Yet again.
We have a nationwide Fake News syndicate who blow stories out of proportion and shamelessly distort facts to incite civil unrest and racial disharmony. A Black person dies at the hands of a police officer, whether White or Black, and the media narrative promptly becomes a lamentation over “systemic racism.” The streets fill with peaceful protesters. Soon, they are shoved aside by agitators, inciters, anarchists, and some paid provocateurs. Fires are set. Businesses are burned down. Homes are destroyed. Lives are ruined. In the background, the chants are heard: “No Justice, No Peace.”
The Fake News had us all stirred and ready for three death sentences to emerge from the fact finding. Three cops, all intent on systemically racially killing Black people at whim. Only the facts got in the way once again.
In time a grand jury is convened. The rules of a grand jury are not like those of a regular courtroom. Only the prosecutor is allowed to put on a case. No defense attorney is allowed in the room. One witness after another is brought in and grilled by the prosecutor in front of the jury. There is no judge to protect the witness from being abused. The witness has nowhere to turn for legal assistance. The prosecutor pummels him or her with tough questions, sometimes insults and nasty remarks. The only brakes that prevent even worse abuse is that the experienced prosecutor knows the limits, that if he or she gets too vicious then the grand jury may shift its sympathies to the battered witness. So the prosecutor plays the grand jury, using tricks of the trade, ploys and psychological maneuvers that never would be allowed in open court. But, again, there is no judge in the room to rein in the prosecutor. As day after day ensues, the prosecutor becomes increasingly chummy with the members of the grand jury. This is why it is said that any competent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict even a ham sandwich.
And yet, despite all the media-stirred public frenzy about “systemic racism,” grand juries and fact-finders in open courtrooms continue to come back with verdicts that completely defy the Fake News narratives. The Fake News convinced many that George Zimmerman was a White supremacist who murdered a sweet, clean-cut teen boy, a darling with a hoodie in Florida. NBC news doctored a recording that Zimmerman had phoned into the police, omitting key words to make his innocent and desperate call seem like a racist one. But in the end, George Zimmerman was charged with a crime and then was acquitted for standing his ground when, as a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, he had acted in good faith and was in peril of getting pummeled to death himself by Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman even turned out to be Hispanic.
The media stirred a frenzy in Ferguson. Poor innocent Michael Brown had raised his arms to the skies, pleading to the bloodthirsty cop facing him, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” But the murderous policeman shot him to death in cold blood anyway. Soon enough, after Ferguson was burned down, a grand jury was convened. The conviction was a certainty, easier than a ham sandwich. The only obstacle was that witnesses came in to testify, and facts were presented. It turned out that Michael Brown was not a darling sweetie pie but a thug who had held up a convenience store. In his encounter with officer Darren Wilson, Michael Brown did not raise his arms and say, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” Rather, he wrestled the policeman for his gun. The officer understood that, if Brown managed to gain control of that pistol, he would murder the cop. The officer secured his weapon, and Brown was shot to death. The grand jury refused to indict.
Freddie Gray in Baltimore was another. The Fake News propounded the narrative that a murderous gang of Baltimore cops had murdered Gray in a police van. Baltimore burned. Men and women lost their life savings as the storefront businesses into which they had invested everything to support their families went up in smoke. Their hopes, their dreams, their decades of goodwill in the community — all up in smoke. The policemen were put on trial, tried before a Black judge. With the narrative the Fake News had propagated, and a Black judge staring down from his bench at each of the accused, they all were goners. And yet each and every officer was found not guilty. Every single one.
This has been the repeated result of the Fake News syndicate’s efforts to stir hatred within our society. While the Democrats scream of “systemic racism,” and while their leftist mobs in the streets yell, “No Justice, No Peace!” they encounter their worst nightmare: justice.
And now Breonna Taylor. The Fake News had us all stirred and ready for three death sentences to emerge from the fact-finding. Three cops, all intent on systemically racially killing Black people at whim. Only the facts got in the way once again. To be sure, the whole thing was a massive human tragedy. The Louisville police thought they had a bead on drugs to be found, so they got that “no-knock warrant.” Three cops were assigned to execute the warrant and carry out the drug bust. They entered — maybe without knocking, although there is at least one witness who testifies that the cops did announce themselves upon entering. Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, was there, had a legally registered gun, and did what many others in that situation might have done: he fired on the home intruders. Did he know they were cops? Maybe, but very probably not. It is totally believable that any owner of a legal firearm innocently would shoot his gun at intruders. Even if he saw them in uniform, even if they said they were police, they were not expected. People expect the cops to knock first and to show a warrant. One cannot blame Walker, the boyfriend, for shooting the invaders. One of his bullets penetrated an artery in an officer’s thigh. Yet, just as the boyfriend cannot be blamed for what he did, the cops cannot be blamed for shooting back. It was just a horrible, horrible botch-up. So they shot back and ended up killing Breonna Taylor, an innocent bystander in her own home. She was struck by six bullets, including the fatal one that officer Myles Cosgrove discharged. And that was what the grand jury learned, outside the ambit of the Fake News media.
The cops executed their warrant and never found any drugs. The boyfriend shot at men invading the premises without their manifesting clear reason to be breaking in. The cops shot back at a guy shooting at them. Horrible. Tragic. But not at all racial. It was just a horrible, horrible thing. The grand jury did not indict anyone for Breonna Taylor’s shooting, but the City of Louisville agreed to pay her family $12 million and to adopt new police reforms so that this awful tragedy never recurs. As a sidebar to it all, the grand jury learned that one of the cops, Brett Hankison, apparently may have started firing wildly, even into a nearby apartment, perhaps demonstrating reckless indifference to surrounding human lives. Therefore, the jury indicted him on three counts of “wanton endangerment,” a Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted. But the grand jury rejected any claim of murder or lesser-intent homicide arising from Breonna Taylor’s tragic death.
It was not a moment of “systemic racism” — because it never is. There is no systemic racism in this country. If there were, we would not have had a Black president — an incompetent at that — for eight recent years. We would not now have a Black woman, descending from parents born in Jamaica and India, running on a major party’s ticket for vice president. Which country in Europe has had Black heads of government, Black UN representatives, Black foreign ministers, Black national security advisers as we have — England? France? Italy? Germany? Spain? Russia? Does anyone hold any office or position in China other than people who are ethnically Chinese?
We are a good people. When Americans elected Obama in 2008, we put an end to the stain of slavery and closed that shameful chapter in American history. But Obama reopened it. He and the Democrats brazenly played the “race card” for political benefit and in ruthless pursuit of power. They began a decade of “gaslighting” Americans into thinking that, well, maybe we are systemically racist. In 2016 Hillary Clinton raised the lie to an art form by lumping a litany of “isms” into one basketful of false charges: “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”
Balderdash. It is a Big Lie. We are not any of the above. And now this Breonna Taylor grand jury, primed and ready to indict even a ham sandwich, could find no grounds, once presented with facts, to support the Fake News narrative that attempted to stir racial hatred among us by concocting the lie that this horrible human tragedy was something different from what it was — a horrible human tragedy. Now they will proceed to search the land and scour the countryside for their next opportunity to incite hatred among us so that, in the words of CNN’s Don Lemon, “We’re gonna have to blow up the entire system.”
Put away your matches, Don. It’ll have to wait till next time.
