“There are other things they could have done” (photo caption) says someone who has zero training or experience in the job, and almost no life experience.
The Sacramento Bee, besides being (quoting my dad) a “pinko commie liberal rag,” has a long history of not being friendly to law enforcement, but lately it has turned from unfriendly to downright adversarial. This recent article is a perfect example of that, and does nothing for anyone except for the cop haters.
First, let me address the facts of the incident before we get into this latest piece of Sac Bee anti-cop propaganda. In November 2016, in the very early morning hours (5am), Sacramento County deputies were called to a house in Fair Oaks where a strange man, Jesse Attaway, broke into a home, but was chased out after trying to get the home owner to hand over the keys to his car. The suspect started jumping fences and tried to break into several more homes. The cops received numerous calls about the man trying to break into homes. Cops located the burglar and when they confronted him, at gunpoint, he refused to comply with orders. He would not show his hands and kept turning away from the cops. Finally, he pulled his hands out of his pockets in a rapid motion and pointed something at the deputies, who thinking it was a gun, shot and killed him.
Per the news stories from the time of the incident, which coincidentally was about the same time Alfred Olango was shot for doing nearly the same thing, it was indicated the suspect’s motions looked just like someone drawing a gun and taking a shooting stance.
During the follow up investigation, it was discovered that he arrived in the area driving a stolen car, which he stole during a burglary earlier in the evening in Rocklin, CA . In addition to the stolen car, he had methamphetamine in his pocket and according to the autopsy, he was high on meth at the time he was killed.
So, let me sum up Attaway’s crimes just the night of his death. Multiple counts of burglary, grand theft auto, attempted grand theft auto, possession of methamphetamine, driving under the influence, and his final act, felony stupid which is what got him killed.
Now for this ridiculous Sacramento Bee article. It starts off with a touching tale of woe, sprinkled with fictional nonsense designed to make the reader emotional, because it is easier to get you on their side if you are emotional. “On the one-year anniversary of the day their father was shot and killed by two Sacramento sheriff’s deputies, sisters Bobbi Attaway and Sierra Rivera returned to the suburban street where he died, and where they thought they could still see traces of his blood staining the asphalt.”
Uh, no, no you didn’t. The blood is cleaned up by a professional hazmat cleanup company. I’ve been to scenes of outdoor homicides only days later and there is no evidence of blood stains, let alone a full year later. But hey, it makes a more touching story if they can see their dad’s blood stains, so we’ll just say they “thought they saw” some.
But wait, we should pile on more completely irrelevant nonsense like “a father the girls described as funny and non-confrontational.” Not sure how often his daughters were tasked with arresting their dad, but oddly enough, people behave differently when they are chilling with their family as compared to when they are stoned, in the middle of a crime spree and get caught by the cops. I know that might seem odd, but trust me, it is true.
“How could Attaway, 41, have methamphetamine in his system, as a toxicology report found, when his daughters never knew he did drugs?” Uh, because they live in a bubble and did not pay attention to what their dad was doing, either that or they are lying about not knowing.
You see, this was far from Attaway’s first exposure to meth. Hell, it was not even the first time the cops found meth in his possession, and the Sac Bee damn well knows that, or they should. It took me all of 10 minutes to check the public court records for both Sacramento County and Placer County, the two counties in which this crime spree occurred, and the two counties in which Attaway had lived. Lo and behold, Attaway had two prior arrests for possession of methamphetamine for which he spent three years on probation. If the Sac Bee was interested in the truth, they would have offered that up, but truth is not what they are after.
Then they go on to talk about the “civil rights attorney” which is funny thing to call a guy who has a reputation in the area of pretty much making a living off of suing city and county government agencies, especially when the cops are involved. Beyond that, they talk about all sorts of other things, doubts, policies, other unrelated allegations, just about anything else they could throw in there before they get down to brass tacks: the shooting was deemed a good shoot by the homicide investigators, by the district attorney’s office and by the independent inspector general. Yes, you read that right, it was a good shoot according to everyone.
But that has never stopped the Sacramento Bee from dragging the cops through the mud.
Hell, this time around, they are also throwing some of the mud.
Cue the poorly edited cellphone video of a sad teen. Be sure to include family photos of the suspect smiling thrown in for that extra little tug at the reader’s heart strings…