Sept. 26, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:53
3428 What Pisses Me Off About Keith Scott And The Charlotte Riots
On Tuesday night, 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott was shot and killed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Brentley Vinson in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Both Scott and Officer Vinson are black, but the shooting nonetheless sparked Black Lives Matter protests which focused the eyes of the world on Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte police originally went to the complex at approximately 4pm, looking for a suspect with an outstanding warrant. Scott was not the suspect, but was observed getting out of his vehicle with a gun, before reentering the vehicle moments later. Officers approached the vehicle and Scott once again exited with the weapon in hand. After repeated orders by Police to drop his firearm, Scott was shot and killed. Scott’s family and Black Lives Matter protestors claim that Scott was “disabled” and was killed while he was peacefully reading a book inside his vehicle. Police have recovered a firearm from the scene, but no books were found on-site. Local protests quickly began and it did not take long for the “peaceful” protests to turn violent. Conservative Treehouse Reporthttps://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/09/24/charlotte-police-release-dash-cam-and-body-camera-footage-videos/Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
So, you know, today's my birthday, and I just wanted to say thank you everyone so much for your very kind birthday wishes.
It's lovely to see it pouring in, just the number of people around the world who gain such value out of this philosophical conversation.
My presence in the world and my continued presence on the sunny side of the eternal dirt nap that faces us all.
And part of me was like, don't look at the news, don't look at the news, don't look at the news!
And then, did I keep my own resolution?
Um...
I often do, but not in this particular instance.
Something pinged up on my phone, and it was that there have been some updates to the Scott shooting.
Now, we did a video on this a little while back ago, so I'm not going to go into all of these details, but...
There are a few things that you need to learn that has come up in this particular case.
The police have released dashcam footage and a body cam.
Scott's wife, a day or two ago, released her video footage of the event.
Some more information has come out about his history because, you know, there's a narrative which is kind of floating around or being pushed by certain elements in the media and other places that he was a disabled guy, he's sitting there reading a book, and the cops just come up and then taser him and shoot him for no reason whatsoever, execution, cold blood, blah, blah, blah, you know, the usual rabble-rousing stuff that tends to disassemble neighborhoods like a Lego toy from a frustrated toddler.
So, according to court records, Mr.
Scott, born in South Carolina, about six feet tall, 230 to 250 pounds.
He lived in South Carolina in the 90s.
He was charged with a number of offenses.
Check fraud, aggravated assault, carrying a concealed weapon.
Later, he moved to Texas, where he shot and wounded a man in San Antonio in 2002.
He was convicted and sentenced in 2005 to seven years in prison.
He was released...
In 2011.
He was also charged with assault with attempt to kill in 1999.
So this is not a guy studying his satra in a wheelchair.
April 2015, a guest in county court found guilty of driving while intoxicated.
And in 1992, charged in Charleston County, South Carolina, several different crimes on different dates, carrying a concealed weapon, which was not a gun, simple assault, and contributing...
To the delinquency of a minor, he pleaded guilty to all charges.
Now, the Charlotte police have released a picture of the handgun recovered from Keith Scott, the ankle holster.
I don't know where you keep your books, but I don't keep mine in an ankle holster.
So we have an ankle holster, and they released the following statement.
I'll just skim through it briefly because it doesn't take long to realize what has actually been going on.
So, there were two plainclothes officers sitting inside an unmarked police vehicle.
They were waiting or preparing to serve an arrest warrant in the parking lot of the village in College Downs.
Now, a white SUV pulled in and parked beside them.
All right?
So...
I guess they glanced over.
The officers observed the driver, who was, of course, later identified as Mr.
Keith Scott, rolling what they believed to be a marijuana blunt.
I don't know.
Maybe that's what he was using the book for.
I don't know.
Now, officers did not consider Mr.
Scott's drug activity to be a priority.
At the time, they resumed the warrant operation, I guess, waiting to serve for marijuana in a car or marijuana possession or something like that, just another crappy war on drugs, non-crime.
And then what happened was Officer Vinson observed Mr.
Scott, the guy who later got shot, hold a gun up.
Hmm.
Okay.
So he rolls up in his SUV. He's smoking a joint.
Is he going to drive somewhere?
Is this what you do when you are there to pick up your child or whatever the other story was?
Well, they were willing to let that ride, but they could not or decided not to let ride the fact that he had a gun.
Now, I don't know whether they knew about Mr.
Scott or not, his history.
But if they did, or if they were aware, or if they looked him up or looked up his plates, I have no idea.
We may never know.
But If they did, then they would know, of course, that he was a convicted felon, and therefore, if I understand the law correctly, not, in fact, not able to have a gun.
So here we have a big problem.
And the problem, of course, is the judgment of a guy who's perhaps or allegedly smoking a joint while holding a gun in a parking lot or wherever the hell they were.
And so what happened was they had public safety concerns.
And, um, so what they did, the cops who were in the unmarked car and playing clothes, they left and they got marked duty vests and equipment that would clearly identify them as police officers, right?
Because you don't want to be some guy knocking on the door saying, get out of the car.
You know, if you're not identifying yourself as a police, that's, I guess, imagine a pretty volatile situation.
So they came back, marked as police officers, and with equipment that says, you know, we're police officers, and they again witnessed Mr.
Scott in possession of a gun.
The officers immediately identified themselves as police officers and gave clear, loud, and repeated verbal commands to drop the gun.
Drop the gun.
And you can hear this in the video that has been released and also other video that was around.
Mr.
Scott refused to follow the officer's repeated verbal commands.
Now, who knows what his state of mind is.
Of course, we'll never know now that he's dead.
But I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say, okay, well, if the cops are telling me to get out of my car, I have a gun.
I'm a felon.
I'm not allowed to have a gun.
I'm going back to jail.
And maybe...
We'll never know, but it's certainly more than a possibility.
So...
He's smoking what the cops report to be potentially a joint or blunt, and he's not.
He's got a gun.
He's not following verbal commands.
So we have a pretty significant escalation going on here.
So next, an uniformed officer in a marked patrol vehicle arrives to assist the officers.
So the uniformed officer, as the cops say, utilized his baton to attempt to breach the front passenger window in an attempt, in an effort to arrest Mr.
Scott.
I guess they're pounding on the glass trying to break it to get him arrested.
Mr.
Scott then exited the vehicle with the gun and backed away from the vehicle while continuing to ignore officers' repeated loud verbal commands to drop the gun.
So this is how quickly the staff can escalate.
SUV rolls up, they say he's smoking a joint or blunt, and then they see he's got a gun, they go and get their gun.
Police duds on comeback, and he gets out of the car and is not responding to verbal commands.
Now, the police chief has said it's impossible to tell from the video footage that they have whether the gun is in his hand or not, but...
The cops, I assume, felt that he had a gun.
So, Officer Vincent, the black guy, perceived Mr.
Scott's actions and movements as an imminent physical threat to himself and the other officers.
Officer Vincent fired his issued service weapon striking Mr.
Scott.
Officers immediately rendered first aid and requested a medic to respond to the scene.
And...
They say, of course, Homicide Unit detectives interviewed multiple independent civilian witnesses at the scene and at police headquarters.
Those witnesses confirmed that officers gave numerous loud verbal commands from Mr.
Scott to drop the weapon and also confirmed that at no time did Mr.
Scott comply with their commands.
A lab analysis conducted at the gun crime scene investigators recovered at the scene revealed the presence of Mr.
Mr. Scott's DNA and his fingerprints on the gun.
It was also determined that the gun Mr. Scott possessed was loaded at the time of the encounter with the officers.
The investigation also revealed Scott was wearing an ankle holster at the time of the event.
And they've released photos of the gun, the holster, the blunt, and so on.
So...
It seems that the narrative that he was a disabled guy just reading peacefully, waiting for his kid to be dropped off on the school bus, may be taken, well, with just a little bit of a grain of salt.
And it sort of feels to me like we're just in this groundhog day of unbelievable narratives, escalated tensions, race-baiting, violence, destruction, contempt, where you've got people who are rioting, protesters, they're rioting, And they're grabbing photographers who are unconscious and trying to throw them on burning fires.
You get people shot.
People throwing giant rocks off overpasses under highways.
Because of words.
There's like these magic spells that can make people go insane.
It's like the Pollard in Zootopia.
They can make people go insane.
Because these narratives are pushed and pushed and pushed.
And the narratives inflame people to the point where these murderous, crazy rampages break out in these communities.
And, according to some police reports, 70% of the protesters from out of town, baby, way out of town, just bust in.
Here, go do some damage.
Oh, God, don't you hate race relations during an election year?
Don't you just hate the way the media, the Democrats, and all of this just get together to rile up people?
To make them hate.
To make them feel victimized.
To make them feel, with all the full justice of victimhood, they can lash out at everyone else.
Because if you tell people they're victimized for long enough, boom, you push it down.
Boo, you're a victim.
You're exploited.
People are doing terrible things to you.
You've got no chance.
You are just laying landmines all across the social landscape.
Now, Scott's wife...
I don't understand how all of this works.
And if people know more about this, please let me know in the comments below.
Scott's wife videoed the encounter.
She mentioned that he had a TBI. I think that's traumatic brain injury.
And she kept saying, he has no weapon.
He has no weapon.
He didn't do anything.
He has no weapon.
He leaves the house, I would assume, with an ankle holster on.
Maybe she doesn't know that.
Maybe she has no idea that he has a weapon.
I guess that will be found out during the investigation.
But she said to him, Keith, don't let them break the window.
Come on out the car.
Keith, don't do it, Keith.
Get out the car.
Keith, Keith, don't you do it.
Don't you do it!
Don't you do what?
What was she thinking he might do?
Suicide by cop?
Going out in a blaze of glory?
Giving, perhaps, family members the possibility of suing in the future and getting millions of dollars in a settlement?
Don't you do it, she said.
What was she thinking he was going to do?
Did she maybe know of his desperation?
I can't go back to prison.
I'm never going back to prison.
Who knows what he might have said.
But I do know this.
This Is worse than not working.
This is like some big, giant, metaphysical, Florida-sized sink pit that opens up between and beneath the civilized society's foundations and sucking everyone into a primordial ooze of violence and self-destruction.
This has happened so many times in the past.
I mean, you can go through a list of it.
We can put a list below.
We've done videos on a whole bunch of them.
Every single time, it is the same script over and over, and everybody seems to believe it with the same amount of enthusiasm.
It's like Lucy and Charlie Brown with a human head for a football.
Let's try it again.
Let's do it again.
This time's different.
Bullshit.
It's the same script.
A black man gets shot, and these days, a black man gets killed, doesn't matter whether it's black or white, apparently half the people who were acquitted of Freddie Gray's death, black.
Officer Vincent, who shot Scott, black.
Black man gets killed.
Immediately, he's a hero.
He did nothing wrong.
Just standing there, hunted for being black, shot for being black, shot for driving while black, shot while on his way.
To give blood in an old age nursing home before putting in his application to turn his life around by going to college.
All was the same.
And then, evil racist system, holding people down, shooting people for no reason, hunting them down like animals, like dogs.
Michael Brown shot, execution style, in the back, hands up, begging don't shoot.
False.
And by the time the facts get out, you see, by the time the facts get out, the city is already in flames.
The bodies are already piling on the street.
The businesses are already destroyed.
The houses are already smashed.
The cars are already set on fire.
The damage is done.
And the good and decent people who've been hanging on by the skin of their teeth in these terrible neighborhoods get out.
And they take their taxes, and they take their productivity, and they take their jobs, and they take their savings with them.
And they take their children out of schools, the smarter kids from the smarter parents who get out.
And you are left with these canyons, these holes, In the heart where cities should be.
And then the truth comes around the corner and says, wait, you've got it all wrong.
The victim was not a victim.
It didn't matter that the victim was black.
If you think that you have white privilege, and I'm not suggesting you actually do this, of course, but as a mind experiment, just imagine rolling up to a bunch of cops, lighting up what they perceive to be as a blunt, playing with a gun, They come to arrest you.
You don't get out the car.
You don't open your windows.
They maybe can't see what's going on.
Maybe there's reflection.
There's glare.
It was daytime.
There's light on the window.
They don't know what the hell's going on in there.
And then you come out.
Maybe you've got a gun in your hand.
Maybe they think you've got a gun in their hand.
They sure as hell saw that you had a gun in the car, and you're not listening.
You're not obeying.
The police, which is kind of what you got to do with the system that we have.
You may disagree with it.
You may not like it.
Oh, the cops should have done this.
The cops should have done that.
But the rules are the rules.
I mean, you...
You may think that you should get $12,000 every time you pass go in Monopoly.
That's not the rules.
The rules are, with the cops, you comply.
And they will escalate aggression against you until you comply.
Or you're dead.
And if they perceive that they are in imminent danger from you, they are perfectly justified in shooting you.
Not to wound, to disable.
Which means, generally, shooting at center mass until you are down.
Those are the rules!
This guy, this is not his first time at the rodeo.
It's not his first time dealing with cops.
Those are the rules.
He knows it.
There are some rumors.
A couple of places have reported on them.
I can't verify them.
Some rumors that the shootings that he was involved in in the past was him shooting at cops.
Maybe the cops knew this about him.
Maybe they knew that in the past, or they believed in the past, he'd been involved in shooting at cops.
And the truth comes along.
And says, he was not a victim.
It was a tragedy, but it was a tragedy of bad decisions.
And these are the rules, people.
We all know this.
These are the rules.
You're speeding along, maybe going a little too fast.
You see the popo in the rear view.
They got the sirens.
They, you know, pull over, pull over, pull over.
Does anybody with half a brain not know what happens if you hit the gas?
What if you start shooting out behind you?
You all know how that's going to end.
This is not complicated.
And the truth comes along, and it comes creeping its way through these shattered, burnt-out buildings with frightened, huddling children, gunshots running through the air, people getting shot at ATMs, unconscious people half-thrown into burning fires, businesses destroyed.
The truth comes along and says, all this was for worse than nothing.
Worse than nothing!
Now we have far less than we had before.
And it doesn't matter, because you cannot roll back time.
You cannot bring the people who've left because the neighborhood has become too terrifying.
They're not coming back.
They sold their house, probably a horrible loss, or maybe they just abandoned it, Detroit-style, and they're gone, baby, gone.
They're not coming back.
Businesses aren't coming in because they probably can't get any insurance.
People are complaining there's no jobs in this neighborhood.
Right.
Right.
You know, when I run at a bunch of seagulls on the ground, suddenly there are no seagulls around me because they've all left.
I guess that's white flight too.
And the truth says the narrative, the story, the mythology was wrong.
And the neighborhood says, doesn't matter.
It's too late.
Because the narrative has become the neighborhood.
The narrative of violence, the narrative of believing falsehoods, the narrative of acting out based on half-truths, half-information, prejudice, bigotry, hatred.
That is the neighborhood now.
And it has become A kind of hell on earth.
And from there we end up with where the circle becomes complete and the escape becomes almost impossible where it turns out that people are not violent because they're poor.
They are poor because they are violent, and they are violent because they were lied to, and they lied to themselves.
So if you've been part of pushing this narrative, he was an innocent victim, he was disabled, he did nothing wrong, reading a book, there was no book.
No book was found on sight, a gun was found on sight with DNA evidence, fingerprints, He's already a criminal.
You can't have a gun if you're a felon.
If you're a part of pushing this, you need to take a goddamn hard look in the mirror, my friend.
If you're a part of pushing this narrative, hold your hands up.
Hold your hands up to the mirror.
You see that red?
That's you and the blood that is on your hands.
If you've been pushing a narrative of lies before waiting for the facts, as I urged everyone to do in the last video I did on this, and the video before, and the video before, and the video before, and hopefully not forward like a broken record until the end of time, or the end of us all, you need to stop doing this.
