Micah Xavier Johnson (above), Eric Garner (below)
By all accounts, Micah Xavier Johnson was a deeply emotionally and probably mentally troubled man. Beginning with his inability to adjust to Army life - he was served with a sexual harassment charge and an Order of Protection was filed against him by the woman who brought that original charge.
Once home, his family noted that he was increasingly quiet and became "more and more reclusive."
This is a similar pattern followed by Dylann Roof. Both Roof and Johnson were said to have had many friends of different races earlier on, but both also became fixated on extremist hate sites online.
None of this is all that surprising, given that schizophrenia often takes root in one's late teens through the 20s.
Unlike most Americans, I’ve followed ALL these high profile police shootings VERY closely. To date, ONLY 2 of all the high profile cases fit the bill for “unjustified shootings.” One was that of John Crawford III, shot and killed in an Ohio Walmart because a malicious prank 911 caller phoned in Mr. Crawford carrying an air rifle by the barrel as “an active shooter” scenario (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZ-teZsZmo). The other was James Boyd a white homeless man shot and killed over “illegal camping” in New Mexico (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tpAZObNZfI). 2 cops were convicted of murder in that case. Well, you COULD put the case of Tamir Rice, the 12 y/o firing a pellet gun as police arrived in Cleveland in 2014, although in that case, the officer was exonerated because Tamir Rice refused to put down a pellet gun that looked very much like a real 9mm handgun.
In virtually EVERY other case in which people shot, they were either attacking police (like Michael Brownhttp://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/breaking-new-forensic-e…/ ANDhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWeA2-wdbcc), or were armed and refused to comply with police demands, or they actively resisted arrest.
A look at the Grand Jury evidence which exonerated Officer Darren Wilson in the Ferguson, MO shooting of Michael Brown, shows that Michael Brown was first shot in the interior of that squad car, as Mike Brown struggled for that cop’s gun. He NEVER had his hands up and died bull-rushing the cop after having already charged the car a 2nd time, after the first attack on Officer Wilson as Wilson sought to get out of the car.
In other words, “BLM’s “Hands Up...Don’t SHOOT” IS and always has been a LIE! (https://www.justice.gov/…/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael…)
So many of us seem to stop reading at the HEADLINES. The real gist of any story is in the body, often deep within the body of the story and often it takes weeks for all the facts to come out.
One of the more sympathetic characters in the litany of these alleged “police abuse” cases was that of Eric Garner, BUT if you don’t know who Kizzy Adonis is, then you DON’T really know the Eric Garner case...at all.
NYPD Sgt. Kizzy Adonis was the black, female NYPD Sergeant who oversaw that incident. It was Sgt. Adonis who did not want a taser used on Mr. Garner due to his heart condition. It was she, who didn’t want to deploy Pepper Spray because of his asthma. She decided that the “Quick Take Down” was the best option available at the time.
Officer Daniel Pantaleo’s tackle DID NOT result in ANY damage to Mr. garner’s throat, or windpipe. Mr. Garner DID NOT die on the scene from asphyxiation, as a victim of a chokehold would have. He died over an hour later, in hospital, of heart failure.
Sadly, Mr. Garner actively resisted arrest. His morbid obesity, along with a litany of other health issues doomed him that day.
NO American is allowed, by law, to disobey police commands, or confront police over perceived injustices in the street. Disobeying some orders, like, “Keep your hands where I can see them,” will often get a person (rightly) killed.
We ALL WANT even DEMAND that our streets be policed. We also seem to KNOW that Police are paid ONLY to bring suspects before the courts, NOT to hear any evidence of innocence, complaints, etc. in the streets. That is NOT their job and they are neither equipped, nor authorized to deal with adjudications on the street.
We SHOULD ALL KNOW that merely stepping away from an arresting officer, proclaiming, “I didn’t do anything,” constitutes “Resistng Arrest.”
While there’s little doubt that we NEED better, more effective non-lethal weaponry (more effective tasers, more immediate acting tranquilizers, etc.) AND that the onboard computers that enable remote shutoff and locking the doors remotely (available now) should be MANDATED.
One day soon, people will see old flicks like, “Smokey & The Bandit” and shake their head, wondering how anyone could actually run from police. We’ll soon have an environment in which police car chases no longer happen, they’ll just remotely shut down the car and lock the occupants inside. The moment someone fails to cooperate with police, they’ll be incapacitated (rendered unconscious), efficiently packaged and quickly transported to holding.
In the meantime, what I hope we all want are (1) much stiffer penalties that can’t be bargained away in any deals and must run consecutively NOT concurrently with any other sentences and the (2) tethering of government benefits (SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, etc.) to public conduct. I can envision a high-tech solution that would allow the Officers on-scene to cancel a belligerent’s government benefits. That individual would then have to go to the courts to see when they can get restored.
We must find new ways to command compliance from individuals, often reluctant to comply. Something more advanced than my own decades old low tech solutions.
Right now, a reckless and irresponsible news media, that fails to wait for the facts and assigns as much weight to notoriously unreliable eye-witness testimony as that of trained professional observers, coupled with a well-financed "hate group," BLM have combined to make law enforcement (Cops, Courts, Corrections, etc.) much more difficult, while emboldening career thugs.
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