It’s just another day in the New York City Subway.
The denizens of blue cities become used to the kinds of crime and squalor Normal Americans don’t see. Apparently, this incident, which was arguably an attempted murder, barely rates a media mention and not a peep from the legacy media. A viral YouTube video illustrates what happens when you bring a skateboard to a knife fight.
The New York subways provide shows comparable to Broadway. Every day, something new and crazy seems to be going on in the rat-infested tunnels beneath the city. It’s either flooding, theft, or, in this case, a knife vs skateboard face-off.
Footage captured by a bystander shows the two men squaring up in the subway. One, clearly the aggressor, has pulled a knife on another man holding a skateboard. The fight is still in the early agro stages, but it could quickly blow up.
What’s infuriating to Normal Americans, but apparently the status quo in NYC Subways, is there were no fewer than two, and as many as four, police officers standing by, watching the confrontation.
The black aggressor is, for reasons unknown, confronting the white guy holding a skateboard. The video—available here--clearly shows the white guy backing up, trying to avoid a fight, while the black guy has his right hand behind his thigh, holding a knife without its blade extended. As he continues to advance on the white guy, the blade pops out.
Remember, there are multiple police officers watching and doing nothing.
It’s impossible to know if the white guy saw the knife—what they’re saying to each other isn’t audible--but as the white guy tries to retreat and the black guy pursues him, the white guy thrusts the black guy with his skateboard—either in the upper chest or face—and he falls backward, dropping his knife on the subway tracks.
The black guy immediately gets back up and starts to advance on the white guy, but realizing he’s dropped his knife, jumps down to the tracks to get it, while a female voice off camera says: “Officer, he got a knife…he got a knife!”
That’s when the camera swings toward the white guy, who has a Taser-wielding cop forcing him to his knees as the guy obviously tries to explain what just happened.
The camera swings back around to the black guy, still on the tracks, as two, then four, officers pull him back up onto the platform, cuff and search him.
What’s jarring about the video is the inaction of the police. There are at least two, and possibly four, officers watching the confrontation. It’s more than clear the black guy is the aggressor, and even if an officer didn’t see the knife, they should have suspected one by the way the black guy kept hiding his right hand behind his thigh, out of view of the white guy who he obviously hoped to surprise and stab.
It was clear to bystanders and to whoever was making the video the black guy was the aggressor. The white guy was continually trying to back away, but every time he did, the black guy advanced on him. It was only when the black guy closed to arms length and was about to attack the white guy used his skateboard to defend himself.
And all the while, the police were watching and doing nothing. Had the white guy not been armed with a large skateboard and willing and able to use it, he could easily have been stabbed, perhaps killed, all while the police, who apparently had already drawn Tasers, did nothing to stop the aggressor.
In a situation like this, any reasonable police officer should have known there was an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death, which would have justified deadly force, or at the very least, a Taser. So, why didn’t they act until the white guy more-or-less solved their problem for them?
Do New York City Police know there’s more danger for them than a potential killer if they shoot him when they’re absolutely justified? Is that danger heightened when the potential killer is black, even when they’re black too? Have their politicians convinced them the smart thing to do is essentially nothing? Will, as usual, the black guy be back on the street looking for a new knife before police paperwork is done?
If this is New Yorker’s daily reality, President Trump can’t send in the National Guard soon enough.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.