Anti-police protester Fahyim Accuay in a police shoot/don't shoot simulation in Portland, Oregon (Video screenshot)
Since the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, that catalyzed the Black Lives Matter movement, incomplete evidence has been used in numerous high-profile shootings of black men to cast law-enforcement officers as race-inspired murderers.
But two anti-police protesters in Portland, Oregon, found out first-hand that the split-second decision many officers face – to shoot or not to shoot – when they are resisted by a suspect isn't so easy.
PJ Media's Victoria Taft recalled that in 2015, activists Fahyim Accuay and Jessie Sponberg agreed to accept the challenge of a Portland radio station to go through a shoot/don't shoot training session at the Clackamas County Sheriff's training center.
Taft noted she underwent a similar simulated training at the same facility "and can attest to the difficulty of doing the right thing when seconds count."
"I’m sure I was 'killed' several times," she said. "One time I tried to convince a perpetrator conducting a school shooting to put aside his bad ways and just stop shooting people. Yeah, that worked. I 'died.' I'd like another run at that simulated training."
Likewise, both Accuay and Spoonberg, she said, "'died' several times thinking they could, like me, talk a perp out of harming others or that they could overpower the bad guy."
"Both men believed that cops intentionally seek out black men to murder," she wrote.
Spoonberg has had several run-ins with the law, including in 2017 when he admitted to beating a counter-protester who had to be hospitialized.
In the simulations, the two anti-cop protesters has to operate under the rules police officers must follow when they stop or question an individual.
The activists "shot innocent people and died multiple deaths," Taft wrote.
"Both said afterward that being a cop is harder than it looks."
See the videos:
In the Michael Brown case, three separate investigations, including by the Justice Department under Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, found the officer acted in self-defense. Obama's DOJ found the iconic "hand's up don't shoot" likely didn't happen.
In the Jacob Blake case in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the graphic video that caused outrage nationally showed the 29-year-old suspect being shot by police seven times. Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden were among many leaders who, before the investigation had barely begun, declared the officer who shot Blake, Rusten Sheskey, to be a racially motivated murderer.
However, other video footage and evidence has come to light since the Aug. 23 incident showing Blake resisting two officers before the shooting, wrestling with them on the ground after Tasers failed to subdue him. Blake broke free and appeared to have a knife in his hand as he walked around an SUV and opened the driver's door. A knife was later found on the floor of the vehicle.
Officers were dispatched to the scene after a call from Blake's girlfriend. The dispatcher relayed that she said Blake "isn't supposed to be there" and that he took her keys and "is refusing to give them back." Officers were informed "we have an alert at this address for a 99 for this subject," referring to an outstanding warrant for Blake's arrest on the charge that he sexually assaulted his girlfriend.
In the George Floyd case in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, video of officer Derek Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd's neck amid cries of "I can't breathe" also caused outrage across the nation. That case also is under investigation, but officer body cam footage released in July shows Floyd, high on fetanyl, resisting arrest from the moment officers confronted him on suspicion he passed a counterfeit bill at a nearby store. Amid the ongoing struggle, Floyd, clearly agitated by what the coroner found to a lethal dosage, declared "I can't breathe" before he was on the ground. In fact, it was Floyd who insisted that he be put on the asphalt as he struggled for breath, apparently from the drug overdose.
Three days after Floyd's death, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman told reporters "there is other evidence that doesn't support a criminal charge" against the officers. A day later – after pointing out it usually takes months of investigation before a charging decision is made in such cases – his office charged Chauvin with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter
The three other officers were later charged with second-degree aiding and abetting felony murder and second-degree aiding and abetting manslaughter.
Last week, ABC News reported, a defense attorney for Chauvin asked a judge to drop all charges, arguing Floyd's death was allegedly from a drug overdose and not caused by the officer planting his knee in the back of Floyd's neck.
Defense attorney Eric J. Nelson claimed prosecutors have failed to show probable cause for Chauvin. Nelson contends Chauvin acted on his training in the use of a "Maximal Restraint Technique."
Chauvin acted out of concern that Floyd might harm himself or the officers struggling to arrest him, Nelson insisted.
Rebutting the narrative
Black Lives Matter was launched in response to the jury acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013 in the death of Trayvon Martin. BLM's founders call Zimmerman and the officer involved in the death of Michael Brown in 2014, Darren Wilson, "murderers." However, Zimmerman's acquittal was confirmed by an investigation supported by open records that uncovered witness tampering and perjury.
Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald has presented compelling empirical evidence rebutting the Black Lives Matter "systemic police racism" narrative that has gripped the nation.
She contends the claim that "policing in the U.S. is lethally racist" is provably false, presenting three types of evidence: the raw numbers, individual cases such as George Floyd's, and academic research.
"A police officer is up to 30 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer," she said, citing analyses by mainstream researchers of available data.
In 2015, under President Obama and Attorney General Holder, a Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. In 2016, the Washington Post reported a Washington State University study finding that police officers are three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.
Black leaders and scholars, such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Shelby Steele, who reject the claim that America is "systemically racist" point to the breakdown of families that has accompanied the rise in dependence on welfare since the 1960s. Boys are growing up fatherless, a major indicator of crime and poverty, with more than 70% of blacks now born out of wedlock.
Civil-rights era activist Bob Woodson offers a forum for voices such as Steele's to counter the narrative of the New York Times "1619 Project" called the "1776 Unites Campaign." And his Washington, D.C.-based Woodson Center helps support "more than 2,881 neighborhood leaders in 40 states who are tackling issues ranging from homelessness, addiction, to joblessness, youth violence and the need for education and training."
See Heather Mac Donald's presentation:
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