Julio reported on the horrific ambush attack against two Los Angeles County Sheriff officers over the weekend, then Beth covered some of the extremely disturbing aftermath. Sometimes situations appear too bad to be true, but unfortunately, some of the appalling updates were coming directly from official sources. In case you missed it, two young officers we shot as they sat in their patrol car in Compton, California. The victims, according to authorities, were a 31-year old mother and her 24-year-old male partner. Both were shot in the head. The assault was caught on tape (content warning):
Breaking: 2 police officers were shot in Compton CA. One male deputy and one female deputy were ambushed as they sat in their patrol vehicle, the shooter just walked up to their vehicle and shot them in the head.
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) September 13, 2020
Suspect is still at large. pic.twitter.com/BGPS7dvpaE
In the immediate and chaotic aftermath of this shooting, with many crucial details scarce, a group of anti-police 'protesters' openly celebrated what happened, chanting ugly slogans and expressing wishes that the gravely wounded officers -- who, thank God, are now expected to survive -- would die. This is sick and evil:
To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling "We hope they die" referring to 2 LA Sheriff's ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL. People's lives are at stake when ambulances can't get through.
— LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) September 13, 2020
Beth chronicled additional videos and witnesses confirming what these extremists, allegedly aligned with BLM, said and did. It's heinous. How the national media covers this will be interesting. When the dynamics of a terrible incident fit certain narratives, breathless, blanket coverage ensues. Some on the Left and in the press even inject political motives where they do not exist, in order to blame and punish their ideological opponents. One such narrative became so ingrained that it lingered for years, poisoning coverage with inaccuracies, to the point of eliciting serious legal action. Under other circumstances, outrageous acts of explicitly political violence are dutifully covered as quickly as possible, then swept away, due to partisan inconvenience.
When there are peaceful conservative or right-wing protests in the streets, they're often portrayed as dark, ominous and even violent (recall the bogus smearing of supposed 'Tea Party violence). When left-wing agitators engage in bona fide rioting, their actions tend to get sanitized and downplayed. We've seen this in the media's dangerous conflation of "protests" and "riots," the ludicrous use of the descriptor "mostly peaceful," and in Democrats' deliberately dishonest bothsides-ism. The relentless spin distorts public perceptions of reality:
Arson, destruction & looting = rioting. The fact that only a small plurality attributes more of the violence to left-wing agitators vs right-wingers demonstrates how successful the Dem/media gaslighting campaign has been. https://t.co/trGFx7okaz
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) September 13, 2020
How will the press handle this terrible episode in Compton? It could be an awful, isolated crime, the context of which doesn't neatly fit into any national controversies or storylines (although the contemptible reaction of "protesters" definitely establishes a news 'hook'). If right-wing crowds were blocking hospitals and rooting for death under similar but reversed circumstances, do you think that might be a big story? To be clear, I don't believe that it's fair to pin this blood-soaked ambush of two officers on Democratic rhetoric (the Biden camp strongly condemned it, though this is a good question), or on calls to defund the police. Unlike many others, I try to be consistent on this point. I don't even think some of the more aggressive demonization should be blamed, nor should 'black lives matter' as a whole. As I discussed in my recent Twitter exchange with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, it's hard to wholly embrace or reject BLM because there are complexities. People who believe that black lives matter are not necessarily synonymous with the radical organization. And I'd guess that a great majority of those who have attended blm-themed marches would be disgusted by the deeply egregious conduct mentioned above.
What's frustrating to many is that the worst excesses and extreme actions of certain protest movements are treated profoundly differently, based on the 'side' with which they're associated. If a relatively small number of bad apples are the elevated as the big story on one side, and diminished as a distraction from the big story on the other, resentment builds and distrust deepens. I'll leave you with the president's reaction to the bloodshed in Southern California, an election-related note, and a left-wing organization dehumanizing police after the shooting occurred:
Animals that must be hit hard! https://t.co/zrOd9ZUl8o
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2020
Believe it or not, this voter exists (and might help decide 2020)... pic.twitter.com/C4NTtX0nfQ
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 12, 2020
Gravel Institute deleted this, but the internet remembers. pic.twitter.com/Fnve64LsCt
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 13, 2020
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