One of the more insane developments from the tragic shooting death of knife wielding Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus has been the emergence of a desperate fantasy from the political left:
The “Let the kids have their knife fights” coalition that must think “West Side Story” is real life.
Valerie Jarrett, the former Obama administration adviser, offered her idiotic notion, echoed by many others.
“A Black teenage girl named Ma’Khia Byrant was killed because a police officer immediately decided to shoot her multiple times in order to break up a knife fight,” Jarrett tweeted. “Demand accountability. Fight for justice. #BlackLivesMatter.”
I liked Jarrett. She was once the most powerful woman in America, Obama’s “consigliere,” and before that she advised Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. When Daley was going off the rails, plunging Chicago into its current fiscal death spiral, I met her for coffee and asked her to run for mayor to save the city.
I must have been living in a fantasy world. But all I wasted was a cup of coffee.
“Teenagers have been having fights involving knives for eons,” tweeted Bree Newsome, a prominent defund-the-police activist. “We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon against one of the teenagers. Y’all need help. I mean that sincerely.”
I don’t need help, but you need help, and so do all others who showed up on MSNBC and other pro-left platforms to spew your idiotic ravings.
What happened in Columbus wasn’t a knife fight. Only Bryant had the knife, from what we see on police-released videos and according to at least one fact-checker. She is swinging at an unarmed person who is defenseless, lying on her back on the hood of a car, a leg up to protect herself.
The officer, in that split second, had no choice. If he’d not taken swift immediate action, the headlines would have been: “White cop allows Black girl to be killed.”
Reason didn’t stop NBA star LeBron James from tweeting the officer’s photo with an ominous warning “YOU’RE NEXT” that James later deleted. James targeted the officer to all of his nearly 50 million followers. I wonder if that cop ever cheered James, an Ohio native, as he dunked like some basketball god. Does that matter, now?
Many of you have seen the Columbus police videos and one from a garage camera across the street. Bryant was lunging at another young woman, knife in hand, screaming before she was shot by the cop.
“The video doesn’t lie,” said Donovan Brinson, the neighbor with the garage camera.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, another neighbor down the street, Ira Graham III, also watched the police video.
“I believe in truth and facts. Video doesn’t lie,” Graham said. “She was in full attack mode. … (Bryant) was literally aiming a knife at this young lady. She needed to be stopped at that point. That young lady’s life was at stake.”
Another fact: The Bryant police shooting happened just shortly after Nyaira Givens, 13, was killed in a fight with another 13-year-old girl armed with a pocketknife in Winton Hills, Ohio. The attacker cut Nyaira in the neck and she died.
“I won’t be able to see my baby,” said the mother, Ashley Givens, who said her daughter had been the victim of bullying from the girl with the knife. “I can’t see that smile.”
The other girl, also 13, has been charged with two counts of murder and one count of felonious assault, according to reports.
That’s not fantasy. That’s one life ended and another destroyed with no racial politics to be exploited among them.
“West Side Story,” the musical based on “Romeo and Juliet,” is fantasy. With an amazing score by Leonard Bernstein, and choreography by Jerome Robbins, it is perhaps America’s greatest musical. And there’s that knife fight between the “Sharks” and the “Jets” that is a ballet.
But it isn’t reality. In reality, a knife fight is not ballet. You fight with knives, you get stabbed and you might bleed to death. And the death isn’t clean. Broadway just can’t capture it.
The late Gregory T. Johnson, 8th Dan Kyokushin karate master from the Southwest Side of Chicago, understood about knives. He spent years instructing law enforcement officers about street combat.
“8th Dan Kyokushin karate” might not mean anything to politicians and keyboard warriors, but all true martial arts experts know what that means.
On knives, he’d tell his civilian students: You are going to get stabbed. Run if you can. If you fight, know you will get cut.
Something else was bleeding when that cop in Columbus shot Byrant, quite likely saving a life, and the Chauvin jury in Minnesota was finding that former police officer guilty in the death of George Floyd.
What was bleeding was the central narrative of the left, pushed in angry, often violent protests in big cities, that cops are trained to be militant, that they target minorities, that they should be unarmed and defunded.
And in their panic, the left built another fantasy: that cops should allow kids to settle arguments with knives.
Want more John Kass? See all his columns and find his weekly podcast here.
Twitter @John_Kass
©2021 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Why is crime so bad? Liberals and judges do not punish criminals and they make up excuses for these criminals!
Its the culture…….change it one way or another and the behavior changes accordingly……example: what the government indoctrination centers have been doing for over 40 years
NOT just judges, but society in general, seem to keep making excuses for their criminality.. “ITS their culture. ITS whites. Its Blahblahblah…” ITS NEVER their fault.
The bigger the knife, the smaller and weaker the human, who cannot prevail in honest one on one individual competition. As soon as one grabs a knife, then other grabs a gun, causing the other to grab a bigger gun. Competition of social collectives and political parties operate just the same, as the last election revealed, with the Democrats grabbing power with stolen election vote tactics the have raised the violent response of January 6th. It will not end well for America until the elections are properly policed, and blacks are recognized to have the brains an ability to acquire a proper id.,,,which is why the Democrats next move is to remove the police, or defund them in propaganda to the point of becoming ineffective to defy the Criminals on the streets, who the Democrats have promoted to political criminal leaders within their own party, who now are so eager to blame the protectors of the innocent they seek to corrupt, and insulate the criminal offenders from any responsibility or corrective punitive punishment.
I remember growing up, and the ONLY ones who fought with knives, were gang bangers, biker chicks and thugs.
“The bigger the knife, the smaller and weaker the human, who cannot prevail in honest one on one individual competition.”
That explains the popularity of machetes in some cultures.
According to one of the commentators knife fights among black girls must be a rather commpon thing, a rite of passage, that was also said about the other black on black girl fatal stabbing. In this case only one girl was weilding a knife and had other targets in mind. If the cop blamers were in the officer’s position I would ask, “Which girl are YOU willing to let DIE, the one with the knife or the unarmed one trying to protect herself?” Some siad the officer should have wounded the knife holder, that is risky at best and wouldn’t have stopped the stabbing as shown in the video.
That is why i say, “IF this is common, fine. THEN EVERY TIME blacks get into knife fights, cops, and EMTS should stay the hell, clear of the entire situation.. AND LET THEM jack one another over.”
“According to one of the commentators knife fights among black girls must be a rather commpon thing, a rite of passage, that was also said about the other black on black girl fatal stabbing.”
I guess knife fights are just fine. It’s the verbal bullying that needs to be stopped. Words are violence…but then so is silence….. or something.
I long for the days when Daniel Webster meant something.
You are not the only one!
The insane assertion by leftists that the police should simply stand by as passive observers while Black youths engage in potentially deadly knife fights is indisputable confirmation that the left does not care at all about the lives of Black children unless they are seriously injured or die in a tragic encounter with a White police officer.
EVEN their OWN so-called leaders and icons, don’t care about them killing one another… SO WHY SHOULD anyone else!
Lets face it, the city’s what the cops gone! or tie them up so that they can’t do their job. If a person does not obey the law, they will suffer the consequences.
Maybe it’s time they all call in sick, every one of the officers that protect us citizens every day from stupidity.
OR just put EVERY black hood, on a “NEVER RESPOND TO any 911 call” list..
I just read where the girls family is suing the cop and the police department. If they can sue police department s for not training their police officers ,shouldn’t we be able to use parents for not teaching right from wrong
“I liked Jarrett. She was once the most powerful woman in America, Obama’s “consigliere,” and before that she advised Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.”
Strike two-o-o-o-o-o-o!
Knife fights should not be permitted because of antisocial distancing concerns during the pandemic. Until the final phase of opening up, only sword fights should be allowed to keep the fighters two sword lengths apart as much as possible.
Na. Swords still let them get face to face.. Should go with jousting matches with lances! Gotta keep proper social distancing!
The cops should only respond if there is a black officer available.
Image what would have happened if he stood back and just called a social worker ???