Lawrence Jones’ opening monologue on Tuesday’s Fox News Primetime Show was fire.

Lawrence Jones: Dems using police tragedy to push radical agenda | https://t.co/5fHg0F68Ac

— Jennifer OO (@joliveroconnell) April 14, 2021

This is a difficult topic for me for many reasons. I’m a young Black man in America, who grew up wanting to be a cop. When I was a kid, my friends and I would play cops and robbers. And I was always the cop. I was a police explorer. And I eventually went onto college and majored in criminal justice. I have nothing but respect for the profession. I know how hard their job is. I know the stakes. I understand the inherent danger that comes with being a cop. But sadly, I also know what its like to have a negative experience with a police officer. I personally understand how experiences like that lead to fear and distrust. And look, I’m not alone in feeling that way. 

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Jones then made this salient point:

Black folks don’t even support this nonsense. But the problem with the left’s bad ideas on police reform is that they go unchallenged. They take up all the air in the room, because conservatives aren’t offering up enough common sense ideas in the wake of these tragedies. The Democrat echo chamber is responsible for cities defunding police — and we’re already seeing the dangerous consequences.

Damn straight. It sickens me that another young, Black man was gunned down, as much as it sickens me that another police officer—no matter what their race or sex—has lost employment, their pension, and is being put through the wringer based less on their actions, and more on the race of the person who they shot.

However, the rotten Leftist idea to “Defund the Police” needs to be destroyed. Bigly. Jones expounds on this in the rest of his monologue, and it is well worth the viewing.

My colleague Brandon Morse talked about the Left’s disconnect between demanding to defund only leading to more crime.

At the June event, council member Jeremiah Ellison promised the council would “dismantle” the city’s police, and Lisa Bender swore “to end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe.”

Fox News reported that crime skyrocketed in the city with 5,237 violent crimes reported so far. Compare that to the 4,169 logged in 2019. As of the writing of this article [Dec. 2020], Minneapolis murders have hit 78 compared to 45 murders in 2019. That’s an increase of 83 percent.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey threatened to veto the original defund bill which would have capped the police force off at 750, bringing it down from 888. He called the move “irresponsible.”

He’s not wrong. Cutting the limbs off of the police department as crime is currently running rampant in the city is like pulling the teeth out of your wolf dog while the foxes raid the hen house. But it would appear that members of the council don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions, choosing instead to try to alter their intention despite agreeing with the most radical of their city’s leftists not too long ago.

Brandon expounds more on this in a video:

Four months after all this, and we have the tragedy of the Daunte Wright shooting. This is all kinds of horrible because, despite best efforts on the Left and the Right, there are no clear villains or knights. But the usual actors on the Left: Black Lives Matter and Antifa, are already fomenting violence and making demands. I don’t care what color you are or where you live, if you are an American, you are bone-weary of this plot point.

Wright was shot by a police officer after resisting arrest and attempting to flee. These are facts. Doesn’t discount that he is dead or the circumstances that led to it.

According to a Fox News report:

Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man shot by a police officer in a Minneapolis suburb Sunday afternoon, had an open warrant for his arrest related to an aggravated armed robbery attempt when he was killed, according to court records.

Wright and another man, identified as Emajay Maurice Driver, a high school acquaintance, had both been charged with first-degree aggravated robbery in a December 2019 incident in Osseso, Minnesota, Hennepin County District Court documents show.

So, despite what Wright’s family said (and it has spread like wildfire on social media), Wright was not pulled over for adjusting his air freshener. The registration on the vehicle he was driving had expired. Once those plates were run, the outstanding warrant against Wright came up. Also according to Fox News, Wright’s case was still pending at the time he was pulled over.

If you make something a crime, you are making it punishable by death via police. And your absolutely good intentions mean nothing when interpreted by the state.

— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) April 14, 2021

Byron York gives more insight on why the warrant existed at all.

Some gaps in early Daunte Wright coverage. Police apparently stopped him for expired tag. Not unusual. But what was warrant? Apparently for Dec 2019 aggravated robbery. Released on $100k bail, bail revoked after alleged gun possession. Warrant issued. https://t.co/Fm5JAZYeqy

— Byron York (@ByronYork) April 14, 2021

My colleague Bonchie expounds on these recent findings:

Wright was accused of aggravated robbery stemming from a 2019 incident in which he allegedly choked a woman and held her at gunpoint in an attempt to steal $820 dollars. After being released on bail, the warrant was issued and his bail revoked because Wright was in possession of an illegal gun.

As to my thoughts on this, I’m probably going to make everyone on both sides mad, but it is what it is. I think those who are saying this warrant isn’t relevant are being disingenuous. It is absolutely relevant to know what state of mind the police were in while trying to execute this stop. They were dealing with someone who was wanted for a violent crime, including a history of using guns in an illegal, threatening fashion. The idea that they had no business serving the warrant or that they should have just “let him go” doesn’t pass muster here. The police were justified in attempting to arrest Wright, and he was wrong for attempting to flee the scene.

I couldn’t agree more. There are no clear “evil actors” or “innocent victim” here. No one in this scenario has clean hands, and nuance is necessary. Sadly, that’s difficult to achieve when Antifa and BLM are looting, burning, and rioting across the U.S., following the Left’s agenda of never letting a crisis go to waste.

My colleague Joe Cunningham points out the need for nuance on the Right, whose knee-jerk response is too often, “if he only didn’t resist”. As my other colleague Jeff Charles always says, this is Sesame Street conservative thinking:

There is a massive cultural gap between law enforcement and members of the black community, and at a time when both need each other, they could not be further apart. This, in turn, promotes that level of distrust that makes one group more likely to pull a gun and the other more likely to get defensive and resist. That is a gap that has to be bridged, but current societal divisions make that very difficult.

At the same time as all of this, however, there also needs to be one key understanding: Just because a person resists does not mean a police officer has free rein to take a life. We have got to do better at moving to defuse a situation quickly and promote understanding rather than giving in to the intensity of the moment and making a decision that costs a life.

I also agree with this. After the George Floyd mess, I was asked to be a part of a racial healing and awareness discussion at my church, and I gladly participated. One of the matters I brought for consideration was the disconnect between our communities and police work. Citizens should get to know where their precincts are, what chain of command exists in those precincts, and who tours your neighborhoods. There needs to be fostering of community and law enforcement interaction that doesn’t involve crime and shootings. Whether that be barbeques or ride alongs, we need to be made more aware of why they do what they do and what should be proper action and interaction on the part of law enforcement and the individual citizen. These disconnects should not exist, yet they are standard in major metropolises where the lion’s share of crime and criminality happens.

When I was a kid in the way back years, Officer Friendly was a regular visitor to my grammar school classroom. I chalk this up to the reason why my lens on law enforcement doesn’t necessarily track the same as other Blacks. This is part of the reason I have never approached law enforcement from the perspective of fear.

Maybe Officer Friendly needs to make a comeback.

To add to this: I think the Right more generally and the #2A community should do more outreach to and support for local violence prevention programs with a track record of success. It’s a more effective and constitutionally sound way of addressing violence than gun control.

— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) April 14, 2021

Project 21 Co-Chair Horace Cooper went on Tucker Carlson Tonight to point out the fallacy the Left wants to push that Black people want less police.

With calls from the left for new restrictions on police powers, despite ongoing riots and looting and long-term increases in crime as a result of past de-policing efforts, Tucker remarked that it “kinda leaves the mob in charge.”

Horace exclaimed, “absolutely it does!” He added:

And is it any wonder that, just like blacks said we want more police, that black Americans are going and legally buying firearms because they – like the rest of America – are worried that the government is going to fall down on its primary responsibility: protecting people?

Who’s to blame? The usual suspects – with deadly results:

And the media is going around validating this behavior – calling looting “demonstration.” Going around saying black Americans need to be concerned when we have nearly 50 law enforcement officers dead already this year.

I am interested in fewer deaths all around and more responsible policing and handling of these incidents. This mobocracy of America has got to end, and this requires we keep debunking and challenging the Left’s narratives with commonsense and plausible solutions of our own.

I leave you with this post from a law enforcement page.

Dear Liberals everywhere,

You cannot call for defunding of police and then more training for police when something bad happens. These are mutually exclusive concepts.

You also cannot call for lower police hiring standards to get more “fair representation”, and then call for better standards in police ranks. These are mutually exclusive concepts.

Furthermore, you cannot call for people to be hired who are more apt to kind and gentle solutions to problems, and then insist that they be mentally equipped to handle fast moving and potentially violent situations. These are mutually exclusive concepts.

The best you can hope for is to hire a warrior who is smart enough to learn the law, strong and mean enough to take the fight to the hard nosed criminal, and who loves their town and their people. When you find that person, hire them, and stop worrying about what the fk that person looks like, or whether they make you feel good by doing PR events with you. Just buy their coffee for them and give a wave. They’ll sacrifice their entire lives for you.

– Copzilla