The Jacob Blake narrative: on getting the story straight
Remember the initial story about Jacob Blake and what he was doing at the location where he was shot? If you don’t, I’ll refresh your memory. Very shortly after Blake’s shooting, his family retained the same lawyer who keeps turning up in these cases, Ben Crump. Crump stated that [emphasis mine]:
…Blake “was helping to deescalate a domestic incident when police drew their weapons and tasered him. As he was walking away to check on his children, police fired their weapons several times into his back at point blank range.”
This was widely reported and seemingly accepted by the MSM. And yet Blake’s rap sheet was rather easily and quickly obtained (by heavy.com, for one, as you can see by this post I wrote on the day after Blake’s shooting) and it said he was wanted for felony third-degree sexual assault.
And a person doesn’t need to do any research to know that no one walks away from a group of police, weapons drawn and screaming to stop (not to mention the civilian onlookers screaming for Blake to stop), and walks towards a car to check on children who are merely sitting in the car. It doesn’t pass the smell test, even as a concept. Not only that, but the children were in the back seat, and Blake opened the driver’s front door and bent down.
One day after Blake’s shooting, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin said, according to CNN [emphasis mine]:
Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times in front of his children. And let me be clear, this was not an accident. This was not bad police work. This felt like some sort of vendetta being taking out on a member of our community.
Let me repeat: this was the Lieutenant Governor of the state speaking. Was he deliberately lying and defaming the police, hoping to stir up trouble? Or did he just speaking about how it felt to him? Either way, unacceptable and unconscionable as well as irresponsible.
But that wasn’t enough for 33-year-old Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. He felt the need to add [emphasis added]:
“The officers’ daily actions attempted to take a person’s life in broad daylight…
“The irony is not lost on me that as Jacob Blake was actually trying to deescalate a situation in his community, but the responding officer didn’t feel the need to do the same…
Well, we know one person who wasn’t trying to deescalate a situation in his community: Mandela Barnes.
So to Crump and Barnes, Blake was a heroic victim. I understand that, as Blake’s family’s lawyer, Crump would present him that way. But Barnes? Pure identity politics and leftism (that’s redundant, I know). And I’m not going to sit on a hot stove till Barnes issues an apology or a retraction. In fact, it turns out that as recently as Thursday, this was Barnes’s stated position:
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has come out against due process, saying during a press conference Thursday that “we don’t need an investigation” to know that the police shooting of Jacob Blake was a racially motivated hate crime.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that (Jacob) Blake’s shooting falls in a long and painful pattern of violence. And this is a pattern of violence that happens against Black lives too often across this country,” Barnes, a black man himself, said during the presser.
I seem to remember that in the state of Wisconsin the people can recall a governor; there was an effort to do that with Scott Walker. So, how about recalling a lieutenant governor (not that Evers, their present governor, is any better)? How can the public respect due process when the elected officials show such contempt for it and/or ignorance of it? [Please see first ADDENDUM below.]
We have learned more and more about Blake in the six days since his shooting – not just his criminal record, but the fact that he had a knife in his car or hand (most likely in his hand during the police encounter, since witnesses report the police were yelling at him to drop the knife [please see ADDENDUM II below]), and also we now learn this description of the sexual assault for which Blake was wanted at the time. It makes for fairly revolting reading.
And we also learn that, when the shooting happened about three months after the assault described in that link, Blake was at the house of the same woman, who is the mother of three of his children. Were these perhaps the same children in the car? We’ve heard next to nothing about why they were in the car, as well, but it makes sense to wonder. I’ve read that Barnes was a father of six, so it’s possible these are three other children, but if they were this woman’s children, I wonder whether he had legal access to them or not. If not, that adds still another terrible dimension to the story and might help further explain the police shooting him.
At any rate, this is why the police originally came to the scene last Sunday:
Blake was shot in front of his girlfriend’s home on Sunday by Kenosha police after resisting arrest.
Officials have said that the mother of three of Blake’s children had called 911 and reported that he was at her house and had taken her keys.
Blake was already wanted on charges in connection with the rape and domestic abuse of the same woman in May.
Car keys? House keys?
And you know what? It’s not rocket science to have figured out that it was the same woman. I guessed as much two days ago, in this post. Law of parsimony, that’s all.
Here we learn what should also be no surprise whatsoever, which is that there was a restraining order against Blake, and that the police who came to the scene knew about his history against this woman and about the order:
Blake, 29, was forbidden from going to the Kenosha home of his alleged victim from the May 3 incident, and police were dispatched Sunday following a 911 call saying he was there.
The responding officers were aware he had an open warrant for felony sexual assault, according to dispatch records and the Kenosha Professional Police Association, which released a statement on the incident on Friday.
That police union statement also claimed that Blake was armed with a knife at the time of the shooting — and had put one cop in a headlock and shrugged off two Taser attempts while resisting arrest.
The headlock information is new, although we knew there had been a struggle. Also, we had been told about one failed taser attempt, but apparently there had been two. So for all the people asking why they didn’t taser him instead of shooting him, that’s the answer.
How many people who have heard about the nefarious police shooting of Jacob Blake, peacemaker, know any of these further facts? I doubt very many.
Oh, and brilliant Mark Zuckerberg had this to say:
The juxtaposition of seeing Jacob Blake kind of facing away from police and being shot, next to images of this white kid [Rittenhouse] with a long gun strapped to his body, walking by the police with nothing happening, I think just kind of symbolizes what we all feel is wrong and unjust and just how much progress still needs to be made.
Actually, Mark, what it “just kind of symbolizes” is how little you care about either facts or due process. It’s all “images” to you.
And if I sound angry, it’s because I am. All of these people are in the business either of profiting off racial anger and violence, and/or of trying to virtue-signal while stoking racial anger and violence. They are not in the business of discovering the truth if it doesn’t further their preferred narrative. And if the truth hits them in the face, they turn their backs and walk away so they don’t have to look.
[ADDENDUM: Commenter “Gerry” has called my attention to the fact that a petition has been started to recall both Governor Evers and Lieutenant Governor Barnes. Good.]
[ADDENDUM II: To expand a bit on the question of whether the knife was in Blake’s hand during his encounter with the police, I’ve heard there are photos of it but the photos are somewhat indistinct and it’s hard to say definitively what was in his hand. However, there’s also this statement from the Kenosha Professional Police Association. I assume that’s different than the Kenosha police department, which as far as I know has declined to say whether the knife was in his hand. Anyway, here’s the relevant part of the police association statement:
Mr. Blake was not unarmed. He was armed with a knife. The officers did not see the knife initially. The officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side of the vehicle. The “main” video circulating on the internet shows Mr.Blake with the knife in his left hand when he rounds the front of the car. The officers issued repeated commands for Mr. Blake to drop the knife. He did not comply.
Please read the whole thing. You will also note it states another fact I’m been wondering about – whether the car involved was Blake’s car. The statement says that it was not. If that’s true, it raises the question of whose car it was – probably the girlfriend’s, if he took the keys? – and why the children were in it. The plot thickens and thickens.
And where was the girlfriend? Was she one of the people screaming in the video? Was she on the lawn, watching it all?]
Wisconsin jury acquits or hangs.
Cops walk.
There are pictures of him coming around the front of the car with a knife in his hand and the police in pursuit behind him. It’s not a kitchen knife, or pair of scissors. It has a curved blade – a fighting knife for dis-embowling or working the joints of your opponent to open the arteries.
Once again, the same story: Elected officials moving to squander the power of their office in a way that is intentionally ruining the public trust. The police should be front and center in front of the cameras setting the record straight within a few minutes. Here we are a week later and it still hasn’t been done. Three months and counting in the George Floyd case.
And now, on the TV we have a whole lineup of speakers hustling race hate, clamoring for the ‘justice’ du jour. The use of the word has come to mean the opposite of its definition – like ‘Anti-fa’.
If this is Neo writing angry, then I’ll take it any day. An excellent summary, done in a crisp and sober way.
I’ve bookmarked it, so I can have it easily at hand if the subject of Jacob Blake comes up in conversation, even though I avoid talking about the race riots. I’m afraid my anger doesn’t sound much like Neo’s. I make unpleasant noises that aren’t always coherent.
The paperwork to recall these 2 fools has already been filed.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/28/wisconsin-woman-starts-effort-recall-gov-tony-evers-over-kenosha/5663102002/
Cornflour:
I make my unpleasant noises offline, in the privacy of my home or when talking to my two conservative friends. Very unpleasant noises, I can assure you.
Stealing phrasing from a famous internet blogger I say that I am old enough to remember when defending a woman, and mom, from a man she has a lawful restraining order issued against was laudable, demanded even. What would have been said if the police didn’t respond and something awful happened to the “alleged victim”?
Steve Walsh:
“*itches and snitches get stitches?”
The white woke antifa chant is “I don’t see ^hit. I don’t say *hit.”
But I’m not part of those cultures so I’m guessing.
One of Trump’s biggest accomplishments is to lure these moral monsters on the left out so that we can know who they are and what they are. I admit that I am surprised about Mark Zuckerberg. I didn’t expect much from him, but I thought that he was smarter than to blatantly lie. The hate talk from the left will lead to race wars and possible genocide if it is not stopped. Does Zuckerberg think that he can somehow convince the mob to spare him? If a billionaire white man like him thinks that, he is delusional.
It is painfully obvious that Blake is the very essence of a modern African-American gentleman: he does what he wants, when he wants, and whitie had better give him wide latitude, or “racism”.
Zuckerberg is one of the big-time elites. They pontificate their ignorance, which is immediately widely disseminated to millions of brain-dead people all over the world by products of their own manufacture, the “social media”, which I despise. Zuckerberg is a geek who got out of the basement. He is no Elon Musk.
“So to Crump and Barnes, Blake was a heroic victim. I understand that, as Blake’s family’s lawyer, Crump would present him that way.” neo
Crump is not defending an accused with the best defense that can be presented. He’s lying in order to obtain money fraudulently. Had the State Bar Association’s Board of Ethics any integrity it would have disbarred Crump by now.
That they haven’t done so is prima facie evidence of its corruption. That Congress hasn’t acted to address that corruption is indicative of a level of complicity with that corruption. That also applies to much of our judicial system.
We are in grave need of an Article V Convention which can only act effectively in one of two scenarios.
After the coming Civil War is settled.
The only effective alternative to Civil War is for a re-elected Pres. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. Followed by declaring nationwide Martial Law in the face of the predictable and widespread riots that will follow.
Then and most critically, arrest and conduct military trials of the Left’s leadership; the politicians, financiers, media heads and the academics that have fomented sedition, insurrection and treason.
Then outlaw All Totalitarian Ideologies within America. A totalitarian ideology being defined as one whose fundamental principles are antithetical to individual liberty.
Any citizen who continues to advocate for totalitarian principles should be arrested, tried for sedition and when convicted… have their citizenship revoked, along with being declared personna non grata and permanently deported with no possibility of later reentry.
Totalitarian ideologies are societally, a fatal ‘cancer’. Free Speech is not a license to advocate for societal revocation of what effectively amounts to dismissal of our God given inalienable rights.
We can no longer allow the Left to use our alligiance to the Constitution as a suicide pact.
Practically, there is no difference between the Left’s leadership and those who enable that leadership. In fact, when the ignorant willfully reject logic, reason and facts they act as the enablers of evil.
Jacob Blake and his girl friend are a big part of why these black neighborhoods are not improving. LBJ’s War On Poverty has turned out to be a War To Foster Poverty. And dysfunctional behavior. The women are having children with different men and collecting welfare. The men are living a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll – with no path forward. They are children in men’s bodies. Until the black community is willing to face those facts, nothing will change.
The Democrat mayors and governors have failed these communities. Failed schools, crime, dugs, and no jobs are what these neighborhoods offer. And no way out because the education system stinks, Few have any idea of how to get a job and get out of the hood. Marriage is uncommon, 70% of children are born out of wedlock, abortion is common, and being a drug dealer is a common dream for the young men. Is it any wonder that the police interact with black men often?
There is a way out of this, but it isn’t reparations, racial quotas, defunding the police, burning down our cities, or marches on Washington. Unfortunately, it entails hard work and responsibility – something few Democrat politicians are willing to engage in.
As a father of two teenage daughters, I will say that Jacob Blake should consider himself lucky to merely be handcuffed (no longer even that) in a hospital bed.
The cop who shot him deserves a medal, not scorn.
We are at war. The hard left wants us dead, and they are very serious. Act accordingly.
The hard left would have little power absent the support of its “useful idiots”. Therein lies the core of the problem preventing reform.
JJ: great comment. I have to wonder if all 3 of her children are also really his. And if all 3 were conceived after consensual sex. I believe we need to have or revisit a conversation about mandating that women with one or more children supported by welfare (and the men if/when technically possible) to use Norplant or similar reversible contraceptives to avoid future pregnancies that are also subject to tax payer support. Unfortunately I gather we run into the issue of abortifacients and other factors, but there has to be some method to reduce having multiple children under public care. This problem is now also beyond restrictions against a single racial or ethnic group.
If you are up for a terrific rant about these cases from a sane perspective, here is a black ex-cop named Brandon Tatum. It’s pretty good – especially when he gets around to LeBron. From Gerard VdL’s page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw64kntMFUw&feature=emb_logo
Brandon Tatum: Preach it brother!
neo,
Obviously there is much wrong here, and you highlight all the crucial points. I’m most disturbed by the abandonment of the rule of law. This lieutenant governor is not alone. It is such a crucial component of the U.S. system of law yet so many are willing to throw it away without a moment’s hesitation.
Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association now are onboard with eliminating due process.
Very, very disconcerting.
The Brandon Tatum video is something to hear. Would love to see a debate between him and Al Sharpton.
But at 8:40 I think he mis-spoke about Ahmaud Arbery’s intent going into that house under construction.
But he gets it at 11:20: “I grew up as a man”
The explanation actually makes sense, but the timing is atrocious.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/virginia-democrats-pass-bill-reducing-assault-police-officer-misdemeanor/?ff_source=Twitter&ff_campaign=websitesharingbuttons
A couple of fine points, maybe even relevant. I have not seen any story as to just how many children the rape victim has, only that she is the mother of 3 of his children.
In one excerpt from a court documents she tells an investigating officer, when making the report from the May assault, that he and she have been on and off for several years and that he comes around several times a year and does the same thing as she is reporting. So she has been putting up with him for years? And this is the first police involvement? Who knows?
In that report she says he showed up and told her he was “taking what’s his..” Most interpret that as getting personal property, like clothing. Could it have actually been the children he was referring to? And somewhere “car keys” are being mentioned.
And JJ at 6:26pm is dead-on with that assessment.
Another Mike:
I recall reading somewhere that his family said he has six children.
He is 29 years old and I don’t think he’s ever been married, at least I don’t recall reading that he has.
Bonchie makes many excellent points in this post:
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/08/29/heres-the-dumbest-argument-against-the-police-in-the-jacob-blake-case/
I’m curious when it would be known: Did he drive the other woman or women involved in the first reports of an argument to the scene? Were they his family members or friends?
Was the argument regarding how she should retract her report?
AesopFan,
Those are excellent points. The most important of which is that BLM is engaged in insurrection and arguably, the MSM in sedition*.
The country will not survive an absence of meaningful consequence.
10 U.S. Code § 252 – Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority
Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 15, §?332; Pub. L. 109–163, div. A, title X, §?1057(a)(2), Jan. 6, 2006, 119 Stat. 3440; renumbered §?252, Pub. L. 114–328, div. A, title XII, §?1241(a)(2), Dec. 23, 2016, 130 Stat. 2497.)
* 18 U.S. Code §?2384.Seditious conspiracy
“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. [my emphasis]
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, §?1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)
What a sorry tale. If only this poor young man’s treatment by the authorities were without precedent and if only the decision to arrest, charge and prosecute him had been made on a calm and considered evaluation of all the unique facts of the individual case. If that had been so, we could and ought to draw no warnings for the future of the US or the West. However, rather like Nick Sandmann, he appears to have been pre-judged and condemned out-of-hand based on the colour of his skin and his presumed “unwoke” political persuasion.
The future of the West generally and of the US in particular seems to me far from rosey. Your country and mine show all the signs of having lost the sense that governments don’t constitute nations but that nations are its people and that the only legitimate form of governments are those which serve the people by reflecting their shared common values and by securing their freedom to live by these values.
Western governments appear to not care that while sweet, sweet nourishing diversity is all very nice to a point, a people without a shared value system on at least the most basic issues are not a nation at all but are different peoples who just happen to be inhabiting what Teddy Roosevelt called “a polyglot boarding house”.
Surely I’m not wrong in thinking that even still among the majority of our people in the West there remains a broad consensus on basic values along the lines of what has been called the Judaeo-Christian ethic and that the majority still hold that such values represent them, wish to order their lives accordingly and want government only to stay out of the way while they do it.
As your Constitution correctly states, where a government does not reflect the will of the people and becomes destructive of their rights to a fully-realised and free life it can and should be abolished. The precedent has been set.
If history teaches us anything at all it is the wisdom of the ancient admonition to unity of a people: “a house divided against itself cannot stand”
Only in a deeply divided country that has entirely lost its way could rioting mobs of Antifa and BLM be lauded as struggling virtuously for liberty and any white male victim of their violence who fights back in self defence be immediately charged while the perpetrators and their inciters and supporters are left unmolested.
Only in a failing country could one of the two major political parties go into a close federal election season by condemning their nation and its history from the founding to the present as entirely base and evil. Yet here we are.
A lot of history students study ancient battles to thrill to deeds of derring-do. Most don’t know that almost a century and a half before the birth of Caesar Rome was still, geographically and demographically, a tiny nation-state. What was foreign territory to them still extended half way down the peninsula and was known as “Cisalpine Gaul”,(or “Gaul on this side of the Alps”). It was still home to foreigners, to Celtic rather than Roman tribes. There was very little stable Roman territory north of Rome and just a few, (contested), territories in Sicily and Sardinia.
Nevertheless, when Hannibal came across the Alps after the start of the Second Punic War he inflicted three huge defeats on Roman Armies: at Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae. Scholars’ estimates of Roman dead in these 3 battles alone, off a tiny population base, range from 75,000 to 110,000. Cannae alone saw the death of 50,000 Roman soldiers, including one-third of the Senate which had taken the field to fight for Rome.
What I take from this is the Roman response. When Hannibal’s emissary appeared at the gates to Rome to deliver what he and most other peoples of that or any other time would have thought to be a natural demand for the surrender of the city, the Romans forbade him entry and refused to hear him.
When the emissary, stunned, repeated his demand for entry the leaders of Rome told him that he could enter if he insisted, but there would be no talk and only his head would be making the return trip to Hannibal’s camp.
Depleted Rome promptly set about raising a new army and used it to attack Carthage’s holdings in Spain. The city and its territories in the south then withstood almost 20 years of Hannibal’s army ravaging the countryside.This was surely a people who not only knew what and who they were but believed profoundly in themselves and their Gods and the implicit value of their culture and way of life.
We seem today to lack that civilisational self-confidence and, much more importantly, any desire to regain it.
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Outstanding piece.
The rank bias and ignorance of the facts of the case as displayed by local law enforcement authorities is remarkable.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
Scipio:
Thanks for a most worthy comment.
But I must correct you: it is the Declaration of Independence (1776) not the Constitution (1789) to which you refer.
As to “a house divided against itself cannot stand”, I believe a division into two will eventually result. Many of us will not passively accept the totalitarian rule anticipated of the empty symbol Biden and evil Harris and cohorts. Further, if Trump should win, the Democrats, Antifa, BLM, and China lovers will rise up most violently, martial law will necessarily be imposed, and peace cannot be restored until those forces are separated from us (dividing the house), or annihilated.
We have seen the enemy, and it is the Democrats. Still prattling about Russia and silent about China, which signifies their willingness to get into a China bed, adopting Xi’s methods.
President Trump must try to meet with the female victim of Blake, whose 911 call precipitated the incident, when he visits Kenosha this week. Her repeated victimization by Blake and the refusal to acknowledge it by the democrat political class must be highlighted. The rule of law is under assault, not the police or private property. She, like all of us not part of the political class and their looters in the street, are the victims. Trump can cement his commitment to all U.S. citizens and the rule of law which is their birthright and necessary condition of life.
Cicero:
And don’t forget Biden’s advisor Ann (the one who worships Mao) What’s-Her-Name. and the BLM’s Red Guards in DC. The Dem’s love their CCP, it’s the “arc of history” don’t you know.
There are also references online to 2015 charges of illegal firearms against Blake, but that those charges were withdrawn by prosecutors due to witness issues.
Pure speculation on my part: if those earlier charges were known to these cops via records available to dispatch, that could have led to concern that Blake could possibly have been trying to access a gun in his car.
Caveat: I’m not trying to start or promote rumor. This is just pure conjecture on my part.
There are a couple of questions that I haven’t seen addressed. Did Blake bring those kids with him, and was that his car? If he was preparing to flee the scene with the kids in a car he stole from his girlfriend (she did say that he took her keys), it makes the shooting look even more justified.
Thanks Cicero. Much obliged. I stand corrected. (Biggly).
(At this rate, next you’ll be telling me that Emma Lazarus DIDN’T pen the Declaration of Independence). She did, didn’t she?
But seriously, I did know, intellectually, that the passage came from the Declaration but rushed it and didn’t check before pressing “send”.
For the same reason my comment ended up posted under the wrong discussion. I would have made more sense had I posted, as I had intended, under the “Kyle Rittenhouse” article.
While we’re on the subject, I do love your Declaration of Independence – but not for the usual reason of the beauty of the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” as stunningly inspiring as they are. I seem to be almost alone where I live in venerating most highly of all the final few lines in which your founding fathers pledge “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour”.
People I talk to seem to pass over it as a formulaic signing-off, which it isn’t. Had your revolution failed Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, the Adamses, et al, would indeed have ended their lives on His Majesty’s gallows, condemned forever as traitors and their fortunes forfeited to the Crown. And these chaps, lawyers mostly and men of affairs all, knew that. It just astounds me.
Here is about the best 3 minutes of tv I’ve ever seen. It rings so true. Notice that contrary to what the short-sighted would assume to have been the case, there was no joy or even happiness on the passing of the resolution in favour of independence. The silence of these very worldly men rings loudly and shows they were very much aware of the hardships that were to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8dNUOqHQGo
Strange:all of these men were well-to-do and already socially prominent under the regime they took such risks to overthrow. Talk about men of principle! Talk about a contrast with today’s sorry non-“leaders”.
At Uni, my constitutional law teacher had just returned from completing her Masters at Yale and warned us at the opening of the first tutorial not to read anything touching on the American revolution until after completing the course or we’d be sorely disappointed with our own founding fathers.
I remember her words: “Be warned, your constitution is largely about potatoes and their right to be trucked unhindered between the states”. It’s proven a functional, efficient arrangement but there’s certainly no ringing assertions of the rights of man in it or its ancilliary documents. It’s why we didn’t need to fight a war to win our nationhood and why our constitution began life first as a Bill and then an Act of the British parliament. It’s also why we all remain here “subjects” of the Queen.
You wrote (as a fact to show his criminal intention) that “…it said he was wanted for felony third-degree sexual assault. ”
One can say almost the same about Trump. The question is if this justifies an attempted murder by the police. And shooting someone 7 times in the upper chest region (damaging the spinal cord) is nothing less than this. Theres is no excuse, it was damned obvious that the police officer Rusten Sheskey has no respect of a black mans life. It was just fortunate, that the bullets did not hit the heart or the aorta. The world is simply horrified by the extend of police violence under the Trump legislation and how supportive he is to allow anybody walk around with assault rifles, like this 17year old Kyle Rittenhouse who confused a protest march with a ego-shooter computer game. The explanation by his lawyer, that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense, is the most blatant lie.
Defending the current US government in general, and its ignorance of police violence and right-extremists has very little to do with a conservative or neo-conservative politic view. It mistakes conservatism with dismissal of civil standards.
I just read up on Barnes’ background. He’s a career politician. From what I gather he’s been on the “social justice” career path for most of his professional political career and it was a strong focus during his college tenure (he never graduated from university). He was elected into Wisconsin’s State Assembly at 25. I am not sure how well he did in accomplishing his promises to the residents of Wisconsin (clean air, affordable healthcare etc.), but it seems like the residents of Wisconsin are really high on feel-good platforms because I can’t find one statistic showing any state improvements while he was in office. His wiki bio just lists all the organizations he was a part of (all solidly left of center, union/Teamsters). I think it’s safe to say he’s another “social justice” type that runs on indignation thinking he’s accomplishing something.
Micha: “Defending the current US government in general, and its ignorance of police violence and right-extremists ”
You act like “right-extremists” are running around across America like orcs. Also President Trump has actually addressed police violence.
Micha, should they have tried to drag the knife-wielding taser-proof rapist out of the car at great risk to their own lives, or should they have let him flee the scene with a car full of kids?
Scipio – the entire musical play “1776” is brilliant in conception and execution (I was expecting the well-known film clip; very interesting to see an alternative production).
This comment from that video expresses what so many Americans have missed out on learning, due to the carefully engineered flaws in their education:
One can say almost the same about Trump.
– Micha
One could say exactly the same about Biden.
(I see that Tara Reade has dropped out of the media cycle these days.)
Since neither of those men has resisted arrest, assaulted police officers, or tried to flee with children in a stolen car, neither example is relevant.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/20/tara-reade-democrats-complicit-in-ignoring-biden-claims/
@ mikesixes: There should be other ways of stopping a fugative (who was not even running away) than shooting him in the back (i.e. a potentially fatal part of the body). Even if he would have tried to escape in the car, the officers could have shot the tyres flat. I am wondering if the discussion here would go in a similar direction, if the rapist’s name would not be Jacob Blake, but Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew or Brett Kavanaugh ?? Would you also justify them beeing shot and paralyzed by police bullets ?
Here in Germany (and many other places in the world), the majority of people are really shocked by the obvious deterioration of civil and human values in the US. This has nothing to do with a conservative political agenda, but it is the end of any political program. It shows a frightening split in the US society.