A 19-year-old man, Jeffon Williams, was arrested and is facing several charges for shooting and wounding two Chicago police officers during a traffic stop.
Criminal Court Judge John F. Lyke Jr. said Williams showed “utter disregard for any person, any human being.” He set bail at $10 million, but Williams will not be released because he violated the terms of previous bonds.
And in St. Louis, a 29-year-old officer, Tamarris Bohannon, was murdered and another was wounded after responding to a shooting call. Details are still emerging, but it appears the gunman set a trap for the officers. The suspect, 43-year-old Thomas Kinworthy, was wanted for sexual assault in Florida. He entered a home and then barricaded himself inside and shot at officers from a second-story window.
Bohannon was the eighth St. Louis police officer shot since June.
The owner of the house, Steve Haag, had a message for Black Lives Matter: “Those who want to defund the police need to rethink that, they stand between us and this stuff,” Steve Haag said. “We are so grateful and thankful.”
Chicago’s top cop, Supt. David Brown, was bitter about the rising tide of violence engulfing the city’s police.
Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said there have now been 10 CPD officers shot so far this year, and 41 others shot at.
“I think 51 officers being shot at or shot in one year, I think that quadruples any previous year in Chicago’s history. I think there’s more than a suggestion that people are seeking to do harm to cops,” he said Monday morning.
Police said when they asked Williams for a statement, he said, “(Expletive) that officer, I hope he dies.” He was taken to the hospital and is said to be in critical condition.
That two officers were shot is of minor importance to the mob. Apparently, the same kinds of rumors about the shooting that circulated on social media earlier in August that led to a night of organized looting began to percolate and both Mayor Lightfoot and Supt. Brown sought to squelch the rumors before they gained traction.
In a rare move for the city early Sunday, both Supt. Brown and Mayor Lightfoot held a news conference before the sun was even up – just two hours after the shooting happened. The move was just deliberate.
“We have already seen the consequences of misinformation. Just weeks ago, false social media posts about a 15-year-old boy shot by police – while not true – spread like wildfire online. That was linked to the night of unrest and looting that followed early on Monday, Aug. 10.”
Around the country, police officers are walking around with bullseyes on their backs. In addition to shootings in St. Louis and Chicago, 5 officers were injured in a riot in Washington, D.C., two officers were wounded in a shootout with a murder suspect in Daytona Beach, Fla., and officers were injured in Dallas, Oakland, and Middletown, New York — all of these shootings and assaults occurred over the weekend.
Black Lives Matter has ginned up so much fear and outrage against the police — most of it false and defamatory — that there are more and more officers going to work every morning wondering if they’ll make it home safely that night.
Is it any wonder so many are filing for retirement?
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