Commentary: Bodycam Footage Shows Cops Shoot Teen After He Pulls Gun from Hoodie in High School Bathroom

Any time there is a police shooting of a black suspect, the left rushes to excuse whatever criminal behavior came before as the suspect is canonized as a martyr to racial injustice. Adding to that is a new and…

IJR SyndicatedApr 24, 20214 min read

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But as police confronted the teen and commanded him to put his hands behind his back, Thompson reached for the weapon in his hoodie.

Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen said in a news conference Wednesday that when Officer Jonathon Clabough spotted the weapon, he thought to himself, “I’m about to die.”

Clabough then shot the teen in the shoulder before firing a second shot that hit one of the other officers at the scene.

The whole scuffle unfolded in 11 seconds, leaving Thompson fatally wounded and another boy in another stall, whom USA Today identified as Thompson’s best friend, physically unharmed.

The officers have not been charged based on the evidence, but the family has lawyered up and retained Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney who represented George Floyd’s family.

“Once again, when a Black person is killed, in this case a Black child, the police quickly shape a narrative to justify the death,” Crump said in a statement before the footage was released (would it have mattered anyway?).

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However, the real story is that this teen is dead because he made a bad decision and police officers had to act fast to preserve their own lives — a fact completely independent of anyone’s race.

Had Thompson escaped the bathroom, other students’ lives would also have been in danger — just as it was when Bryant was on the loose with a knife.

Thompson’s death is a tragedy, but he brought a gun to school and tried to use it as police had him cornered — a surefire recipe to not survive that confrontation regardless of a person’s level of melanin.

Rather than focus on race or bogus claims about “kids will be kids” when it comes to young people prowling the streets with deadly weapons who get shot by police, society would do better to figure out why they’re armed in the first place.

The problem is that Black Lives Matter raises money off the anger generated by false claims of systemic racism, and the public willingly gobbles it up.

But fixing societal problems that lead to violent kids isn’t as lucrative or as interesting because it takes more hard work and diligence than sloganeering and rioting.

Had Bryant or Thompson been truly cared for and raised properly to really believe that violence is wrong, they would still be alive today — but that’s never going to be the message coming from the left.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.