If you are a 26-year veteran of any police department
that employs Tasers, you are beyond dumb, blind and foolish
if you think that you can snuff out a life and invent a
cover story that you did not know you were using a gun and
not the Taser.
I have heard numerous police experts state in light of
the killing of Mr. Daunte Wright that it is nigh impossible
to make such a mistake and especially so when the shooting
officer repeatedly, yelled, “Taser” and still did not
understand (?) that she was holding a real gun.
C’mon people! Stupid is as stupid does!
This police shooter now wants to act all contrite and
mournful for killing a black man due to either warrants out
for his arrest (misdemeanors) or that he had air fresheners
hanging from his rear-view mirror!
Either way, the police culture of approaching
practically everything with deadly force as the first choice
was a death sentence waiting to happen for the late Daunte
Wright.
As one police expert said, where could he go after breaking
free and hopping back into his car? They knew who he was and
where he lived, and he would not get three blocks away
before he would be cornered and captured again.
So many White cops, when they meet a Black male, their
implicit biases kick in with a vengeance and they go for a
gun as their first impulse to protect and serve.
Common sense would tell you that the shooting officer
knew what she was doing and when you observe the holster of
police officers who also carry a Taser, the gun and the
Taser are opposite each other on the hips of the officer.
Confusion as to which is what? Not in a million years.
This officer drew down on the late
Daunte Wright with the expectation that if she made a
“mistake,” a white grand jury would give her the benefit of
the doubt and exonerate her.
White grand juries have a built-in bias for cops,
rogue or otherwise. The grand juries see these officers as
their last line against the onslaught of the Hordes, the
Vandals, the Goths, the Dangerous Black Man and they are not
willing to chastise cops for any aberrant behavior.
They would rather turn a blind eye and ear to any
charges of police misconduct rather than rebuke them or
convict them for clear errors of bad shoots and killings.
These white grand juries will swallow hard and make
peace with a mangled conscience rather than send a cop to a
prison cell; and in the culture of the cop world, they
supremely know it.
Confusion! the shooting cop says? Mistake!... the shooting
cop says.
Tell you what, take my below quiz to find out about your
confusion or mistakes:
(1) On the dinner table, there is the saltshaker and there
is the pepper shaker. You reach for the pepper shaker but
somehow your fingers find the saltshaker. Is that realistic?
Yes or No.
(2) You are dressing to go out on the town. Your shoes are
before you. Do you place your left foot inside the right
shoe and the right foot inside the left shoe? Yes or No.
(3) You are at the meat counter at your store. You need
three pounds of ground beef but you inexplicably reach for
the packaged bacon. Yes or No.
(4) You are about to boil some water for rice. In the
cupboard you see a pot and you see a skillet. Yet, somehow
you reach for the skillet to boil the rice? Yes or No.
(5) It is winter. About 20 degrees. You are in your closet.
Do you reach for the long pants or do you reach for the
lightweight short bathing trunks to wear outside. Which one?
(6) You are at the gas station. You open your gas cap. Do
you fill it with gas or do you look around and fill it with
transmission fluid? Which one.
(7) You are about to do a load of laundry. On the shelf you
have washing powder and (8) You are at a pickup game of
basketball. You choose up sides and instead of a choosing a
basketball, you choose another ball… a ping pong ball. Don’t
you know the difference?
(9) You are about to enter a 10K run. You have a choice of a
pair of running shoes or you can choose to wear foam rubber
flip flops. What do you choose?
(10) You have a splitting headache. You go to your medicine
cabinet and can choose either an aspirin or a quick acting
laxative. Which one do you choose?
Now, notice in all the above questions, it involves a
choice…a clear and unambiguous choice and you know the
difference between the choices but yet, you choose the wrong
remedy for the situation at hand.
This is what the killer of the late Daunte Wright did.
She had clear choices. Choices that she has used for the
past 26 years yet, she knowingly chose the wrong remedy.
She selected deadly force instead of temporarily stunning
the then surrounded Daunte Wright.
So, when I hear the public relations team start blowing
smoke on her behalf that somehow she is some innocent babe
in the woods not knowing a gun from a Taser, you must shut
down that discordant noise and do not fall for the Okey-Doke!
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com
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