A New Kind Of “Mistake”

     I think we’ll be seeing this more often:

     Sunday’s fatal shooting in a Minneapolis suburb was the 18th time in the past 20 years that police officers used a gun when they said they intended to use a Taser, according to a use-of-force researcher.

     By comparison, police kill about 1,000 people each year in incidents including shootings, according to Campaign Zero, an organization focused on ending police violence.

     Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter resigned Tuesday after a second night of unrest followed her shooting of Daunte Wright, a Black motorist she and police had pulled over. Tim Gannon, the chief of police, also resigned.

     Researchers and law-enforcement veterans say it is difficult to confuse the two weapons because Tasers are generally bright yellow in color and lighter than handguns and because most officers wear them on opposite sides of their belts to avoid confusion.

     Body-camera video of the encounter shows Mr. Wright exiting the car and then getting back in, as police try to pull him back out. Ms. Potter can be seen pointing a gun at Mr. Wright and saying repeatedly that she is going to use her Taser.

     Mistake, eh? Well, maybe. Even probably. But then, there was an outstanding warrant on Wright, and it wasn’t for jaywalking:

     Daunte Wright choked a woman and threatened to shoot her if she did not hand over $820 she had stuffed in her bra, court papers obtained by DailyMail.com allege.

     Wright was due to face trial on a charge of attempted aggravated robbery – with a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

     Charging papers say he and a second man, Emajay Driver went to a home shared by two women in Osseo, Minnesota ‘to party’ in December 2019. At the time, Wright was 19 and Driver was 18.

     The women asked them to leave around 2.30 am on December 1, but they said they didn’t have a ride and the women – who are not identified in the court documents – allowed them to sleep on the floor.

     In the morning, one of the women went to the bank to get her $820 rent money which she gave to the other woman and then left for work. As Wright, Driver and the second woman were leaving, Wright allegedly tried to hold up the woman.

     ‘The three of them were walking to the door to exit the apartment and defendant Wright turned around and blocked the door preventing victim from leaving,’ says the report, written by Osseo Police Officer Shane Mikkelson.

     ‘Defendant Wright then pulled a black handgun with silver trim out from either his right waistband or his right coat pocket and pointed it at victim and demanded the rent money,’ continued Mikkelson.

     ‘Victim said “Are you serious?” Defendant Wright replied: “Give me the f**king money, I know you have it.”

     Given all that, had I been in the situation that Officer Potter confronted, I might have made the same “mistake.” But as Officer Potter is white and Daunte Wright was black, she will be pilloried for administering justice to a violent felon. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota is being ripped apart by rioters — black rioters.

     I can’t help but agree with Ragin’ Dave’s approach to the problem:

     I say let it burn. Those areas don’t have what it takes to enforce the law. They don’t have the will, they don’t have the political fortitude, they don’t have the mental ability to stop people from rioting and burning and looting. So let it burn, baby. Not one single fucking cent to Minneapolis. Burn it to the ground, and then laugh at the people who remain….

     Let it burn. Let it all burn, and then mock the idiots who burned their town down around their ears while they sit in embers and ashes. Maybe, just maybe, if it’s painful enough, people will learn that you don’t allow rioters to control everything and everyone.

     It’s that or one of two even more painful solutions:

• Cordon off the afflicted cities to prevent the violence and vandalism from spreading;
• Police and National Guardsmen go to live ammo and free-fire rules for those cities.

     But there are good people doing their level best to defend their portions of those cities, aren’t there? And so far, they’re having considerable success, just as did the famous “rooftop Koreans” of the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Mike Hendrix comments on the matter:

     Don’t start none, won’t be none, bitches. However, be aware: if you DO start some, there are folks around who’ll be more than happy to finish it for ya.

     But as far as I’m aware, Kyle Rittenhouse excepted, none of those armed defenders of their own properties has yet had to fire a shot at a rioter. What will happen to the first man the rioters elect to challenge? The police have notoriously sided against private citizens who’ve wielded firearms in defense of their rights and properties, and the rioters know it. Remember the McCloskeys of Saint Louis, Missouri?

     I’m not hopeful. I think things are likely to get much worse before people generally decide they’ve had enough. Their first act will be to demand the enforcement of the law…a demand which will receive lip service and little more. But after that, decent people will become genuinely enraged. They’ll go to the “We’re going to take care of this ourselves, police and prosecutors be damned” stage.

     Should we get to that point, it will make black Americans wish for the “Two Doors” scenario. But by then it will be much too late.