“Believe your eyes”

Two days ago, a 16 year old teenage girl, Ma'Khia Bryant, was killed by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio while she was attacking another juvenile female with a knife.

This is no time for implicit or confirmation biases. It’s time for some honest objectivity instead of using this situation to further a particular agenda. I understand that many in the black community do not trust the police and may not believe them, but it is important at all times to seek the truth, regardless of what we want to happen or want to believe.

I am absolutely not a police apologist, but too many people are comparing this to George Floyd and the host of other young black people killed by police officers, without any basis in fact. This is patently unfair and wrong.

Generally speaking, a good barometer is the amount of time it takes for police to publish body camera footage of an incident. If it’s a long time coming; days, weeks or months, there’s more than likely some manipulation of the truth, some CYA and an attempt to skew the facts and influence the public going on, behind the scenes. If the police release footage within a few hours, as was done in this case, it more than likely shows that the police have nothing to hide and the officer acted lawfully.

There is a feeding frenzy lately regarding police involved shootings and it’s not completely uncalled for, but saying this is another unjustified police shooting, in light of the available video evidence, is absolutely wrong. I have watched the footage over, and over and over. I watched the scene unfold on the officer’s body cam and the neighbor’s security camera. I’ve watched it in real time and slow motion, and as close to frame by frame as I am able.

I saw a police officer arrive on scene and walk from his vehicle towards a group of people on the driveway. I saw a young woman suddenly attack another young woman, who tripped or fell directly in front of the officer. At the same time, a man came over to the victim and viciously kicked her about the head, followed quickly by Ma'Khia Bryant suddenly reversing course and attacking another young woman with a knife, in what certainly appeared to be an attempt to kill.

As near as I could determine, it was less than four seconds between the attack on the first victim and the second. The officer simply did not have time to do anything other than try to prevent an imminent murder. He had to deal with the first victim on the ground at his feet being viciously assaulted by a man, then a potential attempted murder by Ma'Khia Bryant upon another victim; and I can’t see that he had any choice but to ignore what was happening, or shoot the perpetrator. Police are neither trained nor permitted to ignore crimes such as this committed in their presence. Police training and societal norms mandate and allow deadly force to be used in response to deadly force. There was no time to consider “less lethal” means and to suggest otherwise is to ignore the facts and the truth. This officer simply did not have the luxury of time to assess a situation which happened in an instant.

Those people who are now blaming this officer need to stop and think for a moment what a chaotic scene this was. Instead of looking at this situation with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, multiple camera angles, slow motion replay, wishful thinking or a biased agenda, they need to view the developments with an eye toward the dynamics as they existed in those precious view seconds when everything came crashing down on the participants. What did the officer know at that moment and what did he see? To look at this any other way is unfair and simply wrong.

What would people be saying today if the police officer had not fired and the second girl was killed by Ma'Khia?  Everyone would ask why the cop didn’t shoot.  The people who want to make race an issue might even say he didn’t shoot because he didn’t care about the life of a black girl. This was a situation where one way or another, somebody was going to get hurt;  this police officer was forced to make the terrible decision as to who that person would be. 

The police officer had every reason to be nervous and worried about the terrible situation into which he had just been thrust. It was nothing short of a life or death scenario, and every person blaming him needs to put themselves in the officer’s shoes at that critical instant in time, instead of mindlessly blaming him and all police. Just because police have wrongly killed others in the past did not mean this shooting was more of the same.

I just saw one man asking “What if the police officer had done nothing?” Well, what if nobody had called the police in the first place? If you are going to “what if”, why not ask “What if Ma’Khia had not tried to stab two people at exactly the moment the police arrived on the scene?” “What iffing” accomplishes nothing in this situation except to try to divert attention from the facts and the truth.

As of today, we can expect to go down that never ending road of spin doctoring by the two sides that always follows this kind of incident.

I expect the people who purport to speak on behalf of Ma’Khia are going to try to cast her as some kind of saint. They’ll say she was flawed, but trying to turn her life around. They’ll say she always lit up a room when she walked in. They’ll say she was a good person and a wonderful young woman who didn’t deserve what she got. They’ll go on and on describing her as an amazing young woman who had so much to live for. They will ignore everything bad she has ever done and her willful actions on that day which directly led to her death.

The other side is going to speak of her troubled past and her brushes with the law. Perhaps drug abuse, her criminal record, the difficult life she’d led and how her actions contributed to her death. Both sides are going to try to sway the court of public opinion and paint the events in a way that supports their particular agenda. Lather, rinse and repeat.

The truth is likely a combination of both sides. As is the case with most of us, Ma'Khia was probably a deeply flawed individual who unfortunately made a terrible choice at exactly the wrong moment in time. Each of us needs to understand that there are consequences and repercussions for our actions. Our choices determine our future, or lack thereof.

Too many people are going to use this event to make political hay. These people get most of their exercise jumping to conclusions and running their mouth. Others are going to be force-fed an opinion by their favorite social media platform. You should ask yourself what you would want the cop to do if someone was attacking your daughter with a knife?

In the Derek Chauvin trial that just ended, the prosecutors said in their closing arguments: “Believe your eyes”. The same thing applies now.

Until and unless we see and hear actual evidence to the contrary . . . . “Believe your eyes.”