{"id":53395,"date":"2015-05-19T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T17:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=53395"},"modified":"2015-05-19T12:55:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T17:55:27","slug":"the-death-cult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=53395","title":{"rendered":"The Death Cult"},"content":{"rendered":"

MPR News spoke with Taye Clinton, the 10-year-old boy who was infamously maced, apparently by a Minneapolis cop, at a “Black Lives Matter” protest last week.<\/p>\n

Frontmatter<\/strong>: \u00a0Now, since this city is clogged with people whose purpose in “life” is to find little political incorrectnesses with which to invalidate all dissent, let me establish a few things.<\/p>\n

Too many cops see the world as “cops vs. potential criminals”; if you’re not a cop you’re a potential criminal. \u00a0There are bad cops, and plenty of just-not-very-good cops (I’ve encountered more than my fair share of the latter in Saint Paul, along with some excellent ones); more importantly, until good cops start turning in bad cops, it’s going to be hard for any citizens who cares about civil liberty to trust cops. \u00a0And I’m white – which I say not to disqualify my opinion (as some will take, or put, it) so much as to say “you think\u00a0I’ve\u00a0<\/em>got cop problems…”.<\/p>\n

15:00 And Counting<\/strong>: \u00a0Anway – Susan Montgomery brought little Taye to another protest this past Thursday. Riham Feshir and Peter Cox report<\/a>\u00a0(and I add emphasis):<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night Taye and his mother were part of a Black Lives Matter and the Black Liberation Project march down Seventh Street to protest Wisconsin authorities’ decision not to charge a white Madison officer in the killing of a 19-year-old biracial man.<\/p>\n

Taye, who’s also biracial, says he was frightened.<\/p>\n

“At least I got Maced and not shot<\/strong>,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, let’s be clear; Taye is 10. \u00a0Perhaps he’s an incredibly sharp, precocious kid – a Mozart-like prodigy of juvenile perception of the world around him. \u00a0I’ll just say it could be.<\/p>\n

It could also be that that’s what the adults in his life, including his mom, Susan Montgomery – who dragged the lad to a protest at 10PM on a school night (not that being out on the street watching people protest is any bigger a waste of time than a day in the Minneapolis public schools) have told him to think about the issue.<\/p>\n

The idea that a kid – coached or not – would say such a thing is, itself, a tragedy.<\/p>\n

But I’m at a loss to remember any 10-year-old victims of police shootings in any of the Twin Cities, much less Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Now, there’s been a long butcher’s bill of kids Taye’s age killed, crippled, maimed and injured by people waving guns around the cities. \u00a0I remember the first gang shooting I encountered in Minneapolis, 30 years ago this fall, when 16 year old Christine Kreitz was executed by the gang bangers she’d been hanging around with in King Park in South Minneapolis. \u00a0I remember the first such story I was involved in as a reporter, when a grade-school-aged boy in North Minneapolis was paralyzed by a stray bullet from a Bloods\/Crips throwdown a block away (the boy was a solid 60\u00ba off the line of fire, in a second-floor apartment – which is, statistically, vastly more dangerous a place to be than an actual participant).<\/p>\n

The Question<\/strong>: \u00a0So young Taye Clinton is thankful that he’s not the first 10-year-old biracial boy to be shot by a Minneapolis cop. \u00a0I can’t argue.<\/p>\n

Just curious; has Susan Montgomery warned young Taye about the dangers posed by, to pick a random example, teenage high school dropouts who loiter about the neighborhood and get into random fights with other guys like themselves?<\/p>\n

The ones who, statistically and tragedy, have killed a lot more little Tayes than every police department in the Upper Midwest combined?<\/p>\n

And did anyone from MPR ask her?<\/p>\n

I’m just curious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MPR News spoke with Taye Clinton, the 10-year-old boy who was infamously maced, apparently by a Minneapolis cop, at a “Black Lives Matter” protest last week. Frontmatter: \u00a0Now, since this city is clogged with people whose purpose in “life” is to find little political incorrectnesses with which to invalidate all dissent, let me establish a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53395"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53448,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53395\/revisions\/53448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}