Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who discussed how justice may be served only based on the color of one’s skin and referenced justice for George Floyd versus that of Ashli Babbit who was murdered on Capitol Hill January 6 on video as well.
Leahy: We are joined now as we almost always are this hour by the original all-star panelist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by Crom Carmichael. Crom, we were talking about, I don’t know, I guess we’d call it the disintegration of society. And one element of that is the rule of law and people’s respect for the law. It strikes me, of course, we have Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts verdict in Minneapolis and then the shooting of Daunte Wright. Now a shooting in Columbus of a 16-year-old Black girl with a knife who is attacking other girls, shot dead by a Columbus police officer. Now, that happened yesterday.
Carmichael: Okay, now, first of all, here’s kind of a way that I’m trying to describe this, which is very very close to what you just said. And that is that the difference in how people care about justice.
Leahy: That’s a very good way of framing it.
Carmichael: For example, the people who thought that Chauvin got what he deserved and are thrilled with that verdict don’t care about the woman who was shot, Babbit.
Leahy: Ashli Babbit, the 14 year Air Force veteran, shot and killed by an unnamed police officer. She was unarmed on January 6 in Washington, D.C.
Carmichael: She was not a threat to him but she was just murdered. I mean, if there is such a thing as a police murder, that would be it.
Leahy: Except the Department of Justice disagrees with you, Crom. They’re not filing any charges against that unnamed officer.
Carmichael: It doesn’t matter because I’ve seen the video. And what I’m saying is, is that for the George Floyd people, for the people who think that justice was served, and I’m not even arguing over the verdict. I’m saying just what their argument was. They said you didn’t need anything other than the video. And the video was the evidence. There’s no question about the video being the evidence.
Well, there’s a video that shows an officer raising his gun, pointing it through a barrier to a person who was not a threat to that officer. Through a barrier and shot you right in the chest. Now, that’s on video. And so for the Justice Department to claim that after an investigation, there doesn’t even need to be a trial then the question is, does Babbitt’s family have justice?
Leahy: The answer would be no.
Carmichael: The answer for their family would clearly be no. And the point that I’m trying to make here is that a large part of our society either agrees that bad Babbit’s family doesn’t deserve justice because she was there. Not because of what she was doing, because she wasn’t doing anything. She was there. And the fact that she was there made her so bad that she should be murdered and that that was just.
There are people who believe that. And then there are people who believe that a police officer, for example, now we’ve got this case that you raised in Columbus. Let me be sure I understand that I understood what you said are the circumstances. You had a Black girl who had a knife and she was using it against other girls.
Leahy: She had it in her hand, and she was attacking…
Carmichael: What I’m saying is she was attacking other girls with her knife.
Leahy: That’s what the video shows. The body-cam video shows right now, she is poised with the knife in hand, looking to thrust it at a girl in a pink outfit who was trapped against a car.
Carmichael: Okay. Alright. And then the police officer shot and killed the girl with the knife.
Leahy: Shot and killed the girl with the knife.
Carmichael: And is the last claiming that that was unwarranted?
Leahy: We haven’t seen everything yet on it.
Carmichael: Because there is a video.
Leahy: There is a video that was released late yesterday.
Carmichael: Now, by the way, did you see the video of the girls who hijacked the Muslim Uber driver?
Leahy: The Pakistani driver? I saw that. They hijacked him and killed him.
Carmichael: Killed him. And they were more concerned about their phone still being in his car than they were than the fact that they killed him. And so what I’m saying is, is that in our society now, race seems to determine guilt or innocence. Just race itself. And society won’t last very long if a person is guilty of being a bad person based simply on race. It just won’t.
Leahy: I can’t disagree with that at all.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
