“The prosecutor did not ‘make an error.’ He lied,” New York’s Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the world. Except she was again jumping to conclusions.
She was reacting to a video released by Chicago’s left-wing district attorney that seems to show a cop shooting Adam Toledo, 13, dead after the kid had dropped his gun — a video the DA cited in withdrawing a prosecutor’s earlier claim that Toledo was armed when the cop fired.
That was enough for AOC, whose tweet continued: “He [the prosecutor] lied about the police killing a child. Ending this isn’t just about consequences for who pulls the trigger. It’s about admitting to and confronting an entire system that exists to protect, defend, and cover up state violence.”
But Chicago police soon released bodycam footage that shows the teen turn toward the cop as he drops the gun — less than a second before the fatal shot.
“Even as our understanding of this incident continues to evolve, this remains a complicated and nuanced story,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted.
That’s a calm, considered statement — just how a serious politician reacts to a loaded story. It doesn’t disregard the grief of Toledo’s parents, nor does it dump fuel on the flames.
AOC’s hot words do real damage. As Eric Kaufmann just noted in The Post, “being exposed to news and social media” and “having left-wing views on race” explain a lot of a person’s perception of racism. “Young black men are around 10 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a police bullet,” but 70 percent of whites who agree that “white Republicans are racist” said cops take more lives. Even 15 percent of white Trump voters got it wrong.
It wasn’t too long ago, after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, that Democrats and the media were lecturing all of us on the dangerous powers of speech. But apparently that only works one way. AOC and the rest of the squad regularly speak in incendiary language, calling for an end to policing, an end to business, an end to anyone who disagrees with them. They don’t wait for facts or nuance. They call for retribution. It needs to stop.
*story by The New York Post
