As Twitchy reported, Daily Kos writer Shaun King made a big move up the journalism ladder when he was promoted in early October to the newly created position of senior justice writer at the New York Daily News. At the time, we could only imagine what topics the #BlackLivesMatter activist would tackle. Perhaps police brutality?
It was just a wild guess at the time, but King’s column in Monday’s edition does indeed concern police brutality, using Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent assertion that police have “pulled back” because “they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early.”
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/656187919225393152
Critics of the #BlackLivesMatter movement often criticize its members for not seeming to care about all the nameless black lives snuffed out in cities like Chicago (especially those with the strongest gun control legislation), but King addresses the problem head-on — by naming three blacks allegedly shot and killed by police in Chicago but until now ignored by both the movement and the media. That leaves a lot of lives that matter off the table.
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/656189811099697152
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/656190265539977216
Let’s stop there for a second. It’s mid-October and the Chicago Tribune reports that “there have been at least 404 people shot to death this year, 55 more than during the same period last year and 40 more than in 2013.” There were 60 homicides in September alone.
https://twitter.com/CPhelps_1247/status/653985038065922049
Violence on the streets of Chicago last month was especially brutal http://t.co/6bPES9wwqG pic.twitter.com/95YMZLQK01
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) October 5, 2015
We’d be thrilled to agree, but “on pace to be below 500” seems terribly optimistic.
— RBe (@RBPundit) October 19, 2015
stuff no one should be proud of https://t.co/QecISCEpYb
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) October 19, 2015
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/656190472994426880
And here’s where the disconnect happens. Do we blame those 543 murders on police doing their jobs or not doing their jobs? Is it because police have allegedly “pulled back” that the number of murders is supposedly on pace to be lower this year or that this September saw the most homicides in one month since 2002?
Emanuel declared that “enough is enough” after September’s murder spree and demanded that the city’s criminal justice system and gun laws “reflect the values of the people of the city of Chicago.” The frightening thought is that these homicide numbers in the hundreds each year more and more reflect the values of the people of Chicago.
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