Cop refused to shoot black suspect to avoid becoming media's new Darrin Wilson

Congratulations, media. You've done solid work here. The criminals know what the score is now and they're taking full advantage - and tragically, so do the cops. Police officer conducts traffic stop. Tells suspect to stay in the car. Suspect gets out of the car and comes aggressively at the officer. The fact that the suspect has no gun and the cop is packing doesn't cause the suspect to hesitate in the slightest. In fact, it's to his advantage, and he knows it. Because if the cop fires his weapon to protect himself, you, media, will air the dashcam media while screeching, WHITE COP SHOOTS UNARMED BLACK MAN, and the next thing you know, Birmingham's engulfed in riots, Al Sharpton's on his way . . .

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And this is all the cop can think about as the suspect bears down on him, so he lets the suspect take his gun and pistol-whip him, leaving him on the ground unconscious while idiots come by, take pictures of him lying there and mockingly post it on social media. You're damn right I blame the media. And so does the cop:

Details of last week's incident in the Birmingham enclave of Roebuck remain sketchy -- such as how did the suspect get the officer's weapon -- but the six-year police veteran said he didn't shoot the man who attacked him during a traffic stop because of the outcry surrounding a spate of police shootings nationally. "We don't want to be in the media," he said. "It's hard times right now for us." Heath Boackle, a sergeant with the Birmingham Police Department and president of the city's Fraternal Order of Police, said Thursday that cops are "walking on eggshells because of how they're scrutinized in the media." "We should be thanking the good Lord because he could be dead right now," Boackle said of the detective who was beaten.

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What would help is if someone in a position of authority in this country would stand up for the cops and to the media narrative. The media have very effectively sold the idea that it's always wrong for cops to shoot an unarmed person, which is complete nonsense, as this scenario demonstrates perfectly. When a suspect is coming at a cop aggressively, the very reason the cop has a gun is to give him or her an advantage in that situation - leverage to order the suspect to back off. Now, because of the way they know the media will play it, the cops are afraid to actually use their weapons whenever the aggressor happens to be black and the cop happens to be white. And Sgt. Boackle is right: Once the bad guy has taken the cop's gun, what's to stop him from shooting the cop with it? Yes, we can all thank God that this suspect's quotient for evil didn't quite rise to the level of murder, but are you really confident the next one will be so restrained? At some point, the media are going to get a police officer killed with the atmosphere they've created - not that they'll cop to any responsibility for it. I eagerly await the left's inevitable proposal that we solve the problem by disarming all police officers. That, after all, would level the playing field between the cops and the crooks, which in liberal America would actually be seen as a desirable outcome.

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