July in Chicago: Police 1, the Black Community 64

Well, this week’s “black man shot by police” story concerns Paul O’Neal, an 18-year old black teen with a penchant for stealing cars.  In this instance, he sped through residential streets like a madman, careening around police cars and cops, eventually ramming a police car head-on, then jumped out and ran.

All we’re hearing from the media, of course, is their standard mantra: “Unarmed black teen shot and killed by police,” as if it happens to black teens who are reading in the library, or working at MacDonald’s or hundreds of other lawful activities.  As usual, they choose to ignore the fact that O’Neal was breaking the law and putting everyone, regardless of race, in danger by speeding through the streets trying to evade the police.

Here’s O’Neal’s sister, Briana Adams, commenting about the shooting: “It was disturbing, very disturbing.  I want everybody to know that Paul was loved by my mother, his family, me.”  I’m sorry, is that supposed to be a revelation, that his family loved him?  Did the families of the 64 others shot and killed in Chicago in July, mostly black people killed by other black people, not love them, too?  What has that got to do with the fact that he stole a car (not the first time, by the way) and showed reckless disregard for everyone else but himself?

Adams continued: “We just want answers – the truth.”  I sincerely doubt Ms. Adams wants, will accept or can handle the truth, but here it is –

A punk who clearly had no regard for the law, or for other people’s property, committed a crime and, when confronted by police, decided he didn’t want to be accountable for his actions, so he compounded his first bad decision by trying to get away.  While doing so he barely missed at least one police officer and then, apparently deliberately, crashed into another police vehicle.  Then he ran.

Aside from “Hey, how about not stealing property that other people work for?”, at any point he could have stopped, put up his hands and took what he had coming to him.  But no, like a certain portion of the vaunted “black community” has done for over fifty years now, he clearly didn’t think he should be held accountable for his criminal actions.  After putting dozens, if not hundreds, of Chicago citizens in harm’s way with the speeding vehicle, he trespassed on several people’s property, all in a vain attempt at escaping punishment for his crime.

The media headlines positively declare that O’Neal was shot in the back while running away, but none of the videos I’ve seen show the actual shooting…so much for responsible media.  But it really doesn’t matter, for if I had the power to decide, here’s what police policy would be – If you commit a criminal act and then refuse to stop for the police, instead speeding through the streets putting honest, decent citizens (of all races) at risk, then continue to run away from the police…you SHOULD be shot.  Otherwise, you’re just going to laugh about how you got away and do the same thing again, or worse.  We’ve had over half a century of not punishing the guilty, and the result has been innocent people suffering at the hands of the wantonly lawless.

Now, of course, everyone is boo-hooing about “what a good boy he was,” etc.  Well, if that were really the case, he wouldn’t have stolen the car in the first place, would he?  But from the media and family comments, I guess any black man should be able to rob, rape, steal, etc., and if they decide to run, the cops must just let them go, to do it all again on another day.  Such is the self-serving indulgence of “the black community” and the idiotic, shameless media.

I’ll shed no tears for Paul O’Neal, just as I haven’t for Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling and the rest of the lawless thugs who in death became something other than the lawless thugs they were in life, just another poster boy for the Sharpton wannabes whose work schedule magically enables them to march and protest and burn other people’s property, etc., after each of these shootings.

With the dumbing down of public education over the past decades, I guess it had to come to this: a big segment of the population that doesn’t understand how freedom requires the rule of law, and that without it we’re all right back to the jungle, where the strong and the mean rule over everyone else.  The segment of the population that doesn’t understand that – or doesn’t accept it – has made Chicago and at least parts of most other American cities into war zones, where life is cheap, violence or the threat of it is the way all conflicts are settled and anyone weaker than the predators are fair game, regardless of race.  Black people murder each other at an alarming rate, yet there’s no media frenzy over even one of those nameless people.  What, their families don’t love them, too?

So here we go again, enduring mawkish media accounts and alligator tears from the family (who’ve already sued the police department, by the way) and all the wailing about what a saint O’Neal was.  The harsh truth is that the police just saved his family decades of worry, grief and sorrow from the life he now won’t be able to inflict on the rest of the community.

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Formerly a liberal and an atheist, Paul E. Scates served as a Marine in Vietnam and is a lifelong student of American history, politics and culture. A former contributor to national website TooGoodReports.com, he writes his staunchly independent Conservative and informed Christian commentary for his fellow ordinary, working Americans, the “we, the people” who are ultimately responsible for preserving our Constitutional liberties.

Paul E. Scates

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