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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a full pardon for U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted last year of murder in the shooting death of Garrett Foster, a USAF veteran and BLM protestor. Foster had attended a downtown Austin protest armed with an AK-pattern rifle, and joined his fellow protestors in illegally barricading the street. Perry's car was halted by the barricade, Foster approached the driver's side door, rifle in hand, and Perry shot him four times from a range of roughly 18 inches, fatally wounding him. Police reported that Foster's rifle was recovered with an empty chamber and the safety on.
Perry claimed that the shooting was self defense, that the protestors swarmed his vehicle, and that Foster advanced on him and pointed his rifle at him, presenting an immediate lethal threat. Foster's fellow protestors claimed that Foster did not point his rifle at Perry, and that the shooting was unprovoked. They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident. For his part, Foster was interviewed just prior to the shooting, and likewise expressed hostility toward those opposed to the BLM cause and at least some desire to "use" his rifle.
This incident was one of a number of claimed self-defense shootings that occurred during the BLM riots, and we've previously discussed the clear tribal split in how that worked out for them, despite, in most cases, clear-cut video evidence for or against their claims. The case against Perry was actually better than most of the Reds, in that the video available was far less clear about what actually happened. As with the other Red cases, the state came down like a ton of bricks. An Austin jury found Perry guilty of murder, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Unlike the other cases, this one happened in Texas, and before the trial had completed, support for Perry was strong and growing. That support resulted in Governor Abbott referring Perry's case to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. A year later, the board returned a unanimous recommendation for a pardon to be granted. Abbott has now granted that pardon, and Perry is a free man, with his full civil rights restored to him. He has spent a little more than a year in prison, and his military career has been destroyed, but he is no longer in jail and no longer a felon.
So, now what?
It seems to me that there's a lot of fruitful avenues of discussion here. Was the shooting legitimate self-defense? To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome? How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
Two points seem most salient to me.
First, this case is a good demonstration of how the Culture War only rewards escalation, and degrades all pretensions to impartiality. I do not believe that anyone, on either side, is actually looking at this case in isolation and attempting to apply the rules as written as straightforwardly as possible. For both Blues and Reds, narrative trumps any set of particular facts. No significant portion of Blues are ever going to accept Reds killing Blues as legitimate, no matter what the facts are. Whatever portion of Reds might be willing to agree that Reds killing Blues in self-defense might have been illegitimate appears to be trending downward.
Second, this does not seem to be an example of the process working as intended. If the goal of our justice system is to settle such issues, it seems to have failed here. Red Tribe did not accept Perry's conviction as legitimate, and Blue Tribe has not accepted his pardon as legitimate. From a rules-based perspective, the pardon and the conviction are equally valid, but the results in terms of perceived legitimacy are indistinguishable from "who, whom". As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
This is what we refer to in the business as a "bad sign".
It's interesting because the guy with the rifle was in some sense doing a right wing coded thing. Open carrying a rifle, which in Texas is legal. It's been a left wing talking point that this in and of itself should be considered a threatening act (see Rittenhouse, K). Which means in other circumstances it could quite well have been the case that the right was outraged by the shooting, as open carrying a rifle in and of itself should not be grounds to be seen as threat of violence, that justifies self-defence. In fact if Foster had shot and killed Perry as he was driving a car towards a protest he would have been in the Rittenhouse position! Arguing he brought a rifle to the protest to defend against just such an attack.
Which is why (as with Rittenhouse) the case hinged on whether the rifle was pointed at someone and if this itself constitutes a threat. Only without clear video in this case to show one way or another.
There is a narrative here where Rittenhouse was found not guilty (correctly) because he did not point his gun at someone and therefore was not threatening, and Foster also did not point his gun at someone so was not threatening and was thus murdered by Perry. In that case the left would have a case to argue that they did indeed play by the rules more than the right. Rittenhouse was acquitted. The jury set aside all the political stuff and acquitted him. Perry was found guilty then a political intervention happened. That's how I would contrast the two stories if I were still going to bat for the left in a political sense at least. The left left (hah) it up to the judicial system to decide the right (hah!) outcome, the right refused to do that and blatantly freed a convicted murderer. Might have some bad optics for squishy moderates. But of course plays well with those already convinced. Unlikely to make a difference in Texas, but might have some play if pushed nationally, perhaps.
I suppose to turn the discussion back to you, if you had clear video that Foster did not point his gun at Perry, and was just walking around, would you accept that he like Rittenhouse did not actually threaten someone and thus Perry shooting him was murder?
A "narrative" is all it is. It elides a bunch of significant detail in order to claim two things are far more similar than they are, and therefore make out defenders of both Rittenhouse and Perry as hypocrites.
Does it? Below someone said that because Foster had his gun angled down, but could have pointed it directly at Perry and fired in an instant that Perry was correct to have felt threatened. But we have video of Rittenhouse wandering around gun pointed low where he also could have brought it up and fired at any of the people around him.
If one of those is a threat then surely the other is, even if we removed them from protest situations and just had them standing on the street minding their own business.
Now i'd say neither should really be taken as a threat in and of themselves granted carrying the rifle around is legal. Because it would mean that we have a tension where a legal activity also grants enough of a threat to createthe right to legal lethal self-defence, which just seems problematicly circular.
The comment was that Foster had his gun angled down, from a standing position, which did point it at Perry, who was sitting in a car. Foster was also advancing on him while doing this. Rittenhouse did not point his gun at anyone until immediately before shooting, and he ran away rather than advancing.
It is difficult to overstate how absurdly perfect Rittenhouse's actions were, and how minimal the ambiguity was due to the abundance of clear video evidence. The fact that he was still charged and tried for murder despite the well-established facts was profoundly radicalizing for me, and I imagine for many other Reds. Rittenhouse should not be accepted as a minimum standard for what legitimate self-defense looks like. He is an example of how even complete, obvious, absolute innocence will not be accepted by the Blues as a tribe.
Carrying a rifle is not a threat. Aiming a rifle at someone while advancing on them, while they are already being illegally assaulted by your companions, is a threat. If there is ambiguity here, it seems to me that it is not coming from the facts but rather from a tribal tendency to refuse those facts when they are inconvenient.
I'm given to understand that other motorists reported that Foster threatened them with his rifle previously. If that were the case, would you agree that it undermines a claim that his actions were legitimate?
I really really don't want to engage in 'chan' behavior, so I'm going to try to write something more than just pointing at your paragraph and saying 'this'. But seriously, this.
The more I found out about the Rittenhouse case, the more I felt that someone really needed to give that kid a medal. Running away from attackers at every turn, only firing in the last possible resort, firing the fewest number of shots possible to end the threat, with nigh-immaculate aim at every step (e.g., shooting the bicep of a man pointing a handgun at him), and with precisely zero bystander casualties. He did everything right.
Personally, I felt that Rittenhouse would have been a prime example for progressives to use, to persuade conservatives towards a greater skepticism of police and especially of prosecutors. Something like:
That's a lay-up, and now we can have a conversation about prosecutorial discretion, qualified/absolute immunity, and 'anarcho-tyranny' -- reforms far more palatable and meaningful than 'defund the police'. But no, we had to have a conversation about how Rittenhouse crossed state lines (seriously, how was that the major talking point?) or how he shot three black guys (two of the three were white, and the third's identity only became public knowledge months later).
The point has never been skepticism of police, and especially of prosecutors. The point, at least for the largest bloc of the Democratic coalition, was that the police hate black people. I suspect many on the center-left who boosted these ideas, especially the elite ones, would be shocked to encounter police in a negative interaction. Many middle-class+ white people have no fear of police. And somewhat ironically, it was these types who boosted "defund the police."
Because their history of no or positive interactions with police contrasted with the stories they hear from civil rights activists about black interactions with police, they assumed the problem really must be racist police. They assume it was not a broader problem of police misconduct, necessitating the racially-sensitive reforms they were told were necessary by activists. (And there's also a reason these were the people who turned immediately from defund the police as soon as even the slightest crime problem emerged.) This is why something as mainstream as Family Guy had the skin color police chart as a gag. This is "common knowledge," really a common belief.
There is a contingent of further-left people who hate police more generally, from anarchists to activists. This comes either from ideology or experience. And there's also a group of white conservatives and libertarians who are incredibly skeptical of police, and hate things like no-knock raids. This could form a coalition for real, enduring police reform if reform were made as a government power issue, not a racial issue. But it's been massively polarized along racial and tribal lines, and I now know people with thin blue line stickers on their trucks who hate the police and think they're bumbling idiots who are having a good day if they're just being stupid, not malicious. You had natural allies and you alienated them, making them believe your reform proposals were a call for literal anarchy. The "fiery but mostly peaceful" protests didn't help one bit. And I'll say one thing about libertarians, at least they aren't anarchists.
I read an article by a black activist once, who was frustrated that, despite cases in which white people were mistreated by police, there was no large contingent of white people won over to the police reform cause. "Don't you care that police are going after you guys too?" I recall him asking, to paraphrase.
And I wanted to scream at him: this is because for seven million years you've been screaming at the top of your lungs: "This is a Black Issue! This is a Black Issue! The racist cops hate us! Our equal rights are being violated! This is a legacy of slavery! White people could never understand what we're going through! You can never understand how it is to be mistreated by the police as we have been!"
And white people, especially those inclined to sympathy for the plight of African-Americans, took you at your word. Negative white interactions with police don't register to them, because the civil rights movement has spent forever describing the problems with policing as a racial issue, not a broader issue with police misconduct. The bailey of BLM, or at least the cry from terrified activists on Twitter, was "Black people are being hunted down like escaped slaves by police and systematically murdered." This is decidedly not a message conducive to expressing police reform as a cross-racial issue, especially when the rallying cry was "Black Lives Matter" and not "Police Misconduct Matters," and even "All Lives Matter" was considered an insult. The goal was "centering the Black experience of mistreatment," not talking about the issue as something that could, even in theory, impact whites. What has been sowed is being reaped.
Police reform and accountability would be a winning issue in the US if the left would stop making it exclusively a racialized issue and the right would acknowledge that at least some police corruption hits black people worst.
But hey, at least we have more body cams.
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