Tag: police shootings

Media Ran With Early Reports On The Columbus Shooting Only To Be Wrong

Media outlets and public figures immediately reported Tuesday afternoon that police had killed an unarmed 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio. As it turns out, they were wrong.

Police did shoot and kill 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, but she was armed. Body camera footage from the incident showed Bryant pushing one woman down on the sidewalk before swinging a knife at a different woman. Police shot the teenager multiple times after repeatedly telling her to “get down.”

Instead of waiting for the facts, people claimed that Bryant was unarmed. Many of the posts saying that the teenager was unarmed were still up as of Wednesday afternoon, even after body camera footage clearly showed that she had a knife. The tweets had been shared thousands of times.

“There has been yet another police shooting of an unarmed 16 year old Black teen girl by police in #ColumbusOhio,” CNN Legal Analyst Areva Martin wrote Tuesday night on Twitter.

Keep reading

Study: Critical Race Theory Propaganda Causes People To Grossly Overstate Police Killings of Blacks

As we all begin to absorb the full impact of the Biden administration’s anti-capitalism, anti-freedom, anti-Constitution, America Last policies, we are seeing, for only the second time in our nation’s history, an administration that openly disdains and gleefully condemns America as some kind of uniquely and irredeemably racist nation that must be destroyed in order to be rebuilt according to some regressive dystopian vision, circa the 1930’s.

To that end, today’s regressive Democrats and their media and Big Tech allies lie on a daily basis about everything even remotely pro-America, but the most onerous and intentionally divisive lies they tell are those related to race relations in the United States.

Eric Kaufmann recently published a study at the Manhattan Institute that gives lie to the regressive narrative about race in America.

Keep reading

NBC News Deceptively Edits Bodycam Footage So Viewers Don’t See Knife in Ma’Kiyah Bryant’s Hand Moments Before Officer Shoots Her Dead

NBC News deceptively edited police bodycam footage so their viewers wouldn’t see the knife in 15-year-old Ma’Kiyah Bryant’s hand moments before a Columbus officer shot her dead.

NBC also deceptively edited the 911 call to omit the part where the caller says a girl was “trying to stab us.”

NBC anchor Lester Holt began the segment by showing a picture of a smiling Ma’Kiyah Bryant to make her look innocent.

Omitting the fact that the teen was wielding a large knife and attempting to stab someone is willful deception.

Keep reading

If Derek Chauvin Can Be Found Guilty, These Cops Should Be Prosecuted as Well

On Tuesday former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin found guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Chauvin was seen on video kneeling on the neck of George Floyd — who was handcuffed and not resisting — for over 8 minutes, until he died. Had video of the incident not existed, the chances of Chauvin even being charged would have been non-existent. Even with the video, Chauvin’s case is extremely rare as cops who kill are almost never held accountable.

Finding a police officer facing a murder charge for an on-duty shooting is like finding a unicorn in your front yard. As TFTP has reported, despite horrifying police killings, many of which were captured on video and rocked the nation, the arrest rate for cops who kill people on-duty remains as low as ever. According to reports, since 2005, just 126 police officers have been arrested for murder or manslaughter in relation to an on-duty killing.

Of those 126, just 44 have been convicted, with 31 of their cases still pending, and just eight cops total, including Chauvin, have been convicted of murder. The other 37 cops were convicted on charges ranging from manslaughter to official misconduct, with many of them receiving no jail time.

Chauvin’s case proves, however, that it is indeed possible to charge cops who unnecessarily kill people. If he can be convicted of murder, others should be as well. The Free Thought Project has composed a list of killer cops whose crimes were just as, or more horrific as Chauvin’s but who were never charged.

Keep reading

Who Killed Adam Toledo?

On March 29, just after 2:30 AM, Chicago’s ShotSpotter alert system detected eight or nine gunshots in the West Side, largely Latino, neighborhood of Little Village, where gangs like the Latin Kings and Two Six have made gunplay a regular part of life. Chicago police officer Eric Stillman and his partner sped toward the gunshots once they received the ShotSpotter alert, doubtless hoping to nab the perpetrators and spare the community additional carnage. When they arrived on the scene, almost immediately after those shots were fired, they happened upon two individuals. One of them—who we now know to be 13-year-old Adam Toledo—took off on foot and, at one point, pulled a gun with his right hand. Stillman gave chase, and the world saw what happened next—at least the part highlighted (and, in one case, deceptively edited) by media outlets, many of which elided the actual events of Toledo’s shooting.

The immediate cause of Toledo’s death was the bullet fired by Officer Stillman. But it’s worth examining how a 13-year-old boy ended up in a full sprint through a dark alley at 2:30 AM with a gun in his hand and a police officer on his tail.

Start a few minutes before the shooting. Though it hasn’t gotten much attention, a video compilation that the Chicago Police Department released includes footage that seems to show Toledo walking with a young man before one (or both) fired the eight or nine shots at a passing vehicle near the alley where the police encountered Toledo. Exactly who pulled the trigger remains unclear (the footage is grainy), though CNN reported last Friday, citing prosecutors, that both Toledo’s hand, and the gloves of the man he was with, tested positive for gunshot residue. According to police, that man is a 21-year-old named Ruben Roman, who was arrested at the scene for allegedly obstructing Officer Stillman as he gave chase.

Keep reading