Days after the Baltimore’s Freddie Gray riots, there was another incident that almost became another apocryphal ‘Hands up, Don’t Shoot’ moment.
A version of his post was originally published by Victoria Taft at PoliticalVanguard.com
Sometimes you watch the news or hear ‘man on the street’ interviews on the radio and later, when the truth comes out, wonder to yourself, ‘Where did that cockamamie story come from?’
In the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, interviews contained in both the Grand Jury testimony and the federal investigation revealed Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, conceived of the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ narrative and began to spread it around.
Investigators later deemed doubtful Johnson’s ability to see the last seconds of his friend’s life because of where he claimed to be hiding.
But, by the time he was finished, Johnson was on TV blatantly spouting the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ narrative, and people, later ruled not credible by the authorities, picked up the story and lied under oath.
It was untrue but it was everywhere. And even after it was disproved, protesters still used it.
Protesters used the ‘hands up’ meme in Baltimore, well after the world learned it was bogus.
Just days after the riots in Baltimore, ‘the big lie’ almost happened again.
A man was stopped by cops and subdued after he pulled out a revolver at Pennsylvania and North — the flashpoint of the original riots.
MSNBC host, Joy Reid, was on the ground and spoke to the “victim’s” relative, who revealed the name of the man “shot” and the fact he was only reaching at his waist band.
Fox News was on live and reported the “shooting”, but walked back the story within minutes. Shepherd Smith apologized and said they’d “screwed up”.
MSNBC never recanted, and instead blamed Twitter for their story.
MSNBC went on the air, with a person actually on the ground, and reported a falsehood for which they never apologized. They also talked to the “victim’s” family member who lied about the incident and never apologized.
But MSNBC was right about one thing: They saw the story on Twitter. I know that because I did too.
The Tweet talked of a shooting and contained a link leading to a live-stream of the “shooting” scene.
And here’s what I saw:
Anatomy of a Narrative
UStreamers(?) video “shooting in the back” of a man on 5-4-15 at Penn & North in Baltimore. See how the person taking the video attempts to plant the falseho…
After hearing a gun shot, people came upon the scene only to see a man lying on the ground. Police surrounded him.
Within seconds, a few people on scene began pronouncing the man face down on the ground had ‘been shot’.
Though there was no blood and angry people were close enough to see, the story caught fire.
Soon, a bigger group of angry people converged at the site and, within seconds, a couple of angry men began confronting cops within inches of their faces and accusing them of shooting the black man on the ground. You can hear their voices saying:
The police shot him!
They done shot him, bro!
They shot him?
They shot in him the back, man!
Another voice rang out urging people to go after one of the cops:
He’s the cop!
He’s the cop!
That prompted a man to confront an officer — as if picking a school yard fight — getting within inches of the officer’s face and taunting:
You shot my man, yo?
You shot my man, yo?
You shot my man, yo?
The man recording the event and putting it out over the internet pronounced:
Hey, police just shot someone!
Police just shot SOMEONE IN THE BACK!
Tweet it out, please?
POLICE JUST SHOT SOMEONE.
They just shot someone and they maced someone.
They shot that man in the back.
Tweet it out.
BALTIMORE POLICE JUST SHOT A MAN IN THE BACK!
Now they’re macing people for no reason!
Then he beckoned them to come riot:
Come to Penn and North now.
Soon, the woman caught on tape and who was used in several TV news stories came along to declare:
I watched that man shoot him!
I watched it with my own eyes!
Guy taking video:
File a report on the M******F****r!
He escalated his rhetoric and urged riot again:
Come down to Penn & North NOW!
Those M*****F*****r cops.
They maced someone.
Tweet it out!
And someone did. And that’s when I saw it and MSNBC News did, too.
But just when you think things could spin out of control, they got worse. Someone’s voice in the crowd authoritatively pronounced:
They just shot that man in the back.
The person recording the event embellished:
Baltimore police just shot a man in the back.
Baltimore police just shot that man in the back.
THEY HAD HIM IN CUFFS AND THEY F*****G SHOT IN HIM THE BACK!
Almost none of what they said was true. They just made it up.
Police did pepper spray some of the people who were getting out of control and pushed them down the street and out of the way of the take down.
A Baltimore police officer told anyone who asked him that the man was seen with the gun. WBAL radio reported he’d been spotted via the ‘City Crime Watch’ camera. When he saw cops, he reached for his gun, dropped it, the gun discharged and cops seized upon him:
A fleeing suspect pulled out a revolver, which went off, and no officers fired their weapons, police said, denying conflicting reports from people at the scene.
If that guy had been shot by officers another big lie would have gathered even more momentum. As it was, this was bad enough.
Later, the paid professional protesters, of whom Deray McKesson is one, launched an assault on the media.
Deray was on the ground in Ferguson and won some fame for his activism there. Then he packed his bags and showed up in Baltimore. He was identified by Wolf Blitzer of CNN as a Baltimore community organizer. Deray, originally from Baltimore, is not.
No Title
CNN ID’d @deray as a ‘community organizer from #Baltimore’. He was ID’d as being from #Ferguson during #MichaelBrown riots, too.
No Title
@CarrforGovofCO @deray http://t.co/osLeyY2juz
No Title
CNN ID’d @deray as a ‘community organizer from #Baltimore’. He was ID’d as being from #Ferguson during #MichaelBrown riots, too.
I’d show you Deray McKesson’s original tweet, but he blocked me after I outed him as a professional peripatetic protester.
Wresting the narrative is important.
Trayvon Martin thought George Zimmerman was gay and was worried the neighborhood watch captain would sexually ‘molest’ him. We found that out in Zimmerman’s trial from none other than Martin’s girlfriend, Rachel Jeantel, who was on the phone with Martin as he eyed the man watching him.
The teenager was also high on marijuana, his toxicology tests showed THC in his system when he got into it with Zimmerman.
And he was coming back from the store where he purchased items to make ‘Sizzurp’ to get another high. But to the media and in the world of the Reverend Al Charlatan, Martin was a be-haoloed teen angel who was just trying to get home with his Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea.
Michael Brown was a 6’4″ 300lb ‘Gentle Giant’ who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He traveled the streets of Ferguson in his cap and gown, setting an example for all youth while readying himself for his college career. He was only trying to comply with Officer Darren Wilson. He put his hands up and innocently pleaded with the malevolent Officer not to hurt him.
Reality: He ‘jacked up an old Asian man at the store, took a bunch of Swisher Sweets to roll blunts and attacked a cop, going for his gun.
Things in Baltimore were bad enough. Six cops are under indictment. You don’t have to lie to make things look bad, they already are.
The left tried to make it worse, foment riots and create another urban legend and new narrative. And you saw it in real time.