Quote:
Originally Posted by Rags123
There was a shooting of a white unarmed young man in Salt Lake City by a black police officer. There are in fact protestors because it appears he was unarmed and thought to be armed. Legitimate questions are raised....
NO LOOTING....NO VIOLENCE....and thus far, not a mention of RACE, and the only reason, it appears, that the race is known is that it happened on the same day as the tragedy in Ferguson. Betting that was not on anyones tv screen !!!!
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This is one of several posts that have referred to the shooting in Utah and questioned why there has not been more outrage or rioting about it. Firstly there is no history of repeated deaths of unarmed white people at the hands of black police to have established a basis for a concern of a racially motivated (even subconsciously) shooting. And while we have all been made aware of the conflicting stories as to what happened in Ferguson there is no conflict as to what happened in SLC. There was a report to the police of a young white male brandishing a handgun near a store. The police responded to the report and confronted a group of persons who fit the description. The cop ordered the person and those he was with get down on the ground with hands on your head and while the others complied the victim reached for his belt. His friends say he was adjusting his pants and did not hear the cop as he was wearing earphones. The cop saw a suspect reaching for his waist and shot as he was looking for a white male armed with a gun that was being brandished and his actions at least initially seem reasonable. And the victim in SLC, was a convicted felon with an active warrant for his arrest. This does not make shooting him ok, and it is unlikely that the cop knew that detail. I mention it only in contraposition to the completely clean criminal record of Mike Brown despite all the postings calling him a criminal or a gang member or a lowlife. He was on his way to college, had a mother and a father and yes seems to have had an altercation with the store owner earlier that day which was not part of a pattern of behavioral given his clean record.