Riots broke out in West Philadelphia this week after a deranged black man, armed with a knife, was killed by police. Many of the rioters were not local, but antifa and Black Lives Matter “protesters.”
This incident gives rise to three questions that are always ignored about arrest-related deaths.
First, why is the media taking the role of contemners of the police?
Media accounts of the incident are risible. Two Philadelphia Inquirer journalists, Anna Orso and Samantha Melamed, tweeted misleading accounts of what happened. Melamed said Philadelphia police shot a Black man “to death in broad daylight” without mentioning he was armed with a knife, and neither journalist mentioned his deranged mental state.
The media often displayed a high school picture of the man, Walter Wallace Jr., rather than using a mug shot from one of his many arrests. There are also many pictures of Wallace from his music videos in which he is pointing guns. But the media ignored these as well.
The second question is, why were the police called?
This seems like a simple question. But it is actually quite profound. Police radio dispatched a call for a “person screaming 6124 Locust St. Report of a 27-year-old male assaulting an elderly female.”
This was followed by other officers in the district advising their colleagues to “use caution” as this was an “ongoing domestic issue.” So it seems that the Wallace family repeatedly used the police as their bouncer. When he became violent, they called the police to pacify him.
Consider that media reported, albeit dismissively, Wallace’s long history of violent felonies and domestic abuse. His most recent arrest was in March 2020 after he allegedly threatened his child’s mother in what was described as a domestic disturbance.
Police had been summoned to the residence 31 times since May 2020 because of the man. Most people never request police to their homes, let alone 31 times in five months. Some of these calls involved violent crimes, such as assaults, threats, and weapons. Furthermore, the police were called three times to Wallace’s house the day he was shot. The first two calls concerned domestic disturbances. The last call involved a man with a knife.
So if the police are so hated by the black community in general, and the Wallace family specifically, why were they called so often?
The third question concerns the efficacy of the mental health community.
The mental health community has been proclaiming they have the solution to handling the Walter Wallaces without resorting to the use of deadly force. How so? As already noted, the Wallace family’s problems were “ongoing.” Wallace had been referred often for mental health treatment. His lengthy violent history included being charged in 2013 and 2019 with resisting arrest, a 2016 robbery, during which Wallace allegedly held a gun to a woman’s head, and a 2013 protective order from him obtained by his mother.
One judge ordered that he continue “medication management at JFK,” a major community health center in Philadelphia. It was also “strongly” requested that he be supervised by the Mental Health Unit of Probation.
Again, this was four years ago. A judge also ordered a psychiatric evaluation along with mental health treatment in 2013. So it seems rather obvious what an abysmal failure the mental health system was in the case of Wallace.
A bystander video of what transpired clearly shows Wallace brandishing a knife while walking toward police officers. The police officers retreated — something I was taught not to do when I was in the Police Academy 40 years ago. Despite their attempts to avoid shooting him, it was necessary to do so.
So the mental health community had several chances to control Wallace, but they did not prevent the necessity of the police using deadly force in the case.
Perhaps the 31 calls to the police by the Wallace family in a six-month period should have been routed to a mental health facility instead of police. At least then this would deny politically motivated critics from using police as scapegoats.
These three questions should be asked every time there is an arrest-related death:
Why does the media inveigh against the police?
Why were the police called in the first place?
Why is the mental health community such a failure?
Maybe there will be answers one day, but do not count on it. Left-wing orthodoxy always looks to blame criminality on society. For them, every police officer is a criminal.
Michael P. Tremoglie is a former Philadelphia police officer, corporate executive, and now a journalist and writer.
