The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘It’s Table-Tossing Time’

Posted on | June 19, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

The decision of the Fulton County District Attorney to charge Officer Garrett Rolfe with felony murder in the shooting of Rayshard Brooks has driven many conservatives to the point of despair. How could anyone looking at the facts of the case think this charge was appropriate?

As a native of Atlanta, this case has been emotionally disturbing to me. And as I’ve said, this incident was stupid from start to finish. Brooks was stupid to pass out drunk in the Wendy’s drive through, and the cops were stupid not to be prepared for him to resist arrest.

After watching all the videos, and learning that Officer Rolfe was a decorated member of the High Intensity Traffic Team (HITT), it occurred to me that, because he had arrested dozens of drunk drivers, this was more or less a routine event. Had any of his previous DUI busts tried to resist arrest? I don’t know, but Officer Rolfe is a tall, muscular man, and he had perhaps never encountered someone who fought him as desperately as Brooks did. Keep in mind, there were two cops holding him when Brooks started fighting, and yet they were unable to control him. What could inspire such ferocious violence?

Rayshard Brooks was on probation and faced going back to prison if he was charged with a DUI, DailyMail.com can reveal.
It was the fear of incarceration that likely caused Brooks to panic in the face of imminent arrest and caused him to make a break for it. . . .
The charges to which Brooks pleaded guilty and for which he was still on probation dated back to August 2014 when he was convicted on four counts – False Imprisonment, Simple Battery/Family, Battery Simple and Felony Cruelty/Cruelty to Children.
He was tried in Clayton County and sentenced to seven years on the first count, with one year in prison and six on probation and 12 months for each of the other three counts, sentences to be served concurrently.
His sentence was revised, and he was sent back to prison for 12 months in July 2016 when he violated the terms of his probation.
Brooks had not been in trouble since that year until last December when he went to Ohio without informing his probation officer and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
That warrant was revoked and the case dismissed when he returned to Georgia on January 6.

Have you ever been on probation? Once I got six months probation for driving on a suspended license and it was a bummer. You have to pay a monthly maintenance fee and meet with your probation officer. Talk about feeling like the man is keepin’ you down.

Most middle-class, college-educated people have never had that kind of involvement with the criminal justice system, and can’t relate to what it’s like, but I can. And because of my habit of high-speed driving, I also know the paranoia of a traffic stop when you’re not sure if there’s a warrant out for you because of a ticket you forgot to pay. So imagine what it was like for Rayshard Brooks being on probation for six years, and having just recently gotten past a hassle over a violation for traveling out of state without informing his probation officer.

The mainstream media have ignored Brooks’ prior criminal history, and indeed have depicted him as a devoted family man, despite his record of domestic violence and cruelty to children. In other words, there is a narrative they’re promoting, and this narrative requires omission of the facts of Brooks’ criminal record. The same liberals who deplore “violence against women” are now eager to avoid any discussion of what Brooks did that resulted in his felony convictions, because they are determined to make this a story about racial injustice in which Brooks is an innocent victim. Never mind if he was also a wife-beater and child-abuser.

Daniel Horowitz argues that Officer Rolfe’s shooting of Brooks “was clear self-defense, and had the suspect been white, we would never have heard of it. The cop wouldn’t have been fired and rioters wouldn’t have burned down the Wendy’s”:

I’m seeing some commentators who clearly concede the self-defense point but lament that something so low-level, such as a drunk driver blocking the Wendy’s drive-through, could result in a death. Yes, it is tragic. This is what many cops have to deal with regularly. Many violent career criminals are often caught committing low-level crimes. Cops approach them as if they are innocuous, just as in this case, where clearly the cops treated him as just someone who had too much to drink. But there’s something interesting about violent criminals who barely serve time for past offenses: They are not deterred from acting violent again. Cops never know when someone is going to turn violent on them.

This is true, and it’s what is so wrong with the interpretation of the encounter made by the District Attorney, where he talked about Brooks being “jovial” while talking to the officers. Yes, we can see that on the video — Brooks was trying to talk his way out of a DUI bust that he knew could send him back to prison for violating his probation. His “jovial” demeanor was intended to convince police to let him go, and when that didn’t work? Had he planned to try to escape? Was his fight with the cops something that Brooks had been thinking of the whole time he was being “jovial” with the police? We will never know, because Brooks is not here to tell us, but the suddenness with which this situation went from being an ordinary DUI bust to become a life-or-death struggle was shocking.

Keep in mind that this is really all about politics. It is an election year. Democrats and the media are trying to “energize” black voters by inflaming racial animosity. There was no other reason to make George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks the most famous black men in America. Once you realize that the media is engaged in deliberate distortion, and once you realize the motive for this distortion, this can help you maintain emotional equilibrium among all the craziness.

Or, you could just explode in rage:

Steven Crowder’s rant expresses what a lot of Americans are feeling right now. America seems to have gone completely crazy, so crazy that Officer Rolfe’s stepmother got fired from her job.



 

Category: Crime, Georgia

Comments

2 Responses to “‘It’s Table-Tossing Time’”

  1. The week in reaction. – Dark Brightness
    June 19th, 2020 @ 9:42 pm

    […] And we should not cause collateral damage in a time of crisis. […]

  2. News of the Week (June 21st, 2020) | The Political Hat
    June 21st, 2020 @ 8:47 pm

    […] “It’s Table-Tossing Time” The decision of the Fulton County District Attorney to charge Officer Garrett Rolfe with felony murder in the shooting of Rayshard Brooks has driven many conservatives to the point of despair. How could anyone looking at the facts of the case think this charge was appropriate? […]