Has it been a year already? It doesn’t seem that long. But last year on August 13th I wrote about Michael Drejka’s shooting of thug Markeis McGlockton in Florida on Fleeting Freedom. Back then I wrote, and you all seemed to agree, that this shooting was unjustified. I said, “McGlockton WAS retreating. Drejka was right to DRAW his weapon after being blind-sided by a thug. BUT, once he did, the thug stepped back. At that point there was no reason to shoot him. He was out of danger for the moment. Had the thug taken another step TOWARDS him, then it would have been game on.”
And yes, I said he killed a thug. And I said that because I also wrote a year ago, “McGlockton’s criminal record includes drug charges, petit theft, and an aggravated battery.” Here’s a more detailed history of Markeis’ record:
Following are some of the arrests for Markeis McGlockton:
6/25/2008 AGGRAVATED BATTERY DOMESTIC, 784.045(1)(B)/F
6/25/2008 RESISTING ARREST WITH VIOLENCE, 843.01/F
6/25/2008 DISORDERLY CONDUCT, 877.03/M
5/05/2009 SALE OF COUNTERFEIT DRUGS, 893.13(1)(A)(1)/F
9/10/2010 POSSESSION OF COCAINE, 893.13(6)(A)/F
9/25/2010 POSSESSION OF CONTROLLED SUBS COCAINE, 893.13(6)
9/25/2010 POSSESSION OF COCAINE, 893.13(6)(A)/F
9/25/2010 SALE OR DELIVERY OF COCAINE, 893.13(1)(A)(1)/F
9/25/2010 POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA, 893.13(6)(B)/M
9/21/2011 PETIT THEFT, 812.014(3)(A)/M
9/21/2011 DRIVING UNREGISTER VEHICLE *NCTC, 320.02(1)/M
9/21/2011 DWLSR *NCTC 1, 322.34(2)(A)/M
That’s a thug. So as I said a year ago, “All that happened before 2011 up until the point in 2018 he committed another battery, as seen on the video the day he died. He can’t be charged for it because he’s dead, but he still committed another crime, a crime for which he had priors. So I’m thinking this part about “all happened before 2011” is not an indication that this guy changed his ways, but rather he just hadn’t been caught since then.”
SO although Markeis was wrongfully killed I haven’t shed a tear over it and nor will I.
And trigger happy Drejka has been convicted of manslaughter, and rightfully so. Case closed, right? Wrong. We have to make this all about racism now.
In a case that brought national attention to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” gun law, a jury on Friday night convicted a licensed gun owner on manslaughter charges after deliberating for six hours following a weeklong trial.
The defendant, Michael Drejka, was accused of killing Markeis McGlockton in the parking lot of a convenience store in Clearwater on July 19, 2018, after arguing with McGlockton’s girlfriend over a handicapped parking space. Drejka claimed he fatally shot McGlockton in self-defense.
In surveillance video played for the jury, McGlockton is seen emerging from the store and shoving Drejka to the ground. Seconds later, Drejka pulls out Glock .40-caliber handgun and shoots McGlockton, 28, as he turned away.
In case you didn’t see or don’t recall the video, here it is again.
“He did what he thought he had to do, in the moment, in the split-second time, given that he was attacked,” Drejka’s attorney, John Trevena, said during his closing argument, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “You may not agree with the law. But you took an oath as a juror to uphold the law.”
Aside from being a test of the “Stand Your Ground” law, the case also took on racial dimensions because Drejka is white and McGlockton was black.
Of course it did. Because when is anything NOT interpreted as being racist today? But let’s continue . . .
Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” gun legislation, which became law in 2005, established the right for gun owners to apply lethal force to defend themselves against threats regardless of whether it was possible to retreat first. In 2017, state legislators revised the law to put the burden of proof on prosecutors to disprove a Stand Your Ground claim instead of on defense attorneys to prove one.
The lengthy statute generally says a shooting is justified if a reasonable person under those circumstances would believe they are in danger of death or great bodily harm. But it also says the shooter could not have instigated the altercation.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri initially did not arrest Drejka, saying the controversial law precluded him from doing so. Three weeks would pass before Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe announced his office was formally arresting and charging Drejka with manslaughter.
Some suggested politics or race played a role in the sheriff’s initial decision not to arrest, but Gualtieri was quick to deny those accusations.
Again, everything is racist.
“He told deputies that he had to shoot to defend himself. Those are the facts and that’s the law,” Gualtieri told Fox News at the time. “No matter how you slice it or dice it that was a violent push to the ground.”
But civil rights activists said the shooting, and the sheriff’s delay in arresting Drejka, spoke to a culture of racism within the state of Florida. The National Rifle Association, as well as Republican legislators who helped write the law, disputed the sheriff’s interpretation of it and all five Democratic candidates for governor stood alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton at an Aug. 5, 2018 “Justice for Markeis” rally to call for a repeal of the law.
And yet even more cries of racism. But if that was really so, that this crime was a racist act, isn’t it interesting that no hate crime charge was issued here? Drejka actions were wrong but nowhere have I seen it mentioned that he uttered any racial slurs during the commission of this crime or was otherwise motivated by the skin color of the victim. Had any of that happened, you can bet the prosecution would have been all over it. But again, that didn’t come to be.
McGlockton’s family was pleased with the verdict.
“This conviction doesn’t bring our son back, but it does give us some sense of justice . . .”
And if they had just said that and ended it there everything would have been fine. But no, here comes even more accusations of racism, not only of Djerka, but of the criminal justice system as a whole.
“. . . because far too often the criminal justice system fails us by allowing people who take the lives of unarmed Black people to walk free as though their lives meant nothing,” McGlockton’s mother, Monica Robinson, said in a statement. “We are hopeful that this conviction will be a brick in the road to changing the culture of racism here in Florida.”
Obviously she was implying that it’s whites who are killing these defenseless blacks. OK, where exactly is this happening? Where is it that I can go in this nation and unjustifiably kill an unarmed black person, or any other person for that matter, and get away with it? The only places that come to mind are cities like Chicago. And guess who commits the vasts majority of killings like those? Other blacks. So can we please just dispense with this nonsense?
There is no epidemic of white’s committing the wholesale slaughter of black people. Get that myth out of your damned heads! This was a case of a deranged thug unjustifiably killing another thug. That’s all it was. And it’s one isolated incident.
Drejka will be sentenced in October and could get up to 30 years behind bars.
Look, no one enjoys a righteous killing as much as I do (see Body Cam Theater) but this was wrong. And justice was served here. But that will just never be enough for some people. Everything is and will remain racist.
