Fanning the Flames
Outrage at the death of Daunte Wright is warranted, but rioting and looting only make everything worse — as do fan-theflames comments from cynical politicians. Video footage strongly suggests the shooting was accidental: The Brooklyn Center officer, Kim Potter (who stepped down Tuesday “in the best interest of the community”), thought she was firing her Taser instead of her gun as Wright resisted arrest.
It’s all horrible: Wright was just 20. Yet the mayhem that followed was terrible, too. Within hours, hundreds of “protesters” gathered. Some threw bricks and cans at cops, jumped on their vehicles and even “shot up” a police station, as the chaos spread to Minneapolis and beyond. The ensuing looting and rampage all but destroyed several businesses, including a Foot Locker, a T-Mobile and a men’s clothing store.
This isn’t protest, it’s jumping on an excuse to run amok. This, when local authorities are rushing to do a full investigation, figure out what went wrong and take steps to prevent a recurrence. Even if Potter were a racist murderer (and there’s zero sign of that), rioting only hurts the community.
Yet politicians holding top jobs couldn’t resist fueling the fire. As news of the shooting broke, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz immediately tweeted about “another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement.” New York’s scandal-swamped Gov. Cuomo tweeted, “We cannot stand by and watch as a flawed system again and again devalues the lives of Black men & women” — essentially egging on the violence.
Worse were “Squad” members Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.): Wright’s death “wasn’t an accident” but “governmentfunded murder,” Tlaib insisted. “From slave patrols to traffic stops,” Pressley said.
Their prescription? “No more policing, incarceration and militarization,” declared Tlaib. Lunacy: In a Gallup survey last year, more than 80 percent of blacks and Hispanics nationwide said they want at least as much, or even more, policing in their neighborhoods. So why does the Squad want to deny them the protection they need?
Because their shtick is to play to radicals (mostly white ones) nationwide. Riots and looting that set back minority neighborhoods are just the necessary price for advancing . . . their own ambitions.