At a passionate press conference Sunday night, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms called on citizens to stop “shooting each other on our streets” after an 8-year-old girl was killed in shots on July 4. near a Wendy’s that became a highlight of the city’s recent Black Lives Matter (BLM) police protests.
Bottoms, considered a possible running mate for Joe Biden, made the comments while struggling through tears, and the nation suffered a further urban carnage attack. Sixty-three people were injured and 17 died in Chicago, including two children, over the weekend; and in New York City, 44 were injured and at least 6 killed.
“Enough is enough,” said Bottoms. “Enough is enough. We have talked about this movement that is taking place across the United States and right now where we have the ears and interests of people across the country and around the world who say they want to see change. But the difference at the moment with the civil rights movement: the civil rights movement, there was a common enemy defined. We are fighting against the internal enemy when we are shooting ourselves in our streets. “
She continued: “You shot and killed a baby. And there was not just one shooter; there were at least two shooters. An eight-year-old baby. If you want people to take us seriously, and you don’t want us to lose this movement, then don’t we can lose each other. “
“It has to stop,” Bottoms added, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. “You can’t blame this on the police officers. These are people who shot a baby in a car. We are doing ourselves more harm than any other officer in this force.”
Secoriya Williamson, the father of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner, told reporters that her daughter had been killed after at least two people in a crowd of gunmen opened fire on a car she was riding with her mother. Authorities said the mother had attempted to drive through barricades illegally placed in the area when the vehicle was set on fire Saturday night.
“They say Black Lives Matter. You killed yours,” Turner said. “They killed my baby because she crossed a barrier and made a U-turn? You killed a child. She did nothing to anyone. Black Lives Matter? You are killing yours. You killed an 8 year old girl. No he’s done nothing to any of you. He just wanted to get home to see his cousin. That’s all he wanted to do. “
The shooting occurred near Wendy’s restaurant, where an African-American man, Rayshard Brooks, was killed by an Atlanta police officer on June 12. Brooks was shot only after he hit two officers, stole a Taser pistol from one, and then turned and shot at him.
“They say Black Lives Matter is matter. You killed yours.”
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The fast food store later burned down, and since then the area has become a site for frequent protests against police brutality.
In a statement Sunday, police said the girl was in a car with her mother and a mother’s friend when they left Interstate 75/85 toward University Avenue and were trying to enter a nearby parking lot. They encountered a group of armed individuals who had blocked the entrance.
“At some point, someone in that group opened fire on the vehicle, hitting it multiple times and hitting the boy inside,” the statement said. The driver took the girl to the Atlanta Medical Center, but she did not survive.
Police said they are seeking help from the public to identify those involved and released a search poster for people wearing black and another wearing a white T-shirt.
Bottoms said there have been problems with protesters in the area putting up barriers to close the street. She said she received a message that the barriers had been raised less than an hour before she was informed that the 8-year-old girl had died.
“An 8-year-old girl was killed last night because her mother was on the street,” said Bottoms. “If Secoriea wasn’t sure last night, none of us will be safe.”
The mayor urged anyone with information about the shooting to come forward.
“The BLM political agenda results in the deaths of blacks,” said journalist Andy Ngo, who extensively covers Antifa and the BLM movement. BLM explicitly defends the destruction of the “nuclear family structure,” which President Trump has called the “foundation of American life.” Several commenters have agreed that stable family structures greatly reduce crime rates, citing statistics and personal experience.
Until recently, members of both parties viewed BLM with skepticism. A recently unearthed 2015 Democratic congressional secret note flatly calls BLM a “radical group.”
Violence in Atlanta was not limited to BLM-related areas. Police said two other people, in addition to the 8-year-old girl, were killed and more than 20 injured in shooting incidents and violence during the long holiday weekend.
The mayor said the city’s 911 system was inundated with calls Saturday night and pointed to protesters who damaged the Georgia State Patrol headquarters in Atlanta in a separate incident Sunday morning. But she said the city police force, while in charge of the shootings over the weekend, had no problem with a large number of police officers who called in sick.
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That had been a problem in the days following the filing of murder charges against one of the officers in the Brooks shooting.
Meanwhile, citing publicly available data, commentators have argued that the very idea of systemic racism by the police is questionable, and that efforts to focus on the police may hide problems elsewhere.
“In 2018, the last year for which such data has been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide criminals in the United States and committed about 60% of robberies, although they are 13% of the population “Heather Mac Donald said. wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week.
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“In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims,” he continued. “Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a man black than a black man. an unarmed black man must be killed by a police officer. “
Mac Donald continued: “A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of race discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary does not take into account crime rates and civil behavior before and during interactions with the police. “
Fryer’s work has also determined that when police withdraw from communities, black deaths tend to increase. “The false narrative of systematic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency,” concluded Mac Donald.
Edmund DeMarche and The Associated Press of Fox News contributed to this report.
