Cop Execution in Texas
By Matthew Vadum
Cops in Houston, Texas are blaming the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement for the unprovoked killing Friday of a uniformed white sheriff's deputy allegedly committed by a black man who snuck up on the officer without saying a word and fired a gun repeatedly into his body until he was dead.
This murder appears to be the latest in a series of cop-killings nationwide committed by African-Americans who claim blacks are perennial victims of racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement. President Barack Hussein Obama has been at the forefront of ramping up hostility to police officers throughout his time in office. From early in his presidency when he jumped to conclusions accusing Cambridge, Massachusetts police of acting "stupidly" for daring to arrest his black Harvard professor friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., on suspicion of burglary, Obama has gone out of his way to foment race-based resentment and cop-hatred. His Saul Alinsky-style agitation encouraged the formation of the virulently racist Black Lives Matter movement whose members have declared "war" against police.
Houston law enforcement officials say it's time for this war to end.
At a press conference Saturday, an angry Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman (R), described the killing as "senseless and cowardly" and said that his deputy was targeted "because he wore a uniform." Hickman told reporters:
Our system of justice absolutely requires law enforcement be present to protect our community so any point when the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated, cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen this rhetoric has gotten out of control. We've heard black lives matter -- all lives matter -- well, cops' lives matter too. So why don't we just drop the qualifier and just say lives matter and take that to the bank.
An impassioned Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson (R) weighed in, saying:
It is time for the silent majority in this country to support law enforcement. There are a few bad apples in every profession. That does not mean that there should be open warfare declared on law enforcement. The vast majority of officers are there to do the right thing, are there because they care about their community and want to make it a safer place. What happened last night is an assault on the very fabric of society. It is not anything that we can tolerate. It is time to come forward and support law enforcement and condemn this atrocious act.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Saturday that "heinous and deliberate crimes against law enforcement will not be tolerated in the State of Texas." He added, "Texas reveres the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve their communities."
Although the act of brazenly sneaking up on a cop and gunning him down for no apparent reason isn't anything close to an everyday occurrence in the U.S., predictably the mainstream media are scratching their collective head. The media are refusing to ascribe or even speculate about a motive for the execution-style slaughter of deputy Darren H. Goforth, 47, a 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, while he refueled his patrol car at a gas station. The alleged gunman, 30-year-old Shannon J. Miles, was soon apprehended and now faces a capital murder charge. He does not appear to have explained why he did what he is accused of doing.
How Miles allegedly killed Goforth resembles how two heroes of the Black Lives Matter movement murdered cops.
Born Wesley Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal shot white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner to death in 1981 as he tried to arrest the perpetrator's brother during a traffic stop. Abu-Jamal shot the policeman once in the back and then stood over him and shot him four more times at close range, once directly in the face. Abu-Jamal is now black leftist folk hero who has parlayed his crime into a career behind bars. The former Black Panther often referred to affectionately in radical circles simply as Mumia, enjoys celebrity status on the Left and through the wonder of modern technology is a frequent guest speaker at college commencement ceremonies. Originally sentenced to death, his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.
Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1973 killing of Werner Foerster, a New Jersey State Trooper. Shakur had been part of a Black Panther spinoff group known as the Black Liberation Army. During a traffic stop, Shakur shot Foerster once, and then as he lay helpless on the ground, shot him twice in the head with his own gun. Shakur escaped from custody but was captured in 1977. She was convicted of murder and received a prison term of life plus 33 years. She broke out of prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba which granted her political asylum. During the recent negotiations that restored diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the Obama administration did not seek her extradition even though she remains on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List.
Miles has a long arrest record. The Los Angeles Times reports that
According to public records, Miles had dozens of encounters with law enforcement. He was charged on New Year’s Eve 2006 with displaying or discharging a firearm, and was sentenced to 15 days in jail. In 2007 and again in 2009, he was convicted of resisting arrest, and University of Houston police twice charged him with giving false or fictitious information to a police officer.
One commenter at the newspaper's website wrote, "I wonder if Obama is going to send 75 FBI agents, to Texas, to find out if this was a race related crime. Oh, wait, the victim was white, never mind."
Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller reports that news of Goforth's murder didn't dampen the spirits of radical black anti-police demonstrators in Minnesota:
Black Lives Matter protesters marching on the Minnesota state fair on Saturday spewed violent anti-cop rhetoric just hours after a Harris County, Tex. sheriff’s deputy was ambushed and executed at a Houston-area gas station.
“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” activists with the St. Paul, Minn. branch of Black Lives Matter chanted while marching behind a group of police officers down a highway just south of the state fair grounds.
Accused killer Miles attended Prairie View A&M University, studying business administration, according to his Facebook page, the Los Angeles Times also reports. This is the school where Sandra Bland, a troubled young black woman, was arrested after exhibiting erratic behavior during a traffic stop and allegedly assaulting a police officer. Bland tragically committed suicide in jail. Her case has become a cause celebre for the conspiracy theorists of Black Lives Matter who in the complete absence of evidence accuse the police of murdering her.
Houston-based Texas state representative, Garnet F. Coleman, a black Democrat, whined over the weekend that law enforcement was using Goforth's brutal killing to push a racist political agenda.
“It strikes me as politicizing a death that, I don’t know that anyone knows what was in the mind of the shooter,” Coleman said. “I think black lives matter. I think deputy sheriffs’ lives matter. But I think the statement shows a lack of understanding of what is occurring in this country when it comes to the singling out of African-Americans.”
Coleman is in charge of a legislative inquiry into the death of Bland, who was found hanging in a Waller County, Texas jail cell in July.
There is evidence suggesting that Coleman, like the late double-murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II, is a race-obsessed over-sensitive person who easily takes offense. After the lead-footed Texan was pulled over for speeding in July, he made up a tall tale, accusing the investigating sheriff's deputy of condescension.
"He talked to me like I was a child," Coleman said during a legislative committee hearing. "He was so rude and nasty. Even when he found out I was a legislator, he became more rude and nasty. And I didn't understand why this guy was continuing to go on and on and treat me like a child. And basically like I'm saying is treat me like a boy. I want to be very clear about that."
A video of the traffic stop shows no such rude behavior by the deputy. On the contrary, it shows the deputy was polite but firm and spoke to Coleman as any cop would with a speeder, telling him he must slow down. The deputy said it was especially important for Coleman to slow down because he was driving with special state lawmaker license plates, presumably trying to get the point across that as an elected official he should be setting a good example for others to follow.
The murder of Deputy Goforth comes soon after failed TV reporter Vester Lee Flanagan II, who used the name Bryce Williams professionally, a gay, black Obama-supporting Democrat, murdered two of his former white colleagues on-camera during a live broadcast near Roanoke, Virginia. Flanagan, apparently a paranoid narcissist, had a long history of imagining racial slights and filing meritless lawsuits against employers. He indicated that the shootings were racial payback for white-supremacist Dylann Storm Roof's June 17 attack in Charleston, S.C. that left nine black churchgoers dead. Both Flanagan and Roof, who reportedly confessed after he was caught by police, said they wanted to start a race war by committing acts of violence. Flanagan committed suicide after a car chase. Roof was taken into custody without incident and later reportedly said he had intended to kill himself after the church atrocities but had run out of ammunition.
Last week Louisiana cop Henry Nelson died in a hail of gunfire during a domestic violence investigation. In the same state Steven Vincent, a state trooper, was killed as he tried to arrest a driver suspected of driving while intoxicated. Carl Howell, a sheriff's deputy in Carson City, Nevada, was gunned down responding to a report of domestic violence.
Late last year a black Muslim named Ismaaiyl Brinsley gunned down two New York City police officers who were in their patrol car in Brooklyn. Brinsley made statements on social media showing anger at police killings of blacks.
On Saturday afternoon more than a thousand people held a vigil at the Houston area gas station where Goforth was cut down.
Local resident Wes Tarpley was quoted saying:
You can’t make sense of evil. Evil is evil. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I don’t know what was going on in that young man’s life. Whatever it was, it was dark.
Goforth leaves behind a wife and two children, aged 5 and 12.
Deputy Robert Goerlitz, president of the Harris County Deputies’ Organization, said of Goforth, “I’ve seen some dedicated folks, but he was above and beyond." Goforth refused to allow injuries he sustained during training to prevent his progress. “He wouldn’t give up."
He added the late deputy was a “wonderful family man” who often talked of his family. “He was an extremely hard worker,” said Goerlitz, who served as Goforth’s patrol instructor at the sheriff’s academy and had known him since 2008.
If the racist, cop-hating community organizers of Black Lives Matter get their way, tributes and eulogies like that for fallen police officers are going to become an everyday occurrence.
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