The Patriot Post® · You Probably Didn't Hear About This Police Shooting
A police shooting of a supposedly unarmed man by a Salt Lake City police officer of a different race last week has received scant media attention in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.
Here is what is known: Dillon Taylor, a 20-year-old white man, his brother, Jerrail Taylor, 22, and their cousin were confronted by police outside a 7-Eleven. Cops were responding to a 911 call about a man they are saying matched Dillon Taylor’s description waving a gun. Taylor was also facing an arrest warrant for violating probation connected to a felony robbery. Cops ordered him to the ground. According to his brother Jerrail, Dillon was wearing headphones at the time and did not hear them. Jerrail said that the officers pointed their guns at Dillon’s face, and he was told to put his hands up, while another officer repeated the command to get on the ground. Jerrail claims that his brother reached down to pull up his pants so that he could get down on the ground, at which point an officer fired, fatally wounding Dillon.
Keep in mind the brother of the slain man gave this version of the story, and that Jerrail also has had his share of run-ins with the law. The Salt Lake City police department has released few details of the case. They stand by the officer’s actions, but they have so far refused to confirm or deny whether there was actually a gun. Nor have they identified the officer, other than to say that he was “not white.” Police chief Chris Burbank told reporters that the entire incident was captured by a body camera worn by one of the officers. He said that the video would be released at the “appropriate” time, along with the officer’s identity.
So, there are two young men in different cities, both supposedly unarmed (which police could not have known) but with a criminal history, both shot by cops who were of a different race than the suspects. Facts in the Ferguson case indicate that Michael Brown assaulted the officer who ultimately shot him. Civilian witnesses and Dillon Taylor’s family and friends claim he was unarmed when he was killed, though police have refused to comment on that aspect of the incident. In reaching for his pants, Dillon could have been reaching for a weapon. Brown became a national news story and his shooting sparked a riot and became the focal point of race baiters looking to cash in and play up the racist cop narrative that further stoked violence in Ferguson. Conversely, Taylor’s death was barely reported and life continues pretty much as before in Salt Lake City.
In the Ferguson case, a black man was shot by a white police officer. That plays into the Left’s race-baiting narrative of cops supposedly declaring war on black people. That means ratings. And in this case, it also meant a full-scale riot that took days to bring to a close, even by heavily armed police officers. In Salt Lake City, the man who was shot was white, and the cop is … not white. Therefore, the Salt Lake City story runs against the racial narrative, and reporters can’t, or won’t, confirm the officer’s race.
As Mark Alexander pointed out, if there is a war on black people in this country, then it is a war with other blacks. The latest national statistics on homicide and race tell the story. Blacks represent 13% of the population, yet half of all homicide victims were black. And over 90% of those murdered were killed by other blacks.
This is a disturbing trend that truly is a national tragedy. Yet, it gets no airplay, and it certainly doesn’t get the attention of Barack Obama or Activist General Eric Holder. Stopping black-on-black crime would require real work to stop the cycle of poverty, crime, and lack of education that has plagued blacks for decades. It would mean admitting that the “Great Society” was a failure that has created nothing but a poverty-plantation base of Democrat support. It’s more convenient to point fingers and stir racial animosity, because that draws headlines and makes it appear as if something is being done without expending any real effort.