This past week in Houston,
Texas a white police officer, Darren Goforth, was fatally shot and killed by a black man with a lengthy and violent criminal history. It was a horrendous crime. Thankfully, the alleged perpetrator, Shannon Miles, has already been arrested.
Typically, people who harm police officers don't make it far before they are caught and either charged or killed. This case was no different.
What was different, and extremely disturbing, was when Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman attempted to draw a ridiculous connection between the peaceful Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of this officer.
The two have absolutely nothing to do with one another.
Both the official Black Lives Matter organization, its representatives, and its loosely connected friends and partners actually have real agendas, real goals, real plans, and none of them, explicit or inferred, has ever suggested violence against police.
This man wasn't given any orders or inspired by any Black Lives Matter leaders to do what he did. No op-eds or speeches or workshops or emails from Black Lives Matter leaders have even hinted at violence toward police and any attempt to say such a thing is racist in and of itself.
Just because this man who killed Officer Goforth was black, doesn't make him a part of this movement any more than being white qualifies you as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by police nine months ago and police and prosecutors claim to still be investigating, but days after a criminal kills a white officer, the sheriff is already making declarative statements about motive and inspiration. The double standard is thick. Justice for black victims of white police violence find investigations slow and justice rare. Somehow though, those same slow officers have indicted all of black America in this shooting of Officer Goforth.
It's dangerous, and the statement was a reckless and unnecessary attack on a movement that is actually fighting for a more peaceful and just America.
Comments are closed on this story.