Larry Elder responds to the weekends events of NFL teams dissing the National Anthem and Trump’s multiple comments on the issue. Per the “Sage Rule,” facts are sticky issues used to bring logical thinking and reasonable thought together to create informed opinion. The below NATIONAL REVIEW article was mentioned during the show, of which some of it is reproduced (follow the author on his TWITTER):
…According to this narrative, black men are constantly harassed by the police and routinely brutalized with impunity, even when they have done nothing wrong, and there is an “epidemic of police shootings of unarmed black men.” Even high-profile black celebrities often claim to be afraid of the police because the same thing might happen to them. Police brutality, or at least the possibility that one might become a victim of such violence, is supposed to be part of the experience of a typical black man in the U.S. Events such as the death of Brown in Ferguson are presented as proof that black men are never safe from the police.
This narrative is false. In reality, a randomly selected black man is overwhelmingly unlikely to be victim of police violence — and though white men experience such violence even less often, the disparity is consistent with the racial gap in violent crime, suggesting that the role of racial bias is small. The media’s acceptance of the false narrative poisons the relations between law enforcement and black communities throughout the country and results in violent protests that destroy property and sometimes even claim lives. Perhaps even more importantly, the narrative distracts from far more serious problems that black Americans face.
Let’s start with the question of fatal violence. Last year, according to the Washington Post’s tally, just 16 unarmed black men, out of a population of more than 20 million, were killed by the police. The year before, the number was 36. These figures are likely close to the number of black men struck by lightning in a given year, considering that happens to about 300 Americans annually and black men are 7 percent of the population. And they include cases where the shooting was justified, even if the person killed was unarmed.
Of course, police killings are not the result of a force of nature, and I’m not claiming these are morally equivalent. But the comparison illustrates that these killings are incredibly rare, and that it’s completely misleading to talk about an “epidemic” of them. You don’t hear people talk about an epidemic of lightning strikes and claim they are afraid to go outside because of it. Liberals often make the same comparison when they argue that it’s completely irrational to fear that you might become a victim of terrorism.
One might retort that, while it may be rare for a black man to be killed by the police, black men are still constantly stopped and routinely brutalized by the police, even if they don’t die from it. However, even this weaker claim is false. It just isn’t true that black men are kicked, punched, etc., on a regular basis by the police.
In order to show that, I’m going to use data from the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), which, as its name suggests, provides detailed information about contacts between the police and the public. It’s conducted on a regular basis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and is based on a nationally representative sample of more than 70,000 U.S. residents age 16 or older. Respondents are asked whether they had a contact with the police during the past 12 months; if they say they did, they answer a battery of questions about the nature of their last contact, including any use of force. Since the respondents also provide their age, race, gender, etc., we can use this survey to calculate the prevalence of police violence for various demographic groups. The numbers in this piece are from my own analysis of the data, the details and code for which I provide here, but they are consistent with a 2015 report compiled by the BJS itself to the extent the two overlap.
First, despite what the narrative claims, it’s not true that black men are constantly stopped by the police for no reason. Indeed, black men are less likely than white men to have contact with the police in any given year, though this includes situations where the respondent called the cops himself: 17.5 percent versus 20.7 percent. Similarly, a black man has on average only 0.32 contacts with the police in any given year, compared with 0.35 contacts for a white man. It’s true that black men are overrepresented among people who have many contacts with the police, but not by much. Only 1.5 percent of black men have more than three contacts with the police in any given year, whereas 1.2 percent of white men do.
If we look at how often the police use physical force against men of different races, we find that there is indeed a racial disparity, but that this experience is rare across the board. Only 0.6 percent of black men experience physical force by the police in any given year, while approximately 0.2 percent of white men do. To be fair, these are probably slight undercounts, because the survey does not allow us to identify people who did not experience physical force during their most recent contact but did experience such force during a previous contact in the same year.
Further, physical force as defined by the PPCS includes relatively mild forms of violence such as pushing and grabbing. Actual injuries by the police are so rare that one cannot estimate them very precisely even in a survey as big as the PPCS, but the available data suggest that only 0.08 percent of black men are injured by the police each year, approximately the same rate as for white men. A black man is about 44 times as likely to suffer a traffic-related injury, according to the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Moreover, keep in mind that these tallies of police violence include violence that is legally justified.
Now, it’s true that there are significant differences in the rates at which men of different races experience police violence — 0.6 percent is triple 0.2 percent. However, although people often equate racial disparities with bias, this inference is fallacious, as can be seen through an analogy with gender: Men are vastly more likely to experience police violence than women are, but while bias may explain part of this disparity, nobody doubts that most of it has to do with the fact that men are on average far more violent than women. Similarly, if black men commit violent crimes at much higher rates than white men, that might have a lot to do with the disparity in the use of force by the police…
A black theology professor was suspended for the rest of the year over comments he made about “Black Lives Matter” and how *some* of their members are too extreme.
So, you have Government spending millions of dollars to stigmatize a class of people based on their skin color. What makes anyone think this can go on and not have some of those people get angry about it?
This is not intended as an apologetic for the events in Charlottesville. My only point is you can’t teach people not be racist by being racist.
BTW, LANGUAGE WARNING for the following video (he is an atheist):
One must take note I am a creationist (in fact, a young earth creationist) and reject many of the artistic representations of entire clans and family units from a couple of teeth. I will merely assume “evolutionary” thinking to make my point[s]. Also note that the “out of Africa” and now, “out of Europe” theories have racial overtones and consequences if evolutionary naturalism is true.
If one throws all-in-to naturalistic evolution, you get an “ethnicity” [some call race] evolving before or after others ~ or ~ devolving from an ethnicity [or, species].
Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they have increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory
Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1977), 127.
Several skeletons up end the sparse evidence for the human evolutionary tree (via TELEGRAPH).
“The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa… two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.”
“The Races Of Man – At the present time there exists upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent in structure. These are the Ethiopian or Negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the Islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America”
George William Hunter, A Civic Biology Presented in Problems (New York, NY: The American Book Company, 1914) 196. (For those that do not know, this was a textbook used in classrooms in public schools.)
7.2 million BC is a HUGE jump back in time that negates MOST of the African fossils. If proto-humans were already living in Bulgaria, or in sites now sunk under the Mediterranean Sea, the ENTIRE collection of African fossils is meaningless.
That is, some Europeans wandered SOUTH around 1 million years ago instead of some Africans wandering NORTH. It would also explain why negroid features exist only in Africa: they’re mutations from the common European stock from which the rest of the world descends.
It should be interesting to see what else turns up in Europe.
Sorry Black Lives Matter, so sad that you are not the cradle of civilization (assuming naturalistic evolution). Two books that just got a boost:
An earlier story has thrown a monkey wrench into the old story of human ancestry:
The thighbone of the 400,000-year-old hominid from Sima de los Huesos, Spain.
Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries.
In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years.
The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans. Until now, Denisovans were known only from DNA retrieved from 80,000-year-old remains in Siberia, 4,000 miles east of where the new DNA was found.
The mismatch between the anatomical and genetic evidence surprised the scientists, who are now rethinking human evolution over the past few hundred thousand years….
Consider the following excerpt from a letter written by Charles Darwin in 1881:
“I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit…. The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”[1]
Lest this be considered merely an aberration, note that Darwin repeated this sentiment in his book The Descent of Man, he speculated,
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”[2]
In addition, he subtitled his magnum opus, The Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.
And Darwin was not alone in his racist ideology. Thomas Huxley, who coined the term agnostic and was the man most responsible for advancing Darwinian doctrine, he argued that:
“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilization will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest. But whatever the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will henceforward lie between Nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real justification for the abolition policy.”[3]
Huxley was not only militantly racist but also lectured frequently against the resurrection of Christ, in whom “[we] are all one” (Galatians 3:28). In sharp distinction to the writings of such noted evolutionists as Hrdlicka, Haeckel, and Hooton, biblical Christianity makes it crystal clear that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). In Christianity we sing, “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” In the evolutionary hierarchy blacks are placed at the bottom, yellows and reds somewhere in the middle, and whites on top. As H. F. Osborn, director of the American Museum of National History and one of the most prominent American anthropologists of the first half of the twentieth century, put it.
“If an unbiased zoölogist were to descend upon the earth from Mars and study the races of man with the same impartiality as the races of fishes, birds and mammals, he would undoubtedly divide the existing races of man into several genera and into a very large number of species and subspecies.
“ … This is the recognition that the genus Homo is subdivided into three absolutely distinct stocks, which in zoölogy would be given the rank of species, if not of genera, stocks popularly known as the Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid.
“The spiritual, intellectual, moral, and physical characters which separate these three great human stocks are far more profound and ancient than those which divide the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean races. In my opinion these three primary stocks diverged from each other before the beginning of the Pleistocene or Ice Age. The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolian, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the bodily characters, such as the teeth, the genitalia, the sense organs, but of the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo sapiens.”[4]
Think of the historical consequences that are the direct and logical results of the naturalist worldview. For instance, Adolf Hitler, appealed to the people of his country to have a backbone to advance the logical outworking of their worldview. Now mind you, not all naturalists are racists or killers of the less fortunate… however, this is a logical outworking of philosophical [or, metaphysical] naturalism.
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law [natural selection] did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all…. If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.”[5]
Hitler referred to this dispensation of nature as “quite logical.” In fact, it was so logical to the Nazis that they built concentration camps to carry out their convictions about the human race as being “nothing but the product of heredity and environment” or as the Nazis liked to say, “of blood and soil.”[6]
It is significant to note that some of the Crusaders and others who used force to further their creeds in the name of God were acting in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ.[7]
The teachings of Osborn, Huxley, Hitler and others like them, however, are completely consistent with the teachings of Darwinian evolution. Indeed, social Darwinism has provided the scientific substructure for some of the most significant atrocities in human history. For evolution to succeed, it is as crucial that the unfit die as the fittest survive. Marvin Lubenow graphically portrays the ghastly consequences of such beliefs in his book Bones of Contention:
“If the unfit survived indefinitely, they would continue to ‘infect’ the fit with their less fit genes. The result is that the more fit genes would be diluted and compromised by the less fit genes, and evolution could not take place. The concept of evolution demands death. Death is thus as natural to evolution as it is foreign to biblical creation. The Bible teaches that death is a ‘foreigner,’ a condition superimposed upon humans and nature after creation. Death is an enemy, Christ has conquered it, and he will eventually destroy it. Their respective attitudes toward death reveal how many light years separate the concept of evolution from Biblical creation.”[8]
Adolph Hitler’s philosophy that Jews were subhuman and that Aryans were supermen (mirroring the beliefs Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood) led to the extermination of about six million Jews. In the words of Sir Arthur Keith, a militant anti-Christian physical anthropologist: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consistently sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.”[9]
Karl Marx, the father of communism, saw in Darwinism the scientific and sociological support for an economic experiment that eclipsed even the carnage of Hitler’s Germany. His hatred of Christ and Christianity led to the mass murder of multiplied millions worldwide. Karl Marx so revered Darwin that his desire was to dedicate a portion of Das Kapital to him. In 1983, the dissident Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for religious progress. In accepting the award, he gave a clear assessment of the tragedy that had been so devastating to his homeland:
“I have spent well-nigh fifty tears working on the history of our Revolution. In the process, I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own towards the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were to asked today the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that has swallowed up some sixty-million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened’.”
It should be noted as well that Darwinian evolution (man evolving from lower creatures) is sexist as well. Under the subheading “Difference in the Mental Powers of the Two Sexes,” Darwin attempted to persuade followers that…
“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women – whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands…We may also infer…[that] the average of mental power in man must be above that of women.”
In sharp contrast to the evolutionary dogma, Scripture makes it clear that all humanity is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:29); that there is essential equality between the sexes (Galatians 3:28); and that slavery is as repugnant to God as murder and adultery (1 Timothy 1:10).
Appendix
Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947):
p 15 – “Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution … as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.”
p 28 – “To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied rigorously to the affairs of a great modern nation we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy.”
p 72 – “Christianity makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this respect, the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce? May we not say, then, that Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim? This may be a merit, but if so it is one which has not been openly acknowledged by Christian philosophers.”
p 150 – “The law of evolution, as formulated by Darwin, provides an explanation of wars between nations, the only reasonable explanation known to us. The law was in existence, and wars were waged, for aeons of time before Darwin was born; he did not invent the law, he only made it known to his fellow men.”
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, last paragraph.
“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”
Footnotes
[1] Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, I, Letter to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, p. 316; cited in Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), p. 343.
[2] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (New York: A. L. Burt Co., 1874), p.178.
[3] Thomas Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York: Appleton, 1871), pp 20-1.
[4] Henry Fairfield Osborn, “The Evolution of Human Races,”Natural History (January/February 1926), reprinted in Natural History, vol. 89 (April 1980), p. 129.
[5] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translator/annotator, James Murphy (New York: Hurst and Blackett, 1942), pp. 161-162.
[6] “The SS Blood and Soul,” one of four videos in a video series entitled, The Occult History of the Third Reich (St. Lauret, Quebec: Madacy Entertainment Group, 1998); Now in DVD – ISBN: 0974319465).
[7] This is a side note for those who are of the Christian faith: The Bible does not teach the horrible practices that some have committed in its name. It is true that it’s possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the details it produces evil because the individual people [“Christians”] are actually living in rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it [religion] can produce evil, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism (non-religious practices) actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We’re talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of à God. For example: the Inquisitions (2), Crusades (7), and the Salem Witch Trials killed about 40,000 persons combined (World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana). A blight on Christianity? Certainty. Something wrong? Dismally wrong. A tragedy? Of course. Millions and millions of people killed? No. The numbers are tragic, but pale in comparison to the statistics of what non-religious criminals have committed; the Chinese regime of Mao Tse Tung, 60 million [+] dead (1945-1965), Stalin and Khrushchev, 66 million dead (USSR 1917-1959), Khmer Rouge (Cambodia 1975-1979) and Pol Pot, one-third of their respective populations dead; etc, etc. The difference here is that these non-God movements are merely living out their worldview, the struggle for power, survival of the fittest and all that, no natural law is being violated in other words (as atheists reduce everything to natural law – materialism). However, when people have misused the Christian religion for personal gain, they are in direct violation to what Christ taught, as well as to Natural Law.
[8] Marvin L. Lubenow, Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1992), p. 47.
[9] Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), p. 230. See appendix for more quotes by Keith.
“PLZ Allah, give me the strength not to cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. plz plz plz.” ~ Yusra Khogali, a.k.a. Yusra Ali
David Menzies looks at the double standard at play in the case of a Black Lives Matter activist who issued a hateful, racist tweet that has now come to light and how it hasn’t stopped their ability to get a face-to-face meeting with our social justice warrior Premier, Kathleen Wynne. MORE:
I am posting the above because Yusra is posting typical Nation of Islam (or Five-Percenter) B.S.. These are black nationalist, anti-semitic, racist space-alien-gods/UFO cult members that get on stage with Leftists from Canada to America and are invited the the United Nations. Here is more Cray-Cray stuff from her:
…When the group took the stage to perform Sunday night, Busta Rhymes immediately began to blast Trump as “President Agent Orange” for “perpetuating evil.”
“I just want to thank President Agent Orange for perpetuating all of the evil that you’ve been perpetuating throughout the United States. I want to thank President Agent Orange for your unsuccessful attempt at the Muslim ban,” Ryhmes declared. “Now we come together!”…
A female Black Lives Matter activist (reportedly a public school teacher) rants,
“give your fucking money, your fucking house, your fucking property, we need it fucking all. Fuck white supremacy, fuck the U.S. empire, Kill the white house, fuck the white house, fuck your imperialist ass lives. That shit gotta go.”
Black Lives Matter is underpinned by a radical, racial supremacy ideology not dissimilar to the Ku Klux Klan. Just a reminder, Sargon is an atheist, so there is rough language. MOONBATTERY has this about the following:
Sargon of Akkad digs below the shallow and obsequious mainstream media coverage of Black Lives Matter to excavate the ideological roots of this truly malevolent movement, which helped set the table for the recent horror in Chicago (language alert)…
BOOM!Are the police racist? Do they disproportionately shoot African-Americans? Are incidents in places like Ferguson and Baltimore evidence of systemic discrimination? Heather Mac Donald, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, explains.
The narrative is that a pastor’s vehicle broke down and police shot him with his hand’s up. The multiple videos I have seen on this show this narrative to be otherwise. Here is the short video of the encounter:
(Side-Note: from 13-sec-to-23-sec, you can see the window is down and it even looks like Crutcher is reaching inside the vehicle — or at least having his hand down by his waist.)
Caller: Uhh it’s south of, uhh, 36th street and Lewis.
Dispatch: Alright. Is it on Lewis or is it on 36th?
Caller: Uhh, no. It’s actually an abandoned vehicle. Somebody left their vehicle running in the middle of the street. The door is wide open.
[….]
Dispatch: OK. It’s a tan(vehicle). And there’s nobody around it?
Caller: There was a guy running from it. He, like ‘somebody was going to blow up.’ I think he’s smoking something.
Dispatch: Ohh (laughing).
Caller: I was rude to him too because I got out and was like, ‘do you need help’? And he was like, ‘come here, come here.’ I said ‘well, what’s going on’ and he’s like, ‘come here come here. I think it’s going to blow up.’ I’m like, ‘nah I’m out.’
Dispatch: OK.
Caller: He started freaking out and he took off running.
Dispatch: Oh, wow.
Caller: Yeah, I think he’s smoking something.
Dispatch: Okay, a vehicle is running in the middle of 36th Street.
A few things to surmise from this.
While the first mention of “smoking something” could have been made in jest, the second instance the caller relayed important information to the dispatcher. Very possibly this person was intoxicated on some kind of drug.
The second thing I surmised from the 911 call is that this person was a threat to civilians in his approaching a citizen talking crazy.
The third thing I surmised from the call is that the vehicle was not broke down but still running. Which makes the police response even more weary in that when a vehicle breaks down it usually stops running or is turned off and hazard lights turned on.
The full video of the second cruiser to show up can be found here. From this video a few things can be surmised.
The first being is that Terence Crutcher (the suspect who was shot) was already asked by a female officer what the issue was, and when she surmised the situation was out of her control and needed back-up, she called for it.
He was too big for her to handle, and she probably surmised he was high on something and so her physically engaging him was off the table. Why? Because she did not know if (a) he was armed with a weapon, and (b) he could easily take her weapon away in a physical confrontation.
As Terence was walking away he ignored repeated commands to stop… this is when the second unit showed up.
Other officers joined in the warnings as Terence continued to walk towards his vehicle.
Combining visual evidence from the two videos more things can be surmised that dissuade one from believing the narrative. And one should keep in mind this was a rural area with homes nearby… so allowing a suspect with what is known so far to reenter a vehicle to either turn it into a weapon that could kill civilians (children playing in the street in one of the side-streets); or retrieving a weapon to then use on the officers responding to the call. Here is an excellent article by BEARING ARMS (h-t to Kathleen P.) entitled, “Why Cops Don’t Let Suspects Return To Their Vehicles: The Murder of Kyle Dinkheller“
There are many outraged people complaining that Tulsa Police Department officer Betty Shelby “murdered” Terence Crutcher for refusing to follow lawful police commands, returning to his vehicle, and allegedly lowering his hands to reach inside it.
They cannot fathom why an officer would feel threatened by a non-compliant suspect who returned to his or her vehicle and reaches inside.
That probably because they are probably unaware of one of the most infamous police shootings death of the past 20 years, where a Georgia Sheriff’s deputy gave a suspect pulled over for a simple speeding ticket every opportunity to surrender peacefully… too many opportunities, in fact.
Watch, and learn.
…continuing…
Okay, the videos:
One point is that when he was tazzed his hands were going towards his waist to retrieve key, a weapon, or open the door. In the police officers mind all could lead to a weapon (vehicle or gun).
He continued to ignore commands up to this point.
The original officer that responded to the call shot a single time to stop the suspect from entering the vehicle.
Other news related to the incident was that PCP was found in the vehicle supporting the 911 callers description and the idea that such large man could not feel pain and even with multiple officers could give a hell-of-a-fight and possibly wrestle away one of their weapons.
One should note as well that any police officer would not engage in a physical manner because the assumption is that he is armed… remember, they didn’t know if he was or wasn’t.
BEARING ARMS has an excellent post showing his arms were not up. He had clearly, at the time of his shooting, lowered his right hand toward his waistband. All-in-all the narrative we will hear is a false one.
Here is a response to a person on a friends Facebook that expands my thinking on a less factual level and more on a human level. Here is the comment that got me going down this road:
My issue is that they did not attend to him after he was shot. I don’t know the circumstances. I don’t understand how this could happen. But, how do you not attend to someone who is now powerless because you shot him? They just let him lie there? I just don’t get it?
Here is my response
I re-watched the longer video and it looks like they were still treating the dark tinted car as possibly holding another person. In other words, it was not cleared. As soon as they cleared the vehicle of any other occupants it looks as though they attend to him.
[….]
But the key here is that no matter the actions of the officers, the onus mainly lies on Terence. If the officers truly did not attend to him per their training, they will be disciplined, but, the tragedy of the entirety of the situation lies on Terence. Which breaks my heart Yvette V.B…. I do not “glory” in these conversations, or the life loss and that life’s continued fellowship with family and friends. The impact of that loss of life to assist in dividing the single human race, the altered beliefs in his younger family members who will grow up with a distorted view of justice, etc.
His choices had unfortunate consequences that at the time he didn’t realize. His choices will likely send a “butterfly” effect that is negative because of the distorted narrative through our current culture.
It brings a tear to my eye, but I am sure his senses returned to him at the moment of being shot. While I do not mean to be funny, I bet Richard Priors “Niggas vs. Police” flashed through his mind and I bet he wished — right then — that he had listened.
While I don’t know his heart, I can picture this story as relating that a person like Terence would want to go back and warn his family to make better choices:
“The rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house— because I have five brothers—to warn them, so that they won’t end up in this place of torture, too.’ “Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. They should listen to them!’ (Luke 16:19-31).
Take note that his choices will now effect those officers families lives. That female police officer (watching the longer video) was devastated. You could hear her voice in the dashcam audio breaking up in sorrow when she said “shots fired.” The helicopter video shows here crumbled over behind a cruiser with a fellow officer consoling her.
I think back to Darren Wilson, who was cleared by the DOJ and other investigations… but he can never work [even though cleared in the shooting of Mike Brown]. He must be wary of some sort of revenge because of the lie of “hands up don’t shoot” that came from that. He has to — for the rest of his life — fear for his families life. All for what? Protecting law abiding citizens.
The WHOLE thing is tragic. The whole thing.
In another response I noted the following:
I think they should have tasered him first. But watching the dash-cam video and the helicopter video he was ignoring commands. They were telling him to stop, and he did not. You can also see him dropping his hands to open his door. It is sad that a sense of pride has caused Terence to grieve his family and to divide a nation more. Larry Elder notes that even in the cases where the officer is clearly using deadly force when they do not have to, in that equation is resistance of some kind. If Terence had only followed orders, he would be alive (Romans 13:3-5). Pride is an SOB. In jail “brown pride,” black pride,” “white pride” eats away at people’s souls. Makes them see the world with distorted lenses.
Proverbs 16:18-19 tells us that “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.”
In another conversation over the issue Seth S.V. wanted the female officer to…
For Petes sake the guy was nowhere near his car walking away with his hands up for 10 seconds in that video there was no attempt made to approach, disable, and search him.
[….]
There was in no way an effort made to close the gap she just casually followed him towards his vehicle then all the officers lined up in a firing squad position and he was shot like really man.
[….]
A female officer trained in basic grappling techniques would with no question have taken him down
This caused me to update a previous post on this matter that I noted according to Seth’s arguments is one against having females as first responders versus this being an argument against police mishandling the situation in which Terence Crutcher died. The onus is 100% on him, and not the police. No jury or judge would press any charges against these officers.
UPDATE
(Again, this is with a h-t to Katheleen P.) This update shows a history of bad choices and makes his choice to get a weapon to use on police or turn his vehicle into a weapon to harm civilians one of many bad choices… this one leading to his death. It solidifies the choices that the police had to make. Which is unfortunate in that it ended with a life lost. (The graphic to the right were current warrants out for Terence Crutcher, you can enlarge it a bit by clicking it.). There seems to be a dependency in the part of him getting out of prison after 9-years at the link below. I want to thank Craig M. for pointing this out.
1996 Shooting with intent to kill — Dismissed
2001 Petit larceny — Conviction
2004 Driving while suspended — Conviction
2005 Driving while suspended, resisting officer — Conviction
2006 Driving while suspended — Conviction
Driving with open container — Dismissed
2006 Trafficking in illegal drugs — Conviction. (He was also charged in that incident with assault on a police officer and resisting, but that was dismissed.)
2011 Public intoxication (while in prison for drug trafficking) — Conviction
