The Parable of the Innocent White Shooter
Something quite extraordinary happened in Omaha, Nebraska yesterday in the ongoing fiasco surrounding the murder of James Scurlock on May 30. The Douglas County Attorney, Donald W. Kleine, undermined the special prosecutor who was called in to independently investigate the case that Kleine himself bungled.
To review what happened up to this point:
On May 30, white bar owner Jake Gardner shot and killed James Scurlock, a young black man participating in a Black Lives Matter protest that passed outside Gardner’s bar, The Hive, in Omaha’s Old Market. Two days after the shooting Kleine announced that the county would not be bringing charges against Gardner. This news shocked and outraged many in the community, who insisted that a white man who carried an unlicensed gun to a protest and shot an unarmed protester on a public sidewalk must have violated state statutes.
The public outcry led Kleine to agree to allow a special prosecutor to independently investigate the shooting. The special prosecutor was Fred Franklin, a recently retired assistant US Attorney of 22 years. Franklin is Black. Franklin is also a career prosecutor whose job was prosecuting federal crimes in the Omaha area, including immigration violations and charges related to drug trafficking, two common kinds of federal crimes prosecuted in this neck of the woods. In other words, Franklin’s office’s bread and butter work is hardly the fare of bleeding heart liberals or racial justice activists. To the contrary, the work involves carrying water for federal policy that most racial justice activists want to see dismantled.
Read more: http://seeingrednebraska.com/nebraska-politics/the-parable-of-the-innocent-white-shooter/