I don't get it.
With all the outrage about the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the protests over the shooting death of Walter Scott while he was fleeing from a police officer in South Carolina and the "hands up, don't shoot" sloganeering, one name is seldom uttered – Miriam Carey.
I don't understand it.
If there was ever a more egregious, unrighteous, unjustifiable police shooting death, I'd like to hear about it.
TRENDING: Jihad against Christians is due to … climate change?
In case you have never heard the facts, which would be understandable given the media's lack of interest and the U.S. government's cover-up, Miriam Carey was shot dead in a hail of Wild West-style police gunfire because she made a wrong turn near the White House Oct. 3, 2013. She was killed as she sat motionless in her car surrounded by police – with her infant daughter in a car seat miraculously surviving the fusillade. She was unarmed. She threatened no one. She hurt no one.
Though this shocking incident took place 18 months ago, authorities, including the Justice Department, Secret Service and police are still withholding from the public any reasonable explanation of what went down in this case. All of the surveillance video of the shooting has been withheld. There's a track record of stonewalling and cover-up in this case that is breathtakingly remarkable.
That's why my news organization this week filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, with the legal assistance of Judicial Watch, demanding the government come clean with full public disclosure on the Miriam Carey case. No more stonewalling. No more cover-up. No more lies and deception.
I take this case very personally and seriously for several reasons:
- What happened to Miriam Carey could happen to any innocent person in our nation's capital. It could happen to me. It could happen to my wife. It could happen to one of my daughters. It could happen to you. That there has been no accountability, no transparency, no remorse expressed, no compensation to the survivors and no charges filed against anyone responsible for such criminal behavior is horrifying to me.
- When I compare what happened to Miriam Carey with some of the other more well-chronicled police shooting deaths, I can't understand the news judgment of my colleagues in Washington and around the country. Miriam Carey was not only a black victim of deadly, unnecessary force at the hands of police, she was a woman. She was a mom. She had her baby in tow. She didn't commit any crime. I'm not even sure if she committed a traffic offense. She was gunned down mercilessly and without provocation.
- When I compare what happened to Miriam Carey with the other coverage of black victims of deadly police shootings, I see something else that doesn't compute: The reaction of the black community and so-called "civil rights leaders" seems to be disproportionately weighted toward victims who were not entirely innocent and at least significantly contributed to their own predicament, over Miriam Carey, who made a wrong turn and, apparently and understandably, panicked in the presence of police overreaction.
So the question I grapple with today is a question I have wrestled with for the last 18 months: "Why doesn't this black life matter?"
Is it hypocrisy?
Is police misconduct acceptable in Washington because it's the nation's capital? Shouldn't it set the highest standard rather than the lowest?
Dare I remind you that hours after the gunning down of Miriam Carey in the streets Oct. 3, 2013, the Capitol Police reportedly received a standing ovation from grateful members of Congress who felt they had been protected from Miriam Carey. Are they to be excused from their ignorance? It's been 18 months since this incident that gripped Washington and paralyzed the city for hours. Why haven't those gilded princes and princesses in the Capitol seen the light and demanded accountability from the police, the Secret Service and the Justice Department that has presided over the worst example of police brutality I have ever witnessed in America?
Personally, I couldn't care less what skin color Miriam Carey had. I would be equally upset and committed to seeking justice and truth in this case if she had been white or Hispanic or Asian or a typical American mix like me. But why isn't the Miriam Carey scandal on the lips of every one of those who proclaim "black lives matter"? Do they mean "some black lives matter"? I don't recognize or comprehend the standard they are applying to truth and justice.
Why is the outrage so selective?
Where are the protests of Miriam Carey's death?
I want to participate in those protests. Instead, I find myself leading the protest.
Her totally unnecessary death at the hands of police makes me so outraged, I would be at the front lines of such a demonstration. Instead, there are no demonstrations. Her life is forgotten. Her execution-style death is forgotten.
It doesn't make any sense.
Is it ignorance?
Is it willful blindness?
Why the selective outrage?
Is it the lack of any moral standards?
Or is it all of the above?
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
|