Two terrible things just happened only days apart. In Oakland, during anti-police protests outside of a federal courthouse, federal protective service officer Dave Patrick Underwood was killed in a drive-by shooting that was targeted at the police. Another officer was shot but survived.
The killing of Underwood, a black American, has only appeared in a few national outlets—one of which was the Wall Street Journal. Cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC, meanwhile, appear to have completely ignored Underwood’s killing. At best, they glossed over it.
In Minnesota, just two days later, protestors gathered on an interstate highway bridge they believed to be closed. In a stunning video, they were almost run over by a semi-truck. Fortunately, the driver braked and drove in the middle of the road to make it possible for people to get out of the way. It is amazing that no one was injured. Well, aside from the driver, who was pulled out of his truck and beaten.
The trucker, Bogdan Vechirko, was later released without charges after it was determined that he wasn’t targeting the protesters. As it turns out, the real culprits were state officials, who closed the interstate without putting up a blockade or properly warning drivers.
The media ran videos of the truck moving into the crowd over and over. Admittedly, it was a stunning scene. But they left out the part where the trucker was beaten. There was also little to no national coverage after it was determined Vechirko wasn’t targeting the protestors. And some of the media that did cover the lack of charges made it seem like an injustice was being done.
A quick Google search reveals oodles of national coverage of the initial incident—much more than the killing of Underwood received.
Violence Directed Against Cops Is Being Ignored
Two days after the semi-truck incident, a retired St. Louis police captain, David Dorn, was shot and killed while protecting a friend’s store from rioters and looters. A shocking video, live-streamed on Facebook, shows the 77-year-old black American lying in a pool of blood.
Yet Dorn’s death also appeared in only a few corporate media articles and was hardly covered on cable news at all.
In Alabama, a white American cop was killed, although it is unclear if the killing was related to the George Floyd “protests.” The officer, Stephen Williams, was known for bridging divides in the community.
In Atlanta, a black American officer named Max Brewer is in intensive care after he was run over during protests.
All over the country, police have been run over, shot, or bludgeoned by bricks and other blunt objects. Police officers were hit by cars in the cities of Buffalo and New York. In Florida, an officer had his neck slashed.
While one Las Vegas police officer shot in the head could hang on and survive, he may never be the same again. Officers have also been shot in Virginia, Iowa, and Missouri. Including the 50 secret service officers injured in D.C. by Molotov cocktails, nearly 300 police officers have been killed or injured in the last week.
Do These Black Lives Matter?
At least three other black Americans have been killed aside from Underwood and Dorn. One was Italia Marie Kelly, who was killed in a shooting in Iowa when the crowd of “protestors” became unruly. Chris Beaty was a football star and a real estate broker. He saw thugs stealing purses and tried to stop them. “You don’t need to do this,” he pleaded, “there’s a better way.” Then they shot him.
David McAtee ran a popular outdoor eatery in Louisville. He was shot by police after, at least according to surveillance footage, he appeared to fire on officers. Only McAtee’s death was covered by the national corporate media, and the articles emphasized his barbeque business, not the fact that he had likely fired on police before they returned fire.
These are likely not the only black Americans killed in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing. The race of many dead Americans has not been revealed in the media, and some of the deaths have resulted from recklessness. In Philadelphia, a man died after trying to blow up an ATM. In Minneapolis, a looter was shot by a pawn shop owner.
So many innocent people have died. In Detroit, a man was shot and killed during protests by a drive-by shooter. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, aside from the pawnshop killing, three others are dead. Last week, a man’s body was found in an area that saw rioting and no police presence the night before. A woman’s body was found in the backseat of a car. Her body had suffered “visible trauma,” and the car was in an area “overrun with violence in the overnight hours.” And this week, another woman’s body was found in a car, this time riddled with bullet holes.
The Media Ignores the Lights in the Dark
The national media seems incapable of covering any of the uplifting stories during the chaos. In Minneapolis, people of all colors are coming out during the day to clean up their neighborhoods. Americans—in the absence of police protection—have defended their land, businesses, and families using the utmost restraint.
There’s also been plenty of positive instances of Americans bridging racial divides, and of protestors standing up to looters. In one video, mostly black protestors form a chain to keep looters out of a Target store. In another, thugs dressed in Antifa’s “black bloc” uniform, vandalize and loot while black onlookers yell at them to stop. In a set of pictures from Kentucky, black American men intervened to protect a caucasian police officer who was separated from his squad.
The media is intent on dividing us. They repeat the toxic narrative that police officers are targeting and killing black men when the hard data doesn’t come close to backing up their claims. They are willfully blind when “protestors” commit bad acts—like in Virginia, where firetrucks were blocked from going to a burning house that had a young child inside.
When mob violence is shown, they justify it. When the overall damage is too much to bear, they repeat the total fabrication that the carnage is being carried out by “white supremacists.” They gloss over or ignore Antifa’s role in the chaos, even defending the organization.
The Media Must Start Covering All Innocent Victims
Ultimately, the violence we’ve witnessed has been carried out by criminals of all ethnicities and races. It has, however, occurred disproportionately in Democrat-run states and minority neighborhoods. Yet progressive Democrats like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio have allowed violence to take place. In Minneapolis, cops were ordered to withdraw from areas that became lawless, directly resulting in death. Frey even let the Third Precinct Police Station in his city to be burned without permitting the police to defend it.
Progressive politicians allowed this because they take this part of their base for granted. It was a small but vocal element of their base who was rioting, and their supporters who have a voice (and dollars to donate) don’t live in these neighborhoods. Even so, many leftists from the suburbs or untouched upper-scale pockets of the city took to cable news or posted on social media about how the violence was justified. Frey, whose estimated net worth is $9 million, is a member of that elite.
The anguish of Stephanie Wilford, from Minneapolis, an older black woman who can be seen sobbing while she talks to a local reporter about the destruction in her neighborhood, is part of their “progress.” Unfortunately, she and others like her will never be shown on CNN.
The next logical question is this: Can a democratic-republic function when its media is so dishonest, it’s elite so corrupt, and when one of its major political parties allows street violence? The answer is probably not. God help us.
