Tensions are high in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, following the police shooting death of Andrew Brown, a black man. So naturally, Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump (has anyone seen him in a courtroom?) and his entourage are on scene to inflame the already-sensitive situation by calling anyone and everyone nearby a racist.
Bakari Sellers, a Democratic lawyer who also works at CNN and is representing the Brown family, emerged from viewing police body camera footage of the deadly incident to claim he had been belittled by the white county attorney, R. Michael Cox.
“We went back and forth, and I just want to say I’ve never been talked to like I was talked to in there,” Sellers said at a press conference on Monday. “I went to the back, and I know that we’re live on the news around the world, so I will say that Mr. Cox told me, a grown black man, that he ‘was not f—–g going to be bullied.’ So, I walked out.”
I have no idea if Cox actually said that to Sellers, but if he did, I hope he meant it.
Crump and his crew operate less like racial justice advocates and more like professional shakedown artists. Crump parachutes into any city where a black man is killed, closely followed by Al Sharpton and every camera CNN can spare. Before we’ve heard anything at all about the facts, Crump is consoling a grieving mother on TV and accusing more cops of being racist.
That routine earned the family of patron saint George Floyd a sweet $27 million settlement from the city of Minneapolis weeks before a jury had decided whether anyone was at fault for Floyd’s death.
That’s the power of the Crump squeeze, a pressure campaign that no reasonable person can say didn’t influence the jury’s decision in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murdering Floyd.
Now, everyone knows what it means when Crump shows up. It means there have already been destructive riots in the streets, and as long as he’s there, they will continue.
Virtually everything currently known by the public about Brown’s death is from Crump. Police say they’re still investigating and have so far said very little. The police body camera footage hasn’t been released. The state medical examiner hasn’t even released a report on the autopsy.
That works mightily for Crump. After he and Brown’s family privately viewed the footage as provided by police, Crump declared the shooting an “execution.” Was it? We don’t know yet. But the headlines are repeating Crump.
Crump has also already commissioned a private pathologist to examine Brown’s body. The report has been in Crump’s hands, and he has passed it to the media with the claim that Brown was shot in the back of his head, the implication being that Brown was not posing a front-facing threat when the cops took him out.
Media reports are calling the private examination (which likely means it was paid for) an “independent autopsy.” That’s not what it is. It was a private examination and probably done for money.
Crump did the same thing in the Floyd case, hiring a doctor to say the exact opposite of what the Hennepin County medical examiner had found.
When more information is made public by investigators, who deserve some time to collect all of the facts, maybe Crump’s version of events will bear out. But if they don’t, Crump’s damage will have already been done.
If the county attorney is pledging he won’t be bullied, good for him. We need that to be true.
