BLM Rips Into 'Tear Jerker Press Conferences' After DC Police Officer Shot in the Line of Duty
On Sunday night, a Washington, D.C., police officer was shot and wounded in the city’s northwest neighborhood of Petworth.
In response to the shooting, Black Lives Matter DC tweeted that no one should “jump to conclusions,” until all the information was clear.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s wait till we have all the information (isn’t that what y’all tell us). Oh yeah, and that he had a gun (because cops carry guns),” the group wrote. “Will the media post a picture and list every mistake they’ve made since kindergarten?”
Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s wait till we have all the information (isn’t that what y’all tell us). Oh yeah, and that he had a gun (because cops carry guns).
Will the media post a picture and list every mistake they’ve made since kindergarten?
??♀️ https://t.co/GO3CLttp35
— Black Lives Matter DC (@DMVBlackLives) January 24, 2022
However, D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III did comment on the situation and briefly clarified what had happened.
Contee said the officer approached a suspicious man about 9 p.m. at 14th Street and Quincy Street Northwest. The man then pulled out a gun and fired at the officer, WJLA-TV reported.
“He appeared to be very suspicious in terms of his behavior,” Contee said at a news conference, according to The Washington Post.
Contee said the man fired at the officers “before they could contact him.”
After the man shot at the officers, he ran a block north to an apartment building, the Post reported. Officers searched the building, but did not find the man.
So they set up a barricade and blocked off streets in the area.
Washington DC police officer rushed to hospital after getting shot https://t.co/SAd1B2qhz3 pic.twitter.com/wglWfDJRbd
— New York Post (@nypost) January 24, 2022
A few hours later, the police department announced on Twitter that the barricade had been taken down and that no arrests had been made.
According to the Post, police spokeswoman Kristen Metzger said the officer who was shot did not fire during the confrontation. He suffered a wound to his hand and a “graze wound” to his head, the Post reported.
The department later announced that the officer was taken to the hospital and had been treated and released, according to the Post.
But Black Lives Matter DC continued to tweet critiques of the police, noting previous incidents of police shootings.
This isn’t to say these scenarios represent what happened tonight, but it does explain our skepticism, interest in details, and highlights the difference in how people talk and act when an officer is hurt vs when they hurt a Black person. No one asks what the cop did wrong.
— Black Lives Matter DC (@DMVBlackLives) January 24, 2022
Even though an officer had just been shot, the group also claimed that it is more dangerous to be black in the nation’s capital than any other job.
“Look at the reaction and coverage tonight. Tear jerker press conferences and proclamations of heroes coming soon,” read one tweet, which included a list of names of people it said had been killed by D.C. police. “Being Black in DC is more dangerous than any job.”
The group then linked to the Black Lives DC website where it claims the District of Columbia is a police state.
“DC is an occupied police state. With more than 32 independent police departments, DC is the most heavily policed city in the country,” the website states.
“Policing and the system under which police work exists is bound to the enslavement, degradation, and murder of Black people and was never meant to protect us, but instead to exploit our bodies and labor to fill prisons and bolster capitalism.”
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