In a lengthy press conference on Wednesday, Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray said that black Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Brentley Vinson was justified in shooting black suspect Keith Lamont Scott on the 20th of September during an encounter at an apartment complex parking lot.
Murray detailed the findings of a two-month long investigation showing that Scott was carrying a gun during the fateful encounter.
“All the credible evidence” demonstrated that Scott was armed. The suspect’s DNA was identified on the weapon found at the scene of the shooting. In addition, Murray said that three police officers told investigators that Scott was armed.
Finally, surveillance video captured at a convenience show Scott visited prior to the shooting showed a bulge around his ankle. That bulge matched the description officers provided of the way Scott’s weapon was holstered.
All of this flies directly in the face of a false narrative started by Scott’s family, which insisted that Scott was unarmed and as a result his shooting was unlawful. The family pointed to dashcam footage at the time which failed to show the suspect wielding a weapon. The problem with the dascham footage was that the angle didn’t show the full picture. Images released by the police in the days following the incident showed Scott’s gun at the scene.
Yet again, the false, recycled narrative, or “erroneous claims” as Murray called it, of an unarmed black man being shot by a police officer proved destructive. When Black Lives Matter activists picked up on the Scott shooting and began propagandizing based on the Scott family’s false claims, rioters were given the green light to sack the city of Charlotte.
In the days following the Scott shooting, rioters amassed to destroy property, harass and attack police with burning materials found on the streets, and brutally beat journalists. Hundreds of rioters shouted “black lives matter” as they destroyed their own city.
“They worked their mayhem — trashing businesses and injuring cops, with one protester killed in the disorder — before anything meaningful could be ascertained about the case except that the cops said Scott had a gun and his family said he didn’t,” Rich Lowry reported for The New York Post in an article published on September 26. “Charlotte is the latest episode in the evidence-free Black Lives Matter movement that periodically erupts in violence after officer-involved shootings. The movement is beholden to a narrative of systematic police racism to which every case is made to conform, regardless of the facts or logic.”
At the time, residents described the streets of Charlotte as a warzone overtaken by fanatics keen on enforcing mob justice.
Now, as all the evidence and facts have been brought to light, will BLM-inspired rioters apologize? Will they apologize to Officer Vinson, whose name as been dragged through the mud? Will they apologize to the residents of Charlotte for destroying the city? Will the overpaid liberal pundits apologize for egging on the rioters with hyperbole about “police brutality?”
Probably not.
In this post-truth society, feelings subsume facts.