This is Murder

The recently released footage of Keith Scott’s shooting proves that his death was what most of us feared and assumed, a murder, cold-blooded and intentional.

We are told that in conjunction with other evidence, this video will exonerate his murderers, that they will be justified in having taken an innocent life. This is how systemic racism sustains itself, by finagling together enough disconnected bits of data and opinions to obfuscate the very simple act at the center of the drama: the murder of Keith Scott.

In fact the video does tell the entire story. It is difficult, perhaps impossible to tell if Mr. Scott was holding a gun, a point we will likely hear repeatedly as the agents of inertia attempt to delay progress. Whether he was holding a gun or not is entirely irrelevant, as the video proves, at the time he was killed, Mr. Scott was backing away from his car with his arms at his side, a threat to no one, not least the four officers who can be seen swarming him from multiple angles as soon as he goes down. A man with his arms at his side moving slowly is a threat to four trained officers who have him covered from every angle.

You might ask yourself how this is possible. It’s not. To imagine Mr. Scott was a threat to the officers you not only have to be certain he was holding a gun — which is again unclear — you have to be certain that he was capable of lifting his arms from his side, taking clear aim, and shooting the one officer he was facing at the time who was himself taking cover behind the hood of a car.Meanwhile his colleagues have clear lines of sight on Mr. Scott, able to gun him down in an instant if he so much as takes another step backwards. That is exactly what happened. Far from being able to make a move that was actually threatening, Mr. Scott was murdered by a gang of men who carefully planned where they would need to be to maximize their ability to incapacitate him, and who then used lethal force to do so.

That is murder, pre-meditated, pre-planned, murder. Four men, at least, all armed, intentionally positioned themselves to use force if necessary, and then did so, despite the fact that it was not at all necessary.

In a nation of laws, there is nothing that can be said to exonerate the murderers. In our particular nation of laws, that is even more true. Since, if in fact Mr. Scott was indeed armed, his right to carry a weapon is protected by one of said laws. We can even go so far as to say that in this instance, Mr. Scott wasn’t killed because of his REFUSAL to obey the law, but instead because he was exercising his Constitutional Rights, posing a threat to no one until confronted by the criminals who killed him, and then murdered even as his actions indicate he posed no threat to those criminals, and — as evidenced by his death — we know that the criminals had the drop on him, not vice versa.

Keith Scott was murdered. In cold blood and by men who planned the deed.And we can all watch it happen on cameras that were worn by his murderers.Will we hold them accountable, or will we so pathetically and desperately continue to search for ways to justify murder as long as the killers are white and the victims black?

I have little faith that the justice system will punish the thugs who killed Keith Scott, but I am confident that they deserve punishment for no less than that. Mr. Scott was murdered, and if we continue to condone the act and exonerate the executioners, then the blood is also on our hands.

#RacialReconciliation