The lynchings will continue until there’s no functional police force.
A prosecutor announced Thursday he will pursue a second-degree murder charge against the police officer who shot a black man in the back of the head after a traffic stop.
Kent County prosecutor Christopher Becker disclosed his decision at a news conference. He said Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr has turned himself in and will be arraigned Friday in the April 4 killing of Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Filing the murder charge was a “major decision,” Becker said, and one made after a thorough review of a Michigan State Police investigation into the shooting. He said he hoped it sent a message to the public that “we take these cases seriously.”
The actual message is that we’re taking a knee to Black Lives Matter, Sharpton, and Ben Crump.
Let’s recap what a DA who decided to shoot a cop in the back at the behest of racists is charging as second-degree murder.
Lyoya was pulled over for an allegedly unregistered license plate by Schurr on April 4. Lyoya got out of the car and ran, resisting Schurr’s attempt to arrest him. Schurr shot him while the two were on the ground as Schurr wrestled for control of Lyoya, and Schurr said Lyoya had his Taser. Lyoya had three outstanding warrants at the time he fled Schurr, and an autopsy revealed his blood-alcohol concentration was more than three times the legal limit for the driver of a car.
The refugee had an ugly history of violence.
Along the way, Lyoya sometimes became violent himself, amassing a criminal record that involved numerous interactions with law enforcement.
Just three days before he died, a warrant was issued for his arrest on a domestic violence charge, involving claims he punched a girlfriend in the face, slammed her head against a car and then fled.
We are all poorer for having lost this wonderful human being who in no way, shape or form posed a danger to the officer he was fighting with or anyone else.
Lyoya wanted to take the sheets, which his girlfriend had just bought. She didn’t want him to have them. That led to an argument and eventual punches. Lyoya was accused of hitting her four times in the face with a closed fist, grabbing the back of her neck and slamming her head into a car before fleeing, the police report says. The woman was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation.
In 2017, Lyoya was accused of assaulting his then-girlfriend. A police report says he punched her in the stomach repeatedly, choked her for three to four seconds as she struggled to get away and scratched the back of her neck with his fingernails.
In 2018, Lyoya was the victim in a criminal case, stabbed repeatedly by a then-friend after a dispute about money and alcohol, records show. The two had agreed to settle the argument with a fistfight, police said in an affidavit. During the fight, Lyoya was stabbed with a knife and required emergency surgery.
At the time of his death, Lyoya was on probation for driving under the influence in Illinois and was awaiting sentencing in another drunken driving case.
Juries have been a mixed bag. While they followed the law before the BLM riots, afterward we’ve seen some outright lynchings, especially in the George Floyd drug overdose case.
This is blatant overcharging, almost to the extent of deliberately sabotaging the case, but we’ll see if the jurors in this case follow the media or justice.
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