At first, it was only about the ingredients for the usual mindless reaction. Black 16-year-old girl shot and killed by cop. What more could anyone need to know? Of course, it didn’t take long to find out.
The cry of “split second decision” making is often ridiculed, but this was the moment when the cop had to make a decision. Did he take out the person about to murder another person or not? Only in a fantasy world were there alternatives, like the cop shooting the knife out of her hand or asking the killer to take a moment while he pondered his choice of weapons in the expectation that his Taser might do the trick before the knife plunged into the heart of the victim. But a black woman was shot by a cop, and that can’t happen.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the police officer who saved the life of a black woman would have been applauded as a hero. This is no longer that time.
It was bad enough that so many rushed blindly into the pool of outrage knowing nothing more than a cop shot and killed a black woman, but that they refused to let go of their outrage after learning, seeing, knowing what happened is where they completely lost touch with sanity.
The reporting of this story reflects where we are now and why we’re no longer willing to accept the premise that sometimes bad things happen and somebody is likely to die.
It was Valentine’s Day when Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, moved into the foster home where her younger sister had lived for more than a year. The girls were close, and would dance and make TikTok videos together, while Ms. Bryant nurtured a constant hope: to one day live again with her biological mother.
“That’s all she said, was, ‘I want to be with my mom,’” said Angela Moore, who said she provided foster care for Ms. Bryant and her sister on a quiet block on the southeastern edge of Columbus, Ohio.
Those dreams were cut short after a Columbus police officer fatally shot Ms. Bryant on Tuesday afternoon, just moments after arriving at a chaotic disturbance outside her foster home. Body-camera footage released by the Columbus police appears to show Ms. Bryant holding a knife as she lunges toward another person a moment before she is shot.
Talk about buried ledes. Did the girl Ma’Khia Bryant was about to murder have dreams too? I bet she did. I bet many killers had dreams, had people who loved them and liked puppies. But in the moment that the officer had to make a decision of whether to take Bryant out or let her plunge her knife into another human being, there really wasn’t much of an opportunity to share her dreams. She was about to kill someone. That was no dream.
The media reports showed Ma’Khia Bryant’s family talking about what a wonderful person she was. That may well be, aside from the fact that she wielded a knife and was about to kill another person, but if there is any question that should have been asked, it’s why this 16-year-old girl turned to deadly violence.
No, teens killing other teens with knives is not just some typical, insignificant thing for “eons.” That anyone would be so bold as to say things so utterly absurd, and that it’s not only acceptable to the terminally woke but applauded, suggests that we’re now off the edge of the cliff of reason. In this moment, someone was going to die. No ideological spin was going to stop that knife from plunging into a human being’s body.
No comments:
Post a Comment