Unlike Michael Brown, he didn’t attack a cop. Unlike George Floyd, he didn’t have a criminal record and drugs in his system. In fact, he wasn’t even being arrested. But just like those two men, 17-year-old Hunter Brittain is dead, in his case the victim of a suspicious police shooting.
Yet unlike Brown and Floyd again, you haven’t heard a peep about Brittain’s story from national media.
And you likely won’t.
You see, Brittain was white.
The Arkansas teen was killed by Sergeant Michael Davis of the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office after the deputy pulled him over on June 23 for unknown reasons.
KATV provides some details, writing:
Family members said Brittain was working on his truck around 3 a.m. to make it to his construction job at 6 a.m. Scott Hundley owns Hundley Construction and he said that Brittain worked for him on and off for the past few years. Hundley said he talked to Hunter around 7 p.m. the night before.
“I was checking with him on his truck,” Hundley said. “[He was] sending me pictures of his truck at the shop. He says he’s been working on this truck but he’s trying to make it.”
Hundley said Hunter worked harder for him than many adults. Hundley showed KATV the Facebook messages between the two where Hunter tells his boss he’ll ask for a ride from another co-worker if he’s unable to get his truck up and running.
The shooting occurred after Brittain and a friend, Jordan King, described by sources as being either 15 or 16, left the shop — Mahoney’s Body Shop — which they were able to access in the wee hours because their families reportedly are friends with the owner. This was when Davis pulled the teens over, on Arkansas 89 at approximately 3 a.m.
“Brittain’s family said that his truck — a GMC Sierra — had a broken shifter linkage when the deputy stopped him, which caused the truck to roll backwards,” writes Jalopnik.
“During the traffic stop, Brittain got out of his truck to place a jug of antifreeze behind the rear tire to stop it from rolling into the deputy’s car,” the site continues. “The deputy then shot at the teenager as he was placing the jug down, according to the passenger and witness Jordan King.”
King states that Davis issued no warning whatsoever. “They didn’t say one word that I know of,” he said. “I didn’t hear it and it happened so fast.”
The teen said that another deputy soon arrived and arrested him. “‘[He] told me get out with my hands up and pull my shirt up and stuff, and then took me to the ground, put me in handcuffs and was dragging me around and stuff,’” KATV quotes King as saying. “‘And then I sat in the back of the cop car for about three hours.’”
Brittain’s family is now seeking justice, as the tweet below relates.
To this end, the teen’s family and friends have mounted protests (video below).
Note that unlike the BLM “protests” associated with Michael Brown’s and George Floyd’s deaths, the Brittain demonstrations involve no violence, rioting, arson, assault, or murder (video below).
Also unlike the Brown and Floyd “protests,” the national mainstream media are meeting the Brittain demonstrations and story with crickets. As the Federalist relates, “Despite this being one of those ‘unarmed police shooting deaths’ that so often arouse the media, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has done a single piece of reporting on the incident. Nothing from CNN nor MSNBC” — as of June 30.
What has happened since then is that Sergeant Davis has been fired for violating agency policy: It turned out that he didn’t activate his body camera until after Brittain was killed. Thus, there’s no video of the shooting.
To be fair, while this appears a bad shooting, to say the least, prudence dictates that we wait for all the facts before rendering judgment. Could Davis have sincerely, in the dark of night, mistaken the jug Brittain was carrying for a weapon? Is the story not as the teen’s family and friends are presenting it? We can’t know for sure, but the Arkansas State Police are currently investigating the incident.
What is for certain is that the mainstream media ought to be ashamed of themselves. They can make all the excuses they want for not covering police shootings of whites, but the reality is that only focusing on the shootings of blacks, most gratuitously, skews people’s conception of reality. Even well-meaning blacks could conclude they’re under assault and become bitter, and all sorts of people will suppose that our nation really is beset by anti-black “systemic racism.” It’s divisive and foments unrest, although this could be more of a feature than a bug.
The kicker is that, as I’ve often reported, cops not only shoot more white than black suspects every year — they’re also more likely to do so relative to the races’ different homicide rates and the rates at which they feloniously kill police. Moreover, a study found that cops were more willing to shoot white than black suspects.
And examples reflecting this phenomenon abound. As the Federalist also informs:
Just two days after Brittain’s death, 23-year-old Dimitri Lanahan was also shot dead by police near Fairbanks, Alaska, after brandishing a fake gun. He was white too, so you likely hadn’t heard about that one either.
At least seven other unarmed white people have been killed by police this year, according to a Washington Post database. (A database that users have to search through should not be confused with reporting on, writing on, and giving sustained attention to individual incidents.) Those lives apparently don’t matter as much.
Apparently not. Our pseudo-elites fall all over themselves inventing phenomena such as DWB, Driving While Black, but they couldn’t care less about DWW — Dying While White.
