The obsession with the narrative of systemic racism has led some to push the Columbus police shooting as an example of it. But had the officer showed up later, it would have simply been another homicide ignored by national media and Democrats.
We still don’t know the name of the woman who would have been stabbed to death had officer Nicholas Reardon arrived just a few moments later. Had she actually been killed, outlets such as CBS News or the Washington Post or CNN wouldn’t have cared. It wouldn’t have fit a narrative of police racism or even gun control.
The “woman in pink” would have been a local crime story and nothing more. There would be no privileged Ohio State students marching in protest of her death. Media outlets wouldn’t have swarmed to Columbus to cover her demise. Her name wouldn’t be in a hashtag, and activist lawyers such as Ben Crump wouldn’t have cared. The White House wouldn’t have commented. And we know this because of how frequently it happens.
Black victims of police shootings get wall-to-wall media coverage even if it’s clear that the officer did everything right, as it appears Reardon did. According to the Washington Post police shooting database, 243 black Americans were shot and killed by police in 2020. Eighteen of them were classified as unarmed. “Assault rifles” also get wall-to-wall coverage in the aftermath of a mass shooting: In 2019, the most recent year for FBI homicide data, a total of 364 people were killed by rifles in the United States.
Yet 1,476 people were killed by knives or other cutting instruments in 2019, according to FBI data. That’s more than the number of total people killed by police in the same year, armed or unarmed. And in total, 7,484 homicide victims (53.7%) in 2019 were black. President Joe Biden and establishment media will make sure you remember the names of Michael Brown, Jacob Blake, and Ma’Khia Bryant. But those 7,484 homicide victims are often nothing more than a statistic.
Black victims of homicide or other violent crimes don’t get national media play or comments from Biden because they’re occurring in cities run by Democrats. St. Louis, Missouri, which had the highest homicide rate in the country in 2019, has a population that is 45% black and has been run by Democrats since 1949. Second is Baltimore, Maryland, with a population that is 62% black. Democrats have run Baltimore since 1967.
Birmingham, Alabama, (70% black, Democrat-run since 1975), Detroit, Michigan, (78% black, Democrat-run since 1962), and Dayton, Ohio, (38% black, Democrat-run since 2001) rounded out the top five. Confronting this fact involves examining who has been in charge of these cities for decades. For Democrats and their media allies, it’s not a kind narrative, which is why police shootings and AR-15s dominate their focus.
Had Reardon arrived at the scene later, or not at all, the woman in pink would have just been another number in a statistic, one of thousands of black Americans killed in cities like Columbus (Democrat-run since 2000). The vultures in media and activist circles would wait for the next officer-involved shooting they could fit into the narrative because none of them want to confront this reality.
