The Revenge of the Thin Blue Line 21: Shooting the (Grand) Rapids, death by Cop

Big Toad Barr's Wild Ride

Lester Holt: Can we talk about the big lie?
Bill Barr: Which one is that?
LH: Well you write about the big lie being black live matter...
BB: Yeah [smirks]
LH: What did you mean by that?
BB: Well Black Lives Matter is based on the premise that the main threat to black welfare in the inner city are out of control police force that gratuitously kill African Americans and that's simply not borne out by the facts. - From an interview of the odious toad Bill Barr by Lester Holt, as the Corporate Media again helps to polish despicable conservative turds and allow a flagrant criminal to re-enter polite society while hawking his book about the Trump White House.

I suppose we had gone too long without an extrajudicial killing of a person of color.  Often Officers will tell me, as I express dismay at these incidents, 'Yeah well police kill far more white people than black.' And I'm not sure how to tell them that this is not a good argument other than to reply like Chidi in The Good Place,  

"Okay. But That's Worse. You, You Do Get How That's Worse, Right?"

And watch them brush off such sarcastic retorts. Why? Well, I don't know but, Police in the United States kill far too many people for any claims by such a noxious criminal asshole like Bill Barr to be taken seriously (of course he is taken seriously by the Corporate Media). In fact, violence and death at the hands of the Police is so pervasive Police and the Federal Government routinely undercount the true number. A study found that over 31,000 people died from Police encounters, but only 14,000 were classified as such;

More than half of all police killings since 1980 do not appear in official government data, according to an explosive new study in The Lancet, a top medical journal. The researchers reveal how “systemic misclassification” in the federal database that tracks the causes of death in America has produced, over four decades, an undercount of more than 17,000 deaths at the hands of police. The proportion of undercounted police killings of Black Americans is even more extreme, the research shows, rising to 60 percent.

So, an unidentified Officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan shot and killed Congolese refugee Patrick Lyoya around 8am on April 4th. Predictably, the incident arises from a traffic stop for improper registration and then escalated out of control ending with the unnamed Officer shooting Lyoya in the back of the head while on top of him.

Now, here's where the bad faith actors will get involved. First off, there's going to be the subjective fear for my life defense. It's impossible to disprove the Officer wasn't scared therefore his killing of Lyoya is justified. Secondly, there is going to be the weapons involved defense. Call it the Kyle Rittenhouse Defense; i.e. there's a gun involved therefore I am afraid the "Criminal" will take the gun from me and kill me with my own gun; ergo we are back to subjective fear for your life defense. Third, every white rightwing asshole including those who justify the January 6th violence against Police, will declare with finality Lyoya should just have complied. And lastly, the video evidence is going to be parsed and dissected frame-by-frame for the simple fact that individual still images from the videos can then be presented in a way to present a wholly different picture as opposed to what went down in real time.

Decades ago Police Departments began crafting these Use-of-Force continuums to create justification of violence against people as began to point out police violence is a problem. To justify the extrajudicial killing of Lyoya. It will be something like this:

1. Lyoya get out of the car (escalation).
2. Lyoya ignores "commands" to get back in the car (defiance).
3. Lyoya runs from the scene (presumption of guilt).
4. Lyoya grabs the taser and ignores commands to drop the taser (active "aggressor")
5. Lyoya continues to "fight" the Officer, they go to the ground, the force of Lyoya's fighting is such that it deactivates the Office's body-worn camera (fear for life)

And thus the Arbitrator will be able to reframe the encounter as Lyoya being the aggressor, who is responsible for the escalation of violence and the passive voice of Officer involved shooting will dominate the narrative until voila the official statement is Justified Shooting.

7-10 years ago I would have concluded the Officer would not have faced consequences but, with the increased high profile incidents and despite Bill Barr's mendacious bullshit, I think once the initial investigation is completed charges may be recommended for the still unnamed Officer.