Thursday, June 18, 2015

Charleston

There just aren't appropriate words.

A white man opened fire during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in downtown Charleston, killing nine people, including the pastor, in an assault authorities described as a hate crime.

The suspect attended the meeting at the church Wednesday night and stayed for nearly an hour before the deadly gunfire erupted, Police Chief Greg Mullen said.

Among the dead are pastor and SC state Sen. Clementa Pinckney.  The gunman spared the life of one woman, saying 'tell everyone what happened here'.  Another little girl survived when her grandmother instructed her to 'play dead'.  Prior to the killings, the shooter allegedly said: "You rape our women and are taking over our country & you have to go."

The scene of the crime, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, is the oldest black church in the South.  Dr. Martin Luther King spoke there; it has been at the epicenter of many of the civil rights issues of the times.

Police are releasing surveillance video photos of the assassin and his automobile.  But in contrast to Boston, where the city went on lockdown when the Tsarnaevs were on the loose, nothing like that has happened yet in Charleston.

And that's only the first difference in how the American criminal justice system operates differently for white and black people.  There will be plenty more differences, as we have already seen so many times recently.

Where's that post-racial America Republicans say we live in?  I mean, where is it outside their gated communities, their churches, their clubs.


Update: Dylann Roof, 21, has been captured.  No shots were fired by LEO or the suspect during his apprehension.  Roof's parents gave him a .45 pistol for his birthday two months ago, and he has a police record for drug use and a reputation of racist statements and actions.

1 comment:

Gadfly said...

Well, Dear Leader also claims to live in a post-racial America, but that's another story altogether.

And, did you shoot Greg the PITA? I haven't seen him here in a while.