Earlier: Here We Go Again: Undocumented Shoppers in Philadelphia
2020 has seen the sanctification of a sizable number of Martyrs to White Racism, such as George Floyd and his many peers. The latest one, the knife guy in Philadelphia, was exceptionally saintly. From NBC Philadelphia (by the way, my new motto is: “If there is hope, it lies in the local if-it-bleeds-it-leads newscasts”):
Walter Wallace Jr. Struggled With Mental Health Issues, Family Says
“Depression is real. That’s something that we have to look at as a society. How we engage and we interact when those happen. How the police respond when you deal with a crisis situation.”
By NBC10 Staff • Published 3 hours ago • Updated 38 mins ago
A day after he was shot and killed by two police officers, sparking protests and a night of civil unrest in Philadelphia, family members of Walter Wallace Jr. are speaking out, describing him as a husband, father and aspiring musician who struggled with mental health issues.
“Mental health is real,” Sam White, Wallace’s cousin, told NBC10. “Depression is real. That’s something that we have to look at as a society. How we engage and we interact when those happen. How the police respond when you deal with a crisis situation.”
On Monday Philadelphia police responded to reports of a person screaming as well as a report of a 27-year-old male assaulting an elderly female at a home on the 6100 block of Locust Street. …
Fitzhugh told NBC10 Wallace struggled with mental health issues and was taking medication. He said his cousin was having a mental breakdown Monday when a family member called police.
...Fitzhugh told NBC10 he believes the officers should’ve used tasers instead of guns. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said Monday that neither officer was equipped with a taser and not all police officers in the city carry them.
Fitzhugh stopped short of calling the shooting racially motivated but described a video he had seen of white officers dealing with a mentally ill white man who was armed with a knife that didn’t result in the man’s death.
“I don’t want to say they were racist cops and they shot him because he was Black,” Fitzhugh said. “What I’m saying is if he was of a different nationality, would ya’ll have used that same choice? I don’t know what was going on through their heads.”
Wallace was a 27-year-old father of seven who had just gotten married this month.
“These are all school-aged children so now his children have to grow up knowing that the police officers killed [their] father,” Fitzhugh said.
White was also an aspiring rapper.
“He’s a kid who wanted to be a musician,” White said. “He loved music. That’s what he loved and that’s what his aspirations were. So no matter what that looks like, his dreams are deferred, his dreams were cut down because he got murdered in the streets last night.”
Court records also reveal Wallace’s extensive criminal history.
He was arrested in March after he allegedly threatened his child’s mother over the phone, saying “I’ll shoot you and that house up.”
In 2019, he was charged with resisting arrest by “kicking the windows and door panels of a police patrol car.”
In 2016, during a robbery, he allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck and held what she believed to be a gun to her head, according to court records.
In 2013, Wallace’s mother had a protective order against him which he allegedly violated when he “threw water in her face and punched her in the face” and “threatened to return and shoot” her, according to court records.
Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said she was unsure if the officers who responded Monday had ever interacted with Wallace before. The police dispatch prior to the shooting indicated that police were familiar with the home on the 6100 block of Locust.
“Tell the officers to use caution in responding to this,” the dispatcher said. “It’s an ongoing domestic issue going on up there.”
If you have 7 kids like Wallace or 6 like Jacob Blake in Kenosha, maybe getting yourself shot by the police is your financial plan for being a good provider?
From iSteve commenter Alec Leamas (hard at work):
I think the tacit accord between the low part of the Democratic coalition (i.e., underclass blacks) and the high part of the Democratic coalition (the Press, UMC types, suburban AWFLS) is that the police should in many circumstances sacrifice themselves bodily for the sake of racial harmony. In this case, so maybe one or both officers would have been maimed or killed, but in the latter case we would have had a nice memorial and some beef and beer fundraisers for their kids’ college fund. They’d be remembered fondly as heroes and everything would quickly return to the status quo ante.
The blacks seem to want to be left alone to live in a parallel society outside of legal norms, while the high Democratic coalition members don’t seem to want to be bothered with the gritty edges of life and want to disclaim knowledge of what it takes to keep the underclass in some sort of check so that they themselves can have nice things. The latter seem to have about as much interest in knowing about the day to day act of policing as they do about garbage men or septic tank cleaners – they seem to really not want to be bothered to think about the sights, sounds, smells, and blood-and-bone nature of the whole affair.
The solution of the high end of the coalition seems to be to throw cops into the volcano from time to time in order to preserve their own ignorance and innocence.
Update: A second night of Retail Reparations is going on in Philadelphia:
Mass looting breaks out in Philadelphia tonight in the latest BLM inspired riot. A Walmart is being ransacked. #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/fYH27qnd3O
