For the Washington Post, LAPD is guilty even if the facts say otherwise
Zachary Faria
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It has been a while since liberals and their establishment media allies have tried to whip up faux controversies around policing, and so the Los Angeles Police Department is now being put under the microscope.
Three men have died this year after “encounters” with LAPD, according to the Washington Post, and this is a problem. “The deaths of three men in rapid succession this year after encounters with Los Angeles police officers has exposed a distressing lack of progress the department has made reducing police violence and managing people in crisis,” the Post claims. LAPD is “a department with a problematic history of violence,” and therefore the Post invokes the deaths of Rodney King and George Floyd to hammer home its point.
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But what actually happened in those three cases? The Post buries the details of all three cases 20 paragraphs deep into its piece, focusing instead on reporting on (and contributing to) pressure on new Mayor Karen Bass (D) to go after the city’s police department.
In the first case, officers attempted to deescalate a conflict with a man who had allegedly violated a restraining order against his wife. When that man grabbed a knife, officers tased him. When he grabbed the knife again, officers fatally shot him.
In the second case, officers responded to reports of a man threatening people with a knife. They ultimately located him in an abandoned house, where he approached officers while armed with a spiked pole.
In the third, which the Post decides to compare directly to the death of George Floyd, officers attempted to apprehend a man suspected of DUI after a traffic collision. The officer was patient with him until he fled. When he then resisted arrest and struggled against several officers, tasers were deployed. He ultimately died from cardiac arrest.
To hear the Post tell it, the first two men, who were armed with deadly weapons, should have been approached by a “mental health team,” although in the second case, officers had no way of knowing the man threatening people with a knife and armed with a makeshift spear suffered from a mental disorder. In the first case, with a man barricading himself in a kitchen with bicycles and armed with a knife, you can judge for yourself from the video above whether police officers or social workers should have been the ones responding.
And, apparently, the Post thinks that the DUI suspect who fled from officers should have simply been allowed to flee. After all, there is a natural risk of bodily injury when attempting to flee from police, including the possibility that multiple officers need to detain you or use tasers. Evidently, resisting arrest is supposed to be a get-out-of-jail-free card now.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
There are plenty of real cases of police misconduct, including actual systemic issues such as civil asset forfeiture. But the obsession with peddling a narrative that police departments target (mostly black) civilians with violence has always been an activist fabrication. It wasn’t LAPD who escalated these three cases, and condemning them in order to push an agenda does nothing to keep people safe.