Former NBA stars Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal pushed back on a lot of the outrage that racial activists have been fomenting in recent days over the death of Breonna Taylor, noting that the case, while tragic, did not belong in the same category as the death of George Floyd.
“It’s bad the young lady lost her life, but, you know, we do have to take into account that her boyfriend did shoot at the cops and shot a cop,” Barkley said. “So, like I said, even though I’m really sorry she lost her life, I don’t think that we can just say we can put this in the same situation with George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, I just don’t believe that.”
O’Neal then reportedly jumped in and agreed with Barkley, highlighting aspects of the case from the law enforcement side of things.
“I have to agree with Charles, this one is sort of lumped in,” O’Neal said. “You have to get a warrant signed and some states do allow no-knock warrants. And everyone was asking for murder charges. When you talk about murder, you have to show intent. A homicide occurred and we’re sorry a homicide occurred. When you have a warrant signed by the judge, you are doing your job, and I would imagine that you would fire back.”
God bless Barkley. He also is the only NBA commentator willing to point out that Brianna Taylor’s boyfriend fired first and hit a cop before they returned fire at him. The lack of basic factual understanding in this case is staggering. pic.twitter.com/2DFIs1XjNn
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 25, 2020
At a different point during the NBA show on TNT, Barkley also railed on those who were pushing the “defund the police” movement.
“We have to really be careful on these, you know, I hear these fools on TV talking about ‘defund the police’ and things like that,” Barkley said. “We need police reform and prison reform and things like that because you know who ain’t going to defund the cops? White neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods.”
“So, that notion they keep saying that, I’m like wait a minute, we’re just going [sic], who are black people supposed to call, Ghostbusters, when we have crime in our neighborhoods?” Barkley continued. “We need police reform, but like I said, white people and especially rich white people, they’re always going to have cops. So, we need to stop that defund and abolish the cops crap.”
As noted by The Daily Wire, the notion that the black community in the United States wants less policing is false.
“A Gallup poll conducted from June 23 to July 6 surveying more than 36,000 U.S. adults found that 61 percent of Black Americans said they’d like police to spend the same amount of time in their community, while 20 percent answered they’d like to see more police, totaling 81 percent. Just 19 percent of those polled said they wanted police to spend less time in their area,” Newsweek reported. “Black Americans’ responses to the question were nearly on par with the national average, in which 67 percent of all U.S. adults said they wanted police presence to remain the same and 19 percent said they wanted it to increase.”