An amazing catch by Jeryl Bier, made more amazing by when the statement was issued.

At the exact same time the verdict of Derek Chauvin was being read for murdering George Floyd, police wasted no time in senselessly taking another Black child.

Ma’Khia Bryant. We say her name.

Ma’Khia Bryant called the police for help.

Columbus police officer Nicholas Reardon showed up and shot this 16-year-old child point blank within a matter of seconds.

Another Black life stolen with no regard.

The date of that statement: April 23. That was Friday, days after the bodycam footage was aired proving that Bryant had a knife drawn back and was a second or so away from plunging it into the girl she was attacking. This wasn’t BLM making a snap judgment about the shooting in the first hours after the news broke, in other words. This was a deliberate attempt to obscure what happened in order to facilitate needless racial sh*t-stirring and groundless accusations of police brutality. They don’t even mention that the life that was saved when the cop shot Bryant was a black woman’s.

Should that black life have been stolen with no regard instead?

Even the fact that the cop was a cop is arguably immaterial to what happened. Charles Cooke made the point on an NRO podcast last week, correctly, that a private citizen also would have been legally entitled to use deadly force to defend another person in a situation where that person is facing imminent death or grievous injury. If a neighbor had been standing there with a gun and saw Bryant about to gut the girl in pink, he could have fired to protect the latter. The fact that a police officer did it instead is irrelevant as a matter of criminal law — although Bryant’s willingness to charge someone with a knife in full view of a cop, not just a neighbor, does show us just how far out of control she was. Even if she had escaped with her life, she likely would have committed murder in full view of a police eyewitness. Maybe she would have turned and charged the cop himself next.

Bier has also been compiling tweets this morning from prominent Democrats jumping to conclusions about what happened between Bryant and the cop. Some of these were posted within a day after the shooting, when the author may not have yet seen the bodycam footage, but they’re still live to the world and undeleted on Twitter. A few of them were posted days after the footage aired, like the BLM statement. What’s their excuse?

Ma’Khia Bryant was a 16-year-old baby. She was shot and killed by police yesterday.

This is why no single verdict can deliver justice. Convictions don’t save lives. Convictions don’t end violent policing.

Stop killing us and our babies. Stop.

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) April 21, 2021

Ma’Khia Bryant should be alive today. Instead of using de-escalation techniques, we continue to see the police shooting and killing Black and Brown people.

We MUST eliminate the filibuster, pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and save lives.https://t.co/IYrVSR3daS

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) April 24, 2021

Tamir Rice. Elijah McClain. Adam Toledo. Ma'Khia Bryant.

The police are killing our babies. But so is the broader American system — which locks us into poverty, puts us in underfunded and under-resourced schools, and wages war on our communities.

— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) April 23, 2021

Ma’Khia Bryant was only 16 years old—killed by police yesterday. She deserves justice and accountability. We must reform this deeply broken system. My heart is with Ma’Khia’s loved ones.https://t.co/XQDLWzxFNU

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) April 21, 2021

As the verdict was delivered in the Chauvin trial, police shot and killed Ohio teen Ma’Khia Bryant.

Today, I’m praying deeply for Ma’Khia’s family and the Columbus community. We need answers, and we need accountability.

— Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (@SenatorWarnock) April 21, 2021

Amid the demands for “accountability,” not one person there acknowledged the black life that was saved by the cop’s actions.

Undeterred by the reality of what happened, protesters in Columbus turned out for demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday. “I don’t need a video to know she was a child and she deserved to live,” said one organizer about the bodycam footage. “Just because it may have been legal does not mean it was right,” another speaker told the crowd. “Violence does not have to be met with violence.” Faced with an uncomfortable set of facts, activists have chosen to dismiss the parts that are unhelpful and plow ahead with the claim that the cop should have done … something else to prevent the stabbing that was a split-second away from happening. The narrative requires that this shooting be a new example of racist police brutality, and where narrative and fact collide, fact must yield.

But not always. I’ll leave you with Dem Rep. Val Demings, who was asked about the Bryant shooting yesterday and answered that the officer responded in accordance with his training. Why is Demings more willing to see the incident from the cop’s point of view than virtually everyone else in her party? Because she was a cop herself before Congress, the chief of the Orlando PD. She knows lawful use of force when she sees it. And she’s not willing to close her eyes to what would have happened to Bryant’s would-be victim if the cop hadn’t fired.

Former Orlando police chief @RepValDemings weighs in on the Ma’Khia Bryant shooting:
"It appears the officer responded as he was trained to do," she tells @jdickerson based on footage she's seen.

She calls the incident a "sad moment." pic.twitter.com/HuVs13MBsJ

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) April 25, 2021