That’s my headline, and I’m sticking to it until there’s any credible evidence to the contrary.
So far, the facts seem to go like this:
In Berkeley, Missouri (not too far from Ferguson), a call comes in at 11:15 PM from a Mobil station reporting a theft.
A single white policeman comes to the scene and questions two young black men who are in the station parking lot. One of the men fails to cooperate and starts wandering away from the vehicle, despite requests not to do so.
“One of the individuals ‘produced a pistol with his arm straight out, pointing it straight at the officer kind of from across the hood,’ [Police Chief] Belmar said.”
The police officer fires up to three shots at the man holding the gun, killing him.
According to Belmar, the young man’s 9 mm gun, which was found on his person, had the serial number filed off and there were five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.
The young man, who has been identified as 18-year-old Antonio Martin, had quite a rap sheet, “including three assaults, armed robbery, armed criminal action and multiple uses of weapons since he was 17.”
The family doesn’t any of mention that (of course, it’s understandable that the shocked and grieving family would try to defend him). According to them:
He was not a violent person, to our knowledge,” he added. “Around us there weren’t any pistols. It’s hard to believe that.”
His grandmother, Margret Chandler, was also in disbelief.
“When he was around me, he knew to do right,” she said. “Why would he pull out a gun against the police? That’s the thing I don’t get. It just doesn’t add up.”
His mother says he was just on his way “to visit his girlfriend and that he was not carrying a gun.” I wonder; does she frisk him every time he leaves the house? How would she have a clue what he was carrying?
“Clashes” and demonstrations have already ensued as a result of the death. Some injurieshave occurred, as well as some arrests:
The protest thinned by daybreak, and Belmar told an early morning news conference that four people had been arrested. He said that bricks and what were believed to be fireworks were thrown at officers, but he said police did not use tear gas.
One officer was being treated in a hospital emergency room for injuries to his lower leg sustained while he ran away, Belmar said, and another was treated at the hospital after sustaining injuries to his face from a brick.
The mayor of Berkeley takes pains to distinguish the case from Ferguson:
“This was not the same as Ferguson,” Mayor Theodore Hoskins said.
He took pains to say that the shooting could not be compared to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson or to the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York. The mayor, who is black, pointed out that the Berkeley police department is majority-black.
He promised a thorough investigation but said that the video showed it was not a police officer going off “half-cocked.”
“Everybody don’t die the same,” he told reporters. “Some people die because the policeman initiated. Some people die because they initiated it. And at this point, our review indicates that the police did not initiate this, like Ferguson.”
On the contrary, it is very much like Ferguson, except in Ferguson the “unarmed” Michael Brown assaulted the cop and tried to take his weapon, rather than carrying his own. I can understand why the mayor would want to make a different distinction, though. He doesn’t want the destruction that happened afterwards in Ferguson to happen in his town.
Another difference between this and Ferguson is that this incident was captured on a surveillance video. The policeman (whose name has so far not been released, wisely, although my guess is that some enterprising reporter will publish it) was not wearing a body camera, but the gas station’s cameras caught the exchange. Unfortunately the footage was not taken from close enough to show the gun, although it shows Martin raising his arm as described.
The entire thing might even have been planned as an ambush of the cop, although it’s impossible to say.
How much will this new incident be exploited by the racemongers? Let’s just say that already it’s gotten a ton of publicity from the press, although I don’t think Al Sharpton’s on the scene yet, nor has Eric Holder announced a federal investigation. Let’s also just say that, though the video is hardly definitive, it’s a good thing it exists, and a body camera would have been even better, although no amount of evidence exonerating the police officer would be enough for those determined to make this incident out to be another example of a young black man victimized at the hands of the white police.
Oh, and one more thing: if the police officer had been black this would rate maybe a paragraph in the back of the paper, whatever the race of the dead man. If both participants had been white, likewise.
