NOTE: Mr. Ruszczyk, Do Not Read This Article. This is for everyone else but you.
She made a horrible mistake. He was at fault.
For decades, philosophers and other cultural critics have told us about “objectifying women.” This is the stereotyping of women and treating them as non-agents who only have things done to them.
Don Damond was in Las Vegas when the squad car Justine Ruszczyk called for twice rolled down the alley. She’d imagined the two people fucking in her alley was a woman being raped, instead of a couple sneaking away from the wedding party being held at the end of her alley.
He told her to stay in the house.
The news media, activists, her education, and her neighbors all sold her a steady drumbeat of rape culture and fan-fiction that the police state is only a problem for a minority of people in other Mpls neighborhoods.
I sat behind Justine’s father when the State of Minnesota shoved a Ziploc bag with his daughters’ guts all over a pink Australia hoodie. You all got to sit in a courtroom and pretend this wasn’t exactly how Noor and Harrity were trained.
Fuck you people.
Justine ran out into the alley the way any frightened girl in Australia might, but that no Minnesotan would.
Everyone Minnesotan is convinced that Mohamed Noor was guilty of 3rd Degree Murder. If asked privately, nearly every Minnesotan looks over their shoulder and says, “Hell no, they wouldn’t run up to an MPD Squad Car in the middle of the night.”
He was at fault. She made a horrible mistake.
Kim Potter spent 26 years doing Marxist Praxis in the Domestic Assault Response Team at Brooklyn Center. Like all college-educated Minnesota cops, she was trained that all men are conditioned to oppress women using a spectrum of violence.
After learning that Daunte Wright had a weapons violation and an active Order for Protection, she decided to fill him full of 50 Thousand Volts of State Power.
Like Noor, she pulled her gun and made one, clear, direct, shot and claimed it was to protect her partner from harm.
He tried to resist arrest. His actions made her do this to him. She made a horrible mistake.
The Gap Between Reality and What We Want to Be Reality.
Officer Noor was trained to do pretty much exactly what he did. His counter ambush training was withheld from evidence.
Officer Potter was trained to do pretty much exactly what she did. Her Duluth Model training was withheld from evidence.
In each case, the State of Minnesota presented novel theories of law to pretend this wasn’t exactly how police are trained in Our Beloved Shangri La. The downstream effects be damned.
