Please, Please Wait Before Jumping to Conclusions About Police-Involved Shootings
Why is everyone so determined to pull a Leeroy Jenkins after seemingly every shooting involving a cop?
Twenty minutes before a Minneapolis jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of the murder of George Floyd, news emerged of a police-involved shooting in Columbus, Ohio. Almost immediately, activists, politicians, and concerned citizens seized on what they assumed was another instance of the police shooting an unarmed person of color. They might be forgiven for thinking that, considering how major media outlets portrayed the situation:
Somehow, just coincidentally, three of America’s leading news outlets and the Daily Beast all forgot the exact same relevant detail. Ma’Khia Bryant, the teen who was shot and killed by Columbus police, was shot while she was actively attempting to stab two girls. Again, she was literally trying to commit murder when she was killed.
Did you notice that (taxpayer-funded) NPR quoted her family as an authoritative source? According to Franklin County Children Services, Bryant had been removed from her family and placed in foster care. We do not know the circumstances at this time, but that alone should give most fair-minded people pause before immediately taking her family member’s word as gospel.
Any death of a sixteen year old is a tragedy, but when Ma’Khia Bryant pulled a knife and tried to murder two girls, count me glad the officer was there and the two innocent girls who were not trying to commit murder are still alive today. Columbus police released body cam footage, which can be viewed here. Its horrifying, its tragic, yet it’s clear that after the police ordered her to stop, she was actively swinging a knife at another girl at the moment she was shot and killed. Of course, there will be further investigations into Bryant’s death, and we will likely learn more in the coming weeks about the minutes leading up to this tragedy.
Even so, the body camera footage was clear. That didn’t stop President Joe Biden from releasing this disingenuous, truly unbelievable statement:
The White House somehow failed to mention Bryant’s attempts to stab two people were the reason the police were called, and her continued efforts to commit murder was what forced the officer to use deadly force. They did make sure to include the standard woke boilerplate language, however, so I assume for Biden’s supporters and the media (but I repeat myself) that will suffice.
Floyd family lawyer and ambulance chaser par excellence Benjamin Crump couldn’t be bothered to spell Bryant’s name correctly, but he did make sure to lie and say she was unarmed:
Not to be outdone, longtime Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett had her own scorching hot take about the tragedy:
“Break up a knife fight.” Boys will be boys, amirite? (Or in this case, girls.) Ma’Khia Bryant, like Michael Brown, died much too young and was failed by the adults and institutions in her lives, but she alone chose to attempt murder (or in Brown’s case, assault a police officer).
What would have happened if the police didn’t arrive? Well, barely one day earlier, a thirteen year old girl was stabbed to death by another thirteen year old in Cincinnati. The murder of an American child doesn’t matter any less just because she was killed by another child in a high-crime neighborhood. Just because crime is endemic where one lives doesn’t mean their life has any less value than someone murdered in a nice suburb where violence is exceptional, not routine. Even so, the murder of Nyaira Givens has received a fraction of the media attention compared to Bryant’s death.
If the police weren’t there, we would have never learned Ma’Khia Bryant’s name. Instead, her victims would be like Nyaira Givens: Forgotten by all but the family and friends that loved them, barely mentioned by the media, politicians, or us because they weren’t killed in a way that could further a political narrative.