot called for the police officer to be fired Monday. He said:

“my position is that we cannot afford to make mistakes that lead to the loss of life of other people in our profession. I do fully support releasing the officer of her duties.”

Brooklyn Center City Manager Curt Boganey didn’t quite agree with the mayor. He said:

“All employees working for the city of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline. This employee will receive due process and that’s really all that I can say today.”

The media pressed him on whether the police officer should be fired and he responded:

“If I were to answer that question, I’d be contradicting what I said a moment ago — which is to say that all employees are entitled to due process and after that due process, discipline will be determined. If I were to say anything else, I would actually be contradicting the idea of due process.”

The city council fired him two hours later.

By the way, Mayor Mike Elliot decided to support his police department by pulling the “thin blue line” flag which honors the police officers that have died while on duty. That’s a good look.

Eliot further made an ass out of himself by saying this:

Coming from a guy who knows a lot about policing. What happens if someone is armed? What are the police suppose to do? Use foul language?

Prepare for crime to flourish in that city.

Rashida Tlaib tweeted:

So we should get rid of policing all together. And prisons. And the military. Because it can’t be reformed. This is a broad who has a military presence around her place at work, lives in a secure building and has armed guards. This is an example of a politician that hates her constituents and the country. My proof? Violent crime is up 30% in all major cities. Cities that have already defunded and stopped support of the police. Ironically, she is also one that wants to take guns away from law abiding citizens.

President Obama decided to chime in. He tweeted:

He says there needs to be a transparent investigation but has already condemned the police. I also hate the term “reimagine”.

President Biden comment was the most wishy-washy thing I ever heard. Listen:

Couple of things:

• Biden sounds old and rambling. I cut a minute out of the message.
• He questions whether this was intentional.
• He does call for an investigation and peace on the streets. He never did this when Trump was President.
• He never says anything about the police. Not very unifying.
• Remember how people said this violence like we had in the summer was going to go away when Trump was out?
• Remember how Democrats supported the rioters when Trump was President?

 

The Media

As usual, riots ensued.

Last night, 500 people were arrested for looting, setting off fires and shooting off fireworks. I find it amazing that rioting under the Biden administration seems not to be acceptable but, under Trump, no one was arrested.

But, the media still doesn’t get it. They still refuse to believe that the riots are actually riots. This is the police chief getting chewed out by the media when he called the riots riots and him explaining how he knew there were riots:

Mind you, the police chief resigned today. He already knows he is going to get heat no matter what happens. He just said f-it.

CNN is also getting crap but from an unlikely source. This reporter was confronted by a citizen of Brooklyn Center during the riot while on live television. There’s a lot of cussing here so turn this off if you have kids around.

She really didn’t want to have this conversation with him on live television because it goes against the narrative the media is pushing. This citizen sounds like he hates the riots around a police station and court house and he feels the media actually fuels this violence.

Fact check: True!

This man wants law and order and it sounds like he supports policing. At least he supports it enough that he doesn’t want to see violent riots in front of a police station.

What this man did do that may not have been the best advice was to tell the CNN news crew to go to the front lines of the riot to see what was going on. I don’t think he meant for them to get hurt but those rioters were not too peaceful. In fact, they were looking for blood.

But, hey, it was mostly peaceful. Unless one was white then maybe not so much.

By the way, do you think unarmed social workers will be useful here? Do you think any claims of racism from the media for this obvious targeting of white by black rioters? What if the rioters weren’t black but was made up of Proud Boys (by the way, the Proud Boys aren’t a white supremacist group)?

Yeah, we won’t see this video on CNN any time soon.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-police-release-video-of-minneapolis-shooting-claim-officer-thought-she-was-firing-taser
https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-suggests-minneapolis-police-shooting-could-have-been-intentional-urges-investigation
https://www.dailywire.com/news/minneapolis-mayor-declares-state-of-emergency-announce-curfew-as-minneapolis-braces-for-riots?%3Futm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dwtwitter
https://www.dailywire.com/news/rioters-smash-police-cars-vandalize-police-station-in-minneapolis-while-looters-storm-businesses-following-police-shooting
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-reimagine-policing-daunte-wright-shooting

 

Not Really Clear Cut

There was another case of bad policing in Virginia. And it was bad policing. But, watching the whole video a couple of times, I came to a bit of a different conclusion.

• An Army officer was lit up by police for not having a license plate while he was on his way back from base in his new car.
• The road he was driving on was dark. The officer put on his hazard lights and drove to a gas station. The trip was about 3 miles.
• The officer pulled into the station and the police officers got out of their car with guns drawn.
• They ordered him to get out of his car but he did not comply, asking why he was being pulled over.
• Backup was called.
• The army officer was black and Latino. The lead officer was Latino. The secondary officer was white.
• The army officer had his hands out of the window but would not come out of the car. The secondary white officer holstered his gun.
• The lead officer pulled out his mace and maced the army officer. He did it twice.
• The army officer finally was pulled from the car and put in handcuffs. He was detained not arrested.
• Because the car was new, the army officer did not have the plates. A temporary, paper plate was in his window. The window was tinted and unable to be viewed in any of the video.
• The army officer was released.
• When a complaint was lodged, both officers were fired.
• He is not suing the officers.

 

One should watch the entire video. There are a few things that really make this story far more complicated than at first glance and fault can be put on all sides.

• The police officers overreacted. The yelling and pulling of guns was probably not necessary.
• The officers threaten him with shooting him. When the soldier said he was scared the lead officer replied, “You should be.”
• Pepper spraying the subject, who had his hands out of the window and was talking to officers was not necessary. The fact that the second officer put away his gun shows he did not feel he was a threat.
• The officers did not realize that the yelling and pointing of guns is very nerve racking and it is hard to follow directions under such stress.
• The officers never deescalated the situation.

 

The army officer was also at fault. He almost escalated the situation himself.

• The army officer never complied with any of the commands of the police officers.
• The army officer was resisting and arguing.
• He was livestreaming the incident.
• His license plate was hidden behind the tinted glass.
• This had probably nothing to do with racism. The tinted windows and the night probably did not give the police a good view of the driver.

 

My point here is these instances are examples of bad policing. But the reality is the victims of these examples didn’t help themselves at all. One had a warrant, resisted arrest and tried to escape.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-pull-guns-spray-black-latino-army-officer/story?id=76992531

Lawsuit filed after Army lieutenant is held at gunpoint, pepper-sprayed in arrest