The editorial analysis in this story is brought to you by a United States veteran and staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.
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Minneapolis, MN – Could a bad sex life have resulted in a triple shooting and murder?
Jason Mesich, a 48-year-old Bloomington man, was taken into custody last Monday, and charged with one count of second-degree murder as well as two charges of second-degree attempted murder.
He will likely face additional charges.
Bloomington police were called to the seen of shots being fired. They arrived to find Mesich barricaded in his home. Shots were still being fired, with authorities saying that he fired at least 40 rounds at the responding officers.
Police are on scene of a barricaded subject in the 8300 block of 15th Avenue. We are asking residents in that immediate area to stay in your house and if possible go to your basement.
— Bloomington Police (@BPD_MN) August 31, 2020
A little more than an hour later, Mesich surrendered to police.
They said that they entered to home to find his wife, Angela, dead of multiple gunshot wounds to the neck and torso.
They said Mesich didn’t stop after shooting his wife. His neighbors, who had just finished loading a moving van to move to a new home, then came under fire.
He struck two sisters, Makayla and Canisha. Makayla, 12, was attempting to run away from the sound of gun fire and was shielding her 1-year-old nice from the danger. She was struck in the head. She remains in the hospital in critical condition.
Canisha, 29, was hit three times in the hip and legs, and is in stable condition.
According to a GoFundMe page set up by the girls aunt, both are progressing in a positive direction, but it is going to be a long road to recovery, and it remains to be seen if it is a full recovery for either of them.
According to reports, Mesich told police that he started shooting at the family because they “weren’t good neighbors” and he “hates all children.”
Investigators indicated that Mesich told them that the shooting occurred as a result of an argument he and his wife were having over the lack of sex in their marriage.
“He said he ‘probably’ went into the home and got a gun. When he returned to the garage, he said his wife tried to hit him, so he punched her in the collarbone with two fists. He then said she told him to shoot her, and that he assumed he did so, and assumed he ’emptied’ the gun to make sure she was dead.
When asked about shooting the sisters next door, Mesich said they were not ‘good neighbors,’ and that ‘he hated all children.’”
This story appears to stem from one of two things. Either Mesich was a vile human being looking to end people’s lives, or he was mentally unstable. It could also be a combination of both.
But it didn’t take long for people to chime in on the “racist construction” of policing.
The Atlanta Black Star shared the story of Mesich and the murder of his wife and the tragic inclusion of the Makayla and Canisha.
But, the self-proclaimed narrative company, inserted a narrative in their retelling of the story.
“Some observers have highlighted the contrast of how officers were able to take Mesich into custody apparently unscathed despite the fact that he engaged in a shootout with police, while unarmed Black men have been shot and killed by officers in police encounters.”
Here is the problem with such anti-cop narratives. They aren’t true.
Let’s take a look at the facts for this year, 8 months and 1 week in.
According to the Washington Post Database of Police Shootings, police do not “continue to kill” unarmed black people. In 2020, the database shows that 20 people were killed by police that were either white or black. 11 of those were white, 9 were black.
That is almost split down the middle. But what the narrative tellers do not add in their stories are the facts of the case. They simply leave it as “unarmed black man” continue to be killed by cops.
Of those 9 this year, how many of them were engaged in a physical altercation with the police at the time of the shooting? How many of them were driving their car at an officer? The fact that they didn’t have a gun doesn’t always mean that they were not a threat.
For example, Rayshard Brooks was killed after being shot by an officer in Atlanta earlier this year, and the protests that were already going on after the death of George Floyd escalated. Those officers were charged with murdering Brooks.
Even the left-leaning Washington Post doesn’t classify Brooks in the unarmed category. They listed him as “armed-other.” And that is consistent with the video we have seen from that night. Brooks appeared to pose a legitimate threat to those officers and others.
As is often the case, there is more to the story than the narrative wishes to reveal. The end result they are looking for is not the truth, but the advancement of the narrative, which is nothing more than a way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values.
We all have a narrative for any given subject. The difference is whether or not your narrative is founded in the truth.
And the fact of the matter is that in the overwhelming majority of the cases where an officer is forced to take a life, they truly were forced to make that split-second decision. While there are instances where an officer pulled the trigger out of anger or hatred, the are the exception and not the rule.
But the anti-cop narrative wants us all to believe otherwise.
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