Milwaukee erupted in violent riots this week after police shot a black suspect who was running from a traffic stop. But this is not a story of a racist cop gunning down an innocent young man, even though malignant activists want to shoehorn the facts into that expedient political narrative.
The public has heard of unjustifiable police killings, such as those of Walter Scott in South Carolina and Laquan McDonald in Chicago. But what happened in Milwaukee isn’t like either of those — not even close.
And the fact that it led to a riot reveals three lamentable facts:
- The myth of a systemically racist security establishment is believed by too many people, or at least disingenuously accepted by those who want to take advantage of it;
- “Social justice” militants willingly use the flimsiest of pretexts to inflict violence on society;
- Restoring normal law and order is now a huge task (but many politicians and news outlets are instead fomenting further unrest).
The black man killed in Milwaukee was Sylville Smith. Police say his last act before being shot was to raise his stolen gun and aim it at a police officer. They say, too, that this threat was caught on the officer’s body camera. If true, the officer was justified in shooting Smith. He should probably be commended for his skill with a firearm.
To disappoint those looking for a sharp racial angle, the officer who shot Smith is black. His life matters too, doesn’t it?
Smartphones, dashcams and bodycams record the truth, and thus expose the lies equally of bad-apple police officers, dangerous criminals and mendacious political militants.
A majority of the public recognizes the need for specific and practical reforms. The Milwaukee Police Department had began to pursue some of these diligently before Smith died. All Milwaukee police shootings now require independent investigations. All interactions between police and the public are now captured by body cameras.
What we’re seeing in Milwaukee, however, has nothing to do with bad policing or a need for reform. What we’re seeing, rather, are the results of a political movement that has made people angry without making them well informed.
In some ways, what has happened in Milwaukee is worse than what happened in Ferguson, Mo. In the infamous case two years ago, which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, Michael Brown stole cigars from a local store, threatened the shop owner on camera, then attacked a police officer, tried to take his gun and was shot in the resulting fight.
The result? Rioters, many of them from out of town, went on the rampage looting Ferguson and setting the town on fire.
But in that case, as bad as it was, it could at least be argued that the rioters were misled by the false evidence that Brown had held up his hands in surrender before he was shot dead. The case of Smith in Milwaukee does not even have that minimal justification.
It is one of many cases this year in which police officers simply doing their jobs, protecting themselves and innocent civilians from armed criminals, is taken as justification for mob rule. News media then downplay the violence or, worse, frame it as the understandable result of justifiable anger.
When activists cry wolf over every police shooting, as though shooting a man trying to kill a police officer were somehow the same as shooting a harmless man fleeing unarmed, they undermine the reasonable demand that justice be race-blind.
