Eric the Blue

Probably it would be prudent for me to stay off of social media when events in my stomping grounds are the lead story in international news reports, and not for the first time in recent memory. But being a boomer, I occasionally peruse what my kids derisively refer to as BoomerBook, and unfortunately cannot give myself an order to regard with equanimity, for example, Tom Emmer, who represents probably Minnnesota’s reddest congressional district. I should just laugh but Jesus. I trust Emmer’s not dumb enough to believe his own b.s. and is only pandering to his dumbest constituents, but maybe that’s charitable: maybe he really is that dumb. Anyway, based on his BoomerBook post, he thinks that the statement put out by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after yesterday morning’s homicide on Portland Avenue was drafted by Joe Friday. Here it is:

Just a few comments, paragraph by paragraph.

1. Riot? What riot? By now everyone with the slightest interest in the matter has seen the videos. There was no riot. I love the way they insist upon the lie: in one sentence “rioters,” then again “violent rioters,” even though everyone knows there wasn’t a riot. Portland Avenue wasn’t “blocked,” either. The street is too wide for one vehicle to achieve that feat. ICE could’ve driven around the little SUV like everyone else was doing. After all, they had “targeted operations” to conduct. The puffed up vocab of boys playing at being cops.

2. DHS purports to know what was in the mind of the shooter, just as they purport to know what was in the mind of the woman he killed. Of course they don’t know. Also, they don’t want anyone to investigate these matters, which is why they’ve thrown Minnesota’s BCA off the case. A close analysis of the video evidence proves the woman wasn’t trying to run anyone over, but it’s a fool’s errand to take up that subject with someone who thinks there was a “riot” going on.

3. “Used his training”? Give me a break. The DOJ has a Manual that includes its policy on use of force. Here’s part of what it says:

[F]irearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.

Moreover, the ICE guys refused to permit a doctor on the scene to check on the woman they shot, and did nothing to help her themselves. The video evidence proves this, too. Yet one section of the DOJ’s Manual is entitled “Affirmative Duty to Render Medical Aid.”

4. “The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased”–finally, a true statement, though couched in the passive voice. Another way to put it might be that an ICE officer, in violation of his training, if he had any, shot a woman in the face three times, at point blank range, and this is according to Hoyle, because he was at the side of her car, which was threatening to lurch sideways, as cars do.

5. The referent for the “This” with which this paragraph begins is all the foregoing bullshit. I’m sorry but the evil Democrats are not forcing the Trump administration to lie.

6. “An evolving situation”? The whole point of this statement has been to insist that everything about what happened is known and reflects the Glory of Trump and the depravity of his foes. In any event, the content of the conclusion is a broken promise, because everything new we learn comes from ordinary people, like the Portland Avenue resident who said the ICE guys were shouting contradictory commands at the woman. “Get out of your car!” “Get your car off the road!” Our state’s BCA would investigate this claim, and others, and come to a conclusion about what’s true and what isn’t, which, again, is why the Feds have booted them from the case.