[guest post by JVW]

Officer Betty Shelby, who shot and killed stalled motorist Terence Crutcher last Friday, was charged by the Tulsa District Attorney earlier today. If convicted, she faces a minimum of four years of imprisonment.

Crutcher’s car had stalled in the middle of a city street on the afternoon of September 16 when Shelby’s patrol car passed by on the way to responding to a domestic violence call. Shelby failed to activate the dashcam in her patrol car, so it was left to a police helicopter to provide footage of what transpired. The footage appears to show Crutcher standing alongside the driver’s side of the vehicle with his hands up. At some point his hands seem to lower towards the window (the helicopter at this point has moved to the passenger’s side of the vehicle, so the view is partially obstructed) and Shelby shoots him with her service weapon. Shelby maintained that Crutcher was reaching inside of the vehicle, perhaps to retrieve a weapon, but there is pretty compelling evidence to suggest that the window was in fact rolled up, and no weapon was recovered from the vehicle.

The public outcry was immediate though protests in Tulsa appear to have steered clear of the ugly violence that has marred the protests in Charlotte. Credit is due to the citizens of Tulsa who allowed the district attorney’s office to do its job by conducting a thorough investigation and bringing charges according to what they learned.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

After Tuesday’s police shooting of a black man, Keith Lamont Scott, Charlotte N.C. has become a war-zone of violent rioting. According to reports, 44 people have been arrested for not dispersing, breaking and entering, and assault. As a result, Gov. Pat McCrory has declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard.

President Obama has not publicly condemned the protesters rioters or made any demand plea for them to stop. Instead, the Dept. of Justice is sending “conflict resolution experts” to Charlotte to presumably talk to rioters about how they feel, and one assumes, encourage them to use their words in an effort to understand what makes them try and throw an unconscious person into a burning trash can, assault a news reporter, commit the predictable burn, break and loot of locally owned businesses, injure at least a dozen police officers trying to control the mayhem, and terrorize innocent bystanders caught up in the melee.

The Obama administration’s Justice Department will send conflict resolution experts to Charlotte, N.C., to try to quell the violent unrest over the death of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man who was shot by police Tuesday afternoon

…

The department’s Community Relations Service provides conflict resolution specialists across the nation “to promote peaceful resolution of conflicts and tensions,” according to the DOJ’s website.

“The Community Relations Service is the department’s ‘peacemaker’ for community conflicts arising from differences of race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and disability,” the website says.

“CRS is not an investigatory or prosecutorial agency, and it does not have any law enforcement authority,” it notes.

This is what you do when you’ve got nothing else to offer.

Hug it out. That’ll fix everything.

Here is Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s statement regarding the upheaval in Charlotte:

Now, most of the demonstrators gathered last night were exercising their constitutional and protected right to peaceful protest in order to raise issues and create change…

–Dana

Knoxville News Sentinel:

Twitter has suspended the account of Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and a contributing columnist for USA TODAY and the News Sentinel, after a tweet that urged motorists to run over demonstrators blocking traffic in Charlotte, N.C.

In response to a tweet from a TV news station in Charlotte that showed protesters on Interstate 277, the @Instapundit account wrote, “Run them down.”

Reynolds, the creator of the Instapundit blog, tweets from the handle @Instapundit.

“Ah. I saw it was suspended and didn’t know why,” Reynolds said in an email Thursday morning to the News Sentinel.

He acknowledged tweeting the comment.

“Yes, that was my post,” he wrote in the email. “It was brief, since it was Twitter, but blocking highways is dangerous and I don’t think people should stop for a mob, especially when it’s been violent.”

You don’t say. Glenn Reynolds is old enough to remember Reginald Denny. (Look it up, kids.) If you don’t remember him, here’s a reminder:

And if that’s too long ago, how about this:

Female trucker gets mobbed by Charlotte thugs. Fears for her life. Calls the news and gives horrifying interview. pic.twitter.com/hnDZSBeZv5

— Brett MacDonald (@TweetBrettMac) September 21, 2016

Glenn elaborates on his blog:

Sorry, blocking the interstate is dangerous, and trapping people in their cars and surrounding them is a threat. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when we’ve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesn’t like me, I’m happy to stop providing them with free content.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Was just on Hugh Hewitt talking about this. Since Twitter won’t let me respond to — or even see — my critics, let me expand here.

I’ve always been a supporter of free speech and peaceful protest. I fully support people protesting police actions, and I’ve been writing in support of greater accountability for police for years.

But riots aren’t peaceful protest. And blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.

He acknowledges Erik Wemple’s suggestion that “Keep driving” would have expressed the idea better, and more succinctly. But “I’ve had over 580,000 tweets, and they can’t all be perfect.”

Meanwhile, here are some Twitter users who aren’t suspended:

"When we start firing back, don't ask why." #Charlotte #KeithLamontScott pic.twitter.com/Yx5nEvv4jL

— D (@Delo_Taylor) September 21, 2016

So tired of this shooting. But when we shoot y'all pigs back y'all wanna post pictures with your daughters talking about Bluelivesmatter smd

— KB ♎️ (@kbthejuiceman) September 22, 2016

Those took me about three minutes to find. If Twitter Support cared about finding and suspending accounts like that, they could easily do so.

UPDATE: And now that I have pressed the Publish button, I see he’s back:

Twitter has unblocked my account on condition of deleting the offending tweet. I've done so, but it's here:: https://t.co/DDkZd2el6Y

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) September 22, 2016

He says on his blog: “Still planning on quitting Twitter, though, after making a few points.”

I’m not sure how I feel about conservatives abandoning a popular platform when they are discriminated against. I understand the arguments for quitting — and I can’t say they’re wrong, but my gut tells me not to. It feels too much like letting them win.

Since he was forced to take down the tweet, by the way, it’s only right that we spread it as far and wide as possible — and so, I reproduce it below.

Seeing what he was responding to makes it even clearer that his comment was talking about self-defense.

UPDATE x2: Reynolds has been suspended for one month from his USA Today column and has apologized. As often happens when the SJWs come after you, his speech was not perfect. I don’t subscribe to the whole “never ever apologize for anything” ethic of the Vox Days of the world. If Prof. Reynolds thinks his words ought to be the subject of an apology, more power to him. But really, I thought his sentiment, while perhaps imperfectly expressed, was perfectly reasonable when read charitably. But of course, in today’s world, we cannot read anything charitably any more. Every head must go on a chopping block.