Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

White Man With Pellet Gun Shot Dead by Cops; Media Silent
The New American ^ | 01.05.15 | Selwyn Duke

Posted on 01/06/2015 7:21:16 PM PST by Coleus

White is right — in activists’ book.  That is, the right color to ignore when it comes to stories of people shot by police.

So says American Thinker editor Rick Moran while reporting on the shooting of a pellet-gun wielding white man on Sunday by San Francisco police. The Washington Post describes the incident:

The shooting occurred in the parking lot of the San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station [at 5:20 p.m. PT]. In a statement, the department said that the confrontation began when police sergeants asked a man in the station’s restricted lot to leave. Instead, the man stood in the middle of the driveway blocking their exit, police said.

When the sergeants approached him again, asking the man to take his hands out of his shirt pockets, they said they saw “what appeared to be the butt of a handgun” sticking out from his waistband, the statement said.

“Fearing for their safety and in defense of their lives, the sergeants drew their service weapons as the suspect pulled the weapon” out, the police statement said. Two sergeants shot and hit the man three times. He was declared dead at San Francisco General Hospital shortly before 8 p.m.

Police later learned that the man had an air gun, or a replica gun, they said.

The facts of the case certainly appear to support the police’s actions. The beef Moran and other critics have is that when the races of victims in shooting incidents are reversed, the facts no longer seem to matter. As Moran explains:

Suicide by cop? Very possible in this case, especially given the suspect's behavior earlier in the day. What's missing are the howls of outrage from the anti-cop activists, who should change their hashtag campaign from #blacklivesmatter to #onlyblacklivesmatter. If the victim had been black, Oakland would be on fire at this point.

But it's apparently OK to shoot down a white man, even if he's trying to commit suicide.

Is anyone else getting sick of the rank hypocrisy from these people?

Moran concludes that the man shot in San Francisco was the “wrong color” for the activists’ agenda. And there are many examples of such hypocrisy. For instance, the 2014 self-defense shooting of black robbery suspect Michael Brown by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson dominated national news and sparked the violent anti-police protests common since that time, and the fact that evidence shows conclusively the 6´4˝, 292-pound Brown attacked the officer and tried to take his gun has done nothing to deter his defenders. In fact, the media readily reported the “hands up, don’t shoot” claim that Brown was shot after surrendering — even after it became completely untenable. Yet the case of 20-year-old Dillon Taylor, a white Utah man shot to death by a non-white Salt Lake City police officer August 11, caused nary a national-media ripple; this is despite its tying in well to the Brown case, having occurred a mere two days later.

The media was similarly silent after the killing of white Iraq military veteran James Whitehead by off-duty black police officer Robert Arnold in Texas in 2011. According to reports, Whitehead used a racial slur during a verbal altercation but didn’t attack Arnold, who shot the veteran while the latter was sitting in his truck preparing to leave the scene. Arnold was fired from his Orange Police Department for the killing and for “other violent past incidents” but was never charged.

It was the same media-crickets story with the killing of white teen Gil Collar by a black officer at the University of South Alabama in 2012. And in all three cases, the men shot dead were “unarmed,” just as the media emphasized Mike Brown was — over and over again. As Al.com’s Brendan Kirby put it, “White officer shoots unarmed black teenager and it becomes months-long fodder for the national media. Black officer shoots unarmed white teenager and it becomes nothing more than a local story.”

But we don’t have to rely on just anecdotal evidence. As black pundit Larry Elder pointed out just last month, “In 2012, according to the CDC, 140 blacks were killed by police. That same year 386 whites were killed by police. Over the 13-year period from 1999 to 2011, the CDC reports that 2,151 whites were killed by cops — and 1,130 blacks were killed by cops.” Furthermore, Elder reports that “in the last several decades the numbers of blacks killed by cops are down nearly 75 percent” and then asks, “So what's driving this notion that there is now an ‘epidemic’ of white cops shooting blacks...?" He then provides the answer:

This white-cop-out-to-get-black-civilian narrative advances the interest of many. The media loves what Tom Wolfe called the "Great White Defendant" — a bad white guy everybody can agree to dislike. For the Democrats, it furthers their assertion that race remains a major problem in America, that Republicans/tea partiers/black conservatives are out to get them, and you must vote for us. For "activists" like the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and local wannabes, it gives them continued relevance.

Of course, this phenomenon isn’t restricted to police-civilian incidents. Just consider the shooting of that unarmed 17-year-old by that grown man bent on thwarting crime; with one being white and the other being black, it certainly was prime material for national news.

Except it didn’t make any.

This is because I’m not, as most would assume, talking about the 2012 shooting of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin by community watchman George Zimmerman, a Hispanic man the media universally described as white. Rather, I refer to the 2009 shooting of white teen Chris Cervini by black homeowner Roderick Scott in Greece, New York. And the cases shared similarities: They both involved interracial encounters, both teens were 17 years old, and both shooters were acquitted by juries. But then there are the differences. Zimmerman had been beaten by Martin to the point of looking like something the cat dragged in, whereas  Scott — a large, muscular martial artist who has competed in fighting competitions — admits that Cervini never laid a hand on him. And then there was that other difference:

While the media made the Zimmerman case the story of the year, the Scott incident was sent to news-cycle Siberia.  The effect of this slanted coverage is to make people believe there’s an epidemic of white-on-black violence, driven by bigotry. This makes blacks and others angry, foments racial unrest, and risks pushing the United States into a race war.  The reality is that black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than the reverse, and 93 percent of all black homicide victims are killed by other blacks. As Larry Elder put it, “We are being manipulated.”


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: activists; banglist; blacks; california; donutwatch; pelletgun; police; sanfrancisco; selwynduke; sfpd; shooting; tna; whiteman

1 posted on 01/06/2015 7:21:16 PM PST by Coleus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Coleus

“Why didn’t they shoot it out of his hands?”

(/s)


2 posted on 01/06/2015 7:23:52 PM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus
Media only weeps over thugs. Matthew Shepard, for example, was a drug dealer who reportedly had sexually abused a child. When he was a killed by his boyfriend (over a drug deal?), the media went wild though the riots never reached the level of the thug M. Brown.
3 posted on 01/06/2015 7:32:01 PM PST by apocalypto
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

Bookmarked.


4 posted on 01/06/2015 7:36:41 PM PST by Inyo-Mono (Just say to NO Rhinos in 2016.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

I understand the officers HAD to shoot that guy, but let me tell you that the MISSION DISTRICT PRECINCT of San Francisco is..

CORRUPT AS HELL.

I doubt they hesitated for one MICROSECOND.

I’m a little shocked they didn’t body slam him after he didn’t leave the very first time they asked him to.

SF MISSION DISTRICT — COPS THERE ROTTEN TO THE *CORE*.


5 posted on 01/06/2015 7:42:04 PM PST by gaijin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

Were the cops black?


6 posted on 01/06/2015 7:44:14 PM PST by SkyDancer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: gaijin

My officers are all ROBBERS..! Got cash? We'll TAKE IT..!

Come to "The Mish" and GET ROBBED..! BY COPS..!

7 posted on 01/06/2015 7:44:52 PM PST by gaijin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: SkyDancer
Were the cops black?

Good question.

8 posted on 01/06/2015 8:06:19 PM PST by Mark17 (All thru dark hours dreary, knocking again is He. Jesus are thou not weary, waiting so long for me?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

Local tv did a report on police shootings after the Eric Garner grand jury failed to indict the police and what’s interesting all the local people killed by police were white!

White Lives Matter????


9 posted on 01/06/2015 8:08:21 PM PST by RginTN
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

Based on what is described here, it seems justifiable to me.

Dude behaved in a way that was not conducive to living.


10 posted on 01/06/2015 8:14:46 PM PST by chris37 (heartless)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

Some of us aren’t being manipulated.

We are making a list.


11 posted on 01/06/2015 8:27:38 PM PST by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus
When the sergeants approached him again, asking the man to take his hands out of his shirt pockets, they said they saw “what appeared to be the butt of a handgun” sticking out from his waistband, the statement said.

“Fearing for their safety and in defense of their lives, the sergeants drew their service weapons as the suspect pulled the weapon” out, the police statement said. Two sergeants shot and hit the man three times. He was declared dead at San Francisco General Hospital shortly before 8 p.m.

It is concerning that what they instructed the perp to do is not part of the account. "Freeze"? "Hands up"? What?

I'm going to say something likely to be unpopular here. Lacking an instruction, how was he to surrender or drop the gun without taking it out of his waistband? There are multiple cops, probably in body armor, all with their weapons already sighted on him, and ready to discharge. There is no way the perp could grab it, withdraw it, sight it, and get a shot off at them without dying. Thus, this "fear for their safety" is unjustified unless and until he demonstrates intent to bring the weapon to bear. Did he grab it suddenly or slowly?

"Fear" is not a justification for the use of deadly force. REASON to fear can be. I need better information before deciding that this was a justified killing.

12 posted on 01/06/2015 10:24:04 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex and too important to manage by government regulation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie
what they instructed the perp to do is not part of the account.

What is "asking the man to take his hands out of his shirt pockets"? Sounds pretty clear to me. If he did indeed then draw what appears to be a gun, then cops are justified to shoot him. Body armor or not, cops are not required to let a perp get the first shot off.

13 posted on 01/06/2015 10:46:53 PM PST by Hugin ("Do yourself a favor--first thing, get a firearm!",)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: gaijin
I'll bet he makes great tips on the pole wearing that uniform with
his leopard skin G-string.
14 posted on 01/06/2015 10:52:53 PM PST by MaxMax (Pay Attention and you'll be pissed off too! FIRE BOEHNER, NOW!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Hugin
What is "asking the man to take his hands out of his shirt pockets"? Sounds pretty clear to me.

The instruction does not indicate what he is to do once the hands are out of the pockets. It is not clear.

If he did indeed then draw what appears to be a gun, then cops are justified to shoot him.

One draws a gun to surrender it too.

Body armor or not, cops are not required to let a perp get the first shot off.

I didn't imply that they were.

15 posted on 01/06/2015 11:06:46 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex and too important to manage by government regulation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie
One draws a gun to surrender it too.

No, not with several cops already pointing weapons at you. You raise your hands and tell them there's a gun in your waistband. You don't make any move towards it, unless you want to get shot.

16 posted on 01/07/2015 2:47:05 AM PST by Hugin ("Do yourself a favor--first thing, get a firearm!",)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Hugin
No, not with several cops already pointing weapons at you. You raise your hands and tell them there's a gun in your waistband. You don't make any move towards it, unless you want to get shot.

People do stupid things under stress. That's why they need instructions. They aren't there.

17 posted on 01/07/2015 8:15:33 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex and too important to manage by government regulation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson