A local district attorney has taken Comedy Central host Jon Stewart to task for his comments in the wake of the Ferguson controversy, in which Stewart implied that police killed black suspects out of racial motives. San Bernadino County D.A. Michael Ramos recorded a YouTube response to Stewart’s comments about the death of suspect Dante Parker in August. Stewart claimed that sheriff’s deputies had killed Parker by shooting him.
In a YouTube video released Tuesday, Ramos countered Stewart’s comments with the facts of the case.
“[Stewart] was so wrong about those facts. They did not shoot him. They Tasered him, after he had committed a burglary and he was attempting to assault a deputy sherif–a sheriff who was losing that struggle and fighting for her life. We later found that he was under the influence of many types of drugs, which was the cause of his death. So I really believe we need to get our facts straight before making statements like that,” Ramos said.
Ramos added that the media rarely discuss the risks taken by “the men and women–our law enforcement officers–who protect us on a daily basis.” He pointed out that San Bernadino County police are killed in the line of duty more often than elsewhere in the state. “Why isn’t anybody protesting and marching about that?”
In a report aired Wednesday by CBS Los Angeles, the Parker family’s attorney, Mark Eisenberg, said that Ramos was engaged in a debate about “semantics.” He added: “What we’re really talking about is instances of excessive use of force by the police.”
Stewart had characterized Parker’s death as “a manifestation of systemic inequality and mistrust between the African-American community and these somehow always justified police.”
Image: Screenshot/YouTube
Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak edits Breitbart California and is the author of the new ebook, Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, available for Amazon Kindle.
Follow Joel on Twitter: @joelpollak
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