Rayshard Brooks fell asleep at a Wendy's drive-though and was shot and killed by the police.
Fox blowhards like Dan Bongino have screamed and yelled that Brooks brought this on himself, that the police had no option in that situation. After all Brooks pointed a tazer at them (the one he took from one of the on-scene officers) so what else could they have done? That's of course complete BS.
Of course they had an option; namely to not kill him. First, they were not in grave danger; the tazer Books had taken is non lethal so the use of deadly force seems clearly excessive. Second, what's the downside of simply letting him go? He was drunk, close to home and they could simply have impounded his car and served a ticket for drunk driving if they wanted when he came to collect it. He was not armed. He was not a danger to anyone. He was not driving drunk. So why shoot him in the back? Shooting someone running away is not consistent with the use of force in self defense.
Bongino, like most of his thinkwithhisdick testosterone-fueled, enraged colleagues, is offended that a black man did not obey white a authority figure; and that makes him apoplectic. Law and order, in his mind, is really about power and control, in Secretary Mark Esper's words "dominating the battle space".
And the GOP's response? Crickets. That's where the GOP has been dragged by its white supremacist fringe. That's why they no longer have any moral authority. And that's why they need to be unceremoniously turfed out of office in November.
Fox blowhards like Dan Bongino have screamed and yelled that Brooks brought this on himself, that the police had no option in that situation. After all Brooks pointed a tazer at them (the one he took from one of the on-scene officers) so what else could they have done? That's of course complete BS.
Of course they had an option; namely to not kill him. First, they were not in grave danger; the tazer Books had taken is non lethal so the use of deadly force seems clearly excessive. Second, what's the downside of simply letting him go? He was drunk, close to home and they could simply have impounded his car and served a ticket for drunk driving if they wanted when he came to collect it. He was not armed. He was not a danger to anyone. He was not driving drunk. So why shoot him in the back? Shooting someone running away is not consistent with the use of force in self defense.
Bongino, like most of his thinkwithhisdick testosterone-fueled, enraged colleagues, is offended that a black man did not obey white a authority figure; and that makes him apoplectic. Law and order, in his mind, is really about power and control, in Secretary Mark Esper's words "dominating the battle space".
And the GOP's response? Crickets. That's where the GOP has been dragged by its white supremacist fringe. That's why they no longer have any moral authority. And that's why they need to be unceremoniously turfed out of office in November.
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