I was made aware of this article by a friend of mine. It’s an essay on the recent police shooting in Chicago, the protests (riots) that ensued, the hypocrisy of those protesters (rioters), and how the lies that spew from the mouths of Black Lives Matter regarding police racism and brutality will only serve to make black communities even more dangerous places than they already are, by causing law enforcement to become less and less willing to enforce the law.
A Tale of Two Killings
– Chicago erupts in violence over a police shooting, but no outrage attends the far more typical killing of a bystander by a murderous felonLast Sunday, a 59-year-old woman on the West Side of Chicago was killed by a would-be carjacker. The felon walked up to the driver’s side of the car, which was being driven by a 71-year-old man, and pulled his gun. The senior citizen refused to surrender the vehicle and kept driving. The would-be carjacker opened fire at the car, striking the woman in the head and killing her.
And that sound you’re hearing is crickets. Albeit, the sound of crickets interspersed with the crack of gunfire. Because from 7/15 – 7/21 a total of 50 people have been shot in Chicago, ten of them died. No protests.
The night before, on the South Side, a Chicago officer killed a 37-year-old man whom the officer’s patrol partners had observed behaving in a manner suggesting that he was carrying a gun. The officers tried to question Harith Augustus, and he appeared to pull something from his wallet, according to police body-camera footage, possibly his firearms owner-identification card. One officer tried to grab Augustus (the police report said that he became combative), but he pulled away and ran into the street, where he appeared to reach for the gun holstered on his right hip. One of the officers opened fire and killed him. Augustus’s gun was recovered at the scene.
And sad case of another individual who couldn’t get it through his thick skull that being combative with police and resisting arrest is never a good idea. Reaching for a weapon when police have contacted you probably isn’t the greatest idea either. Look at the video and you tell me if you think this shooting is justified.
I say that it is.
But of course, Black Lives matter and groups like them don’t agree with me. To them, this is nothing but cold-blooded murder! This is definitely not cool, and the social justice warriors took to the streets en masse!
True to script, the officer-involved shooting sparked violent street anarchy on Saturday night, instigated by Black Lives Matter, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and other anti-cop activist groups. Protesters threw rocks and bottles, some filled with urine, at officers. Four officers were injured. Chants included “How do you spell racist? CPD [Chicago Police Department],” and “Murderers.” Protests have continued, drawing intense local media and political attention. “This department is racist . . . and we’re tired of it,” said one of the organizers.
If the CPD really is a band of racist murderers, then why didn’t they open fire on this unruly crowd? Certainly a pack of murderous scoundrels such BLM claims CPD to be wouldn’t tolerate being assaulted with rocks and bottles of piss. At least one of the psychotic animals on the CPD would have snapped and begun firing into the hostile crowed of black protesters (rioters). How could a murderer resist such a target-rich environment. But that didn’t happen. Go figure.
There were no protests against the taking of the carjacking victim’s life. Carjackings have nearly tripled in Chicago since 2015, averaging two per day in 2017 and close to that in 2018. In August 2016, officers tried to pull over a car involved in an earlier carjacking; someone inside the car opened fire and hit one of the officers in the face. The shooter was on parole for attempted armed robbery. In January 2017, a teen carjacker ambushed a 34-year-old mother in an alleyway where she had been parking her car. His initial blow to her head with his gun was so severe that it temporarily blinded her. “Quit trying to kick back, you white bitch,” the assailant said as he pistol-whipped her. Before the attack, the mother had noticed a van suspiciously idling in the alleyway, but decided to continue about her business, likely second-guessing herself about “racial profiling.” In March 2017, a man with a gun forced a 24-year-old woman into the trunk of her car and raced it around the South Side until crashing into a tree. In August 2017, a 28-year-old entrepreneur and student was fatally shot in his car when he refused to hand it over to the carjacker. In November 2017, a pair of thugs accosted an 88-year-old man and stole his Lincoln at gunpoint. They almost immediately crashed into a semitrailer truck and retaining wall; one of the two felons died in the crash.
And more . . .
In the first six months of 2018, more than 60 children under 15 have been shot in Chicago. In June alone, an 11-year-old boy was shot in the head; a 12-year-old girl was killed as she was carrying her baby cousin; and a 14-year-old boy was gunned down by a passing car. Black Lives Matter activists have nothing to say about this violence because it does not involve police officers. Officer-involved shootings are a minute fraction of Chicago’s ongoing carnage—in 2016, they made up 0.5 percent of all shootings in the city. The foot patrol that accosted Augustus was in the neighborhood—the CPD’s Third District—because the local alderman, residents, and business owners had requested greater police protection. The area had seen an increase in open-air drug deals. So far this year, there have been 69 shootings in the Third District, a little under a dozen a month, 15 of them fatal. A witness reported to the Chicago Sun-Times that Augustus was selling “loosies”—single untaxed cigarettes—a practice that shop owners loathe for its contribution to an atmosphere of street lawlessness.
Black Lives Matter has thankfully lost its sounding board in the White House. But at the local level, away from the Resistance-obsessed national media radar screen, its anti-cop poison continues to distort policing and police-community relations. It is a tragedy for Augustus’s family and acquaintances that he lost his life; the shooting must be thoroughly investigated. If any tactical changes are needed to lessen the risk that a police encounter escalates into the use of lethal force, they should be implemented through rigorous hands-on training. But the officers were right to approach an apparently armed man, especially given the area’s record of shootings. Such proactive policing has dropped precipitously in Chicago, resulting in a sharp rise in violent crime since 2014. (Law professors Paul Cassell and Richard Fowles empirically connect the drop in stops to rising crime in this 2018 paper.)
To illustrate, here’s a snap-shot of a few of those violent crimes in Chicago so far this year:
One must wonder why there hasn’t been 303 protests to match the number of murders.
The anti-cop violence against the CPD for a shooting that, though deeply unfortunate, appears to be justified will further lessen officers’ willingness to intervene in suspicious behavior. A Chicago detective told me, in the wake of Saturday’s violence: “Those who care about law enforcement and a civil society cannot win against willful blindness and straight-up lies. This is an open civil war that goes quite beyond Chicago.” The demoralization of law enforcement continues, and it is the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas who will continue paying the price.
Yes, those law-abiding citizens are screwed. Who can blame the police for becoming less than willing to uphold the law when it can often ruin their lives? I personally know someone in law enforcement in another shithole of a major city who, after all the BLM uprisings and specifically after the massacre of police officers in Dallas, started looking for safe, quiet areas to park his patrol car and just sit and wait for radio calls. No more proactive policing for him. This man is no coward. He’s a combat veteran who is understandably now more concerned with staying alive for his family’s sake. Thankfully, he will be able to retire from law enforcement soon. It’s just an example of exactly what the author is talking about.
And finally, here’s some insight about all of this from the individual who sent me the article, and another aspect of these incidents that very few people ever stop to consider:
“Society hates cops these days. Obama started the war on cops with the beer summit. When this most recent justified shooting took place, perp had gun in waist band and was reaching for it, most of society wants to blame the officer who pulled the trigger. Let’s think about that officer for a second. A man or woman, a husband, a wife, a father or a mother, an American. A person who dedicates their life to selfless service, for barely enough money to pay the bills, all the while, protecting a society where most people hate you.
No one ever talks about what happens to the cop after a shooting. They didn’t sign up to shoot somebody. Yes, YES!, there are bad cops. Just like there are bad doctors, lawyers, carpenters and plumbers. But the good ones, they don’t want to pull the trigger. Why? Because their life will never, ever, be the same. Take away all the legal implications, look at the human implications. They will, without a doubt, suffer from PTSD. They were doing their job, they were put in a bad situation, someone made a bad choice, and now they have the demon. These are the men, women, husbands and wives, neighbors, friends, Americans that are just trying to provide a living for their family. Providing a service for a society that hates them. Providing for a society that has lied about them. And now they have the demon.
Beati Pacifici.”
Originally published at Fleeting Freedom on July 21, 2018.
