The AP Lies Again and Again.

The AP just published a story (a story is what it is as it contains so few facts) titled " Black community sees Charlotte as glimmering, fake Oz".

When the authors of such a story put out a absolute lie about an important fact of the recent events, there is little reason to regard the entire story as anything more than a hit piece.

This deceitful piece openly claims that Keith Lamont Scott was shot by a WHITE police officer. That is a bald faced lie! It has been well documented from the very beginning that the officer was himself black. It's very telling that the AP couldn't be bothered to use his name. Brently Vinson is a two year veteran of the CMPD and the son of another veteran officer.

I am not here to address the merits or lack of them in CMPD's tactics in pursuing criminal investigations. Yes the living conditions of much of Charlotte's black community are less than ideal. But they are far from the fetid sewers of run down tenements and row houses of Baltimore, East Cleveland or South Chicago.

Have there been some tragic incidents in Charlotte? Yes. The case of Jonathan Ferrell and officer Randall  Kerrick is the most recent. Much like this case there was a great deal of pressure applied to "release the tape" of the incident. So confident was the city attorney that Kerrick would be found guilty that the City gave Ferrell's family a multi million dollar settlement on a wrongfully death suit even before Kerrick 's trial began. Then came the trial and the tape was released and it showed Ferrell charging headlong at officer Kerrick while he and other yelled at him to stop and get on the ground.

So where do the rest of the citizens go to get their millions of dollars back?

The video released by Scott's wife clearly shows several things. One the officers are heard yelling repeatedly to Scott to "drop the gun....drop the fucking gun!" Two Ms. ,Scott makes a liar of herself by first claiming her husband had no weapon and the pleading with him "don't you do it, do it."

Seems pretty clear she knew he was carrying a weapon, she also knew as a convicted violent felon he shouldn't have been in possession of a fire arm. So did Scott after making the mistake of showing the police he had a weapon decide that he didn't want to go back to prison for another long stretch and considered "suicide by cop" was preferable? If Scott had suffered a traumatic brain injury as his wife claims and wasn't thinking clearly then why did this wife let him go about carrying a gun?

This was a man with a long string of violent offences all springing from poor impulse control. Apparently made another in a long string of bad decisions and this one proved fatal. That is hardly the fault of officer Vinson or the socio-economic condition in Charlotte.

Tragically maybe Mr. Scott wasn't thinking clearly, but the AP  knows perfectly well that they are lying through their teeth. If they want to write a story about conditions in the black community fine. There is plenty to be said but to tar all of Charlotte as racist and or redneck and collectively guilty for Keith Lamont Scott's death and use naked lies to do it is pretty despicable.