Liberal commentators criticized the fatal police shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant by arguing that teenage knife fights are run-of-the-mill occurrences that do not require law enforcement intervention.
The shooting: A Columbus, Ohio, police officer on Tuesday afternoon shot and killed Bryant, who was armed with a knife and appeared to be in the process of attempting to stab another person.
- “She came at her with a knife,” an officer can be heard saying on a body cam video released by the Columbus Division of Police hours after the incident.
- Interim Police Chief Michael Woods said officers were initially on the scene in response to a caller claiming someone had tried to stab them.
- According to Bryant’s family, she had been the one to call police for help.
The controversy: Critics of law enforcement expressed outrage at the killing of Bryant, which took place around the same time as the verdict was announced in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.
- In the wake of Floyd’s death last May, racial justice advocates sparked a contentious nationwide debate regarding police killings of black people.
- Also, at-times violent protests and riots broke out across various urban centers in America.
The takes: Liberal pundits seeking to dismiss the notion that the officer who shot Bryant may have been justified in using lethal force minimized the threat posed by the knife-wielding teen, with some of them comparing the incident to a “schoolyard fight.”
- Bree Newsome, racial justice activist: “Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons. We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon against one of the teenagers. Y’all need help. I mean that sincerely.”
- Britney Cooper, associate professor of women’s and gender Studies and Africana studies at Rutger’s University: “A Black girl is dead because the cops brought a gun to a damn knife fight. If you don’t know how to de-escalate teen girls who are fighting, you should not be a police officer. I said what I said.”
- Valerie Jarrett, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama: “A Black teenage girl named Ma’Khia Bryant was killed because a police officer immediately decided to shoot her multiple times in order to break up a knife fight. Demand accountability. Fight for justice.”
- Cornell Brooks, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: “What if it were your daughter? What if it were your child? What if it were a member of your family … in essentially a teenage fight, a schoolyard fight?”
- Jill Filipovic, feminist author and activist: “The officer who killed Ma’Khia Bryant literally brought a gun to a knife fight & people still blame her?”
Counterpoint: Some commentators pushed back against the narrative and argued that, in fact, knife fights should not be accepted as a normal part of the coming-of-age experience.
- “Look, sometimes kids grab steak knives and stab other kids in the driveway. We’ve all been there. Just innocent kid stuff. Can’t believe the cops had to get involved at all. Let kids be kids!” quipped the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh.
Relevant: On Monday, 13-year-old Nyaira Givens was stabbed to death in Cincinnati’s Winton Hills neighborhood, NBC affiliate WLWT reported.
- Her assailant was also a 13-year-old girl, authorities said.