A READER writes:

Time to leave Robbinsdale, Minnesota! The daily drama and uproar, the protests, ululations, swooning, and instant community/activist mobilizations are just not worth it. Ferguson in microcosm.

Thank goodness the cop was a bad shot. If the girl wound up dead (and assuming the cop was white) there would have been hell to pay. From The Star Tribune:

[T]he criminal complaint says [Tania] Harris “burst” out the apartment door, chasing a woman with the knife and screaming, “I’m going to kill you, b***h!”  The complaint says that the police officer ordered Harris to stop and drop the knife — a command heard by at least two witnesses, investigators say — but she didn’t stop running or drop the weapon. An officer fired twice, wounding Harris, and then recovered the knife.

“I know police have a job to do, but there has to be another way to deal with a teenage girl,” said Bishop Larry Cook of Real Believers Faith Center in north Minneapolis, where the family worships. “For her to be shot two times to me seems to be totally unnecessary.” “Police were called to protect them. And their daughter gets shot,” Cook said. “It’s easy to say, ‘Just drop that knife’ … of course she should have stayed in the house … [But] did she deserve to get shot?”

Black Lives Matter Minneapolis released a statement early Friday condemning the shooting and saying that Harris was unarmed, but edited it later to remove the reference to her being unarmed, stating: “That’s no excuse for shooting a high school student.” “The police’s attempts to vilify Tania and immediately justify their unnecessary violence toward her in the media reflects a larger pattern in which black victims of police shootings around the country have been demonized,” the organization said. “We are witnessing a policing culture that insists on shooting first and asking questions later.”

“I called the police and they treated us as if we weren’t the victim,” [Tania’s mom] Kim Tolbert said. “Teenagers fight. You don’t just shoot a teenager for being a teenager.”

“Being a teenager.” Hmm.

If you can’t shoot someone running toward you with a knife saying, “Ima keeyou!”, who can you shoot?

There really ought to be a way to have two separate systems and let folks opt in or out as they see fit. If chasing someone with a knife while screaming threats to kill them is just “being a teenager” in one community, there ought to be a way to accommodate that.  Perhaps separate neighborhoods, separate schools, or separate criminal justice systems.  Let each be governed by the laws and the people they prefer.  And let them sort out “teen fights” as they see fit and at their own expense. Maybe have some sort of internal passport system to control movement from one community to another, or notices at the border that tell you are moving from one zone to another. Given the huge cultural and civilizational gulf, reconciliation would just be too oppressive.

— Comments —

Neil writes:

Douglas writes:

Regarding two justice systems, my grandfather told me stories of rural Alabama long ago wherein the community law enforcement would arrest blacks involved in crime within the black communities and instead of prosecuting them through the normal justice system would hand them over to the leaders in the black community and allow them to administer justice however they saw fit.

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