Here’s a point to ponder: If a white cop shot and killed an unarmed, 5’2” black woman who’d never attacked anyone, would his identity have been kept secret?
Would the media essentially say, “Nothing to see here; move along”?
Would there not be coast-to-coast riots, looting, burned buildings, and mayhem stoked by that very media?
Anyone who has trouble answering these questions has probably been asleep for as long as Rip Van Winkle.
Speaking to NBC’s Lester Holt on Thursday, Lieutenant Michael Byrd of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) revealed himself as the officer who killed unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt, 35, during the January 6 trespassing incident. Characterizing his actions against the diminutive Babbitt, Byrd told Holt, “I showed the utmost courage on January 6” and “I know that day I saved countless lives.”
Now, maybe it took courage for him to fire his weapon; that is, if he’s the kind of person who found it an agonizing decision. Yet this kind of self-exaltation is not a good look. Maybe Byrd did believe, too, on January 6 that the trespassers were something more, that they really could be a blood-seeking mob.
After all, at one point, Byrd recalled during the Holt interview that “an incorrect report that gunshots had been fired into the House chamber came over his radio,” reports the New York Post.
“‘I was very afraid,’ Byrd said,” the paper continues. “I’m hearing about the breaches of different barricaded areas, officers being overrun, officers being down.”
How, though, could Byrd conclude at this late date that he saved lives, with the FBI having found that the trespassing event was not an insurrection and stating that no firearms were seized from those arrested that day?
Of course, it’s man’s nature to rationalize to justify his actions. The 53-year-old Byrd, a 28-year MPD veteran, killed someone, and anyone who’s not a sociopath wouldn’t want to believe that he did such a thing without good cause.
He may have much to rationalize, too. For no other cop shot anyone on January 6. Asked about this by Holt, Byrd replied, “I’m sure it was a terrifying situation. I can only control my reaction, my training, my level of expertise. That would be upon them to speak for themselves.”
As to his level of training, Byrd was the officer who left his gun unattended in a Capitol restroom in 2019. He possibly didn’t even notice its absence, either, and it was discovered by other Capitol police “during a routine security sweep,” reports the Federalist.
Whatever the case regarding Byrd’s January 6 actions and overall competence, don’t expect to hear officials bloviating in speeches about law-enforcement reform, accountability, or “re-imagining police.” Don’t expect posturing about “systemic racism.” Not only did the Department of Justice announce in April that it won’t pursue criminal charges against Byrd, but the MPD announced Monday that he won’t be disciplined.
Also don’t expect the mainstream media to give continual sympathetic interviews to the Babbitt family’s lawyer, Terry Roberts, and emphasize his assertions that “Babbitt didn’t brandish a weapon, wasn’t in close proximity to any members of Congress and [was] ‘not an imminent threat of death or serious injury to anyone,’” as the Daily Mail relates it. Nor will they trumpet Roberts’s claim that Byrd never gave commands. (For his part, Byrd “told Holt during the interview [that] he yelled multiple times, ‘Stop. Get back,’” the paper also informs.)
Additionally, Roberts questioned why Byrd outed himself, saying, “‘Quite a turn-around, given the months of constantly saying that to identify him would expose him to danger,” the Mail further relates. “‘Where did that one go?’”
In fairness, Byrd had already been unofficially identified by various sources as Babbitt’s killer, had supposedly been in “hiding,” and says he has received death threats. So he might have appeared on NBC out of a desire to tell his side of the story.
One person who won’t extend him much sympathy, however, is Babbitt’s widower, Aaron Babbitt. “I don’t even want to hear him talk about how he’s getting death threats, and he’s scared,” he said on Thursday’s edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight. “I’ve been getting death threats since January 7th — two, three, five, 10 a day — and all I did on January 6th is becoming a widower.”
“So you’re going to have to suck it up, bud, and take it,” he continued (video below).
Unlike the mainstream media, we at The New American endeavor to be fair. So just as we have with other police shooting incidents, we’ll say that a person’s “unarmed” status isn’t necessarily relevant; after all, in the heat of the moment, an officer doesn’t know if a lawbreaker is armed or not. It’s also a general principle that if a person doesn’t follow police’s lawful commands, they can use necessary force to neutralize the perceived threat. (Although we could ask why Byrd didn’t deploy a less-than-lethal weapon such as a taser.)
The problem is that these standards aren’t today accepted by the pseudo-elites — even in cases where profound threats exist. Note that Babbitt wasn’t a 6’4”, 294-pound man who battered a cop and tried to grab his gun, as was the case with criminal Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. She didn’t resist police, wrestle with them, and steal a taser (which can be a deadly weapon when used incorrectly), as Rayshard Brooks did last year in Atlanta.
Yet as is par for the course with white-on-black police shootings, the officers in those cases were immediately identified and demonized by media; their actions were used as a pretext for rioting, violence, and nation-rending destabilization; and Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, though exonerated by the DOJ just as Byrd was, will never work in policing again.
Then, remember the unarmed 17-year-old shot by that grown man years ago? Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman were, respectively, their names, right?
Wrong.
I’m talking about 17-year-old white kid Chris Cervini, shot to death by black man Roderick Scott in Greece, New York, three years before the Martin incident, in 2009. Unlike Zimmerman, Scott is built like a brick outhouse, is a highly trained martial artist, and never had a hand laid on him by the teen. As with Zimmerman, Scott said he thought his life could be in danger and was acquitted by a mostly white jury. Unlike Zimmerman again, however, the Scott incident never became national news and a federal case.
The bottom line: Whatever the truth about Michael Byrd, 100 more just like him wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous to our Republic as one average pseudo-elite journalist.
