The district attorney in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, announced that he won’t bring any charges against the police officers who killed Andrew Brown, a black man. But don’t worry America! Your favorite attorney Ben Crump has whipped up enough racial animosity to see us through these trying times.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Andrew Womble, the district attorney, made public police body camera footage of the attempted arrest of Brown, who was wanted for the distribution of drugs, including cocaine and fentanyl-laced heroin.
The video showed several police officers in a pick-up truck driving to Brown’s home, where they found him inside his car. They surrounded the vehicle while telling him to exit, but Brown backed the car up then drove forward in an attempt to flee, apparently striking one of the officers with the right front of the car. As Brown peeled away, police fired multiple shots, which ultimately killed him.
Womble said that by ignoring orders and plowing the car into officers, Brown had put lives in danger and that the vehicle had in effect become a deadly weapon. He deemed the shooting justified.
Oh, but Crump is just getting started. When he heard last month that a black man had been shot by police, he and his entourage of race hustlers parachuted into Elizabeth City and began their usual con game, accusing everyone on site of being racist and telling fantasies about Brown’s death having been an “execution.”
And now that there won’t be any charges against the police, Crump is turning up the heat. Following Womble’s press conference, which lasted well over an hour, Crump called on President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to get involved. Then he went on MSNBC to claim, without any evidence whatsoever, that the investigation of the shooting had been “whitewashed.”
Those violent, intimidating riots don’t start themselves, you know.
Sure enough, protesters that same day showed up at the home of the former police chief, honking their horns and screaming outside, “F*** you, racist b****es.”
Thanks, Crump!
That’s admittedly tame when compared to some of Crump’s other work, as in Minneapolis, Ferguson, and Kenosha. Those cities saw weeks of arson, looting, deadly violence, and vandalism after Crump got involved, spreading lies about police killing supposedly innocent black men. But it’s surely just the start for Elizabeth City.
A civil lawsuit will soon result, because it’s Crump’s belief that if a black man doesn’t want to be arrested, police should just let him go, even if it gives the suspect a chance to put lives in danger. “Not only was the car moving away from the officers,” Crump said in his statement Tuesday, “but four of them did not fire their weapons.”
What point is he trying to make by noting that not every officer fired a shot? That Brown’s car didn’t go in multiple directions at the same time? Does it matter that the car was “moving away from the officers” by almost mowing one of them down? If a suspect is attempting to flee, should police just let him?
I view Crump as an illiterate Al Sharpton. He’s every bit the shakedown artist but less articulate.
Pray for Elizabeth City — and for any other city where Crump finds himself.
