Sunday, November 25, 2018

THIS SHOOTING DOES NOT LOOK TOO GOOD

Alabama soldier survived the Army only to be murdered by cops while on Thanksgiving leave

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos
November 24, 2018

If there was any doubt that when the NRA says “good guy with a gun” it actually means “white guy with a gun,” that doubt was removed over the holiday. On Black Friday, police in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover were trumpeting how one of their officers killed an “active shooter” at a local mall, potentially stopping a mass shooting. The police issued a statement describing what had happened.

“...two males engaged in a physcal altercation on the second floor concourse area of the Riverchase Galleria, near the entrance to the Footaction. During the fight, one of the males produced a handgun and shot the other male twice in the torso. Two uniformed Hover Police officers providing security at the mall were in close proximity and heard the gunshots. While moving toward the schooting scene, one of the officers encountered a suspect brandishing a pistol and shot him. That individual, a 21-year-old male from Hueytown, was pronounced dead at the scene.”

As the Root reports, the police described this dead man as the shooter who had wounded both an 18-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl at the mall. But a few hours later, the police were forced to make a second statement after it became uncomfortably clear that the dead man had not fired a gun. In this statement, they admitted that Bradford had not shot either the 18-year-old or the 12-year-old, but still claimed he was “brandishing a weapon” and “fleeing the scene” when shot by the police. So …. good shoot.

But what police put down as “fleeing the scene” appears to actually represent chasing the real criminal. Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr, the 21-year-old black man shot by the police in an Alabama mall, was the son of a Birmingham police officer and a decorated soldier who was uninvolved in the shooting, beloved by his community, and possibly attempting to stop the person who had opened fire in the mall. But after police shot him dead … they let the actual shooter get away.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was a combat engineer in the US Army described by everyone who knew him as trustworthy and solid. In a nation where “good guy with a gun” is the solution to every gun problem, Bradford — known as EJ to his friends — seems like an admirable candidate to be that good guy. The respected son of a police officer who graduated a private Catholic high school and enlisted in the Army, and was home to see and shop with his family on Thanksgiving. It’s seems the kind of hero that the NRA is always wishing for … except that he was black.

Video of the scene shows that the police provided no medical attention to Bradford and left him to bleed out on the tiled floor of the Galleria. The actual gunman has still not been apprehended.

Trumpists rushed in to explain how the problem here wasn’t with guns. It was with African Americans.

Dee Plored‏ tweeted:

NOT THE FAULT OF GUNS! The fault was with the inner city thugs allowed to invade The Galleria! If those involved were white and from Hoover they would be identified as so but the fact that ALL of the trouble was caused by BLACK thugs from Birmingham is being hidden by the media

Everyone should carry a gun everywhere — unless they’re black, in which case it’s perfectly okay to shoot them.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The liberals, like the Daily Kos, are having a field day with this police shooting.

I agree with Dee Plored, but that’s because I am a racist.

1 comment:

bob walsh said...

I hate to throw cold water here (I don't really) but there is a big difference between defending yourself and others from a demonstrated bad guy and pursuing the bad guy. Even real cops get shot by other real cops while doing this. For private citizens with no easy access to police communications it is a very dangerous thing to do.