There have always been those who don’t like the police. Often, they’re criminals who see police as their natural enemies. That view makes sense to many people, even if they vehemently disagree with it. They don’t like it, but they get where it comes from. Criminals are thwarted by police and sent to prison, creating an antagonistic view of law enforcement. Again, it’s easy to understand.
However, there have been some who just don’t like police for whatever reason. That’s generally fine as well. Police don’t require your affection to do their job, after all.
Yet as police have been maligned over and over again in the media and by the rich and famous, it was only a matter of time before anti-police sentiment manifested itself as violence.
Well, that time is here, unfortunately.
In the 48 hours before Steven Carrillo allegedly shot a Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy to death in an ambush, the Air Force staff sergeant who led an elite protection unit posted a flurry of Facebook posts that were critical of police brutality and law enforcement’s responses to the Black Lives Matter protests.
“Who needs antifa to start riots when you have the police to do it for you,” Carrillo wrote Friday, sharing a post about tear gas fired at protesters in Richmond, Va.
Carrillo posted another meme before Saturday’s shootout with deputies in Ben Lomond, mocking the idea that tear gas kills the coronavirus and commenting: “Unfortunately it just kills people with asthma, RIP Sarah Grossman.” Carrillo was referring to the Ohio woman who died after getting tear gassed by police at a protest in Columbus.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said Monday it was too soon to say if Carrillo had an animus toward police, but he called him “dangerous” and offered additional details about an attack that appeared to be premeditated and included multiple improvised explosives.
“He’s an angry man intent on bringing harm to police officers,” Hart said at a news conference at the Sheriff’s Office in Soquel. “I trust that our district attorney is going to bring justice for Damon’s murder.”
It may be too soon for Hart to say such a thing, but it seems very clear that Carrillo did have a great deal of animosity toward police and he took it out on deputies.
Honestly, if Carrillo were the only one acting on their anti-police sentiment, it would be bad enough.
The problem is that he’s not.
From our sister site, Hot Air.
That’s a shame, because they were covering a lot of stories that don’t get much oxygen in the mainstream press. Fortunately, I was able to cache one of those before they went dark. It’s a rather horrifying story that took place in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Three people, two of whom had previously been arrested and released at George Floyd protests, tracked down the identities and addresses of two police officers who were working at the protest sites. They then traveled to the officers’ homes and damaged or destroyed their squad cars by throwing Molotov cocktails at them. Thankfully, witness testimony and surveillance footage allowed the police to locate and arrest all three suspects.
Three people tracked two Georgia law enforcement officers to their homes and set their patrol vehicles on fire using Molotov cocktails on Thursday night.
The first incident occurred outside a home in Duluth sometime after 10 p.m., WSB reported.
Police received a 911 call that a Gwinnett County Police Department car was on fire at that location, but it had successfully been extinguished by the time officers arrived.
Witnesses told police they spotted three black males running away from the scene, WXIA reported.
Shortly after the attack in Duluth, another patrol car parked at an officer’s house in Lawrenceville similarly had a Molotov thrown at it, but that time the criminals missed their mark and didn’t end up doing too much damage to the vehicle.
The initial report of “three black males” running away from the scene turned out to be incorrect. It was actually two males and a female. Alvin Joseph, 21, Lakaila Mack, 20, and Ebuka Chike-Morah, 21, were all subsequently located and arrested on a variety of charges. Felony charges of attempting to destroy a government vehicle using a firebomb are pending.
They tracked down police in an effort to get revenge for being arrested at protests.
Let’s bear in mind that unless they were charged with some crime relating to riots, charges from protesting are typically not something that will hold you back too much. You’re looking at a fine most of the time and little else. It’s hardly grounds for trying to firebomb people.
Now, they’re facing arson charges and they have every police officer in the county keeping an eye out for them should they make bail. They won’t be able to cross the street without having to wonder if the police are going to bust them for jaywalking.
That’s the least of their problems as they face hard prison time they likely wouldn’t have otherwise.
Yet the deeper problem is ours. What do we do in a world where the people we entrust with enforcing our laws and protecting our society–police aren’t responsible for individual safety, but for society as a whole–are individually targeted simply because of the actions of another officer on the other side of the country?
Well, we make sure we have enough ammo and dig in for a bumpy ride.
