Facade ripped away

The most basic fundamentals are revealed by the instinctive reaction.

It appears that 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with a rifle, shot three persons who were protesting a police shooting in Kenosha, WI or who were part of a crowd attempting to apprehend Mr. Rittenhouse. Apparently, the crowd told Kenosha police that Mr. Rittenhouse had shot someone. Mr. Rittenhouse returned to Antioch, Illinois, after passing through a line of Kenosha police with his gun.

There were no commands by Kenosha police to “DROP THE GUN!” or threat of deadly force if he didn’t .

The instinctive reaction of the Kenosha police was “He’s one of ours!”

Imagine the Kenosha police seeing a black man, running with a gun away from a white crowd shouting “He shot someone!” That black man would not reach his home without interference from the police. He would not have lived many minutes after the police saw him.

Apparently, in the eyes of the Kenosha police, a white man with a gun is not a threat, and they instinctively don’t react to him as a threat. In many places in this country, the instinctive reaction of police to a black man carrying something that might be a construed as a gun, is to regard him as a threat to be eliminated.

Instinctive reactions do not lie.

Instinctive reactions by police kill a lot more black people than white people.

And there is no longer a facade to hide it.

John Simanton

Spokane