In reaction to the recent Rayshard Brooks shooting during a confrontation with Atlanta police, MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough claimed that white kids such as Dylann Roof that “run afoul of the cops aren’t shot at.”
According to Scarborough, if Brooks were white, the situation with police officers “would have never escalated” to the point of getting shot in the back after resisting arrest and taking an officer’s weapon.
“It’s not just about, again, what they are taught on paper, on these reforms that they’re pushing forward in Atlanta, which are good reforms. But … also, they have to look at race and they have to acknowledge race, and they have to understand that if this were a white kid in a white suburban neighborhood in Atlanta that was just sleeping it off, he tried to resist arrest and was lumbering away, cops wouldn’t shoot him in the back. Actually, it would have never escalated to that point. We’ve seen it, you and I have seen it, I’m sure Mika has seen it over our 50 years or so, you’re much younger, of course, but white kids that, you know, run afoul of the cops aren’t shot at. They’re put in the back of police cruisers.”
“They’re given a break,” co-host Mika Brzezinski interrupted.
“And given a break,” Scarborough continued. “And Willie, the fact that this happened in the middle of the George Floyd protests — it wasn’t even linked to the Floyd protests — that this happened with a guy who was trying to sleep it off, on his own, in a Wendy’s parking lot is just beyond outrageous.”
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