Lancaster Riots: Social Justice Warriors should pick their battles

In Lancaster, PA, yet another deadly police-involved shooting has sent shock waves through the community. Officers shot dead 27-year old Richard Munoz after he allegedly charged at them wielding a knife.

After police shot dead Munoz, over one hundred protesters gathered outside the police station and remained there overnight. Police said the group gathered on an access ramp and locked arms.

Authorities said the group damaged a county vehicle, threw a brick through the post office window and threw other objects at officers.

Protesters in Lancaster right now may think they are part of the same movement that has responded to the sickening killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, or George Floyd in Minneapolis.

But the cases couldn’t be more different.

Taylor was killed when police burst into her home in the middle of the night, looking for someone else. Floyd, notoriously, was unarmed and already in custody when an officer knelt on his neck for over 8 minutes.

Any reasonable person would be outraged by their deaths.

By contrast, the bodycam footage released by Lancaster police shows Munoz wielding a knife and charging straight at officers when he was shot dead.

In fact, his case closely resembles a recent police shooting in Florida where a woman was shot dead by officers after also charging them with a knife.

Those who shot Leah Barker didn’t pause to check her heritage and, on the basis of her European genealogy, decide not to pull the trigger.

Like any of us, of whatever background, the moment she decided to train a weapon on a police officer, she faced the deadly consequences.

But there were no riots over Leah Barker’s death. No foaming cable pundits and eulogies from social justice warriors. In fact, her mother acknowledged after the event that she could not condone her daughter’s actions, even though Barker was mentally ill.

Bottom line: there are indeed some rotten police in America who should be scrutinized and rooted out. But not every use of force against a suspect is unjustified. What is more, most decisions to use force are NOT based on a person’s appearance and heritage.

To insist otherwise and to use even the most unlikely case as an excuse for a riot is to play into the hands of those who want to kill the social justice movement stone dead.