Last week was relentless.
The election results in Georgia and Florida were fraught with chaos. There have been accusations of voter suppression and fraud. This has led to Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum conceding, and in my opinion doing so too quickly, only to un-concede. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams never conceded. Now both Florida and Georgia have been forced to recount the votes.
In the midst of all this, there was another mass shooting. This time it was in Thousand Oaks, CA. Twelve innocent people went out that night with the intent of having a good time, but they never made it home. Because the shooter was a white male, his actions were immediately attributed to his mental health, and very little else will be done.
And then, in what felt like cruel irony, the same city that is trying to cope with the shooting must also deal with one of the worst fires in California’s history. Over 42 people have died, and hundreds are unaccounted for. To add insult to injury, this president, the same person that was too fragile to stand in the rain to honor our military, he had the audacity to lodge ill-informed criticism against the firefighters in California!
Like, I said, last week was relentless.
While all these stories are worthy of press, another story equally as important may have escaped your news cycle.
Early Sunday morning Chicago police shot and killed Security Guard Jemel Roberson, 26, while he was at work. Roberson worked at Manny’s Blue Room, a local bar. A patron, who was part of a drunken group that had been kicked out of the bar, returned with a gun at 4 a.m. and opened fire, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Several people were shot.
Roberson, who was legally armed, managed to subdue the suspect by holding him down, with his knee and a gun in the suspect’s back to prevent the suspect from escaping while he waited for police.
Waiting for the police proved to be fatal. Sadly, the officer that arrived appeared to be following a “shoot first and ask questions later” policy. According to witnesses, the officer with the Midlothian Police Department immediately shot Roberson when he arrived at the scene without asking questions.
Roberson was shot despite the warnings of people. Adam Harris, an eyewitness, explained the scene. “Everybody was screaming out, ‘Security!’ He was a security guard … and they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him,” said Harris. Roberson later died at the hospital.
The shooting is under investigation, but we already know how this will be handled. There will be some excuse about how the officer followed protocol and there was no wrongdoing on his part. After all, Roberson was armed! Even though officers know how to arrest mass shooters without harming them, apparently they don’t know how to handle innocent black men.
Hopefully I’m wrong, and this officer will face punishment like Jason Van Dyke in Chicago and Roy Oliver in Dallas.
I’m not holding my breath, however, especially in light of the statistics released by the Huffington Post this May. According to the report, from August 2016 to May of this year, at least 378 black Americans had been killed by police, and more than 3,357 people have been fatally shot by officers since 2015.
In other words, I’m hoping for justice, but expecting otherwise…
—Until Next Time—
Palooke
[https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-security-guard-detained-gunman-170407573.html]
This has got to stop and I’m also curious about the race of the suspect the security guard was holding down. These double standards!