Oh Mope-rah, You Hack

Mary Mitchell, columnist and member of the Slum Times editorial board, weighs in on the recent shooting of a 13-year-old gang banging thug. Predictably, she begins with a non sequitur that has nothing to do with current events in order to "bolster" her argument of a "lack of respect" between the police and members of the black community. She continues by showing off her ignorance:

• Now we are faced with a police shooting that is national news because a Chicago police officer put eight holes in a 13-year-old boy who was allegedly carrying a BB gun.

  No matter how you see it — whether you believe Jimmell Cannon was unarmed, or whether you believe he toted a BB gun that looked like an AK-47 — the bottom line is a police officer shot a 13-year-old boy eight times and what was recovered was a BB gun.

An AK-47? Huh? Let's go to the tape!

The recovered weapon

An Avtomat Kalashnikova 47

Nope. Not seeing any resemblance at all. But Mope-rah had to get in her anti-gun credentials though and resorts to exaggeration.

• I don’t blame the police officer for what happened. After all, six Chicago police officers were killed in the line of duty last year. If a suspect points a gun at a cop, you should expect the cop to start firing.

  But when a 13-year-old boy is shot eight times, and police have to admit it was because he was aiming a BB gun at them, then that seems to be the time to express regret.

Express regret? For what? For following Department Orders? For following the Illinois Statutes? For raising a miniature gang banging piece of crap and future drain on society as a whole? Oh wait, that would be the parent(s) who should be expressing regret in that example. Never mind.

Anyone want to clue us in as to what the police have to express regret for?

• Instead, on a popular blog, Second City Cop, written by a police officer, the shooting victim is described as a “dumbass kid.” The site also posted a photograph of Jimmell and claimed that he confessed to “shooting out windows at the Piccolo School and a van in the 11th District before he pointed it at an officer.”

  “That dumbass kid is lucky to be breathing in the hospital instead of pushing up daisies at Burr Oak, though that will probably happen soon enough anyway,” the police officer wrote.

Well Mope-rah, that photograph was given to media by the family, and it quite obviously shows Jimmell holding a "blunt" in one hand and throwing up for the vice lord nation with the other hand. The Tribune and other sites ran the photo for hours and hours before someone whispered to them what the item and hand signals were all about, then suddenly, the media developed a bad case of amnesia, cropped the photo and pretended it didn't exist. The trouble was, we saved the original and will continue to use the uncropped photo seeing as how it shows two things - (1) what Jimmell is all about and (2) what hypocrites the media are.

And he's still a dumbass. Thanks for the mention though - any day now, we won't be as insignificant as J-Fled thinks.

• Obviously, I support the First Amendment, but how is it helpful to have a police officer denigrating the victim of a controversial police shooting, especially when the victim is a juvenile?

  Moreover, when did police get the alleged “confession?”

  Jimmy Porter, Jimmell’s father, claims that police officers “crowded” into his son’s hospital room and questioned him without a parent being present.

Glad you support the First Amendment, so the rest of your sentence will be ignored, since it attempts to infringe on exactly that Amendment. You can publish a column full of lies and half-truths exactly because of the First Amendment. We can call you on it for the same reasons.

As to the alleged confession, we're sure the family's lawyers will attempt to paint anyone except that individual responsible for his own predicament as blameworthy as they always do. Juveniles are handled in a very specific manner, so we highly doubt anyone "crowded" a hospital room as the doctors/nurses might object. As to the circumstances of the questioning, you better brush up on the law lest you appear more ignorant than you already do. Youth Investigators can stand in during questioning for absent parents - you know about absent parents, right?

• If that happened, it would appear to violate the juvenile’s rights. But more than that, under the circumstances, such aggression seems cruel.

  Police “are trying to make my son out to be a problem child and trying to set it up like he gave them a reason to shoot him eight times,” Porter told me.

  “I don’t know anybody walking around here that would have to be shot eight times to be subdued.”

Question a subject is not "aggression." Grow up Mope-rah. He just broke out thousands of dollars worth of windows within speaking distance of a party being held by his family and pointed a gun at a cop. Where are the questions for them about Jimmell being out at past curfew with a gun? As to "dad," what he "don't know" would probably fill two or three sets of encyclopedias. Mope-rah concludes:

• But what is really needed is a level of dialogue about this issue that fosters respect.

  Without it, many of the people in neighborhoods most affected by police shootings will see this incident as another stone tossed onto a growing mountain of distrust.

Well, it's kind of hard to "respect" a community that praises the criminal and refuses to accept responsibility for the actions of spawn it has produced and failed to raise within the norms of a civilized society. You work on that and then come back so we can talk, maybe in about thirty of forty years. Jimmell will just about be finishing his sixth or seventh stint in prison about then.