The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 157 - Another Innocent Man Gunned Down By Police

00:00:00.060 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, there have been several very disturbing cases recently of innocent men being gunned down by police.

00:00:06.920 There is a legitimate problem here, I think, with how police deal with the public.

00:00:11.340 I didn't always believe that, but now I do, and I'll explain why today on the Matt Walsh Show.

00:00:19.560 So, I have been wrong about something.

00:00:22.960 Not the first time, won't be the last, but I have been wrong about something.

00:00:27.140 I have, in the past, been dismissive about the issue of unjust police shootings, and I realized that I was wrong to be dismissive.

00:00:36.440 I've come to this realization over time, but the last few months have solidified it for me, especially, I think there is a problem here.

00:00:46.100 There is an issue.

00:00:47.900 In the past, I've basically taken the position that there's not a real issue.

00:00:52.700 It's all just hysteria, and I still maintain that there's a lot of hysteria mixed into this, clouding the picture, but still, when you sift through that, there is definitely an issue.

00:01:04.340 There is a problem.

00:01:05.680 So, I was wrong.

00:01:07.740 Let's just start by looking at some recent episodes.

00:01:10.540 Most recently, from just last week, police were responding to a shooting at a mall in Alabama, and in the process, they killed an apparent innocent man, a mantic Fitzgerald Bradford, who, according to witnesses, was trying to direct shoppers to safety.

00:01:27.540 He was trying to help, and he got killed in the process.

00:01:29.780 And to make matters worse, they apparently shot him in the back three times, according to an autopsy report.

00:01:38.200 Now, this was an independent autopsy.

00:01:39.800 The police did not admit this.

00:01:42.840 They have been not very forthcoming about this case.

00:01:46.680 But according to that autopsy, he was shot in the back three times, an innocent man shot in the back three times.

00:01:52.660 He did have a gun.

00:01:53.780 He himself had a gun, but he was carrying it legally with a permit, so it's a bit reminiscent of the Philando Castile shooting.

00:02:01.880 It was another man legally carrying a gun, not trying to harm anybody, and yet was shot and killed by police.

00:02:08.600 Now, if you follow the trajectory here, it doesn't make the police look very good in this case.

00:02:15.860 So, originally, they said that the suspect in the shooting had been killed.

00:02:23.900 And then a day later, they said, okay, actually, the guy that we killed probably was not the shooter.

00:02:29.340 And then a few days after that, they said, well, he wasn't the shooter, but he was brandishing a gun.

00:02:35.360 And then, in fact, in a statement issued by the police department, they said, we can say with certainty, Mr. Bradford brandished a gun.

00:02:43.600 But then later that same day, they clarified that the victim, Bradford, maybe didn't actually brandish a gun.

00:02:52.980 Maybe he just had a gun in his hand, which is not the same thing as brandishing one.

00:02:59.660 But, again, apparently he had the gun legally, and according to the family and witnesses, he was trying to help other shoppers.

00:03:06.480 So, there was also a similar case to this a month before.

00:03:12.980 So, in early November, there was an armed security guard, Jamel Roberson, was killed by police after attempting to detain a shooter at a bar in Chicago.

00:03:24.520 He was doing his job, and police killed him.

00:03:26.440 Now, there's a big problem here, because how are we, as gun rights advocates, how are we supposed to make the case that a good guy with a gun can stop a crime

00:03:37.560 if police are just going to show up and shoot the first person with a gun that they see when they arrive on the scene?

00:03:43.760 So, these are cases that, as gun rights advocates, these are cases that we should be really paying attention to.

00:03:53.300 First of all, because innocent human life has been taken, but also there's an issue here with gun rights.

00:04:00.260 If police are killing legal gun owners, that's a huge issue.

00:04:07.440 And it does seem rather conspicuous that gun rights advocates, for the most part, say nothing about these cases.

00:04:19.680 Now, there are exceptions, but for the most part, gun rights advocates say nothing when police kill legal gun owners.

00:04:31.720 Now, the month before this, so we've got December, November, now this was back in, I think in October, maybe late September,

00:04:41.880 a man named Botham Jean was in his own home, in his apartment, in Dallas, when an off-duty cop came into his home and shot him to death.

00:04:52.560 Now, she has since been charged with murder.

00:04:54.300 She claims that she accidentally went to the wrong apartment, and she thought he was an intruder,

00:05:03.740 and so she was barking commands at him, and he wasn't obeying the commands,

00:05:07.240 because, you know, God forbid you fail to obey the commands of an intruder who just came into your home,

00:05:14.680 which she was the intruder in this case, and then she just killed him. 0.98

00:05:19.940 Now, these are cases from just the last three months.

00:05:24.300 And there are plenty of others from recent times that have been equally as egregious.

00:05:29.140 I mentioned Philando Castile.

00:05:31.460 Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old child with a fake gun, shot and killed by police.

00:05:36.300 Last year, there was Daniel Shaver in Arizona, an unarmed man,

00:05:40.880 who was shot and killed by police while crawling on the ground, literally begging for his life.

00:05:47.360 And that's not an exaggeration.

00:05:48.720 It's on video.

00:05:49.520 You can watch it.

00:05:50.280 He was on the ground, crawling, begging for his life, and they shot and killed him.

00:05:57.920 Now, you can look at these kinds of cases, as I have done in the past, and say,

00:06:07.080 well, these are isolated.

00:06:09.060 These are isolated cases.

00:06:11.620 Sure.

00:06:12.800 And you could say, most cops aren't killing innocent people.

00:06:16.000 Sure.

00:06:16.240 The statistics show that this is a non-issue, really.

00:06:21.080 Well, hold on with that.

00:06:24.480 Because, first of all, I would submit that three innocent men gunned down by cops in three months

00:06:29.600 is enough of an issue already.

00:06:31.940 But actually, this is an issue that's hard to quantify with statistics.

00:06:37.400 There was a study done a few years ago that found that the government has been undercounting

00:06:41.880 the number of civilians killed by cops.

00:06:46.360 So, the numbers and figures are unreliable.

00:06:49.680 And we are left, then, to look at individual cases.

00:06:52.660 We are left with the anecdotal stuff.

00:06:55.840 And I think there's enough of that to show that we have a problem.

00:06:59.980 The other thing is that the underlying issue is not one that can really be quantified

00:07:04.140 by statistics and by studies and so forth.

00:07:06.680 The underlying issue has to do with the way that police approach and deal with interactions

00:07:13.760 with the public.

00:07:16.520 The question is whether or not police, not all but some, a significant number maybe,

00:07:21.880 tend to take an adversarial, aggressive, assume everyone is a criminal kind of approach

00:07:29.720 when dealing with the public.

00:07:30.960 That's the problem.

00:07:31.880 And you can't just look at statistics and say, yep, or say, yeah, or no, or, you know,

00:07:36.860 it's an issue that goes deeper than statistics will show.

00:07:41.880 But here's the problem.

00:07:44.640 Both sides of this issue have muddied the waters.

00:07:48.460 Both sides have made huge mistakes in how they approach this discussion.

00:07:51.880 So those who are critics of police, those who insist that there is a problem with unjust

00:07:57.500 killings, they often make, I think, two big mistakes.

00:08:03.520 First of all, hyperbole.

00:08:05.060 They will speak as though there's a nationwide epidemic of rogue cops just prowling the streets,

00:08:11.800 gunning down innocent people.

00:08:13.620 And that kind of exaggeration just is not helpful.

00:08:17.480 The second mistake is they always make it racial, you know.

00:08:21.840 I'm not saying that race plays no role in any of this.

00:08:25.620 All of the cases I mentioned at the start involved black men, save for one, Daniel Shaver was white.

00:08:33.160 But all the rest were black. 0.99

00:08:34.620 So I'm not going to completely dismiss the racial element of this.

00:08:38.480 I don't think we can do that.

00:08:39.900 But I do think that racism is too quickly assumed.

00:08:46.460 And I think that the focus on race causes us to miss the bigger picture.

00:08:53.260 There probably are racist cops out there, just like there are racist people in every profession.

00:09:00.080 But when we boil this all down to a racial issue, I think it takes everything off track.

00:09:07.580 And we miss the point, I think.

00:09:11.500 So those are mistakes.

00:09:12.540 But then on the other side, the defenders of the police, they also make some huge mistakes.

00:09:18.660 And these are mistakes that I myself have made for a long time with respect to this problem.

00:09:23.060 Number one, they rely too much on statistics.

00:09:27.020 They look at some study or survey and they say, look, this hardly ever happened.

00:09:31.260 So it's not a problem.

00:09:32.080 But as I said, the figures are unreliable because we're relying on the government to provide them.

00:09:37.840 We're relying on the government to tell on itself, essentially.

00:09:42.520 And so that's a bit precarious.

00:09:45.580 Also, even if these situations are statistically rare, they still happen.

00:09:51.280 And they happen too much.

00:09:53.340 And so they have to be dealt with.

00:09:54.680 If an innocent man is laying dead in the street after being gunned down by a trigger-happy cop, it doesn't do much good to assure his family and the community that this is a rare occurrence.

00:10:05.260 So what?

00:10:06.260 We still have a dead, innocent person here.

00:10:08.520 And we need to figure out why and how this happened.

00:10:10.980 And there needs to be justice.

00:10:11.920 The other mistake that I think the defenders of the police make is just in being much too eager to excuse police kind of reflexively.

00:10:25.800 And they'll excuse police with, I think, really insufficient rationales.

00:10:34.360 They'll say, oh, it's a mistake.

00:10:36.780 You know, people make mistakes.

00:10:38.060 Yeah, but this mistake involves the direct killing of an innocent person.

00:10:44.340 So calling it a mistake doesn't cut it.

00:10:47.700 It would be a mistake if I was driving recklessly one night and I accidentally plowed into a pedestrian and killed him.

00:10:53.460 But I'm not going to escape justice by calling it a mistake.

00:10:56.840 Now, the fact that it's a mistake is going to weigh into the sentencing and everything.

00:11:02.120 And it would be worse if I did it on purpose.

00:11:04.920 But mistakes that result in the death of innocent people, these are more than just mere mistakes, right?

00:11:16.500 They'll also say, well, cops have stressful jobs.

00:11:19.880 You know, so they have stressful jobs.

00:11:22.020 And so these things happen.

00:11:24.160 Yeah, they do have stressful jobs.

00:11:25.620 But what's your point?

00:11:27.040 This is a job that they signed up for.

00:11:29.420 It's a job they are paid to do.

00:11:31.360 If they aren't prepared for the stress, they should get another job.

00:11:36.040 If they can't handle the stress without killing people, they should get another job.

00:11:40.360 Nobody forced you to be a cop.

00:11:42.080 Nobody drafted you into law enforcement.

00:11:45.020 You sign up.

00:11:45.840 You apply.

00:11:46.540 You volunteer.

00:11:47.720 And we as citizens who pay your salary and are expected to respect and listen to you should be able to expect in return that you'll do your job without killing or otherwise abusing innocent people.

00:11:57.520 That shouldn't be too much to ask.

00:11:59.220 And we have every right to demand it.

00:12:03.600 And then the other excuse is, well, cops are in life-threatening situations.

00:12:07.020 They have to protect themselves.

00:12:08.140 They can't take any chances.

00:12:10.220 That's the—I've heard that phrase used many times.

00:12:12.820 They can't take any chances.

00:12:15.200 They can't?

00:12:18.280 No, I think they can take chances, and they should.

00:12:22.200 Their first instinct and responsibility should be to protect innocent civilian life, not their own.

00:12:31.760 Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves, but if they're going to err on the side of protecting themselves or protecting the innocent, they should go with the latter.

00:12:40.520 Because that's their job, isn't it?

00:12:43.140 If that's not their job, then what are we doing?

00:12:45.080 What's—why do we have police?

00:12:47.520 If their first job is just to protect themselves, even if it means killing someone and erring on the side of, well, look, you know, I mean, you've got to err on the side of just killing an innocent person.

00:12:55.960 If that's what makes you safer, then what's the point?

00:13:01.860 Firemen have dangerous jobs, and they have to protect themselves, too, as they're doing their jobs, and we can't expect them to, you know, put themselves in situations that are, you know, in dangerous situations without being able to protect themselves.

00:13:19.120 But if a fireman arrives at the scene of a fire, and there's a child trapped inside a burning building, and he could feasibly rescue the child, but he's too scared, so he lets the kid die instead, we would have every right to be outraged at him.

00:13:34.060 And yeah, he could say, it's a dangerous job.

00:13:35.820 I don't see you out here fighting fires.

00:13:38.540 Well, true, but you signed up for it.

00:13:41.160 That's not my job.

00:13:41.960 It's your job.

00:13:43.040 That's the job that you signed up to do.

00:13:44.900 If your first priority is always going to be self-preservation, why did you take this job?

00:13:52.880 That's the question.

00:13:55.800 If someone's, it's on a selfish level, it makes a lot of sense that someone's first priority is going to be self-preservation.

00:14:03.800 Many of us operate that way.

00:14:06.260 But if that's how you operate, why are you in that job?

00:14:10.620 And that's the problem.

00:14:11.380 And we seem to accept this idea that a cop's first priority should always be to preserve his own life, even if it means possibly taking an innocent life.

00:14:19.460 But that just seems really backwards to me.

00:14:21.920 I thought protect and serve meant protect and serve the innocent, the public, not protect myself.

00:14:27.820 So if you look at the Tamir Rice case, for instance, okay, the child was a kid who had a toy gun.

00:14:36.800 And you could say, well, you know, the cops didn't know it was a toy.

00:14:41.460 The cops could have been real.

00:14:42.900 And, you know, a bullet fired from a real gun, even if it's fired by a 12-year-old, is going to be just as lethal, potentially, as a bullet fired by an adult.

00:14:52.040 Well, so, you know, they didn't know, and they were being cautious.

00:14:58.200 Okay, but they knew that it was a child they were dealing with.

00:15:03.640 They had to know that it could have been a toy gun.

00:15:06.740 They know that toy guns exist, right?

00:15:09.000 And they know that this is a young boy, and young boys play with toy guns.

00:15:12.780 I mean, they know all of that, I assume, right?

00:15:14.440 So then there's a calculation.

00:15:18.640 The calculation is, do I pause for a few moments to assess the situation in case this child really is not a threat? 1.00

00:15:26.300 Or do I shoot and kill him just in case, so that he doesn't hurt me? 0.93

00:15:32.020 I think we should expect police officers to value innocent life a little more than that. 0.99

00:15:37.900 We should expect them to stick their necks out a little bit more than the cop who shot a child with a toy was apparently willing to do.

00:15:44.440 So where does this come from?

00:15:55.180 What leads to these situations where the innocent are being gunned down by those who are sworn to protect and serve them?

00:16:02.540 I think there are several factors.

00:16:04.640 Number one, as I've already said, there seems to have been a philosophical shift in the way that we see law enforcement.

00:16:15.780 Okay, we don't see cops as servants of the public anymore, and I think many cops don't see themselves that way anymore.

00:16:25.340 Instead, they are simply enforcers, right?

00:16:28.000 Law enforcement.

00:16:29.000 They're enforcers.

00:16:29.720 And as enforcers, their first priority is enforcement over protection of the innocent, and certainly over service to the innocent.

00:16:37.940 Now, this is not how every cop approaches the job.

00:16:40.220 Not at all.

00:16:41.000 But there has been this general philosophical shift, I think.

00:16:45.160 Second factor, there was a study done recently showing that something like 20% of all police officers are always or nearly always angry and frustrated on the job.

00:16:57.520 Now, they have plenty of reasons to be.

00:17:02.160 Cops deal, much of the time, with the dregs of humanity.

00:17:05.240 Cops deal with drug addicts and domestic abusers and gang members and so on, and I imagine that can make them jaded.

00:17:11.680 That can be frustrating.

00:17:12.560 I'll never forget what a cop said to me once while we were waiting at traffic court so that he could testify about a ticket that he'd given me, a well-deserved ticket.

00:17:24.620 I was going like 25 miles over the limit.

00:17:27.360 And, but as we were waiting there, he said to me, he said, you know, it's hard.

00:17:32.240 It's hard because the only time I interact with normal, decent people in this job is when I'm pulling them over to give them tickets.

00:17:38.400 The rest of the time, it's domestic violence and drug-related stuff.

00:17:43.300 And that's always stuck out to me.

00:17:45.580 And it shows the psychological toll that the job can take on a police officer.

00:17:50.920 So they have reason to be angry and bitter and frustrated.

00:17:54.020 I would be if I did their job.

00:17:55.540 But on the other side, it's kind of scary to think that 20% of the cops you come across wearing guns and badges and exercising an enormous amount of authority over you are angry and frustrated from the get-go.

00:18:11.920 That's a frightening proposition, considering how much power and authority they have.

00:18:18.260 In fact, basically, when you're, when you're confronted by a police officer, in that moment, they basically have complete and total power over you.

00:18:32.840 That's, that's not the way it's supposed to be.

00:18:34.560 It's not the way it should be, but that's the way it is.

00:18:36.300 In, in practice, that's the way it is.

00:18:38.480 Because they've got the gun, they've got the badge, and, and that's all. 0.94

00:18:44.880 You, so if you, and if you don't listen to them, they could kill you. 0.50

00:18:48.340 That's, that's the way it goes.

00:18:51.200 So it is, given that, the way that power dynamic works, it's frightening to think that so many of them are almost always, according to this survey, frustrated and angry.

00:19:02.560 Now, that leaves a lot of cops who are not always frustrated and angry or are rarely frustrated and angry, but there's still a large number who are.

00:19:08.780 Um, and it's, it's a self-perpetuating thing, right? 0.94

00:19:15.520 Because cops deal with a lot of just scumbags, frankly, and so that can make some of them bitter and resentful. 0.98

00:19:24.000 But then, when they're engaging with non-scumbags, with just normal people, you know, a normal person who happened to be speeding and they got pulled over, doesn't make you a scumbag, right? 0.99

00:19:34.140 Just so you're just a normal person. 0.98

00:19:35.560 Uh, but then they take that baggage into their interactions with non-scumbags. 0.95

00:19:41.520 And then, so then those non-scumbags are, their, their perception of the police is going to be shaped by these interactions. 0.93

00:19:48.660 And so now they're going to have a certain hostility towards the police because of these negative interactions.

00:19:53.040 I can say that, you know, the number, I don't know how many times I've been pulled.

00:19:56.280 I've, I've been driving for, uh, whatever, uh, 17 years or something.

00:20:01.400 And maybe I've been pulled over six times, six or seven times.

00:20:05.680 And most of that, not even speeding.

00:20:07.480 I think, you know, I had a brake light out recently, um, and of those interactions, a couple of them were really nice and the police officer was really nice and friendly. 0.98

00:20:21.000 But then a couple of them, the police officer was just a jerk, uh, to me for no reason. 0.97

00:20:25.700 Like, it was just no reason going into the interaction. 1.00

00:20:28.220 He was just a jerk. 1.00

00:20:29.080 There was no reason for it. 1.00

00:20:30.140 I was, I was being completely respectful.

00:20:32.160 I was, wasn't arguing, nothing like that.

00:20:35.180 I just was doing as I was told. 1.00

00:20:37.300 And he was a jerk. 1.00

00:20:39.000 Now, I don't hold that against them. 1.00

00:20:42.200 I don't, I don't let that paint my impression of police officers in general. 0.79

00:20:48.320 But I think the point is, if you're a, just a regular civilian and you've had several interactions with police and they're being jerks to you for no reason, uh, that could make you resentful.

00:21:01.320 Um, so police officers are resentful based on their interactions. 0.95

00:21:04.660 The public is resentful based on theirs.

00:21:06.420 And it's just, uh, it's just a cycle and it leads to bad places.

00:21:12.680 Um, third, third factor here.

00:21:14.600 And this circles back to the first point with the philosophical shift.

00:21:19.720 But I think we have an, an exaggerated idea of the kinds of power a cop is supposed to have and conservatives who are usually big fans of limited government and all of that, all of a sudden they lose that conviction when it comes to the police, the skepticism, the desire for accountability, the caution that conservatives usually have when it comes to the government.

00:21:42.700 When it comes to state power, suddenly that vanishes with respect to police to the point where some conservatives will even insist that it isn't our place to criticize, but it is.

00:21:54.360 These are agents of the state.

00:21:56.220 These are public employees, public servants.

00:21:58.860 We have every right and every responsibility to hold them accountable.

00:22:03.880 And I think part of this very authoritarian view that some people have about the cops and that some cops have about themselves is the idea that if you disobey an order from a police officer, or if you fail to follow it exactly as instructed, that alone is reason enough to kill you.

00:22:23.520 Um, I go back to the Daniel Shaver case.

00:22:26.260 He was clearly no threat.

00:22:28.040 He was, he was, he was, uh, clearly try trying to follow the orders that were being barked at him, but the orders were confusing and they were coming at rapid fire speed.

00:22:38.520 And Shaver was obviously overwhelmed and terrified.

00:22:41.880 When you've got people pointing guns at you, um, that can be frightening and it can, it can make you a little bit jumpy and it can make you, um, it can be difficult to follow instructions in that situation.

00:22:53.440 So as he was crawling on the ground, crying, begging for his life, he moved his, his hand slightly just to lift up his shorts.

00:23:04.000 You can see in the video that his shorts are falling down.

00:23:07.640 Um, and so he reached just to pick them up.

00:23:09.700 So it's a normal instinct that people have when your pants are falling down, you pick them up and that's when they killed him.

00:23:14.940 Now, when I talk about that, when I talked about that case at the time that it happened, some police defenders said, well, he shouldn't have moved his arm.

00:23:25.160 Uh, he, that's what happens when you disobey the police.

00:23:27.780 Really?

00:23:29.140 So police are, are what?

00:23:30.960 Kings?

00:23:31.580 They're like these demigods who can execute you on the spot. 1.00

00:23:35.360 If you dare disobey them.

00:23:39.040 That really is, appears to be the, the, the attitude that some people have when it comes to the police.

00:23:44.940 And the attitude that some police have.

00:23:46.420 And that's, that, that's not what a police officer is supposed to be.

00:23:50.280 That is not how policing is supposed to work.

00:23:54.640 A man should be able to pull up his pants and protect his dignity without being shot in the chest.

00:24:00.380 Okay.

00:24:00.660 I really feel like that shouldn't be a controversial statement.

00:24:03.800 And you could say, well, he's moving his arm.

00:24:05.400 Maybe he's, maybe he's reaching for a gun.

00:24:08.000 Well, I think it should have been really, you know, you, you look at the video, it should be really obvious to anyone that he didn't have a gun.

00:24:14.940 Um, but even if he did, okay.

00:24:17.240 And it's also should be really obvious to anyone that he is trying to follow the orders.

00:24:21.760 He's crying and crawling and doing what they tell him.

00:24:25.140 So that all should be obvious to anyone.

00:24:27.900 And it should be obvious to police.

00:24:29.620 They're the ones who are paid to be in these situations.

00:24:31.420 They should be able to make those assessments.

00:24:33.160 But what I'm saying is, even if he was reaching for a gun, let's say even, even if he was in the, you know, there were three guys with guns pointed directly at him.

00:24:44.540 He was crawling on the ground.

00:24:45.880 Even if he did grab a gun, there, they would have enough time.

00:24:51.560 By the time they actually see him, they actually see him grab the gun.

00:24:55.540 There is enough time for them to then open fire.

00:24:59.720 I know you could say, well, it's a split second thing.

00:25:01.660 It's not literally a split second though.

00:25:03.560 Like it takes, unless you are, unless you're John Wayne or something, it takes you more than a second to go from here to grab the gun, to pull it.

00:25:10.640 Now I know it's not a couple minutes.

00:25:11.960 It's, it's a short amount, it's a few seconds, but what I'm saying is that police officers should value life enough that they're willing just to wait for a second.

00:25:22.700 And without assuming, without jumping to this conclusion and then killing someone just in case, because that's what this is.

00:25:31.140 They, let's be clear about what they, they killed him just in case.

00:25:35.200 Like he probably didn't have a gun, but maybe he was. 0.99

00:25:38.160 And just in case, let's kill him to be safe. 0.98

00:25:39.780 Like that's, I, I, I, I submit again, that is not how the police should operate. 1.00

00:25:45.140 Let's kill them just in case. 0.99

00:25:47.180 That is a shoot first, ask questions later kind of thing. 1.00

00:25:50.420 Let's shoot him first and then go see, oh, he didn't have a gun. 1.00

00:25:53.000 Well, oops. 1.00

00:25:54.820 No, it's not an oops.

00:25:55.920 That's an innocent man that you just killed.

00:25:57.880 He's dead now.

00:25:58.900 He's got a family.

00:25:59.800 He's dead.

00:26:00.260 He's got, it's a life that's gone.

00:26:01.860 This is not an oops.

00:26:02.720 This is not a my bad.

00:26:04.740 Yeah.

00:26:04.920 If they had waited one more second, they would have put themselves in a little bit more of harm's way.

00:26:09.600 But I think that that's their responsibility.

00:26:12.280 And it's not even that much of harm's way because there are three of them standing over him with guns already drawn.

00:26:18.700 So it's just to wait one more second before, before pulling that trigger.

00:26:23.920 Yeah.

00:26:24.500 It increases the threat to them by, by some, but not by that much.

00:26:29.080 But the trade-off is in increasing the threat to themselves by just a little bit.

00:26:33.980 They, they get to preserve the life of an innocent person.

00:26:39.000 And I, and I think that's a trade-off that they should make.

00:26:41.540 And if, again, if you're not willing to make that trade, um, then I, what are you doing in that job?

00:26:48.740 It doesn't do any good to say, well, it's easy for you to say, Matt.

00:26:51.900 Yeah.

00:26:52.220 It is easy for me to say, I didn't sign up for that job.

00:26:55.920 You did.

00:26:56.720 You know, uh, it's, it's really easy.

00:27:00.120 If, if, if a, if a, let's take a surgeon in a trauma ward, surgeons and trauma wards have very stressful jobs.

00:27:07.080 Uh, very stress, probably the most stressful job.

00:27:09.760 One of the most stressful jobs you could have on earth.

00:27:11.540 Is that job?

00:27:13.300 Well, and they make mistakes and these are life and death situation.

00:27:17.140 But if a, if a surgeon engages in blatant medical malpractice and kills a person in the process,

00:27:26.740 we are going to criticize them and we're going to be outraged and we're going to expect accountability.

00:27:32.980 And it doesn't do any good for the surgeon to say, well, I don't see you doing this job.

00:27:37.180 This is a difficult job.

00:27:38.320 You try being a surgeon.

00:27:39.420 And yeah, you're right.

00:27:41.620 I'm not doing it.

00:27:42.180 I didn't, I'm not getting paid for it.

00:27:43.360 I didn't sign up for it.

00:27:44.060 You did.

00:27:45.180 You took on that responsibility.

00:27:47.600 And so it's on you.

00:27:49.300 It's not on the rest of us.

00:27:50.380 It's on the person who does the job.

00:27:51.960 If I hire a plumber to come to my house and he screws up the job really badly and then

00:27:57.580 he can't say, well, I didn't see you fixing it.

00:28:00.760 I hired you to do it.

00:28:02.320 This is the, this is your job.

00:28:04.240 So yes, yes.

00:28:05.800 You're a better plumber than me, but you're not good enough.

00:28:08.720 Right?

00:28:11.040 So I think this is, you know, this is just, it is an issue.

00:28:14.780 And, and, and on both sides, I think we need to, we need to reassess the way that we look

00:28:20.400 at this.

00:28:21.600 And I also think the last thing I'll say is, uh, you know, I think that we should, and this

00:28:30.520 is something I'm working on as well, but we should make an attempt when you've got a whole

00:28:37.240 bunch of people, a whole group of people, um, saying something, taking a position on something

00:28:42.380 and insisting that there's a problem with something.

00:28:45.260 I think that the intelligent and the right and the intelligent thing to do is to just

00:28:51.540 stop and at least listen to what they're saying.

00:28:55.740 So there are a whole lot of people in this country, um, especially people in the black

00:28:59.600 community, but not just them who are saying, look, there's a problem with the way that police

00:29:03.860 operate and the way that we approach policing.

00:29:06.100 And there's an issue here.

00:29:08.420 And so I think no matter where you stand on it, we have to at least stop and listen to what

00:29:14.200 they're saying and the points that they're raising, especially when they're talking about

00:29:18.600 their own experiences and they're saying, look, here are my experiences with cops.

00:29:23.840 We have to stop and at least listen.

00:29:27.160 And I think once you do that, you discover that, yeah, there, there is a problem.

00:29:33.280 Um, it might not be racism.

00:29:35.420 It might not be a problem as widespread as the way that it's painted by some people, but there

00:29:40.440 is at least an issue that's worth looking at.

00:29:44.200 All right.

00:29:44.980 Uh, we'll, we'll leave it there.

00:29:46.200 Thanks for watching.

00:29:48.040 Thanks for listening, everybody.

00:29:49.200 Godspeed.

00:29:55.920 I'm Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show.

00:29:58.360 The knives are out and 2020 Democrat presidential aspirants are already shivving each other.

00:30:03.720 We will revel in the glory.

00:30:05.040 Then president Trump allegedly is considering replacing Mike Pence as vice president.

00:30:10.280 And at the university of Texas, a professor has been taken out of the classroom because

00:30:14.640 the phrase be respectful is now apparently racist.

00:30:18.120 All of that and more go to dailywire.com and watch the rest of the Michael Knowles show.

00:30:21.960 And we'll see you next time.

00:30:25.520 Yeah.

00:30:25.880 Okay.

00:30:26.400 Uh.

00:30:26.660 And I'll, uh.

00:30:27.040 And we'll see you next time.

00:30:28.720 Well, we'll see you next time.

00:30:29.640 You know.

00:30:30.400 And I'll check for this interview.

00:30:31.100 No lack ofHappyños.

00:30:31.540 You know.

00:30:31.740 I'll tell you, I know.

00:30:32.920 I know.

00:30:33.240 But anyway, I know.

00:30:34.080 Yeah.

00:30:34.620 I know.

00:30:35.420 But anyway, there are a number of85.

00:30:35.560 I know.

00:30:36.200 But anyways, I can see you next time home here.

00:30:37.480 I know.

00:30:38.420 Of course specific adventures.

00:30:39.460 There are a number of faltun tres Bazkely.

00:30:40.500 Under sort of circumference.

00:30:41.380 And there are a number of

The Matt Walsh Show - December 06, 2018

Ep. 157 - Another Innocent Man Gunned Down By Police

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