ABC did a documentary about a white, Australian-American woman who was needlessly killed by a Somalian-American Minneapolis Police Officer named Mohamed Noor. The heartbreaking story tells the fairytale life that Justine Ruszczyk and her future husband hade planned out and was destroyed by the Minnesota Cop. Making it tougher for this story, there was no body-cam or cell phone footage of this shooting.
NPR reported:
Mohamed Noor, 33, was convicted of third-degree murder and manslaughter in April in the death of Justine Ruszczyk in July 2017, a month before she was to be married.
Noor’s attorney had asked the judge for leniency, saying the remorseful ex-officer hopes to make amends for killing Ruszczyk, who was also known as Justine Damond and who held both U.S. and Australian citizenship.
It was a tragedy, similar to other police shootings that are either accidental, or out of bounds, despite the fact that the majority of police are good people, and many shootings are misleadingly used for political reasons and the details twisted by some in the media. The connection here between the recent officer-involved shooting that tragically took the life of George Floyd is the city and state. We are certainly not saying that the two situations are exactly the same by any means.
But the irony is the media response by some, in this particular instance the New York Times. And really you don’t need to look much further than the title. “A Black Officer, a White Woman, a Rare Murder Conviction. Is It ‘Hypocrisy,’ or Justice?”
It’s a general consensus among most people on both political sides and different backgrounds that George Floyd didn’t need to be killed, just as Justine Ruszczyk didn’t need to be killed. But there are calls to appease the mob of rioters and looters that didn’t really occur the same way. Is there hypocrisy?
Perhaps only in the left-wing race-rage media outlets who change the narrative depending on how things happen, and to whom. The bottom line is both stories are tragic, and the further tragedy is the cultural divide further propagated by many large media outlets who are supposed to be neutral. The New York Times reported back in May 2019 in part:
Mohamed Noor, who is black, Somali and Muslim, became the first Minnesota police officer convicted of murder in an on-duty killing, when a jury found him guilty on Tuesday in the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk, who was white.
While many in the community said Mr. Noor should have been held accountable, they could not help but wonder what the outcome would have been if the races of the officer and the victim had been flipped.
“This is an anomaly based on the race of the officer, and the race and affluence of the victim,” said Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and activist in Minneapolis. “The system treats African-Americans and white people differently, whether they are the victim in a police-involved shooting case or whether they are the police officer. This is absolutely outrageous.”
While the officer who allegedly killed George Floyd hasn’t been found guilty yet, he probably already has been found guilty in the court of public opinion, and will likely face a swift unbiased trial. So perhaps the New York Times should stop trying to control a narrative and just report the story?
