There are post-shooting press conferences and there are post-shooting press conferences where a demonstrator grabs the police chief’s microphone, delivers a denunciation of police, capitalism, imperialism, and Zionism, while a second demonstrator holds a sign reading “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!!”, and Madison, Wisconsin, produced the second kind Thursday following the fatal officer-involved shooting of Corey Durell Ruiz.
Ruiz was fatally shot by Madison police on July 22, per Fox News’s confirmed reporting. City officials confirmed at the briefing that Ruiz had pulled out a fixed-blade knife during the confrontation and injured an officer. Court records showed Ruiz had a criminal history spanning nearly three decades, involving failure to pay child support, vehicle theft, bail jumping, threats to authorities, resisting an officer, theft, attempted invasion of privacy, and cocaine possession. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the shooting would be “rigorously investigated.” The police chief began presenting these facts.
A demonstrator then grabbed the microphone. “We don’t want any of that talk,” the protester said, which is the phrase used when you have decided that the facts being presented are an obstacle rather than a basis for the conversation you prefer to have. The protester then, per Fox News, delivered a “lengthy denunciation of police, capitalism, imperialism and Zionism,” which is a list whose scope suggests the briefing was understood by at least one attendee as an opportunity to address several things at once. A second demonstrator held the sign. The sign was specific about what it thought corrupt cops deserved.
The police chief waited. “Once the protesters quieted down,” per Fox News, “the chief resumed his presentation, promising his department’s full cooperation with the state investigation.” This is the sentence that describes a person deciding that resuming is better than responding, which is also a description of how this particular news cycle works.
There is no bodycam footage of the shooting, per the HuffPost homepage today. The investigation is ongoing. The capitalism and Zionism remain under separate investigation.
When a protester grabs a police chief’s microphone to denounce four distinct systems while another holds a sign about what corrupt cops deserve, what exactly is the press conference for?
Sources
Fox News: Wisconsin protester brands Madison ‘corrupt’ during anti-police tirade
