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Here We Go Again

Last year George Floyd, who was Black and had hyper­ten­sion, an enlarged heart, and a bunch of oth­er med­ical issues (includ­ing hav­ing enough Fen­tanyl in his sys­tem to kill a horse), died after being arrest­ed and fight­ing with police.

The MMMs swung into action: Floy­d’s been can­on­ized and the offi­cer who knelt on him is in prison for mur­der.

Last month, police offi­cer Nicholas Rear­don shot and killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was also Black, while she was attempt­ing to stab some­one. Rear­don’s now sus­pend­ed and Bryant was well on her way to saint­hood as well, until today:

A few weeks ago three of four sher­if­f’s deputies on the scene in Eliz­a­beth City, N.C., shot and killed Andrew Brown, who was, again, a Black man. Once again, the MMMs insist they mur­dered Brown for no rea­son at all.

Oh sure; the deputies were there to exe­cute a felony arrest war­rant and a search war­rant. And yeah; the war­rants were issued because Brown was alleged­ly deal­ing in nar­cotics. And okay;  if you’re real­ly gonna get picky, Brown was try­ing to run the deputies over with his car.

If you want to ver­i­fy whether any­thing I just said is true, pre­pare your­self to wade through a bunch of news items that gloss over those issues, or don’t men­tion any­thing at all except that the deputies shot and killed Brown.

With the medi­a’s atten­tion focused on Ma’Khia Bryant and Nicholas Rear­don, this inci­dent was­n’t get­ting much atten­tion.

Until today, when Dis­trict Attor­ney Andrew Womble had the unmit­i­gat­ed gall to announce that the sher­if­f’s deputies were jus­ti­fied in using dead­ly force, giv­en that Brown was try­ing to run them down with his car. The deputies won’t be fired. They aren’t being charged with any crimes.

It’s an out­rage.

I sus­pect, though, that the inter­rupt­ed can­on­iza­tion and cru­ci­fix­ions won’t get much far­ther, at least not in North Car­oli­na. A Sher­iff and Dis­trict Attor­ney with the back­bone and balls to make and stand by a deci­sion based on facts, not by media and polit­i­cal pres­sure, prob­a­bly won’t tol­er­ate riot­ing, arson and loot­ing.

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