Image Credit: KSL
On August 21, 2014 I wrote about the shooting death of Dillon Taylor, who was gunned down by a Salt Lake City police officer, on the same day that police in Missouri shot Michael Brown. According to witnesses, Dillon was wearing headphones at the time the officers approached, shouting out an order he most likely never heard. His cousin and his brother, both present at the time of the shooting, say he reached for his cell phone to down the music, and a trigger happy cop shot him, then and there.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after I had written the story that I realized that Rush Limbaugh and other right wing media pundits, were advancing a false narrative regarding this shooting.
Here’s a screen shot of a headline that appeared on WND.com on August 20, 2014.
Screen Shot: WND.com
The same false information has been spread across the right wing blogosphere, with sites like Breitbart, Ron Paul forums and a host of others, all repeating the same lies.
Here’s a meme that’s been spread around the internet by a trash site called “News for Whites.” Note that the color of Dillon Taylor’s skin has been altered in this and many other pictures of him, which are being distributed by right wing media sites.
Meme Credit: News for Whites
It’s no surprise that the right wing would lie about anything. It’s also no surprise that some would try to capitalize on Taylor’s death to advance a false narrative that “proves” that black are the problem, or similarly, one that “proves” that no-one cares when white people are shot by black people.
Dillon Taylor was Hispanic. Immediately after the shooting his brother and cousin accused the police of racial profiling. From the Deseret News, published on August 19:
“The chief also addressed speculation about the ethnicity of the officer who shot Taylor, saying the officer is not white. Taylor’s brother, Jerrail Taylor, raised issues last week about racial profiling. He said his brother was Hispanic.”
That the police have confirmed that the officer in this shooting is “not white” in no way proves the officer was black. Nor does it prove in any way that Dillon Taylor was not racially profiled.
This video, from KUTV, includes footage taken at the scene.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervkQ2cVJRA?feature=player_detailpage]
This is the screen shot that WND is using to advance their false narrative.
Image Credit: WND
For anyone viewing the footage or looking at the above screen shot with an unbiased mind, it’s impossible to determine the color of this officer’s skin. So, I have to ask, what underlying beliefs motivate certain people to see something that can’t be seen and to entirely believe they know things that aren’t known…?
The right wing narrative around Dillon Taylor’s killing not only distorts the facts to an unbelievable extent, it also neglects to address an underlying and on going problem in the racially divided region of Salt Lake City, Utah. The east side of the city is predominately white, while the west side is predominately made up of minority groups.
In 2012, the ACLU filed suit against the Salt Lake City police department, after authorities illegally detained and questioned students of color, in a mass sweep. The sweep, which specifically targeted students of color, was carried out by a large number of officers, not all of them white.
Salt Lake City’s chief of police, Paul Rolly, has acknowledged that police brutality and racial profiling is a problem in the community, especially toward minority and homeless citizens. The city is fortunate to have a chief of police who neither denies that the problem exists or refuses to address it. Instead, he has made it a priority to work with outside entities to identify areas where the city can and needs to improve.
Last year, Salt Lake City citizens rallied against police militarization and officer involved killings. One of the speakers at the rally was “Dub” Lawrence. A former police officer, Lawrence helped create the city’s first SWAT team. Later his own son-in-law was gunned down by a Salt Lake city police officer.
“Police officers have found themselves in situations and conducted themselves in such a way that I am ashamed of the profession that I treasured,”
he told the crowd, which was made up of many family members and friends of people executed by law enforcement in the Salt Lake City area.
In Salt Lake City, protests over the deaths of Dillon Taylor and Michael Brown are being held on a regular basis. These protests are mainly organized and led by friends and family members, with others who have lost loved ones in officer involved killings.
On the other hand, sadly, blind support for America’s over zealous, often racist, police force, often comes from inside of the white right wing. In Dillon’s case, suddenly they are on the side of the killed, rather than the killer? Not really. The inaccurate headlines and plethora of misinformation illustrate how little they actually care about what happened to Dillon Taylor,a 20 year old, father to be.
The right wing narrative about this officer involved shooting is entirely false. The right wing makes up its own narrative to explain what’s going on in the world far too often. It’s not really a secret that they do it because only a false narrative will allow them to cling to their narrow views of the world and of the people who live in the world. They need stories that will help them justify their racist, hateful, fearful ideas, and if they have to make them, apparently that’s OK too.
But this is one false narrative that MUST be called out. The right wing lies surrounding the shooting of Dillon Taylor wholeheartedly dishonor him, his family, his heritage and the life that he lived – that of a young, Hispanic man, growing up in a city where Hispanics are routinely profiled and targeted by police.
I find it very disturbing that the narrative the right is advancing about Dillon Taylor’s death is one that actually perpetuates the very problem that members of his family say contributed to his death – racial discrimination.
