Category: Crime

Death at Chuck E. Cheese

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Google “fight + Chuck E. Cheese” and look at the results:

Hair-pulling, screaming brawl
breaks out at Chuck E. Cheese’s
— Miami Herald, Oct. 4, 2016

Women brawl in front of kids
party at Chuck E. Cheese’s
— New York Post, Dec. 19, 2017

Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese sends
three adults, one child to hospital
— WCPO-TV Cincinnati, April 28, 2019

Video of Sunday brawl at Beaumont
Chuck E. Cheese shared on social media
— KBMT-TV, Beaumont, Texas, Jan. 20, 2020

Police release body camera video during fight
in Mayfield Heights Chuck E. Cheese
— WJW-TV Cleveland, April 26, 2021

That is only a small sample of headlines from the past five years, and how weird is it that adults would be fighting at a pizza place best known as a location for little kids to celebrate their birthdays?

Who are these people? What kind of example are parents setting for their children, when they can’t even go to a birthday party without the occasion turning into an amateur UFC cage match? But it gets worse:

A Davenport woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday for fatally shooting another woman in a Chuck E. Cheese.
Treshonda M. Pollion, 25, was originally charged with first-degree murder, but in April she accepted a plea deal and pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. The plea deal included a mandatory sentence of 10 years.
Pollion was arrested on Oct. 25 for shooting Eloise Chairs, 29, after the two women allegedly got into a fistfight sparked by an argument about a game card.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more senseless crime than this one,” Scott County Judge John Telleen said during the sentencing hearing. . . .
Davenport officers were dispatched around 7:38 p.m. Oct. 25 to Chuck E. Cheese, 903 E. Kimberly Road, where they found Chairs with a gunshot wound. Chairs was transported to Genesis Medical Center East, Davenport, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Investigators said a number of witnesses described an argument among Chairs and others at the restaurant, sparked by a game card.
After the initial argument ended, a second altercation started between Chairs, Pollion and a witness. A Chuck E. Cheese manager tried breaking up the fight when Pollion and Chairs allegedly exchanged punches.
A witness who first argued with Chairs said she saw Pollion with a gun in her hand and heard Chairs warn others Pollion had a gun. Investigators said a single shot was fired during another altercation between Chairs and Pollion.

This line about an argument “sparked by a card game” didn’t make sense to me, so I dug a bit deeper and found more details:

Chairs had become involved in an argument with a mother after her son’s card game was taken by another child, her family told WQAD.
The other mother’s friend — identified as Pollion — allegedly took out a gun and shot Chairs in the shoulder, hitting a major artery.

So a kid steals your kid’s deck of Uno cards or whatever, and next thing you know, it’s shootout time at Chuck E. Cheese? But wait a minute — why is mom packing heat at Chuck E. Cheese? While I am a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights, what is going on in Davenport, Iowa, that a woman feels the need to be armed at a kid’s birthday party?

Perhaps I need to attend a seminar with Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo so I can understand the “systemic racism” angle in all this.




 

CNN’s ‘Hero’ Voter Is a Felon

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On “Super Tuesday” last year, CNN celebrated a Houston voter, Hervis Rogers, who stood in line for hours to vote in the Democratic primary:

“I figured like it was my duty to vote. I wanted to get my vote in to voice my opinion. And I wasn’t going to let nothing stop me. So I waited it out,” Hervis Rogers told CNN’s Ed Lavandera early Wednesday morning after casting his ballot at a polling center located at Texas Southern University, a historically black college in Houston.
Asked how long he had waited for to vote, Rogers said: “About six hours. A little bit over six hours.”
Rogers was among scores of voters who experienced long lines at some polling centers in Texas, where the state has shut down hundreds of polling sites in the last decade, contributing to the long lines at some of the remaining locations.

Notice that long lines at polling places are a crucial part of the liberal media’s “voter suppression” narrative, insinuating that this is some sinister conspiracy by Republican racists. Not even CNN, however, bothered to explain why those evil Texas racists would be “suppressing” votes in a Democratic primary, but CNN’s audience wouldn’t recognize sound logic if they ever saw it, which they seldom do. At any rate, what about this Hervis Rogers, who was so proud to do his “duty” by voting for Democrats? Have you got your shocked face ready?

Hervis Rogers is a convicted felon, who was on probation at the time he voted for Democrats last year — twice, once in the primary and then again in November — and Rogers was arrested this week for illegally voting, which is also a felony in Texas. Now, ask yourself this question: If convicted felons are prohibited from voting, then how was it that Hervis Rogers was on the list of registered voters in Houston?

If convicted felons were permitted to vote illegally in Houston, what about Atlanta? Milwaukee? Phoenix? Philadelphia? The point here, see, is that making sure election laws are enforced is a job of local officials, but because Democrats control all the election offices in major cities, we have no idea how many people are voting illegally in those cities, because Democrats have no interest in actually enforcing election laws.




 

‘Gun Violence’ Propaganda

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Notice the grammar of this headline from CBS News:

More than 180 people died in gun violence
over the July 4 holiday weekend

They use passive voice in the headline, which is contrary to the rules students of my generation were taught in journalism class. This use of passive voice is dishonest, serving to conceal from the reader just who it was that was pulling the triggers in these holiday weekend shootings. And where was it that all these people were dying from “gun violence”?

Were hillbillies gunning for each other in Appalachia? Were these holiday weekend shootings perpetrated by Italian gangsters? Salvadoran MS-13?

The journalists at CBS News don’t seem much interested in the details — who is shooting whom and where? — and so I, a lone blogger, must sort through the various reports for clues. For example, we know that more than 70 people were shot this weekend in Chicago, which thus accounts for more than a third of nation’s weekend shooting total, and as to the demographics of the shooters in Chicago, I think it is safe to say that probably none of them were Trump voters, IYKWIMAITYD.

Let’s go to Cincinnati:

The two people killed late Sunday at Smale Park shot at each other as a result of an ongoing disagreement, Police Chief Eliot Isaac said.
According to police, one person died at the scene and another at the hospital.
Police identified the two people killed as 16-year-old Milo Watson and 19-year-old Dexter Wright Jr.
“There’s been some kind of ongoing disagreement between the two individuals and believe it just spilled over yesterday evening at the park,” Chief Isaac explained.
Three victims were caught in the crossfire, Chief Isaac said.
A 17-year-old female, who was shot, is in critical condition at UCMC, the chief said.
400-500 teenagers were at Smale Park when the shooting happened, according to Colonel Lisa Davis. . . .
The three surviving victims are not being identified at his time.

That story features a mug shot of Dexter White Jr., and while we have no description of Milo Watson or the 500 other teenagers who were in the park at the time of the shooting, let’s just say it’s not likely many of them were Trump supporters. Or NRA members, for that matter.

How about Baltimore?

Violence continued in Baltimore over the July 4th holiday weekend as 14 people were shot, including a 12-year-old and 16-year-old. Five of those shot were killed – including two teenagers.
A 12-year-old boy was shot in the chest in a double shooting early Saturday morning on Annor Court in SW Baltimore. He’s listed in serious condition at last check.
Just before noon Monday, a 16-year-old was shot on McCulloh Street in Upton. A lieutenant on patrol found him with wounds to his arms and legs. He’s recovering at an area hospital.
The Carrollton Ridge neighborhood saw three homicides in four days.
Two shootings were reported on July 4 and eight shootings were reported on July 5, including the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old.
An 18-year-old was shot in the head and killed Tuesday morning.

Who is doing all the shooting in Baltimore? Well, I can tell you that in the 2020 election, Joe Biden got 88% of the vote in Baltimore. And I can tell you that, on the Baltimore Sun‘s listing of the 100 most recent homicides in the city, only one of the victims was known to be white, because most white people don’t want to go anywhere near Baltimore. And what do we know about the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood?

The area currently known as Carrollton Ridge is a low income residential neighborhood directly west of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Its boundaries are roughly defined by Frederick Avenue to the north, Carroll Park to the south, Bentalou Street to the west and Fulton Avenue to the east. The neighborhood is racially diverse, though predominantly African American.

Forgive me for suspecting there aren’t a lot of Trump voters in that neighborhood. Maybe it’s a stereotype, but in a city where 88% of voters are Democrats, I don’t think very much of the “gun violence” in Baltimore is being perpetrated by Republicans. How about Philadelphia?

A triple shooting at a Fourth of July barbecue in West Philadelphia left two people dead and and a teenager in the hospital.
Witnesses say, at first, they mistook the gunshots around 10:30 p.m. Sunday at 60th and Sansom streets for fireworks. Then they started to run.
One of the victims has been identified as 23-year-old Sircarr Johnson Jr., the owner of Premiere Bande, a clothing store in West Philadelphia. . . .
More than 100 shots were fired. Police ran out of evidence markers.
Johnson’s 21-year-old friend, Salahaldin Mahmoud, was also pronounced dead.
A 16-year-old female was also shot and hospitalized in stable condition.
Police are reviewing footage from surveillance cameras in the area.
And only a few hours later, police responded to the 5900 block of Hazel Avenue in West Philadelphia for another homicide.
Police say a 21-year-old male was shot multiple times just before 2 a.m. Monday.
He rushed to the hospital where he died.
As of now, there is no word on any arrests or a possible motive in these shootings.

Maybe some readers who are more familiar with the area can give us some demographic details about West Philadelphia, but just watching the video of the news report about this shooting, I’m going to speculate that it’s highly unlikely the perpetrators were Trump voters.

Again, I apologize if I am unfairly generalizing based on a handful of anecdotal evidence here. My point is that the phrase “gun violence” is a sort of verbal camouflage used by liberal journalists to obscure the reality of who is actually responsible for the majority of such crimes in America, and to transfer that responsibility to firearm owners in general, most of whom would never commit such lawless violence. In other words, the phrase “gun violence” is a form of political propaganda.




 

72 Shot in Chicago This Weekend

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Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s constituents celebrated the Fourth of July by turning their city into a shooting gallery:

Thirteen people have been killed and at least 59 others wounded since Friday night in shootings across Chicago.
At least seven children have been shot in Chicago since late Sunday afternoon.
Two people were killed and at least four were wounded, including a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy, in a shooting early Monday in Washington Park on the South Side.
The Washington Park attack happened around the same time that a 6-year-old girl and a woman were shot in West Pullman, and about four hours after an 11-year-old boy and a man were shot in Brainerd on the South Side.
In one of the latest shootings, a 5-year-old girl was injured after she was shot in the leg, according to police.
Chicago police say the girl was in an alley near 117th Street and South Normal Avenue when she was hit.
A six-year-old girl and 43-year-old woman were shot in the 100-block of East 119th Place, police said.
They were standing with a group in the 100-block of East 119th Place at about 1:04 a.m. when police said someone in a gray SUV fired shots in their direction.
The girl was wounded in the hand and transported to Comer Children’s Hospital. The woman self-transported to Roseland Hospital in fair condition.
A 19-year-old man was killed while riding in a vehicle on the Near West Side.
Just after 11 p.m., the teen was riding as a passenger in a vehicle in the 2600-block of West Van Buren Street when someone fired several shots, Chicago police said.
He suffered five gunshot wounds throughout his body and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said. . . .

The report details further carnage and then concludes:

Last weekend, six people were killed and 68 others were wounded in weekend shootings in Chicago as the city reaches the halfway point of what could be one of its most violent years in decades

So, in just two weekends, the city has had 19 killed and 127 wounded. If the U.S. military were sustaining such an alarming casualty rate in a foreign country, Joe Biden would order a troop withdrawal.




 

Khaled Awad Update: Student Visa for Egyptian Who Stabbed Massachusetts Rabbi; Roommates Say He Hated Jews

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When we first reported on this case, authorities in Massachusetts were still mystified about the motive behind the stabbing of a rabbi in front of a Boston-area Jewish school by 24-year-old Khaled Awad. Some readers may have anticipated this latest development:

An Egyptian man who is accused of stabbing a rabbi outside of a Jewish day school in Boston on Thursday overstayed his student visa and lost his legal status on May 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Fox News.
Khaled Awad, 24, allegedly approached Rabbi Shlomo Noginski with a gun and demanded his car keys, at which point Noginski ran across the street to a park, where Awad stabbed him in the arm multiple times.
He entered the United States two years ago for college, but his legal status recently lapsed.
“Khaled Awad, 24, a citizen of Egypt, entered the United States on a student visa in August 2019,” a spokesman for ICE told Fox News. “However, he failed to stay enrolled as required by law, resulting in a loss of legal status in the U.S on May 14, 2021.” . . .
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said her office has launched an investigation into the case but it has not been labeled a hate crime as of yet. . . .
One of Awad’s former friends at the University of South Florida, Eric Valiente, told CBS Boston that Awad was “violent” and “anti-Semitic.”
“He started becoming violent,” Valiente told the local news outlet. “He was very much anti-Semitic. He would say like all types of Jewish jokes. I thought he was joking at first and then I started to see seriousness in his comments.”
Aidan Anderson, a former roommate of Awad’s who is Jewish, told CBS Boston he had to move out and get a restraining order last fall when Awad attacked him in their shared kitchen.
Prosecutors must prove “that a crime is bias-motivated beyond the violent and seemingly targeted nature of the attack” in order to charge a suspect with a hate crime, a spokesman for Rollins’ offfice said. . . .
Prosecutors said in court on Friday that Awad faced charges of battery and theft in Florida and had to be sent to a mental health facility. He had a clean record in Massachusetts.
Awad is currently being held without bail pending a hearing on July 8 to determine if he is a danger to society.

Talk about an open-and-shut case: Jew-hater stabs a rabbi, but you need a court hearing to know whether “he is a danger to society”? And prosecutors aren’t sure they can prove this is a hate crime?

Also, why are we importing Jew-haters from Egypt? Is there a shortage of domestic anti-Semites, so we need to bring them in from foreign countries? Stabbing the rabbis American Jew-haters won’t stab?




 

Guy Named ‘Khaled Awad’ Stabs Rabbi in Front of a Synagogue: ‘The Motive … Was Not Immediately Clear,’ Police Say

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Pretty sure that if some rednecks in Mississippi lynched a black guy, the police might be willing to speculate about the motive:

BOSTON — A man who is accused of stabbing a Brighton rabbi eight times appeared before a judge in Brighton District Court on Friday on charges of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a police officer.
The victim, identified as Rabbi Shlomo Noginski, was stabbed multiple times in the Brighton Common park at Chestnut and Washington streets, near the Shaloh House school.
A suspect, later identified as Khaled Awad, 24, of Brighton, was arrested a short time later on Chestnut Hill Avenue, authorities said.
In court Friday, prosecutors said Awad has no criminal record in Massachusetts but has had incidents in Florida, including battery and theft.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins was present in the courtroom for the arraignment. “We believe this individual is a danger to our community,” Rollins said following the arraignment.
Awad was held without bail, with a dangerousness hearing scheduled for next week.
Rollins’ office is still investigating to determine if the attack can officially be called a hate crime.
Court documents say three police officers initially made contact with the suspect, before he ran.
According to the court documents, one of the officers looked around a corner and was confronted by the suspect pointing what appeared to be a black firearm at him. The other police officers drew their firearms and ordered the suspect to drop his weapon multiple times.
The court documents say after a brief, but tense moment, the suspect lowered his weapon and threw it to the ground.
Police said the suspect kicked one of the officers in the stomach as he was being assisted into a transport vehicle for booking.
Rabbi Dan Rodkin, the executive director of the Shaloh House, said Noginski was stabbed eight times.
Rodkin said the suspect approached the rabbi while he was talking on the phone, sitting on the steps of the school.
According to Rodkin, the suspect demanded the rabbi’s car keys at gunpoint but also wanted the rabbi to get in the car.
Court documents, which cite a police interview with Noginski following the incident, say the suspect ordered him to walk over to his vehicle. . . .
Investigators said the motive of the stabbing was not immediately clear.

Yeah, it’s a real mystery, this case. By the way, did you notice this news report says nothing about Awad’s immigration status? Do you suppose it’s possible that Awad came here as some kind of “refugee”? But curiosity is no longer a requirement in the journalism business.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades: “If [the suspect] were white, CNN would already be analyzing what podcasts he listened to, and calling for YouTube to deplatform Tim Pool.” He forgot to add that they would be leading every hour with coverage of the story, and demanding that Republicans in Congress denounce Tim Pool for inciting this hate crime.




 

What Happened to Nathan Allen? Troubling Omens of ‘The Crazy Years’

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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . .
. . . you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling’s once-famous poem came to mind this afternoon while I was pondering the bizarre case of Nathan Allen, a 28-year-old from Massachusetts who seemed to have everything going for him. He got married last fall and had recently completed an advanced degree in physical therapy and . . . Well, appearances can be deceiving:

Nathan Allen was named as the gunman who shot and killed a retired Massachusetts state trooper and an Air Force staff sergeant after crashing a stolen box truck into a building in Winthrop, Massachusetts, on June 26, 2021. He left behind white supremacist writings targeting Jews and Blacks, authorities said.
He told neighbors he worked as a physical therapist, according to The Boston Globe.
The incident unfolded in Winthrop in a chaotic scene on the street and ended with police shooting and killing the suspect. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins released Allen’s name. “Two innocent people lost their lives,” she said, adding that the murders are being investigated as a hate crime. Both victims were Black. She believes Allen, 28, acted alone.
On social media, the gunman painted a picture of a mundane and apolitical life, writing about his rabbits and being featured with his future wife in a flattering Boston Globe article that described how they got married in a nursing home so her grandfather could attend in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had no criminal history and had earned a Ph.D., according to Rollins. Prosecutors say those attributes were a front that hid a darker side, fueled by racism.

In nearly all such cases, there are warning signs — “red flags” — that have been overlooked prior to the suspect’s deadly rampage. For example, the infamous “incel” killer Elliot Rodger was clearly a ticking bomb whose behavior had been troubled for some time. In this case, however, there seems to have been no warning signs at all, and the only evidence of his motive comes from what Allen had scrawled in a notebook:

Rollins revealed that the suspect wrote antisemitic and racist statements.
“There is some troubling white supremacist rhetoric that was found in Nathan Allen’s own handwriting, antisemitic and racist sentiments against Black individuals,” Rollins said in a news conference. “This is a sad day. These two people protected our rights and fought for us to be safe. They were executed yesterday and we will find out why.”
In a news release, she wrote:

At this preliminary stage of the investigation, the excellent work of law enforcement has already unearthed troubling white supremacy rhetoric and statements written by the shooter. This individual wrote about the superiority of the white race. About whites being ‘apex predators.’ He drew swastikas.
There is a growing national, and global, problem with extremism and white supremacy. The FBI believes the most serious domestic violent extremist threat comes from ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the white race.’
This shooter was married and employed. He had a Ph.D. and no criminal history. To all external sources he likely appeared unassuming. And then, yesterday afternoon he stole a box truck, crashed it into another vehicle and a property, walked away from the wreckage interacting with multiple individuals and choosing only to shoot and kill the two Black people he encountered.

We will almost certainly learn more about Allen’s descent into murderous madness. When did he start drawing swastikas in his notebook? Did he have any online communications about his beliefs? Had something happened in his life recently that triggered this deadly rampage? Until we have more actual facts, it is irresponsible to speculate, but the disconnect between Allen’s superficially normal life and his secret racial hatred leads me to suspect that his radicalization (if we can call it that) must have been rather recent, and was probably triggered by some problem in his personal life. Nearly all hate-crime sprees like this are committed by people who could generally be labeled “disgruntled losers,” whose personal failings lead them down the rabbit-hole of racial paranoia. This guy “doesn’t fit the profile,” so to speak; Allen was employed and married and seemed to have a promising future ahead. Why would someone like that go so completely off the rails, and do it so suddenly?

Like I said, we can expect to learn more about why this happened, but at the moment, it’s a disturbing mystery, perhaps an omen of hidden danger in what Heinlein called The Crazy Years, “when rapid changes in technology, together with the disruption those changes caused in mores and economics, caused society to, well, go crazy.” When you’re surrounded by insanity, it can be a struggle to “keep your head,” as Kipling said. Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid the craziness so far.




 

Thank You, Officer Curtis Brown!

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Tyler O’Neil has a story headlined, “Antifa Rioters’ Response to the Latest Police Shooting Shows Just How Racist They Are,” which amuses me endlessly. Police in Portland, Oregon, were called to a motel where a man was causing a disturbance. He charged at them with a screwdriver, and was shot dead by Officer Curtis Brown. The usual riot squad of radical Antifa trash showed up to protest — because “Black Lives Matter,” right? — only to learn that the dead man, Michael Ray Townsend, was white and that the cop who shot him was black. Oh, but wait! It gets even better! Townsend was a crazy meth addict with tattoos on his face:

Townsend had a documented history of mental illness. In 2018, Townsend was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for an unarmed bank robbery in Portland. Townsend claimed to have been having a psychotic episode at the time.
“Defendant’s mental illness and heavy use of methamphetamine apparently contributed to his decision to rob the bank,” Hannah Horsely, the Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted the case, wrote in her sentencing memorandum at the time.
In December 2020, Townsend’s parole was revoked after he failed to participate in the mental health treatment program stipulated in the terms of his release.

If ever there was a cracker who needed to be shot by a cop, this was the guy — but wait! I know you think it couldn’t get better, but it does!

Officer Brown was already a hero. Remember the “Occupy” movement of 2011? Well, when police were finally dispatched to clean up the fetid mess of “Occupy Portland” in November 2011, the protesters got violent:

Brown was “engaged with a group of violent protesters,” [police Sgt. Pete] Simpson said, when someone tossed an improvised explosive device from the back of the crowd. It struck Brown in the leg and detonated a short distance away, police said.
Brown immediately fell to the ground and had to be pulled out of the melee by other officers. He underwent surgery to re-attach a large portion of his quadriceps.

They gave him an award in 2012. This guy hates smelly hippie scum, and he doesn’t seem to care much for crazy meth heads, either.

As I explained in February, “It’s always heartwarming news when cops shoot a white criminal. . . . Good-bye and good riddance, criminal scum.”

Shootings like this completely disrupt the liberal media narrative, and weeding out the dope-addled scum helps improve the breed, so I hope our readers in the law-enforcement community will spread the word: If you get a chance to shoot a white criminal, fire away.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! A commenter there expressed concern about my indifference to Michael Ray Townsend’s demise:

Somehow, having a white man advocate that if a police officer ever gets a chance to shoot a white criminal, go right ahead is not comforting, especially when it does not advise the same response to non-white criminals.
One of the strangest aspects of this summer’s anti-white racism push is that most of the pushing is being done by white people. Perhaps they hope the alligator will eat them last, but otherwise it is as hard to understand as when someone who appears Jewish verbally attacks Jews (the stereotypical self-hating Jew.) Apparently, there is now a self-hating white equivalent, quickly also becoming a stereotype.

Moi? A “self-hating white”? Somebody alert the SPLC to this! But meanwhile, I replied in the comments to explain my attitude:

This is the difference, you see. Cops shoot white criminals all the time, and yet you don’t see white mobs looting Foot Locker in response. If “white supremacy” actually means anything, shouldn’t it mean that white people are more law-abiding? Well, then, why would any white person give a shit because cops killed a worthless piece of trash like this meth head in Portland?

Please, somebody call this to the attention of SPLC Thought Police, as I’m sure they’ll find some sinister significance to this, but you see my point: If, as we are told, white people are automatically endowed with “privilege,” then what was Michael Ray Townsend’s excuse? He alone must bear the responsibility for his failures — meth addiction, mental illness, tattoos on face, etc. — because no self-respecting white person would consider him as representative of our race. But let some black guy get shot by the cops and, no matter what a dangerous scumbag the deceased suspect may have been, the black community will celebrate him as a heroic martyr. I don’t think that attitude reflects very well on the black community, but they haven’t solicited my advice.