The Other McCain

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Video: A Death in Omaha

Posted on | April 24, 2021 | Comments Off on Video: A Death in Omaha

Two important details about the death of Kenneth Jones:

An autopsy later showed that Jones’ urine and blood tested positive for phencyclidine, or PCP, a hallucinogen. . . .
Jones had a felony conviction on his record and would have faced a mandatory three years in prison if convicted on a charge of being a felon in possession of a weapon.

The loaded .45 Jones was carrying on the night of Nov. 19, 2020, had been purchased by his brother. We do not know — the article in the Omaha World-Herald doesn’t tell us — whether the brother acted as a “straw man” purchaser to provide his criminal brother with a weapon, which would be a federal felony. Liberals are always proclaiming they want “common sense” gun-control laws, and prohibiting convicted felons from possessing firearms is about as common-sense as it gets. Need I explain the relevance of this to the death of Kenneth Jones?

  1. Contrary to what liberals would have us believe, there are already numerous laws — federal, state and local — which regulate the sale and possession of firearms.
  2. Criminals do not obey gun-control laws. If it were in their nature to obey laws, they wouldn’t be criminals, would they?
    and
  3. The way to prevent “gun violence” (a phrase beloved by the liberal media) is to enforce existing laws.

Guess whose job it is to enforce laws?

Oh, wait — it’s the police! And liberals hate the police.

So it’s about 7:30 on a November night, a week before Thanksgiving, when Omaha police officers Dan Faulkner and Rich Martier are on patrol on the south side of Omaha, on South 27th Street about a mile west of the Missouri River. Let me ask the reader: What do you know about Omaha? And what do you know about standard police procedures?

Knowing nothing at all about the geography of Omaha, I would hazard a guess that the city’s south side includes what most people would call “bad neighborhoods,” that the south side is home to most of Omaha’s black population, and is also where most gun violence in the city occurs. Because the job of law enforcement is to prevent crime and apprehend criminals, I would further speculate that Omaha cops spend a lot of time patrolling the south side of the city: “Hunt where the ducks are,” as the old adage goes. All of which is to say, it was not a coincidence that officers Faulkner and Martier were in the vicinity of South 27th Street on the evening of Nov. 19. They’re both four-year veterans of the force, and had probably spent a lot of time in that neighborhood, so when they saw a Dodge Charger driving erratically, they knew what was up.

“Probable cause” — an impaired driver, that was what they suspected. There were three women in the car, and Kenneth Jones was in the back seat on the driver’s side. Even before they exited their patrol vehicle, the cops saw Jones reaching around in the back seat. If you’ve watched enough bodycam videos on YouTube — you are subscribed to the Police Activity channel, right? — you’ve seen this scenario played out dozens of times in office-involved shootings: Cops pull over a bad guy, notice him moving around in the vehicle in a way that suggests he’s trying to hide something, and the order is shouted: “Show me your hands!”

Before we get to the video, let me digress for a moment and ask you to consider something: What is the point of issuing pistols to police officers, if they never shoot any criminals? In 2020, about 1,200 suspects were shot to death by cops — a hundred a month — and very few of those shootings could legitimately be considered “controversial.” For every questionable police shooting, there are many dozens of cases that are strictly “local news” because either (a) the suspect was white, and there’s no racial angle to exploit, or (b) the suspect was so flagrantly dangerous not even Ben Crump would object to cops shooting him dead.

My point is that cops shooting bad guys is not a rare event in America, and thank God for that, because the potential of getting shot — the credible threat — is what makes law enforcement effective. Why would anyone cooperate with a police officer otherwise?

You’re driving 90 mph and see the blue lights in your rearview mirror, why not just keep going, if the cop can’t shoot you? The cop wants to put you in handcuffs? Just say “no,” because he can’t shoot you. That gun on the officer’s hip is there for a reason, you see. If cops were prohibited from using their guns, there would be no real law enforcement, and criminals would be able to perpetrate felonies with impunity.

This is the future anarchy toward which anti-cop rhetoric is leading us. America will become a society in which criminals have no fear of police, in which no one will be safe from violent predators. And while I’m digressing, let me ask: How many unsolved homicides have there been in Omaha in the past 15 or 20 years? I ask this because Kenneth Jones was 35 years old and had apparent been perpetrating felonies his entire adult life. He had been busted at least three times on weapons charges, and in 2014 was sentenced to prison: “Jones was released on May 3, 2018 after serving three-and-a-half years with 191 days of good time, according to records from the Department of Corrections.” Is anyone foolish enough to believe that Jones was in the habit of carrying weapons for peaceful and legal purposes? No, don’t be silly — he was a full-time criminal, and the pistol was a tool of his felonious trade. We will never know how many people Kenneth Jones robbed, assaulted, or murdered during the course of his criminal life, but we do know this: He’ll never shoot anyone again.

 

“I’ve got my f**king gun right on your face.”

Say what you will, but you can’t say Officer Martier failed to explain the situation clearly to Kenneth Jones. Everybody else in the car raised their hands, but Jones kept reaching around, because he knew damned well he was going back to prison if he got caught with that gun.

How often have you heard liberal advocates of gun control speak about the need to “get guns off our streets”? Well, how do they suppose this is going to happen? Whose job will it be to apprehend criminals and confiscate their weapons? Cops, that’s who. And what will happen when, predictably, criminals don’t cooperate with the program?

You just watched the video. Now imagine how many more shootings like this we’re going to see if Democrats enact new gun-control laws.

Maybe you think more laws are the answer to the “gun violence” problem, but in my opinion, the real solution to the problem is more effective enforcement of the laws we already have. And really, how could any American be against effective law enforcement?

Kenneth Jones could not be reached for comment.




 

Category: Crime, Nebraska, Racism

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