That shooting at Georgia Tech was suicide by cop

What with all of the other rioting going on all over the country, you’re to be forgiven if you missed the latest mayhem breaking out around Georgia Tech this week. It resulted from the shooting of a student there by the name of Scout Schultz on Saturday night. Schultz reportedly “identified as neither male nor female” but based on the pictures and some of the local reporting I’m going with male because I can’t be bolloxed with writing an entire column while dancing around the use of pronouns. (My apologies in advance to the Schultz family if your child actually lacked a Y chromosome.)

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Since it was a student being shot by the police, the New Normal dictates that people have to immediately take to the streets. And rather than just protesting and expressing their disapproval to influence public opinion like we did in the old days, their actions had to be punctuated with some arson and attacks on law enforcement. (The Daily Caller)

Georgia Tech students rioted on campus Monday after police fatally shot a student who was carrying a small knife over the weekend…

Now, Georgia Tech students are being told to shelter in place as the campus is rocked by violent riots meant to protest Schultz’s death.

Videos from the scene reveal that the campus has descended into absolute chaos, with some rioters torching a police car and others swarming and attacking police officers.

That Daily Caller piece has plenty of video and images from the riots, complete with the now apparently mandatory police car being set on fire. Browse through for the details.

What’s of more interest this morning are the circumstances of the shooting and reasons being given for the “protests” currently taking place. There are many accusations of the police “overreacting” to protesters and shooting down a guy who only had “a very small knife” as a weapon. But once you begin digging through the details, such as a few items helpfully provided by the Washington Post, you find that this is actually something very different and tragic in an alternate way.

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The call that led Georgia Tech campus police to respond to a man reportedly wielding a knife was made by the student who was later shot and killed by officers, police investigators said Monday night.

That student, Scout Schultz, left three suicide notes behind in a dormitory room, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The developments added further layers of complexity to the death of Schultz, a 21-year-old who led the university’s Pride Alliance and had a history of mental illness.

There’s more to be found at the source. There is video of the moment in question where Schultz is heard shouting, “Shoot me!” at the police. There were three suicide notes left at the dorm. He had, according to his family, attempted suicide on multiple occasions before. And, as noted in the excerpted section above, it was Schultz himself who placed the call to draw the cops to the area, providing a description of himself and saying that “the unidentified male” had not only a knife, but a gun.

This isn’t a question of heavy handed police coming down on activists or anything of the sort. It’s also not a story of racism since Schultz was white. This is a textbook case of suicide by cop carried out by a very disturbed individual with a history of presenting a definite danger to himself if not others. In the video linked above you can hear the police making every effort to talk Schultz out of this and attempting to get him to drop the knife and cooperate. He refused and instead advanced on them. They already had reports (without knowing Schultz was the one who made them at that point) saying there was also a gun. At that point what were they supposed to do?

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While any needless death is a tragedy, cases of suicide by cop are some of the most infuriating. If the subject doesn’t have the willpower to do the deed themselves they enlist law enforcement officers as unwitting participants. And then, having achieved their goal and not being around to suffer the consequences, the community erupts over, “another police shooting” and everyone else is left to pay the price.

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