What You Mean When You Say “He Should Have Obeyed the Police”

Maybe you’ve already heard this story:

On August 23, a caller alerted police to a domestic incident involving a man perceived as dangerous. When police arrived on the scene, they discovered the man’s child also present. The man was not compliant with orders, so police, fearful for their safety, did what they needed to do to control the situation.

You couldn’t miss it, right? So let’s have a pop quiz. Should be easy.

Name the city.

Name the suspect.

Explain how the incident ends.

If you answered Kenosha, Jacob Blake, and “he was shot 7 times in the back” — you get zero points.

The correct answers are: Draper, Utah; Richard Grant Lees; and the police let him calm down.

Bonus question: Which one of those two men was Black?

I’m not the first person to make this comparison. How could I be, when the two incidents occurred only hours apart and the cases have such overlap? But national news coverage has comparatively skipped right over the Lees story; most media outlets, which have given the Kenosha PD a platform to say they acted rightly, have ignored the glaring parallels.