Oklahoma GOP DA Candidate Pretty Sure Cops Are Never Wrong, Ever

Rallying for the Only Blue Lives Matter vote.

Last year, current Oklahoma County DA David Prater charged five cops with first-degree manslaughter for fatally shooting 15-year-old Stavian Rodriguez outside a convenience store.

Rodriguez allegedly tried to rob the store, but when the police arrived and surrounded the building, he exited with his hands raised in the air. He even dropped his handgun. He should’ve been easily taken into custody, but instead, he was shot more than a dozen times. He died at the hospital later that night. The cops claim he reached for his back pocket, presumably for another gun like in an action movie or something, but all he had back there was a cell phone.

But cops have often executed people because they confused a cell phone with a gun, and they almost always walk. Kevin Calvey, the Republican nominee for district attorney, wants to restore this balance, apparently. He’s said that as DA, he’d “support the police, not persecute them,” by holding them accountable to the same laws they supposedly enforce. He also vowed to immediately dismiss the charges against the officers.

Calvey admits that all he knows about the case is that the Oklahoma Police Department ruled the shooting justified. So much for Calvey running an independent prosecutor’s office. Calvey has declared that he’ll always rubberstamp whatever internal “investigations” of police wrongdoing conclude. Calvey's also under investigation for alleged campaign finance mismanagement, so we can imagine he's especially motivated to win the election.

During a primary forum, Calvey said, “I would have shot him myself,” but the personal itchiness of a DA’s own trigger finger is not really the standard you want for homicide cases.

This month, Calvey accused his Democratic opponent Vicki Behenna of pandering “to those anti-police people” (wink wink) when she challenged his cynical campaign promise. However, DA Prater is hardly anti-police. He became a deputy sheriff in Cleveland County when he was 19. He was a patrol officer and a member of the Norman Police Department (NPD) Tactical Unit, Underwater Rescue and Recovery Team and the NPD’s Pistol Team. He’s received multiple commendations and, perhaps most relevantly, he trained other officers. He is likely qualified to distinguish between a justified police shooting and criminal manslaughter.

However, Prater is a Democrat, and that’s enough for Republicans to smear him as reflexively anti-cop. Prosecutors who are the slightest bit progressive or in this instance treat cops like actual citizens are blamed for the supposed rampant crime rates in our cities. Cops are "demoralized," which somehow "fuels crime." If cops don't like their job, they won't quit.They'll just do it really half-assed, and we'll have ourselves to blame.

 Prater also charged Sgt. Clifford Holman, who's white, with manslaughter for fatally shooting 60-year-old Black man Bennie Edwards, who struggled with mental illness. Holman shot Edwards three times in the back.

The Oklahoma County police have some obvious problems, but local Republicans believe the cops need a more forgiving DA.

Calvey is a creep. During his 12 years in the state House, he was reliably right-wing and prone to absurd stunts. For instance, in 2015, he threatened to set himself on fire over a bill that proposed a pay raise to state Supreme Court justices. He wasn’t just cheap. He thought the court hadn’t done enough to prevent Oklahoma residents from exercising what was at the time their constitutional right to an abortion.

Then-Rep. Calvey said, "If I weren’t a Christian and didn’t have a prohibition against suicide, I’d walk across the street and douse myself in gasoline and set myself on fire." He's quite the diva, and Oklahoma County can do without a cop-humping prosecutor.

[ Boltsmag ]

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