Oklahoma Cool With It If You Wanna Shoot Some Black Cops, Guys

It’s set to be a banner fucking year for white assholes . Again. An Oklahoma man who shot the black chief of police four times is being released with no charges, because of course he is.

The gentleman in question is Dallas Horton of Sentinel, Oklahoma, which is a name you’d expect to see sported by a villain on Law & Order SVU : the kind of paranoid, creepy gun fetishist who lives off the grid because he hates the government or something. Well you’ll be pleased to know that’s exactly what he is :

Horton’s neighbor David Delk described the gunman to the Oklahoman as a “survivalist” type who mistrusted the government, was openly unfriendly to neighbors and wore a lot of black clothing.

Nailed it.

The day began when cops were called out to Horton’s home in the course of investigating a bomb threat. Someone had called police earlier that morning claiming he’d planted a bomb in the local Head Start school, and it was set to detonate at 8 am. When police investigated the school, they found there was no bomb, but they managed to trace the call back to Horton’s residence.

Police Chief Louis Ross led a team of officers to Horton’s, and after yelling for him to come out, decided to storm the Bastille. It’s a damn good thing he decided to wear a bulletproof vest at the last minute because Horton opened fire on the officers and struck the police chief four times, three of them in the chest. Your correspondent is not a firearms expert, but generally after you hit someone once in the chest, are the subsequent shots really necessary? Sometimes, especially if they're invading your home and maybe you need to Stand Your Ground. [contextly_sidebar id="vu3DZvYepy5zab7j2FyNBgSk0ZCvReBA"]

But whew, our hero officer survived thanks to some serendipitous thinking, and the suspect was taken into custody... for a few hours . And then he was released without any charges because, according to a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, "We don’t have probable cause to make an arrest at this moment." Sure, maybe they don't have probable cause about the bomb threat, but what about that whole shooting-at-the-cops thing? Any probable cause for that?

Haha, you forgot for a second that this is America. When a black man shoots someone in the chest he's a thug, but when a white man shoots someone in the chest he's a "gun enthusiast." It was just an unfortunate accident that Mr. Horton's enthusiasm got all over Chief Ross' body, leading him to still feel numb in his arm days later.[contextly_sidebar id="x3NtcSKOraH3gJ9elIK8B6NjynasEEhq"]

The only way this story could get worse is if evidence surfaced that Horton's bomb threat to a predominantly black school and his opening fire on a black officer might have been just a smidge racially motivated. Dear God it is not our day :

A Facebook profile believed to be Horton’s is rife with racially charged images and jabs at black leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton. “Hurt ME and your [sic] gonna feel pain,” declares one image, “hurt my BEST FRIEND and your gonna need an ambulance, hurt my FAMILY...I’m gonna need a shovel.”

Another image shows a blood-spattered 18-wheeler cab with human limbs sticking out of it. “JUST DROVE THROUGH FERGUSON,” it reads, “DIDN’T SEE ANY PROBLEMS.”

Super. This is the point in the L&O episode where Stabler glares at his computer screen like he's trying to incinerate it with his mind, and Benson just grits her teeth like she's trying to hold back vomit. After the commercial break Munch and Tutuola have a snarky talk about the sorry state of race relations in America, and then the detectives get into a fight with the DA because the plot says so.

Back in the real world, you may be wondering how on earth Horton got off with just a stern handshake. Now while your mommyblog would never try to suggest anything untoward about the politics of small town Sentinel, Oklahoma, let's just say that it probably doesn't hurt his case that the Mayor himself says of Horton, “I’ve known that kid all of his life.” We're just saying.

Now if you'll excuse me, your correspondent is going to go turn this story into a spec script and shop it around to some people and go win all the Emmies. It's pretty easy to do when the hacky drama writes itself.

[ Raw Story / News OK ]