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Who Killed Ashli Babbitt, and Why?
Greetings, Ricochetti. With apologies for my long absence from the site, I return today to bring your attention to a piece I’ve written for The Pipeline, “Who Killed Ashli Babbitt?” You’ll recall that Babbitt was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during the so-called insurrection of Jan. 6. She was unarmed and did not appear to pose a threat to anyone at the time she was shot.
In a time when police shootings far more justifiable than this one are endlessly scrutinized in the press, how is it that Babbitt’s death has escaped even a fraction of the coverage devoted to other police killings? Here’s a sample from the piece:
At the time the shot was fired, the Speaker’s Lobby appeared to be empty save for the shooter and two or three men walking casually at the far end. Babbitt, who was of slight build, carried neither a weapon nor anything that might reasonably be mistaken for one. The officer was about ten feet away from Babbitt when he shot her and cannot reasonably claim he was under an imminent deadly attack at the time, nor can he claim he was defending someone else from such an attack as no one else visible on the far side of the doorway appeared to be closer than fifty feet away. If it is true that the officer fired in self-defense or the defense of others, what was his explanation for doing so when no justification is evident in the video, the only publicly available evidence we have? The government will not say.
I didn’t choose the headline for the piece, and for me the question of who killed Babbitt is of far less importance than why he did. As I write in the piece, local police departments are far more transparent in their investigations of officer-involved shootings than they were just a few years ago. Why should officers working for the federal government be governed by a lesser standard? Why should the Department of Justice be allowed to issue a brief memo saying the officer was faultless and expect us to leave it at that and go away? And why have the media, who have been so quick to condemn police officers involved in far less questionable incidents, been so incurious about Ashli Babbitt’s death?
Please read the column and weigh in here with your comments. And if anyone wishes to catch up with my recent writing, my articles for The Pipeline can be found here, my work for PJ Media is here, and my NRO archive is here.
Published in Policing
See Oliva Vs. Nivar (below). The Feds can do anything they d*mn well please. If the identity of Babbitt’s killer is disclosed (at least, during the Biden Administration) I will be very surprised.
https://ij.org/case/oliva-v-nivar/
None of your better insurrections break up in time for supper.
I’ve been wondering where to find your work, Jack. Ever since Second City Cop went dark, I haven’t heard too much from police officers as to how the job is going.
There was a thread on Ricochet at the time that concluded that not only did she have it coming, but that it would have been ok to kill anyone who broke into the Capital.
https://ricochet.com/861284/the-capitol-pd-made-the-right-call/
You can clearly see the officer firing the shot in the video. He appears to have a mask on, but his haircut is distinctive and it’s hard to believe that a lot of the Capitol pd don’t know who he is, either through the grapevine or just looking at the video. I’m surprised his name hasn’t leaked.
I didn’t see that at the time, and if I had I would have engaged Bethany, whose writing I admire. She’s simply wrong on the law here. Graham v. Connor is the controlling case, and this shooting doesn’t come close to passing the test.
Surely his coworkers (and many others) know who he is, and if the circumstances had been different, i.e., different protesters and a different cause, the media would have sniffed his identity out long ago. But again, I’m less interested in who than why.
I too miss SCC. He writes occasionally for the Chicago Contrarian website, which I recommend to anyone who wants to keep up on affairs in the Windy City.
He must have thought it was justified. Otherwise why would he do it? It’s easy to look back with hindsight and second guess his decision. But it must have been pretty unnerving and unprecedented to be in his position. He may have felt he was duty bound to do it.
What bothers me is why his name hasn’t been published. That makes it seem like a corrupt decision from the top by people who secretly know it wasn’t justified.
The idea that DC is an incorporated city, just like those of states, with it’s own police department, mayor, schools, etc., is a relatively recent development and was never the original intent. This of course opens everything DC-related to massive corruption.
We will never know the justice or not, they will pay off the lawsuit and keep it quiet.
They are hammering those who invaded the capitol because it was those folks who threaten them who matter, the people in power. Joe Six-pack whose shop is burning in Gotham can suck it, doesn’t effect Those In Power(tm) one bit, so who cares. But them what stormed the capitol? The almost got their dirt, disgusting paws on people who actually matter. Them we gotta prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
You think I’m overblown? Watch and see.
You could make the same claim about any police shooting. Mohamed Noor, the Minneapolis cop who shot Justine Damond, thought he had to also. That doesn’t make it reasonable as the law requires. Noor is in prison right now.
And yes, hindsight is easy, as is discussed in Graham v. Connor, but just as Noor’s partner did not fire at Damond, no other officer at the Capitol fired his weapon that day, despite several being present in the area when Babbitt was shot. The government owes an explanation as to why this shooting was reasonable under the circumstances.
A mob has a different way of functioning. It is no longer just individuals, though killing an individual can stop a mob.
Also – given that crowd, do you think the officer would still be alive if their name was given out?
She was killed by the Capitol cops, not the DC cops.
I’m fine with cops’ names being withheld if it applies across the board. Again, the big question isn’t who but why.
Derek who?
He’s still alive.
It’s how you stop a mob. I know she was a slight white woman, but she was a part of a mob at the Capitol. I don’t buy the ‘I couldn’t see anything so there was no danger to anybody’ position.
Pretty harsh for dealing with BLM and Antifa.
If the officer is the one who he is rumored to be, he was waiting for just such an opportunity.
Yes, this also works for winning spirited conversations in late night bars. But the idea of killing someone to effectively stop an unarmed crowd may work in communist countries but it is not American law.
Not to a committed Maoist.
And we know who he is.
Care to elaborate? I must have missed something there…
Also pretty harsh for dealing with mobs of violent Palestinians…or Egyptians…or Pakistanis…or…
Mobs work the same way around the world. How do you suggest they could have stopped them in the Capitol?
I don’t care what the cop’s name is. I want to hear his superiors try to justify his decision to shoot.
Because they can’t.
Different crowd.
The Damond shooting was a case of an instant split second overreaction, a huge overreaction which clearly disqualifies the shooter from being a cop. The Babbitt shooter had more time to think through what he did before he did it. Doesn’t mean it was justified, it just means the cop’s motive for doing it need not be mysterious.
A less incendiary crowd, anyway.
I see what you did there. Brilliant.