Apparently someone at USA Today was either mad as all get out and wanted to make sure its readers knew about today's news item relating to a policeman killing a suspect, or that person fell asleep with their finger on the "Send" button.
Yours truly received four emails between 2:36 and 2:37 PM telling me that New York City Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo will not be charged in the death of Eric Garner:
Readers will note that three of the emails say exactly the same thing — and to be clear, all four came to the same email address.
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds indicated that, unlike Ferguson, this may be a situation where they jury might have gotten it wrong (links are in original; bolds are mine):
... A few observations:
(1) His initial crime: Selling “looseys” — individual cigarettes — in violation of NYC tax law. When you pass a law, however trivial, you are providing an opportunity for police to use lethal force. That’s why I favor fewer laws, not more.
(2) I saw someone on Twitter saying that if you expect a Staten Island grand jury to indict a cop, then you don’t know Staten Island. That may be the case, but it shouldn’t be. If police can’t be accountable for their use of force, then we shouldn’t have police. Fire ‘em all and privatize. We’re not supposed to have titles of nobility in this country.
(3) Listening to NPR on the way back from the UT Studio — I taped a segment on this for The Independents on Fox Business tonight — they kept stressing that it was a WHITE officer who had killed a BLACK MAN. You could pretty much hear the capitals in their voices. They’d never stress race that way in other circumstances. And it’s not clear that excessive force by police is especially a racial problem. In Alabama, we had the shooting of a unarmed white 18-year old by a black cop; in Utah, we had the Dillan Taylor shooting, also unarmed, also not prosecuted. Racializing the issue makes it more divisive and less likely to be addressed.
"Racializing" — obsessively, as is apparently the case with USA Today — seems to be all they care about.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
