Journalists and Domestic Terrorists Jump the Gun Again

It’s funny how police shootings tend to look a lot different after a little time passes and the facts come out.

Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back as he was reaching into the driver’s seat of a car. It’s on video, and the video most people have seen doesn’t look too good.

Problem: like the edited Rodney King video that led to days of rioting in Los Angeles, the Jacob Blake video is incomplete, and it makes him look considerably nicer than he is.

Now more facts are coming out. A witness says the cops tried to restrain Blake before he walked to the side of his car and tried to enter. They wrestled with him and punched him, but somehow he got loose. The police were overheard saying Blake had a knife.

There is a new video at TMZ, and it shows Blake emerging from a scuffle and walking to his driver’s door.

Things are getting more complicated, and Blake is looking worse.

If the police had a reasonable belief Blake was armed, or if there were kids in the car (as some accounts say), and they feared he would kidnap or harm them, or if they believed he was reaching for a weapon in the driver’s area of his car, then deadly force may have been justified. You can’t always wait to see if a violent idiot is reaching for a gun or his sunglasses.

If deadly force was justified, was the level of force the police used reasonable?

That may sound like a stupid question, because deadly is deadly. You could say that if it’s reasonable to shoot someone once, it must be reasonable to shoot him 7 times. That’s not necessarily true, though. You’re only allowed to continue shooting someone as long as you reasonably believe he’s not getting the message. If one shot changes his mind or incapacitates him, and you know it, you have to stop shooting. Of course, you can’t necessarily stop and check a suspect’s demeanor between shots, so in many cases, shooting until a suspect drops is the correct thing to do.

It looks like there are a lot of questions left to be answered.

I have very little sympathy for Blake. There was no need to batter innocent police officers who were trying to prevent his dysfunctional family from destroying itself. If I fought with several cops and then reached into my car, I would expect to be shot. He worked hard to make them shoot. Still, a cop has to have a sound reason for his actions. If the cop who shot Blake didn’t have good reason to fear a very bad outcome had he not fired, or if he kept firing when a reasonable cop would have stopped, he may have committed aggravated battery or attempted murder.

There are questions about the police and Jacob Blake, but I have no patience at all with the rioter terrorists. Their act is not about justice. It’s about racism, sadism, theft, arrogance, and ignorance.

If you’ve ever looted, set fire to a building or vehicle, or physically attacked another person for disagreeing with you, you’re not a protestor. You’re a terrorist and a common criminal. It’s that simple.

It’s strange that no one is complaining about the all-too-common practice of resisting the police. If you take the list of BLM martyrs and subtract the ones who fought the police, you would end up with a much shorter document. Eric Garner fought the police. George Floyd fought the police. Michael Brown fought the police. Trayvon Martin fought a neighborhood watch volunteer who worked with the police. Life is better when you don’t fight the police. If you think they’re wrong, get in the car and ride to the police station with them anyway. Then find yourself a camera-loving lawyer. Even if you’re completely innocent before the cops show up, if you fight them or run away in a car, you become a felon, and you may be setting yourself up for a justified shooting.

My sister was convicted of felony fleeing and eluding. The cops say she ran from a traffic stop and hit the cop who was standing by her car. She was originally charged with aggravated battery. If she had taken a traffic ticket, she would have had some problems. There were issues with her insurance and so on, and she might have been arrested. She would have gone to court and apologized, the judge would have let her go, and that would have been it. Instead, she lost her law license and spent a fair amount of time in jail, and she ended up with a conviction. You can’t be your own judge and jury. When the cops have a problem with you, the appropriate place to set things straight is a lawyer’s office or a courtroom.

I remember taking a clinical course in law school. A successful defense lawyer named Bob Amsel taught us on a few occasions. He told us the same thing I’m telling you. Say, “Yes, officer,” and “No, officer,” and do what they ask. You get your turn later, in court. You can say you don’t consent to this or that, but you should still cooperate.

People need to have reasonable expectations of the police. They are generally moderately bright people who are not highly educated. If you’re too smart, you may be rejected if you apply to to join a police force, because the work is boring for highly intelligent individuals. They’re generally average people doing a hard job, dealing with laws they don’t understand as well as attorneys and judges. They make mistakes. Also, some of them are malicious and dishonest. Some don’t handle provocation well. A lot of Americans are putting the police in very difficult situations, and many of us are doing everything we can to provoke them to cross the line. It’s amazing they do as good a job as they do.

News stories say Jacob Blake is paralyzed now. Was his minute of unnecessary, childish defiance worth it? Even if it turns out the police broke the law, Blake’s life is ruined.

Improving police oversight is important. Police overreaching is one of the main reasons the Bill of Rights was written. It’s an ancient problem, and peaceful–truly peaceful–demonstrations have their place. But if I were a black parent, I’d be telling my kids 1) do NOT break the law, and 2) do NOT resist the police, and activism would be a lot farther down on my list of priorities. In other words, I’d be telling them what my white parents told me. Good behavior and cooperating with the police would save more lives than a thousand demonstrations, and besides, we’re supposed to behave well and work with the police. It’s not groveling. It’s not giving in to oppression. It’s what civilized people do.

It would be nice if the press would tell us the whole truth once in a while, and it would also be nice if terrorists and legitimate activists waited to hear the facts and let the justice system do its work. It would also be nice if my cattle pooped rubies the size of pomegranates. Too bad.

The word says God will give the world over to the sword before the rapture. Sure looks like we’re seeing it now.