Midwestern Police Trying New 'Shoot All Black People' Approach

Here are a couple stories in which police officers shot people, and race was most certainly not a factor, because race is never a factor now that Barack Obama is President/Dictator for Life. We begin with the tragic death of a man named John Crawford, who was shot by police officers in an Ohio Walmart for the crime of shopping for a BB gun while black. While Crawford was busy exercising his Second Amendment rights, two other shoppers, April and Ronald Ritchie , decided they ought to inform the local police that a scary black man was carrying a gun in a store where guns are sold.

The gun held by a 22-year-old man who was shot dead Tuesday night at a southwest Ohio Walmart was just a realistic-looking toy, a law enforcement source told CBS affiliate WHIO. [...] April and Ronald Ritchie, of Riverside, told WHIO that they were in the hardware department Tuesday around 8: 20 p.m. when they saw a man walking the aisles carrying what they thought was a real gun, pointing it toward the sky. The couple called 911.

The couple said they followed Crawford at a safe distance. "Anytime I saw people walking his way, I would get their attention," April Ritchie said. She said the man was cradling a cellphone between his left ear and shoulder while he messed with the rifle.

Completely justifiable use of force! After all, how were the officers to know that the gun wasn't real, other than the fact that Crawford told them it wasn't?

LeeCee Johnson, who said she is the mother of Crawford’s children, said she was on a cell phone call with Crawford when he was shot by officers. [...] “We was just talking. He said he was at the video games playing videos and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were. And the next thing I know, he said ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him,” she said, adding: “And I could hear him just crying and screaming.”

To be fair, "It's not real!" is exactly what a rampaging black man hellbent on murder would say to the cops who'd already drawn their weapons on him. The National Review , America's best-loved white supremacist journal since 1955, thinks we ought to teach the controversy.

On its face, this is horrific. But is it true? The New York Daily News suggests Miss Johnson’s version is inaccurate [...] 'It is highly unlikely that the [BB gun Crawford was carrying] would kill a human but it can kill squirrels, snakes, rabbits or small birds if aimed properly. It’s certainly not a toy.' [...] if Crawford genuinely was “brandishing” (legal definition here) — and if he “did not comply with the officers’ commands” to such an extent that he actually threatened them — what exactly could they have done? More information needed.

Who can really say, y'know? The National Review certainly doesn't want to rush to judgement here, and journalistic ethics require them to suggest that LeeCee Johnson is a big fat liar. And who couldn't imagine a scenario in which the scary black man made scary movements at the brave and level-headed police officers? Not the kind of people who read the National Review, that's for sure. Whatever else happens as a result of Crawford's death, we expect the NRA to launch a full-fledged campaign demanding that Ohio police departments stop infringing on the rights of black people to purchase and bear arms. Should get started any day now.

Our second terrible story comes to us fromFranklin Ferguson, Missouri , where police shot a young black man to death long before that young black man tried to purchase a BB gun. It's called preventive policing, libruls, try reading a book sometime.

Witnesses tell News 4 that Mike Brown, 18, was unarmed and had his hands in the air when he was shot multiple times by a Ferguson police officer. [...] “He (the officer) shot again and once my friend felt that shot, he turned around and put his hands in the air,” said Dorian Johnson, a friend Brown’s. [sic] “He started to get down and the officer still approached with his weapon drawn and fired several more shots.”

The National Review has yet to run a "on the one hand" review of Mike Brown's shooting, mostly because the local chief of police appears to be doing all the fever-dream imagining for them.

"The genesis of this was a physical confrontation," Jon Belmar, chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, said at a Sunday news conference.

The officer tried to leave his vehicle just before the shooting on Saturday afternoon, but Brown pushed him back into the car, "where he physically assaulted the police officer" and struggled over the officer's weapon, Belmar said. [...] The account was in stark contrast to those of witnesses who said Brown did nothing to instigate the shooting and appeared to be surrendering when he was killed.

Cool story , Mr. Police Chief Man! Does it square with the available facts?

Belmar says after the officer got out of the car, he shot Michael Brown about 35 feet from the vehicle.

So who are you going to believe, America? A cop who wasn't there, or a bunch of eyewitnesses and forensic evidence? Seems like a pretty easy win for the forces of law and order, if you ask us. But ugh , then all the stupid citizens ofFranklinFerguson, Missouri, took to the streets because we guess they don't like being shot by the cops.

The fatal shooting of a black teenager by police sent hundreds of angry residents out of their apartments Saturday in a St. Louis suburb, igniting shouts of "kill the police" during a confrontation that lasted several hours.

Officers from 15 nearby departments responded with the kind of measured, non-military arms and tactics that have become the hallmarks of American policing since 9/11.

And of course Twitter reminded us of both the better angels of our nature and why we all love microblogging so much.

All in all, it's another great week to be a young black man in America!

[ CBS News / CBS News via Gawker ]

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