A while back I wrote about a situation up here in which a young black man was killed by the police, resulting in numerous demands from the BLM types.
Of the first round of demands they got two. Later they demanded that the case not be taken to a grand jury and that the decision to charge be made by the prosecutor instead. True to form the prosecutor gave in and did as they demanded.
Before I go on, a quick reminder, this happened in the heart of a city, county, and state historically and currently controlled by the democrat party.
The assumption on the part of the BLM types was that they could put enough pressure on the prosecutor to force him to charge that police officers no matter what the evidence. As part of a preview of coming attractions these fine upstanding citizens essentially laid siege to a police station, blocking roads, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, and hindering the police from protecting the rest of the citizens of that district. After a couple of weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted (I can't imagine that they couldn't have gone toward something more useful), they got bored and moved on.
Cut to today, the prosecutor finally makes his announcement about charges. He brings out video evidence, forensic evidence, DNA evidence, testimonial evidence, and reached the conclusion that (based on the actual, real, legally admissible evidence) that charges against the police officers were not justified.
Surprising no one, the press conference was hijacked by a local activist (not a member of the press), who proceed to pretend as if none of the evidence that had been shown was going to change her preconceived notion based on her bias against the police department. The kicker was when she said to the prosecutor, "When the fires (or burning) starts it will be on you." or words to that effect.
Seriously, om what planet does justice look like "Do what we want, or we'll burn things down."?
Personally I hope that cooler heads prevail and that there will be no riots, no burning, and no violence. But given the history, I just don't know.
A few thoughts keep swimming around in my head.
1. You (the urban African American community) elected and continue to vote for the very people who you now claim are the problem and have been for decades.
2. What does it say about our political system when people expect to be able to influence the outcomes in a criminal justice proceeding by threats or by political influence?
3. The "victim" in this case had beaten his girlfriend badly enough to require that an ambulance be called, was trying to prevent the EMT's from treating the woman he had beaten, then when the police tried to stop him he resisted arrest and tried to take one of the officer's weapon. I'm not saying that he deserved to die like this, but can't these folks see that making this guy a "poster boy" for their cause does absolutely no good and ultimately probably harms it.
4. Where is the sympathy for the young woman he beat the crap out of?
What we seem to have here is a case in which justice seems to have been done despite all of the threats and pressure put on the prosecutor, and an opportunity for the BLM folks to demonstrate that justice is really what they want.
EDIT
I just want to applaud the fact that so far the protests have stayed non violent despite the public threat made at the press conference.
EDIT 2
The woman who was beaten did a TV interview last night in which she contradicted her 911 call while people still try to deny the physical/forensic evidence while clinging to the contradictory witness statements. But again, props to the protesters for not doing any damage,
2 comments:
There was a time, long, long ago in a world far, far away, when the rule of jurisprudence was the assumption that the person being arrested was actually innocent of the charges and it was the daunting task of the prosecutor to prove otherwise. The original idea of this long ago land was that it was more just to release a guilty person than to imprison an innocent one.
Fast forward to today when trials are carried out on the Internet and the media and the public square and "No justice, no peace" is best translated "Do what we say on this or we are going to burn you down."
Now, let me think ... where was that long ago, far away land?
Amen. Couple that with this recent attitude that Justice requires that certain people or groups of people must be prosecuted and have their lives ruined, simply to satisfy some sort of ridiculous notion of justice.
Twice in the last month or so, we've seen family members interviewed on TV bemoaning the fact that they had children who were killed while they were in the midst of committing crimes. Not once do they even acknowledge the fact that had their children not been in the act of committing crimes that they most likely would still be alive. Not to minimize individual responsibility, but when you have parents who don't seem to understand that raising children who beat women or break into people homes indicates at least some degree of failure on the part of the parents.
This guy's parents were on the news last night and just couldn't seem to understand that the death of their son could be anything except police misconduct. Nor did the fact that there was scientific forensic evidence which corroborated the testimony of the officers dissuade them from believing that that the inconsistent and changing "eyewitness" statements, seem to have any affect on them it all.
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