Ken Berwitz
What do you think about the lynchings which often took place in the south? The ones where racist scum lynched a Black man who was accused of doing something he may or may not have done, or lynched the first Black male they saw, regardless of whether he could have had anything to do with the accusation, to “teach those niggers a lesson”?
Does that sicken you to your stomach? I hope so. Because, if it doesn\’t, you need serious help.
With that in mind, please read the following article (too short to excerpt)from from CBS News (but not well covered by most mainstream media):
It\’s a story heard a lot these days: A cop mistook somethinga suspect was carrying for a gun and shot him dead.
The difference with the Antroine Scott shooting in SanAntonio last week is that a local tabloid newspaper wants to publicly exposeevery local cop over it.
CBS affiliate KENS-TV reports the owners of the San AntonioObserver held a press conference and spoke on behalf of Scott\’s family whilerevealing their plans. The editor-in-chief, Stephanie Zarriello, said shootingsof citizens by officers go unpunished because the officers remain anonymous.
“Like Ku Klux Klansmen with hoods, (officers) doeverything they can in order to protect their identities for fear of beingbrought to justice,” said Zarriello. “Just as the names and addressesof sex offenders are publicized in order to protect the public from theirwicked behavior, we feel that our community has the right to the exact samelevel of protection.”
San Antonio\’s police chief said Friday that Scott washolding a cellphone, not a gun as officers feared, when he was killed.
The 36-year-old was fatally shot at a north San Antonioapartment complex by officers trying to serve two felony weapons and drugwarrants for his arrest Thursday evening.
At a news conference Friday, Police Chief William McManussaid Officer John Lee approached the suspect as he stepped from a car and toldScott to raise his hands. McManus says Scott spun quickly with something in hishand. Lee, fearing for his life, shot him in the upper torso. Scott died wherehe fell.
Lee, who\’s a 10-year veteran of the San Antonio PoliceDepartment, has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome ofa department investigation.
Let\’s see: Police are trying to serve a warrant for, among other things, felony weapons charges (i.e. there is good reason to believe the man they are serving those warrants are is armed). The man they are trying to serve has an object in his hand and spins quickly toward the officer. He shoots, the man is dead, and the item turns out not to be a weapon.
What would you have done? What if you did not know whether the the indeterminate object an accused weapons felon reached for was a gun?
Ok, let\’s take a worst case scenario here. Let\’s suppose that the cop is lying. Let\’s suppose he easily could have seen it was a cell phone, and decided, for whatever reasons (which may or may not have been racial) to just shoot the accused perp dead. How does that translate into ALL cops being compared to the ku klux klan? How does that translate into the names and addresses of ALL cops being put up for the public to see…so that every police officer, regardless of his or her quality as a human being, along with anyone who lives in his or her home, could become a target?
How, conceptually, does that differ from the ugly “any Black male will do” example of racism I put up at the beginning of this blog?
I don\’t know what the laws in Texas are for this kind of thing, but I hope every one that is applicable will be used against this sorry excuse for a “journalist”, stephanie zarriello.
I wonder how she will feel if someone puts up her home address, and/or other personal information that people who dislike her can use it for whatever their purposes are.
I wonder how she will feel if someone puts up the same information for every employee of her paper, regardless of how they feel about her attitudes toward police, the way she intends to put up every police officer\’s information.
I hope for their sake they never have to suffer the possible consequences.
One other thing: the article starts with “It\’s a story heard a lot these days: a cop mistook something a suspect was carrying for a gun and shot him dead”.
The hell it is.
There are almost a million police officers in this country. Count up all the instances and see whether it is “a story heard a lot these days”. Even when trying to report a straight story they do this.
Journalism with a small “j”. Again. As usual.
