By BillieBLVD
The anxiety of the news has pushed me to the brink of having to smoke a cigar just to brace for the barrage of bad news. Being subjected to the brutal footage of police shooting unarmed black men has become all too common but this shooting is very different. It's extremely rare that you get a perfect analysis of a police shooting where you can truly isolate the variables and understand what is happening as to whether a particular incident is related to race or not. One of the misconceptions that a lot of people have when they analyze a so-called race based police shooting of an unarmed person is the tendency to analyze incidents from different states. The problem with such an analysis is that regions have different perspectives, counties have nuance, and states have different laws providing too much daylight between one incident and another. The geographics, demographics, and psycho-graphics muck up the process of identifying the trend. For example, Trayvon Martin's murderer George Zimmerman was found not guilty because Florida's Stand Your Ground Law allowed Zimmerman's bum ass to follow a child buying candy, start a fight with a child, lose the fight to a child like the punk he is, and shoot the only other witness, Martin. In NJ or NY he would have been found guilty in our hour of deliberation. In fact, I am astounded that he is still walking the streets right now. If it were my son he would be dead as a fucking door knob.
But in this one instance in Wisconsin we have a coming-together of variables in the equation like we haven't seen in many other shootings. For example, we have a shooting that occurs in Kenosha, Wisconsin and immediately after that we have a riot and three more shootings related to one single incident in the same county. Its the same police department, the same county, the same state, the same leadership thus there is less nuance that can be sited to dismiss the racial aspects of the shooting. We can now juxtapose how the Kenosha Police Department deals with black and white suspects as it relates to an event with a tight chronology.
Simply put a black man, Jacob Blake, breaking up a fight is shot seven times at point blank range while opening a car door with three officers are within feet of him. Jacob ignores the officer's order to halt and is shot while opening his car door supposedly because he is retrieving a weapon. In other words, Blake defies authority and he may have a weapon and that to the police is justification for deadly force which we have to assume because the officer has not been arrest as of yet. There is no hesitation for Blake's true motives to open the car door and no consideration for his three children also in the very same vehicle. We can be sure that the imagery of Blake's shooting will ricochet in the minds of the children for the rest of their lives.
Soon after a 17 year old, Kyle Rittenhouse, kills a protester with an AR15 and is soon mobbed by protesters that rightfully identify him as an active shooter. They attack from multiple angles and Rittenhouse sprays a litany of bullets killing one and injuring another (two killed in total and one injured). As the blood soaked bodies lay in the street Rittenhouse approaches a wall of police in armored tanks. Over the tanks loudspeaker Rittenhouse is told not to come closer but he disobeys the order claiming to be part of a group protecting a nearby business. Rittenhouse is not suspected of retrieving a weapon he has it out in the open plain as day and has shown a willingness to use it. Rittenhouse dismisses multiple orders not to advance with the weapon on his person. He is not shot nor is he arrested. The officers do not fear for their lives. Hmmm.......Do I have to dismiss my adult intuition and experience as a 48 year old black man to see what's in front of me.
There is clearly a racial problem here. Lets not ruin a teachable moment America.
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