Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) took to social media on Wednesday to scold police officers across the country as lawless protesters continue to torch U.S. cities.
“When will it stop? When will the police that we pay to protect & serve stop killing black people?” Waters asked following yet another night of violent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“In the words of Doc Rivers: ‘We keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back?’ But love doesn’t last forever!” she continued.
“Another unarmed black man, shot in the back, by a WI police officer! No matter the outrage at the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, knee on his neck, the killing of black men continues,” she added, asking, “Is this a defiance by the police that indicates they don’t intend to stop?”:
Waters did not condemn the protesters — many of whom have torched and looted businesses and interrupted residential areas — for their criminal behavior.
Protests broke out in Kenosha on Sunday following the officer-involved shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake, who was wanted on charges of sexual assault, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct, per a July 7 warrant.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ), officers responded after a woman called to report her boyfriend, whom she said was permitted to be there.
An August 26 update from the Wisconsin DOJ reads in part:
During the incident, officers attempted to arrest Jacob S. Blake, age 29. Law enforcement deployed a taser to attempt to stop Mr. Blake, however the taser was not successful in stopping Mr. Blake. Mr. Blake walked around his vehicle, opened the driver’s side door, and leaned forward. While holding onto Mr. Blake’s shirt, Officer Rusten Sheskey fired his service weapon 7 times. Officer Sheskey fired the weapon into Mr. Blake’s back. No other officer fired their weapon. Kenosha Police Department does not have body cameras, therefore the officers were not wearing body cameras.
Blake admitted to having a knife in his possession. Agents recovered a knife in the driver’s side floorboard of Blake’s vehicle.
Criminal activity has dominated the streets of Kenosha in the following days. Several videos show vehicles and businesses set ablaze, leaving local store owners in a state of shock and devastation:
“What I see, I was not prepared for. I knew it was going to be a disaster but I didn’t know what a disaster looked like until I saw it,” one man said to reporters after surveying the damage to his family’s business.
“It’s emotionally hurtful, but we didn’t do anything to anybody. Why did we deserve it?” he asked:
“I don’t understand why people do these things. Our society is just really disappointing. What about just being kind to people?” another business owner stated:
The left, including Waters, has largely failed to condemn the riots dominating U.S. cities like Kenosha and Portland.
“It just gives more credibility to why I ran,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said in an interview with Vanity Fair after being asked how the overall “moment” has “galvanized” her.
“It gives more credibility [to] why I fight to [lift] people out of poverty, why I am saying enough with structural racism, and ending mass incarceration, and ending the injustices that we see in our school system,” Tlaib said.
“When I see this movement on the street—that’s where transformative change really starts and it’s hitting us right here in the halls of Congress,” she continued, describing it as something “powerful to watch.”
Donald Trump Jr. took to social media on Thursday, blasting Democrats for failing to use last week’s Democratic National Convention platform to condemn the rioting across the country.
“Democrats had an opportunity last week to condemn the looting and the violence happening in Dem run cities and not one person, not a single one, took even a second to do that in that never ending I hate America zoom call that they called the DNC,” he remarked:
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