Dillon Taylor (1993-2014) was a white Hispanic American who was shot dead by a non-White police officer in South Salt Lake, Utah – just two days after the Michael Brown shooting. Taylor was apparently unarmed. Some say the officer was Black. His brother, who was there, says he was White.
On August 11th 2014 Taylor was coming out of a 7-Eleven (pictured) with his brother and cousin. Three police officers were there, saying something. When Taylor took off his headphones to hear them, one was telling him to get on the ground, another was telling him to put his hands on his head. He got confused. He went to pull up his pants to get on the ground and then they shot him, at least twice.
The police were there because they got a telephone call that said someone was waving a gun. Taylor fit the description of that someone.
His brother says he was unarmed. The police are not saying whether they found a gun at the scene.
A week before on Facebook, Taylor wrote:
“I feel my time is coming soon, my nightmears are telling me. im gonna have warrnts out for my arrest soon. ALL my family has turned and snitched on me. ill die before I go do a lot of time in a cell. I feel like god cant even save me on this one . at my fiancé house in delta my lovley sister and my fiancé saved me but this time coming its me and the demons im fighting”
He had a $25,000 bench warrant for his arrest on a probation violation. He had served 14 months in prison for felony robbery. The police say the officers probably did not know about the warrant.
When he died his fiancée was three months pregnant.
The police: Unlike the Brown case, the officer had a body camera. The video and the officer’s name will be made public in days, weeks or maybe months. The officer is on paid leave. The police say they are investigating but are very tight-lipped.
Protests: There were four protests in the first two weeks. Some protesters were family and friends of other shooting victims, like Kelly Simons in 2013 and Danielle Willard in 2012.
Media bias: Some say the national media will not cover the shooting because, unlike the Brown shooting, it is not White-on-Black.
As of September 3rd, according to a Google search, the shooting was:
- Covered by: CNN, MSNBC, News One, Raw Story, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Washington Times, Fox News, Twitchy, Rush Limbaugh, American Renaissance.
- Not covered by: New York Times, Democracy Now, Time, Daily Beast, BET, The Root, Daily Caller, Drudge Report, Michelle Malkin.
Right-wing outlets were only somewhat more likely to cover it than left-wing ones: 63% v 54%.
Only three of the outlets reported Taylor’s robbery conviction:
- Daily Kos, Raw Story, Washington Times.
Compare that to Michael Brown’s alleged robbery, which was universally reported. True, Taylor’s robbery had nothing to do with the shooting, but the same could be said of Brown.
Thuggification: Google hits for:
- “Michael Brown was a thug”: 83,600
- “Dillon Taylor was a thug”: 0
Thanks to R B White for suggesting this post.
– Abagond, 2014.
Postscript (June 5th 2015):
The police body camera video of the shooting is now on YouTube. Warning: it is graphic:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01ZwvYqMRhQ)
In the video Officer Bron Cruz yells at Taylor to get his hands out. Taylor’s hands were under his T-shirt. Just when Taylor gets his hands out, the officer shoots and Taylor goes down. Taylor was unarmed.
In October 2014 the district attorney ruled that:
“Taylor’s shooting was justified not because he posed an actual threat, but because (Officer) Cruz reasonably perceived a threat.”
See also:
- Michael Brown
- Killed by the NYPD in 2013
- selective outrage
- Christopher Lane – the Dillon Taylor of the Trayvon Martin media frenzy
- The Thuggification of Trayvon Martin
2 hits for Taylor was a thug
Both lead back to this blog
Lol PROGRESS!!!
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This boy was failing at life.
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Well at least you abagond strive for things like balance ,truth and consistency,but other posts by you as well details in this post indicate that this is not the interest of the establishment nor the majority.
Just look a the lastest media coverage of Ferguson or the 200 black girls kidnapped by boco harman ,conveniently dropped off the media radar,
but every day ,day in day out we’re updated about the same locations middle east or europe.
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This Taylor kid reminds me of a Netflix movie I saw briefly for about the first 30- 40 minutes Jamesy Boy. A kid that clearly just fixes up 2 stitches on his deranged mind and is granted the CEO position over any POC that’s been @ the company for 30+ yrs just because the daughter of the company thought he was cute. You get my point…
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OK, my thoughts on the “thug” thing. “Thug” generally carries the connotation of someone violent. I don’t know if Mr. Taylor’s robbery was violent. He sounds pretty emo from his writing. However, we clearly saw Mr. Brown’s violent tendencies, just to get a box of cheap cigars…
More importantly, no one would ever call Mr. Brown a “thug”, except in response to people treating him like some sort of martyr. If there was no outrage over Mr. Brown’s death, no one would have said bad things about him. He was killed. Plenty of reported deaths out there, and it’s usually preferred not to speak badly of the deceased.
In the case of Mr. Taylor, hardly anyone cared. No one treated him like a martyr. Therefore, there would be no reason for anyone to have to justify his shooting by looking into his criminal history, calling him a “thug”, etc.
Incidentally, however, his facial hair and backwards cap certainly do look “thuggish”. If he were wearing a suit or even business casual, what are the odds that any cop pulls the trigger when he reaches for his belt? Also, if your pants are not sagging, probably you don’t even need to reach for that belt…
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The news reports I’ve read only listed the shooting officer as non-white. After reading several comment sections/blogs, I came across one comment that suggested the shooting officer was Asian/Pacific Islander.
All the officer = black narratives I’ve come across are from racists and/or right-wing sources who want to claim that non-white is a pseudonym for black. And, of course, those sources/commenters explicitly want to play the childish, even-the-score game with the Michael Brown/Ferguson incident.
Of course, the common thread in both the Taylor and Brown protests where the trigger happy nature of the police is legitimately questioned is lost on them.
What’s remarkable is how readily the vast majority of the commenters in new articles/blogs about Taylor seem to be noticeably much more sympathetic to the shooting victim, viewing Taylor’s death as truly tragic and uncalled for under the circumstances — i.e. the report that Taylor was apparently unarmed.
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More sympathetic because the “color arousal,” as one blogger put it a long time ago, simply isn’t there. Chalk it up to both an ingrained, institutional response and a tribal response, as well. You sympathize more with your own kind than with others.
Which makes black empathy for others outside of our tribe that much more interesting.
And I see you, biff, trying to soft-pedal justification for the media narrative. We’re fully aware of how that’s being shaped.
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One thing I don’t think many have brought up during all these police shootings, is the involvement of Homeland Security, in offering new training, and drills and providing federal partnerships and even tanks to local cops that to me don’t need to be more armed. Purchasing billions of hollow point bullets, and training with targets that include women and children. Even in very rural areas that wouldn’t even be feasible to roll out heavily armored vehicles through dirt roads and farm lands they have them. I often ask myself why that is. Is it because it’s a money maker for the military industrial complex in a time of peace? Or are there factions of our own government that may come after the american people?
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I cannot believe that there are some commenters that are trying to devise justifications for the thuggification or deadly shooting of an unarmed man by the police.
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By the way, it wasnt a black cop that shot him.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRhCpTB7XG4&feature=youtu.be)
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Yes, there is a bias out there. I wonder if there is store security video that can show what happened before the police arrived.
@rabab,
How do you know the race of he cop if they haven’t released the name?
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Another thing, does anyone notice that the news calls him white and not Hispanic but when George Zimmerman was UN the news they called him Hispanic? What’s the difference? They are both mestizo men with Anglo last names.
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@ Rahab
Great video (aside from the sound quality). Thanks.
@ All
Rahab’s video shows Taylor’s brother talking about the shooting. He says the officer who shot his brother was White and that the police probably perceived them as Mexican American gang members. He says no one was waving a gun. He also talks about how the police apply the law in an unfair manner.
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@ Anne
They both seem to have Anglo fathers and Latina mothers.
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@Agabond,
That is what a mestizo is. But my point still stands that you can’t call one white and the other Hispanic.
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@ Anne
I think they are both ambiguously White. That allows people to see them as White (or not) according to need. In the wake of Ferguson, the right needed a Black-on-White police shooting, so they jumped on this.
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Another case to consider is that of Jose Walter Garza.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/04/texas-cops-shoot-mentally-ill-man-armed-with-pellet-gun-until-he-had-no-face/
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@ buddhuu
Wow. That is absolutely sickening
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abagond
You beat me to the punch in your response to Anne. This situation is not less tragic, but whites only seem to use it as a means to say that the media is biased or whites are ignored in the vise versa situation.
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Anne
Good point. I did not really pay attention to that as I simply saw this guy as white. Though I think it is a ploy to show blacks as irrational and racist. Zimmerman was the aggressor and in their minds (whether they admit it or not) a criminal. Taylor becomes a victim to them and mainly because his killer was black. Had the cop been white Taylor would likely be as irrelevant as other victims of white cop killers.
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Per Abagond’s post correction on his killer being black. Apparently he was white, but most whites believed him to be black from other sources.
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Dave
I think it is just too costly to have people question the government and it will not be too much longer before those freedoms are taken away. From what I have been taught this direction has been in play for a very long time. People just chose to ignore it and during the Jim Crow era people just saw it as acceptable because it was keeping those negros in line.
While rights were established for blacks, the attitudes of the cops did not change. That aggression and culture did not change. It really was only a matter of time before it trickled into white society. And with people being able to use arms and get weapons to protect themselves at a much more higher rate, cops feel they need something more powerful to combat what citizens have. And what is more powerful that military grade weaponry? Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.
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Abagond said:
It really is, isn’t it? 😦
It’s similar to what happened with Kajieme Powell. The police do not try to avoid killing. The two officers who shot Kajieme Powell placed themselves in immediate danger by stopping right beside him and pointing guns at a young man who was clearly behaving in an erratic and distressed manner.
With Jose Garza, unfortunately, the video footage is not so clear, but again we have a person whose mind is disturbed being medicated with lead.
Subsequent to shooting these men, the police’s priority was not to call or administer first aid, it was to handcuff their victim.
I am no more fond of the police in my country than I am of those in yours. That said, in the UK the police are not routinely armed with firearms for general duty. They face people with knives on a daily basis and frequently resolve those situations without calling armed units. Despite that, we do not have a high number of officers killed or seriously injured at this kind of incident.
If your cops have guns they will kill people. It is that simple. I would be very concerned if they routinely issued guns to the cops here. They are the same predatory species as yours.
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Sharina said:
Many whites would certainly prefer it if the shooter were black. It would be more convenient for agendas and rhetoric.
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White privilege is oozing through the entire event, especially with how it’s perceived compared to Michael Brown.
An article in the Huffington Post posted an article on how white killers and black victims are reported. Granted, Dillon Taylor was no killer. He was still a white male who was a victim of police brutality. Still, he had a record. Nevertheless, the article shows evidence of a racial bias in how white victims and black victims are covered in the news:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/media-black-victims_n_5673291.html
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Dammit, comparing this to the killing of Michael Brown in any way is so wrong.
Whoever shot Taylor is under proper investigation.
Darren Wilson is not. There’s this “Grand Jury” thing which means pretty much nothing at all. If not for the protests, even *that* wouldn’t have happened.
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@ Brothawolf and naishee:
Certainly the consequences and aftermath of these events are skewed by racism and privilege. I don’t doubt it for a moment. The disproportionate (both statistically and qualitatively) targeting of POC is conspicuous, as is the lack of subsequent justice.
IMO, where the killings of white/Hispanic victims are relevant – if not comparable – is in the way they form part of a related pattern of wider police abuse. There is the clear victimisation of POC by police, but it does not stop there.
In the UK, where I live, numerically many more white people die in police custody or after contact with police than POC do. However, the percentage of POC victims is disproportionately higher when one takes into account their representation in the population. The bias is clearly present, but the sheer number of white victims shows that the police have no policy of avoiding the killing of whites, even if they prefer to kill black people. They do not particularly fear the consequences in either case. The establishment simply closes ranks to justify or excuse the killings. I am not aware of a single successful prosecution of a UK police officer for unlawful killing in the last 15 years of so.
Anyone who does not comply with and conform to the rules is at risk. Anyone who rebels, no matter how modest that rebellion, is a target.
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@ buddhuu
It’s more like these officers had tough and take it on any opportunity they can if they can possibly get away with it. On the flip side you go into any economically depressed community and they’ll tell you it’s a cop that is a POC that can sometimes be the most brutalizing. It’s like a POC cop has something prove and thus very dangerous with that deranged mindset.
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@Dave
I posted a few links in the Furgeson thread that touched on police being given military weaponry and another acknowledging the fact that the US is turning into a police state.
The killing of another young person hurts my heart.
@Anne
I agree, the media stressed that Zimmerman is Hispanic while this young man was White.
I think this may touch on the questions you posed about the enlargement of Whiteness @Abagond. Perhaps Hispanics will be White when it suits White people. They better not play that game too much or the Hispanic community will revolt from considering themselves White and refuse to bulk up White numbers by classing their demographic as White.
@Biff
Your disgusting racism is the very evidence of the complaints of POC. Look at your code words. Backwards cap, sagging pants. But when it comes to emu White youth culture one doesn’t pose enough suspicion to be shot. Disgusting!
This what I’m talking about. Those Columbine killers were White rocker kids, but when White youth sport baggy clothes, tons of piercings and tattoos, they’re okay, but anything that hints at Black youth culture, as Don Lemon suggests and many other social dress communists, warrants a kids death. This is yet more perfect proof. The misogyny and violence in rock and metal and the drug culture, the hedonism in these youth cultures, but “White youth culture” isn’t criminalised. Despite protests in this case as well as Browns, this young man isn’t labelled a thug. The only difference is many in media haven’t picked this up.
This young man had a record and Brown wasn’t an angel, but one is given the benefit of the doubt in the incident while the other is automatically a thug.
As far as I can see, these so called race baiters are on both sides. One just happens to use code words and petty justifications, is all.
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This and the murder of Michael Brown reminded me of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the UK in 1993.
This BBC Timeline is brutally honest, at least compared to white news channels in the US:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26465916
This is about the only time I’ve agreed with The Daily Mail, a British sensationalist tabloid. The five killers were, at first, acquited. The Daily Mail then a couple of years later did this:
“The Daily Mail newspaper uses its front page to name the five men it says killed Stephen Lawrence. It invites them to sue if it is wrong.”
If the murderers were to sue, they would have had to open the trial again, and they would most likely have lost and gone to jail for a long time.
2012, 19 years after the murder, two of the perpetrators were judged “guilty” and sentenced to fairly harsh, by European standards, jail terms. But there is much more to the case. The BBC timeline catches a lot of it. Read it.
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@ Ebonymonroe:
^^ Good comment. The Columbine thing… Even Michael Moore, who generally tends to be anti-racist and critical of the white-ruled system largely missed the trick there. He focused on the corporation that sells ammunition, but missed the opportunity to identify the fact that crime perpetrated by POC tars all POC people with the brush of criminality, while crime perpetrated by whites need to be analysed to find out “what went wrong”.
This is clearly a major failing.
@ naishee:
I am very familiar with the Stephen Lawrence murder. The sight of those white thugs strutting defiantly outside court made me want to commit violence of my own.
Again, that was a case where the police were exposed for the racist, corrupt organisation that they are.
I have to say that I was disappointed when Stephen’s mother accepted her peerage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Lawrence,_Baroness_Lawrence_of_Clarendon). Not only is the British honours system a relic of imperialism, but it means that this bereaved lady has been absorbed into the establishment and, to some extent, defused. I am certain that she genuinely intends to try to challenge the system from within, but I am not holding my breath.
Where honours are concerned, I stand with the brilliant black British poet Benjamin Zephaniah: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/27/poetry.monarchy
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PLEASE READ! This story definitely deserves a post on here. People are SICK!
SICK PEOPLE!!! http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/daniel-holtzclaw-alleged-sexual-assault-oklahoma-city
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@naishee
That’s a nice name.
I can see where you’re coming from but I think Stephen’s case may be a little different in that with Stephen there’s no reasonable doubt whereas Brown’s robbery, his drug use and the language in his music contradicts the non violent teddy bear narrative his family has tried to paint, and a Black witness at the scene was accidentally recorded corroborating the police officer’s version of events. But with Lawrence, if I remember rightly, they were a group of White supremacists who killed him for no reason, his death didn’t result from an altercation. Stephen passed all respectability politics.
@Buddhuu
Thanks Buddhuu I saw Bowling for Columbine not too long ago and Moore did dedicate a part of the doc to highlighting that Black people don’t commit the most crimes in the US, not even guΩ crime, and are statistically more conservative about the right to, yet it’s a national truth since news media constantly zeroes in every time Black men commit crimes to perpetuate the idea that it’s to the contrary to play into America’s fear of Black people. And he did state that White suburban kids commit the most guΩ crime along with a police officer he interviewed. Check it out again one day.
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Piggybacking on buddhuu and Ebonymonroe: I have always liked Michael Moore and couldn’t figure out why he was so hated but since i have been a commenter on Abagond and various other ant-racist blogs i understand why most of the dominant culture hates him it’s because of his anti-racist leanings. I truly can see clearly now.
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^^^statistcally more conservative about the right to own fire@rms
@Mary B
Yep! The right hate Michael Moore with a passion. I’ve even come across librals who suggest he’s anti-American. I think he clearly comes from a place of great love and hope for his country, not the spitting hatred people accuse him of. I’ve got alot of respect for that man. I can’t praise him enough.
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@Ebonymonroe: I concur, I would hear people at work talking about how they hated him and how he should be run out of the United States and just didn’t know why they felt like this but i connected the dots knowing how many not all whites feel about race related issues i can see why they react this way to him. I thought “Bowling For Columbine” was a good film. But when the subject of taking away guns from Americans comes up this is blasphemous to many white Americans.
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@Gm
Read about that a few days ago. It is extremely sick. Makes you wonder how many cops are running around raping the women they stop.
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@Anne
Actually initially Zimmerman was called white.
Though this guy doesn’t look as mixed and his skin is somewhat paler so maybe they are more comfortably looking at him as white.
Mestico/Hispanic is Hispanic to me but different strokes for different folks I guess.
That and the guys a victim instead of a perpetrator and the recent deal with cops being racist and people wanting to say they aren’t.
Which at best still leaves the cops as being pretty corrupt and needing fixing anyways…..
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Michael Moore is a good guy, but he doesn’t go far enough.
“Bowling for Columbine” was excellent, but I prefer Moore’s writing. Dramatic and relevant as BfC was, “Stupid White Men” goes deeper into the nature of things and made more of an impression on me.
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@Teddy What the name of the movie?
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@Buddhuu
What’s Stupid White men? Is that a doc or a book? Iiiiyy dunnoow about those kinda titles. You liberal White guys may have, should we say. . .. stronger feelings towards White people than I do. Lol
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@biff
“I don’t know if Mr. Taylor’s robbery was violent.”
Who would be robbed if not at least threatened with violence?
FBI’s definition of a robbery: “the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or threat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear.”
Robberies are violent, otherwise it wouldn’t be classified as a robbery.
“Incidentally, however, his facial hair and backwards cap certainly do look “thuggish”. If he were wearing a suit or even business casual, what are the odds that any cop pulls the trigger when he reaches for his belt?”
Looking “thuggish” is highly subjective, and some of the biggest thugs in history wore suits and ties everyday. John Gotti, James Marcello, Bernard McLaughlin, James McLean, etc.
That’s the problem with pretending to know what a thug looks like: you let all the big thugs get away with their crimes for many years b/c they don’t fit your childish stereotype.
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“Taylor was apparently unarmed. Some say the officer was Black. His brother, who was there, says he was White.”
I didn’t know that, but the police chief says the officer was “not white,” not that that means he was “black.” Why do people think the officer was black…has the officer been identified?
“Taylor was a white Hispanic American…”
How do we know he was “Hispanic”? Is Spanish his first language or is one of his parents from Central or South America?
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@ resw77
His brother says Taylor was Hispanic and that the officer was White.
The police say the officer was not White. When they arrested Taylor in 2012 for robbery, they identified him as White.
Someone who called into Rush Limbaugh’s talk show said the officer was Black. So did the Huffington Post.
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resw77
Yeah! What about Wallstreet thugs? What about South American drug kingpins? The biggest thugs always seem be in suits.
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@biff
He was arrested for aggravated robbery. That means he was, according to police, either armed and/or injured someone.
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@Abagond
Thanks, so this alleged rumor stems from Rush Limbaugh’s show? That seems to be where many racist conservatives get their talking points.
@Ebonymonroe
“What about Wallstreet thugs?”
That’s funny b/c my inclination was to say that thugs have to be violent, but the origin of “thug” is actually a cheat or thief. So the Wall Street thieves like Maddoff, Corzine, Dreier, etc are all thugs in suits too. Instead of stealing boxes of cigars, they steal your life savings.
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@ resw77
Not sure if it started with Limbaugh but quite likely.
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I thought originally the cop was supposed to be black? Video shows a white guy? WTF.
plus to you bootlickers that say this was justified I hope to god your kids aren’t mistaken for someone else like this guy was. Don’t give me the crap that my kids know what to do for people don’t always act they way we think they should.
You jurrurs that equited this cop this applies ot you to you better hope your not mistaken for someone else while listening to headphones and go to either show your not armed or get confuesed in a heated situation!
plus this bull that Brown was a thug crap there’s a witness that has came out that shows he had his hands up. search it new witness comes forward and video that shows two workers near enough to see what happened has one holding his hand up and saying he had his fucking hands up so…
either way unjustified and the jurrests that said otherwise should have nightmares from now on!
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The body cam video of the shooting is now on YouTube. Warning: it is graphic:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01ZwvYqMRhQ)
Officer Bron Cruz yells at Taylor to get his hands out. Taylor’s hands were under his T-shirt. Just when Taylor gets his hands out, the officer shoots and Taylor goes down. Taylor was unarmed.
In October the district attorney ruled that:
More:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/03/1390285/-Shocking-new-video-shows-unarmed-Utah-man-was-listening-to-headphones-when-killed-by-police
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