Police officer Nicholas Reardon has finally been cleared of all criminal wrongdoing for the death of Ma’Khia Bryant. The fact that this was ever even a national story, though, is an indictment of racial brain rot that has taken hold of legacy media and liberal activists.
It was obvious that Reardon did his job properly from the moment video of the incident was made public. After arriving on the scene in Columbus, Ohio, Reardon witnessed Bryant shove a woman to the ground. Reardon yelled at Bryant, who was wielding a knife, multiple times to get down. Instead, she charged at another woman while swinging the knife, at which point Reardon shot her.
Reardon saved a woman from being stabbed to death. He appeared to handle the situation as well as could possibly be expected of him. But he is white, and Bryant is black. For the mindless liberal drones in media and activist circles, that was the only information they needed.
Several outlets, including the Washington Post and CBS News, tied the shooting to the death of George Floyd, despite the fact that there were no similarities in the two situations whatsoever outside of skin color. The New York Times included a quote from activist attorney Ben Crump, omitting the part where Crump falsely claimed that Bryant was unarmed.
The rotten carcass of the American Civil Liberties Union used the event to “again” call for abolishing police. LeBron James, the NBA star who really should stick to basketball, was incensed that Reardon did not simply allow a black woman to be stabbed to death. The Democratic mayor of Columbus asked the Department of Justice to investigate the city’s police department in the aftermath of the shooting.
This event became a national story only because of race. Body camera footage clearly showed that Reardon handled the situation as he should have, but by then, activists and legacy media outlets had decided to run with their preferred narrative. Racial division and anti-police sentiment were the order of the day, no matter how clear-cut the facts of the incident were.
Every media outlet that picked up this story to throw into a larger narrative about police brutality should be looked at skeptically. Every activist who picked up the story should be recognized as the anti-police, race-baiting fraud that they are. This narrative was always a sham. Reardon, and the woman he saved, deserve better.
