Radio Derb Is On The Air: Following Up Police Shootings, Checking For Narrative Collapse, Etc.
07/15/2016
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF
Radio Derb is on the air—go here to listen, here to download the MP3:

Sample text:

Cops shoot blacks: follow-up.     A follow-up here on last week's report about three incidents of blacks getting shot by cops.

I reported on these three incidents last week when they were new news and there wasn't much data to go on. Now there's more, so let's see if my speculations about Narrative Collapse were on target.

Short answer: Somewhat, but not much.

I thought the third story I reported, the one from Minneapolis featuring Philando Castile, was already showing signs of Narrative Collapse. Indeed, a bit more plaster has fallen from the ceiling since then; but we haven't seen total collapse, and we still don't really know why Officer Yanez shot Mr Castile.

The girlfriend who took the video everyone's seen has been caught out in a couple more untruths. She'd told the world that Castile didn't get medical attention. Minnesota's halfwit Governor repeated that at his press conference. It wasn't true: local police gave Castile CPR. She said she was kept at the station house all night and didn't get home till 5 a.m. In fact she was held only two hours, and taken home at 1 a.m. … and so on. This lady is deeply unreliable as to facts.

Which makes it all the more shameful that her version of events continued to be the only one put out by mainstream media down to the middle of this week. The report I made in last Friday's podcast about the pull-over happening because Castile resembled a wanted robbery suspect, didn't get major air time until Wednesday evening on The O'Reilly Factor, to my knowledge, though the local Minnesota station had broadcast the dispatcher exchanges five days previously.

On the other side, Castile actually did have a permit to carry, in spite of that statement to the contrary by the local sheriff's office. Castile's family produced the permit this week.

So I wouldn't say officer Yanez is off the hook at this point — not enough information. I'm still going to call shame on the media for promoting the stories told by the loopy girlfriend.

That was my number three cop shooting last week. Number two was Alton Sterling, the Baton Rouge guy shot while wrestling with cops. There's even less new to report here. What there mainly is, is a full account of Mr Sterling's 2009 arrest, which was a carbon copy of last week's, except that in 2009 he didn't get shot.

He was selling CDs on the sidewalk; he pulled a gun on someone; cops were called; he put up a fight; they found the gun, which was stolen; Sterling was hit with a raft of charges and got five years in the pokey.

Last week's attempted arrest was a total repeat, except this time Sterling ended up dead. A justified shooting? We still don't know; but whatever the final determination here, it's hard to feel much sympathy for a guy who makes a habit of wrestling with cops while illegally carrying.

And then, my cop shooting number one: Delrawn Small, shot by an off-duty cop in Brooklyn, New York, July 4th. This was road rage. Small thought the off-duty cop had cut him off. He followed him to a traffic light, then got out of his car and went to confront the cop. We had witness accounts that he was punching the cop through his side window, then the cop shot him.

Well, that narrative collapsed, but it collapsed on the cop. See, these collapses, you never know which way they'll fall.

We got some surveillance video on this one. It shows that the cop, name of Wayne Isaacs, shot Mr Small around one second after Mr Small showed up at his side window. It's hard to see how Small had time to do any punching. So much for eye-witnesses.

I said in last week's podcast, concerning Wayne Isaacs the cop, quote: "I assume he's white, but I haven't seen that confirmed anywhere and can't find an image," end quote.

Well, now we have news pictures of Officer Isaacs. Guess what: He's black. So this is a black cop shooting a black civilian.

Which means you won't be hearing too much more about this one …

Print Friendly and PDF