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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
14:12
What Inspired Colin Kaepernick? | Larry Elder Show
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In a recent interview, Colin Kaepernick revealed, apparently for the very first time, the case of alleged police brutality that inspired the kneeling.
Ten months before the then San Francisco 49ers quarterback took a knee during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner in protest of systemic anti-blackness and police terrorism, he and his partner Nessa devised a plan.
The seeds of that plan gave birth to the Know Your Rights campaign, a traveling youth empowerment initiative.
As Kaepernick describes it, the discussion happened shortly after the execution of Mario Woods.
Now, Mario Woods' mother says she was overwhelmed when she learned that the tragic death of her son inspired Colin Kaepernick.
If he would know what's going on now, if he knows, he would be, I mean, He would feel so, so honored and like someone loved him that didn't even know him.
You know, and I think all our life we kind of went under the radar, particularly Mario.
And to feel that someone of Colin Kaepernick's stature spoke his name, spoke truth to his light.
Yeah.
Again, tragic.
Parents are not supposed to bury their children.
Now, there have been a number of these high-profile cases in recent years.
Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald.
But Mario Woods' case sort of flew under the radar, as Mrs.
Woods said.
Here's some cell phone footage from the encounter with the cops.
Drop that knife. Drop that knife, homeboy.
Drop the knife.
Drop the knife, man!
Again.
Tragic, but execution?
Here's an account from the San Francisco Gate.
The incident began at about 4 p.m.
on December 2nd, when officers were dispatched to San Francisco General Hospital to take a report from a 26-year-old Bayview man who had been slashed in the upper arm, according to police documents.
The man, whose name police have withheld for his protection, told officers that he and a female friend had been eating in a car parked in front of an apartment building when they saw a man walking back and forth on the sidewalk talking.
The suspect was not making any sense and appeared to be under the influence, according to the police report on the interview.
The assailant then reached into the passenger side of the car with a knife, prompting the man seated there to open the door and push the suspect away.
When the man got out of the car, the assailant slashed him across the left shoulder.
Bleeding heavily, the victim fled and showed up a short time later at San Francisco General.
Two officers responding to the crime scene, aided by a neighbor who saw the attack, briefly spotted the suspect but lost track of him.
Police radioed in a description and more officers were called in to search.
Within minutes, two officers spotted Woods, who matched the suspect's description, waiting to board a bus at 3rd Street and Fitzgerald Avenue.
When the officers got out of their car, the man began to backpedal, according to the statement provided by the partner of Officer Charles August, who would soon become a central figure in the shooting.
Woods then grabbed a knife out of his jeans' pockets and said something to the effect of, you're not taking me today, wrote the partner, whose name was redacted from the documents provided to us.
The partner reported that he and August then drew their guns and told Woods to drop the knife.
That's when August's partner said he heard Woods say, you better squeeze that mother blank And kill me.
Then Woods turned south on third and the officers radioed for backup while repeatedly ordering him to drop the knife.
More officers arrived, some of them armed with weapons that fired non-lethal beanbags filled with lead shot.
The first beanbag round, shot from a 12-gauge weapon, had no effect, August's partner wrote.
Police then hit Woods with two more rounds, including one that struck his leg, causing the limp that Woods displayed in the videos of the police confrontation.
Still, Woods wouldn't drop the knife.
When a fourth beanbag was fired using a more powerful 40mm gun, the officer said the subject appeared to be stunned and crouched to one knee but still refused to drop the knife.
He quickly regained his balance and stood back up.
At that point, another officer tried to subdue Woods using pepper spray.
He didn't appear to react, the police accounts say.
I then noticed a large crowd of people behind me, said August's partner.
I walked toward the crowd to advise them to back up when I saw the subject with the knife still in hand begin to walk toward the crowd.
As Woods headed toward the bystanders, August tried to cut him off, police accounts say.
In the videos of the shooting, he can be seen stepping into Woods' path.
I yelled, back up, as loud as I could at the crowd when I heard multiple gunshots, August's partner said.
It was the sound of August and four other officers firing their weapons.
Did police overreact?
Was the crowd at risk?
Would Woods still be alive if police had tasers or were trained to use less force when confronted with weapons?
Those are questions being looked at by investigators and the broader forums of City Hall and public opinion.
Some of the racial element in the case has been diffused by the fact that August and his partner are African-American, as Woods was.
So let me get this straight.
The suspect had a six to eight inch knife, shot with several escalating rounds of bean bags, pepper sprayed, and still wouldn't put down the knife.
You remember what the actor Jesse Williams said at the BET Awards ceremony where he said the police used de-escalation on whites but not on blacks?
What we've been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow managed to de-escalate, disarm, and not kill white people every day.
To repeat, Had a knife.
Wouldn't drop it.
Hit with several rounds of bean bags.
Hit with pepper spray.
Oh, by the way, the first two cops on the scene, black, as was the suspect.
Failing to surrender peacefully, Woods posed an immediate threat to bystanders and officers, wrote Deputy City Attorney Sean Connolly.
Woods, while still armed with the weapon, attempted to flee by walking past the officer and toward the area where numerous bystanders congregated.
End of quote.
Actor Jesse Williams said, what we've been doing is looking at the data.
So let's look at the data.
The Washington Post said in 2015 there were roughly 1,000 people killed by the police.
500 of them were white.
250 of them were black.
Less than 4% of the total shot and killed by the police were white cops shooting unarmed black men.
In a year-long study, the Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities, most often white police killing unarmed black men, represent less than 4% of fatal police shootings.
Meanwhile, the Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories.
They were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.
End of As to unarmed whites, the Washington Post says, there are at least as many unarmed whites killed as unarmed blacks.
As to unarmed whites killed, name one!
Bet you can't.
And being unarmed does not mean not dangerous.
Michael Brown was unarmed, but they found his DNA on officer's gun.
So unarmed does not mean not dangerous.
Heather McDonnell is a researcher with the Manhattan Institute.
She wrote a book called War on Cops.
Here is what we know.
A recent deadly force study by Washington State University researcher Lois James found that police officers were less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white or Hispanic ones in simulated threat scenarios.
Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer analyzed more than 1,000 officer-involved shootings across the country.
He concluded that there is zero evidence of racial bias in police shootings.
In Houston, he found that blacks were 24% less likely than whites to be shot by officers, even though the suspects were armed or violent.
Now, President Barack Obama and members of his administration met with people from the Black Lives Matter movement, which gave it credibility.
At a criminal justice forum Thursday at the White House, President Obama said the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted a real problem, that he too had uneasy encounters with police in his younger days.
Now, in Obama's second term, there were three executions of police officers.
One took place in New York.
Police departments around the country are telling their personnel to be extra vigilant this morning after the killing of two officers in New York City.
Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjen Liu were shot execution style Saturday in their patrol car.
And then there's Dallas in July 2016.
President Obama is cutting short his overseas visit with NATO and European leaders to visit Dallas early next week in the wake of the deadliest day for law enforcement since 9-11.
Five officers were killed by a sniper during a protest on Thursday.
And just ten days later, Baton Rouge.
On the eve of this convention, the country has been shaken by another deadly act of violence.
Six law enforcement officers were shot this morning in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Three are dead.
Another is in critical condition tonight.
They were ambushed by a gunman that the police identify as a black ex-Marine from Kansas City.
There's a common theme here.
All three suspects?
Black men.
Motivated by the lie that the police are engaging in institutional racial profiling against blacks, institutional racial brutality against blacks.
How do we know this?
They said so.
They either posted it on social media or told others, which means this Black Lives Matter movement is getting people killed.
After all, President Trump was blamed for El Paso, The President's language, his rhetoric, has produced the kinds of hate crimes that we saw in El Paso yesterday.
You see the contradiction?
Obama embraced the Black Lives Matter movement.
Donald Trump never called himself a white nationalist, a white supremacist.
In fact, he rejected this.
How do you feel about the recent endorsement from David?
I didn't even know he endorsed me.
David Duke endorsed me?
Okay.
All right.
I disavow, okay?
I totally disavow the Ku Klux Klan.
I totally disavow David Duke.
I've been doing it now for two weeks.
This is, you're probably about the 18th person that's asked me the question.
David Duke is a bad person who I disavowed on numerous occasions over the years.
If he said on Friday, I disavow, why ask him again on Saturday?
I'm saying to myself, how many times do I have to continue to disavow people?
And the question was asked about David Duke and various groups.
When I put out that I reject KKK and David Duke, nobody picks it up.
You know why they're not?
Because they don't want to pick it up.
I disavowed them on Friday.
I disavowed them right after that because I thought if there was any question, and you take a look at Twitter, almost immediately after, on Twitter and Facebook, they were disavowed again.
I disavowed them every time I speak to somebody virtually, and, you know, they just keep it going, they keep it going.
But neither the Democrats nor the media blamed Obama for these three execution-style shootings, even though all three men said they were motivated by the lie that the Obama administration has been pushing.
But I will tell you somebody who did blame Obama.
I think the Obama administration's continued appeasement at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, while blaming police for the problems in this country,
has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible." Now, as for Colin Kaepernick, Even the great Jim Brown says, Cap, you got to make a decision.
But I would advise a young man, if you're a football player, play football.
You're going to be a real activist.
Use your money.
Use your notoriety.
Go ahead.
I double dog dare you to call Jim Brown and Uncle Tom.
Now we finish with this.
Elizabeth Warren says that there is a national emergency regarding gun violence.
Let me tell you what the real national emergency is.
Her dancing.
First, here's Tina.
And then there's the LA Lakers' Mark Mad Dog Madsen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I want to rock right now.
I'm Shaq D's and I can't get down.
But hey, Tina.
Hey, Mad Dog.
Move over for the nimble feat of Elizabeth Focahontas Warren.
What you need to do?
You know I got it.
I ain't gonna give it up for Saturday!
Like I always say, do not try this at home.
I'm Larry Elder, and this has been The Larry Elder Show for Epic Times.
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