Before Breonna Taylor, there was Dennis Tuttle and his wife Rhogena Nicholas.
The couple was at home in Houston one evening in early 2019, when, at 5 p.m. local time, police kicked in the front door to execute a drummed-up drug raid. Tuttle and Nicholas, both nearly 60, were shot dead by the police, who stand accused of falsifying evidence and records to obtain search warrants as a part of a fraud scheme for overtime pay.
The Houston Chronicle followed up this week on new developments in the case, and the details of the shooting death aren’t dissimilar to those of Taylor. She was the young woman at home with a boyfriend in Louisville, Kentucky, earlier this year when police with a no-knock warrant showed up to conduct a drug raid and killed her.
But there is one key difference: Taylor is black, and her death served as a can of kerosene thrown into the bonfire of marches and riots across the country protesting the baseless notion that white officers are everywhere hunting down innocent black people. This, on the other hand, might very well be the first time you’re hearing about Tuttle and Nicholas.
The incident in Houston has, in fact, been covered by major newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. But have you seen it anywhere on CNN? MSNBC? Did you read endless columns about the problems with our police and the excess use of force? Did you see anyone in Congress go on TV to eulogize Tuttle and Nicholas? Did anyone take a knee in their names?
Of course not. The media weren’t there to turn this into a monthlong headline because it lacked the thing they love most — a black victim that they can use in continuing their never-ending obsession with race.
Four years before George Floyd, there was 26-year-old Daniel Shaver. He had committed no crime, and he had his hands up at a motel in Mesa, Arizona, to comply with an officer’s instruction before nonetheless being shot dead.
Unlike Floyd, Shaver was white, so, again, not the media’s preferred illustration of police brutality. Then again, the media aren’t interested in addressing police brutality. They’re interested in perpetuating another myth about racism.
