[Music]
hello i'm lawrence jones and tonight
minnesota braces for more violence in
the wake of the death of dante wright
it's been more than a little of 48 hours
since wright was killed and the officer
who
shot him and brooklyn center's police
chief have resigned
businesses in the greatest minneapolis
region have been destroyed
and looted we'll have an update on the
ground for you in moments but first
i have to be honest with you 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 on to college to
major 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 it's like to
have a negative experience with a police
officer
i personally understand how experiences
like that
can lead to fear and distrust
and look i'm not alone in feeling this
way
we all have stories like senator tim
scott
i recall walking into
an office building just last year
after being here for five years on the
capitol
and the officer looked at me a little
attitude and
said the pin i know
you i don't show me your id
i'll tell you i was thinking to myself
either he thinks i'm committing a crime
impersonating
a member of congress or
or what now that's a republican
stop six times in the capital and one
year
look i get it every time a police
officer makes a stop they have one goal
in mind
they want to survive it they want to go
home
and the citizens they act interact with
they want the same thing they just want
to go home
how could something so simple becomes so
complicated
unfortunately it is tragedies like the
death of dante wright can happen
even when an officer has the best
intentions
in these tragedies they leave voids and
families
they leave voids and communities they
leave voids in our heart
the problem with a void is
it needs to be filled nature hates a
vacuum
so we try to fill these tragic holes
with
bad ideas some big
with policy what calls for reform
the political left understands this all
too well
they know better than to let a good
crisis go to waste
and they fill these voids with those bad
ideas
and rhetoric that don't make the
communities or the
officers sworn to protect them any safer
take congressman rashida to leave
pouring gas on the fire with this tweet
it wasn't an accident policing in our
country is
inherently and intentionally racist
dante wright was met with aggression and
violence
i am done with those who condone
government-funded
murder no more policing incarceration
or militarization it can't be reformed
so let's get this straight rashida to
leave
wants to take away your guns and the
police officers want to protect you
what could possibly go wrong think about
it
then there's former president obama who
tweeted this
here's a reminder of just how badly we
need to reimagine policing
and public health safety in this country
here's an example of reimagining
policing
courtesy of brooklyn center mayor mike
elliott
i don't believe that officers need to
necessarily have weapons uh
you know uh every time they they're
they're making a traffic stop
or or engaged in uh
situations that don't necessarily call
for
for weapons look that's not just a bad
idea
it's a deadly one any cop will tell you
that traffic stops are among the most
dangerous parts of their job you don't
know who's waiting for you as you
approach a car
it could be a sweet old woman with her
license and registration
or it could be a violent criminal with a
machine gun
take this officer new mexico police
officer darren jarrett
was armed when he was killed in the line
of duty
i want you to look at this picture and
tell me that the cops
that protect us shouldn't have guns
doing traffic stops
at that video that's obviously an absurd
idea
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
democrats echo chamber is responsible
for cities defunding the police
and we're already seeing the dangerous
consequences
take minneapolis the city council voted
to slash his police budget by
8 million dollars what happened
the number of gunshot victims doubled
carjackings went up 330 percent
it suffered 1 000 more violent crimes in
2020
than in 2019. it backfired so
badly that the council voted to refund
the police
but the original bad seed of an idea
lives on and will take root in other
cities
the left will win this war of ideas if
republicans won't even show up
to the battlefield their ideas will
become policy
and we will all be left safe for it
the tragedies will keep happening our
cities
will continue to burn