Roy Exum
There are between 200 and 300 people in Berkeley, Missouri, who should be in jail today. They chanted and screamed and threw rocks at police officers in the early-morning hours of Christmas Eve after an 18-year-old black hoodlum was shot dead, this clearly after threatening another police officer with a loaded firearm.
The “protest,” which was much more a riot, actually closed nearby Interstate 170 at times and police had to use pepper spray to defend themselves. One police officer was rushed to the hospital after being struck in the head by a thrown brick. Several police cars were damaged. The majority of Americans are being threatened by a very few who angrily defend a known punk who video cameras plainly show pulled a pistol and aimed it at an officer. This is nuts!
Any fool knows the only way these idiotic protests of trumped-up police brutality can take place is with the assurance – what! – that only a police presence will protect the same mob. But now American has suddenly got it all wrong. Anyone who throws a rock at a cop should go to jail. Anyone who verbally threatens a cop should go to jail. Anyone who disobeys a cop should go to jail. These actions are clearly disturbing the peace and are against the laws of any municipality and certainly a decent society.
Antonio Martin, who was fatally shot after pulling a loaded 9 mm firearm from his pants pocket and pointing it at an officer at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, was a known trouble-maker. Court records show he was arrested twice in 2013 and spend 30 days in jail as a juvenile. In May of this year Martin was arrested again for an armed criminal action, unlawful use of a weapon, and armed robbery.
Three different surveillance cameras in the vicinity clearly show Martin pulling the gun on the officer and his parents, who at the scene called him “a good boy who could push a smile out of you,” admitted on Christmas Day that the 18-year-old high school drop-out had “stumbled in the past,” according to more recent reports in the St. Louis newspaper.
Martin’s grandmother told reporters, “When he was around me, he knew to do right. Why would he pull a gun against the police? That’s the thing I don’t get. It just doesn’t add up.”
But it is startling obvious Martin did exactly that after a police officer responded to a report of stealing at a convenience store. At first Martin defied a police order to stop, instead walking away, and then drew a gun and pointed it at the officer. Martin never shot the weapon, although it had a loaded clip with another bullet in the chamber.
A large crowd quickly gathered at the site, where rescue responders had covered the body and later shielded it with a partition, which is common for several hours in the first stages of an investigation. But with the recent shooting of Michael Brown in the neighboring Ferguson, the mob was unruly, out of order and eager to cause trouble. Some threw bricks and others threw firecrackers at nearby gasoline pumps.
Berkeley Mayor Theodore Hoskins, who is black, said at a Wednesday morning press conference, “You can’t even compare this to Ferguson or the Garner case in New York,” he said. “We have the video.”
And unlike Ferguson, Hoskins reminded the media that Berkeley is 85 percent black. “We have a majority (black) police department,” Hoskins said, adding, “Our police officers are more sensitive. Our overall goal is to project the truth to residents," Hoskins said. "At this point, our review indicates that the police did not initiate this, like Ferguson."
When the angry crowd gathered, Berkeley police Chief Frank McCall ordered his officers to allow for the emotion. “Let ‘em vent,” he said and St. Louis County Chief John Belmar praised the decision. “When you're trying to take care of a scene and you're trying to protect that — you know, shell casings, different things like that — and we're dealing with other issues, I think that makes it a little more difficult for us to do our job and it certainly makes it more difficult for us to do our job in a timely fashion," he said.
"We really do need to get to the point where we can at least wait for certain facts to materialize before we jump to conclusions, before we make attributions, before we become cynical," he added. "I've already seen through social media that this officer stopped him, questioned him, frisked him and then killed him in cold blood — well, that's not what you're going to see when you see the video."
The pain in Belmar’s voice was apparent. “These are nothing but tragedies," Belmar said. "This is a family right now that, regardless of the decisions that this individual made, are without a family member this Christmas season. This is also a tragedy for the police officer. He will carry the weight of this for the rest of his life, certainly for the rest of his career."
"This really underscores the task that our police officers across the nation have to deal with day in and day out as they answer these calls in our community," Belmar added.
Reaction to news accounts in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch are overwhelming in favor of the officer’s actions and the police in general. As one post read, “So let me get this straight. Guy pulls gun on cop. Cop shoots guy. Idiotic mob shows up and causes all sorts of stupidity effecting and delaying the investigation.
“Now the Facebooking part of the idiotic mob wants to know why the investigation isn’t to the point in a few hours where they can see videos and all the evidence but since ‘Joe Blow Unknown’ on twitter claims he was there and (Martin) was unarmed then the cops must be guilty. Good Lord people, this is stupid!”
Another wrote, “Any excuse to turn it into a race issue - this was a criminal issue. The media is pushing the young black thing - Guess what? Young white, black, yellow -- whatever -- criminals are shot and killed every day and they are trying to blame the cops for it. How about blaming the criminals? And now in NY they won’t even allow the police to mourn their lost officers they are protesting. The police did not protest at the dead criminal’s services. Ignorance is contagious and must be stopped.”
My point exactly. Stop the ignorance, the protests and the killing right now.
royexum@aol.com