If you are old enough or have a penchant for classic TV and radio, you may be familiar with the series Dragnet. The original series started on the radio in 1951 and ended on TV in 1970. There have also been reboots and movies. Set in L.A., the series starred Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday, who was a detective with the LAPD. Friday had different sidekicks throughout the show.
Friday was known for his flat, no-nonsense, matter-of-fact delivery. And then there was Friday’s alleged trademark line that lives on in media folklore: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Actually, he never said that line. He said variations on it. But it was clear that Friday, Bill Gannon, or whoever was with him was only interested in the facts, not opinions or speculation.
Recently, police bodycam footage has emerged of an arrest at a park in Doraville, Ga., from May of last year. A man with his fiancée and his kids called the police when another man allegedly threatened them with a knife. Rather than recount the entire incident, I will refer you to the footage below:
Warning: some language is not suitable for work or younger ears:
The officers handled the situation extremely well. Ask any cop and they will tell you that it is very common in disputes to deal with conflicting stories. At that point, the only option left is to enforce the law based on the available facts, like Joe Friday. But what is striking about the video is the way the complainant breaks down in tears when he finds out that the man who threatened him and his family is being arrested. He insists that he doesn’t want the man to be arrested; he just wants his family to be left alone.
Well, crime victims of all races just wanted to be left alone. His fear, however, was that he might be viewed as a racist because the suspect in this case was black. Up to that point in the video, he is doing exactly what a man should do: protecting his family. He has no qualms about doing so, but then it dawns on him that, given the people involved in this incident, he may have made himself a target for the outrage machine. The triple threats of accusations, innuendo, and cancellation, not to mention all of the fallout that can come with them, are simply too much to bear.
At no point in the video does anyone call the man a racist. Even the suspect who allegedly pulled out a knife and told him to die didn’t call him a racist. The mere threat of being called a racist held more power than the threat posed by a man with a knife. And so this guy went from “alpha male” to “zeta male” (I’m bypassing four other Greek letters here) in less than a second.
The sad thing is that the guy’s fears are legitimate. That’s no excuse for not protecting his family, or regretting a call to the cops. But the truth is he could face all manner of retaliation for being concerned for his family. Up to and including losing his job.
This man was pathetic. So pathetic, in fact, that there is nothing here to mock. It is tragic that someone would prefer being victimized for the sake of avoiding the capricious outrage machine. And in the same vein as the furor over the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, this man’s fear is indicative of the attitude on the Left. The media and various governments and powers-that-be recognize that it is more lucrative to treat a certain demographic as a lower class and continue to reinforce the idea that certain people are somehow incapable of accomplishing great things or even acting civilly. The powers that be do not want to elevate black people and do not want black people to elevate themselves. It is an exploitative attitude.
One might even say it’s racist.
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