Vigilante shooting is a warning to Idaho about militias as ‘protectors’
Tuesday night’s shootout on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, should be a wake-up call about whether Idaho should accept armed civilians acting as “protectors” on our own streets.
As the Idaho Statesman reported Sunday, when Black Lives Matter protests broke out across the country this summer after the police killing of George Floyd, groups of protesters in Coeur d’Alene were met with as many as 400 civilians, mostly white men, purporting to be their “protectors.”
Brandishing rifles, the men proclaimed they were there to safeguard local businesses and protesters from a rumored antifa incursion. The mayor and City Council members described their armed presence as potentially “reassuring.”
But now we see the fruits of that misguided policy: It’s straight-up vigilantism, and we cannot tolerate or accept it, let alone welcome it as “reassuring.”
On Tuesday night in Kenosha, residents were protesting in response to the Sunday night police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black father of six who was left paralyzed from the waist down. Police shot Blake in the back seven times as Blake leaned into his SUV, in which three of his children were seated. The shooting has spurred widespread protests by athletes, shutting down both the NBA and NHL playoffs.
The Tuesday night shooting came during the third night of unrest, looting, vandalism and clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement in Kenosha.
Tension arose earlier Tuesday between protesters and a group organized to protect property, according to WDJT-TV in Milwaukee. The group showed up armed, promising to protect any property in the city of Kenosha that may be harmed, according to the CBS-affiliate TV station.
After the shooting, the teenager apparently walked right past a throng of police officers, his hands up, his rifle strapped across his chest, while people behind him were yelling that the teenager had shot people.
A day after the shooting, Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis said during a Wednesday press briefing, “Last night a 17-year-old individual from Antioch, Illinois, was involved in the use of firearms ... to resolve whatever conflict was in place. The result of it was two people are dead.”
That is a strange way to say he shot and killed two people.
Miskinis also blamed the shooting on protesters for being out past curfew.
“We appreciate you guys. We really do,” one officer said.
Still worse was Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggesting, in essence, “Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Carlson said on his show, essentially giving the act of shooting and killing people in the streets a free pass in the name of maintaining order.
Fortunately, the teen was eventually arrested and charged on Thursday with multiple counts of homicide.
We cannot tolerate armed vigilantes shooting people in our streets. That’s not America.
We did not ask these people to “defend” us or “protect” us. They are not trained as law enforcement and are certainly not paid public servants.
Do we really want an untrained 17-year-old wannabe cop to decide who the bad guy is and when it’s appropriate to pull the trigger?
It’s incumbent upon police chiefs and sheriffs across the country — and especially Idaho — to send the message loud and clear and to denounce self-declared “protectors” who threaten to turn America into a scene from a Wild West shootout. We certainly shouldn’t be handing out water, telling them we appreciate them and say their presence is “reassuring.”
Going around shooting people because you think they’re doing something wrong is not patriotism. It’s called something else.
It’s criminal.
This story was originally published August 28, 2020 at 8:38 AM.