I might not have bothered with this story had the dead criminal’s name not been Winston Smith. Winston Smith is the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Winston Smith, apparently nicknamed “Boogie,” was a wanted felon in GeorgeFloydeapolis, and wound up on the wrong end of a gun. On Thursday, June 3^rd, United States Marshals tried to arrest Mr Smith on a felony-arms charge. Mr Smith decided that no, he wasn’t going to go quietly, and “exchanged gunfire” with the marshals. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office reported Saturday morning.

As always, Mr Smith’s family demanded answers from authorities.

“I want body camera footage … we want to see that footage of what actually happened,” Smith’s brother, Kidale Smith, told reporters Friday.

“And all other security surveillance as well,” chimed in Waylon Hughes, identified as a friend of the victim.

Of course, Mr Smith wasn’t really a bad guy!

His family claims the angry social media posts don’t reflect the man they knew.

Smith “was a comedian,” his sister Tiesnia Floyd told reporters Friday, adding, “So this doesn’t sound like him.”

She admitted he had a criminal record, but said her brother was trying to improve his circumstances.

Being a convicted felon, Mr Smith was legally barred from possessing a firearm, but it seems that that ‘common sense gun control law’ was not one which Mr Smith chose to obey:

Police officials in Minnesota say the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force attempted to arrest 32-year-old Winston Boogie Smith on June 3 for a warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm, the Associated Press reported. As sheriff’s office deputies assigned to the task force approached Smith’s vehicle, he reportedly refused to comply with orders and pulled a handgun. Officials confirmed Smith fired at least one shot from inside his car.

A statement from the Marshal’s Service said Smith was in a parked vehicle and “produced a handgun resulting in task force members firing upon the subject.” Smith died at the scene from wounds from two deputies’ shots.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reported that state investigators found a gun in Smith’s car along with a spent cartridge indicating Smith fired from inside his vehicle, the AP article states.

Robert Stacy McCain noted Mr Smith’s anger at the killing of another convicted felon, George Floyd:

In the aftermath of the shooting, Smith’s social media activity came under scrutiny after we found posts on his Facebook profile in which he bragged about shooting a police officer if he was shot at and would not surrender “like the rest.”

“Officer please don’t shoot at me cuz ima [I’m gonna] shoot back I ain’t so sucker like the rest I ain’t going with my hand up” Smith wrote in a Facebook post in September 2019.

In other posts, shared days after the death of George Floyd as the city of Minneapolis erupted in riots, Smith wrote about burning down police stations and starting a “war” against law enforcement. “justice is an eye for eye u kill one of mine we need one of yours that’s justice!,” he wrote in one of the posts.

Smith was sentenced to 48 months in prison in October 2018 for aggravated robbery in the first degree but the judge stayed his sentence and let him out on parole.

Wait a minute! If he was sentenced to four years in the clink in October of 2018, he should still be alive today, behind bars, but alive. Mr Smith is now stone-cold graveyard dead because a soft-hearted and soft-headed judge stayed his sentence and let him out on parole!

“We got guns and bullet proof vest too or should be able to get em … why not just rush these fucks and start this war they keep asking for!” he raged on Facebook.

“Fuck justice anyway bitch justice is an eye for eye u kill one of mine we need one of yours that’s justice! Right or wrong fuck being right cuz they keep doing us wrong.

“I’m down with the burn everything government not touch shit else I don’t even need to loot I’ll buy my shit just kill them dirty ass cops off we tired of being scared at the red light!” he wrote.

Those Facebook posts quoted were from September 12, 2019 — before George Floyd was killed — and May 28, 2020, both after he was treated very leniently by the criminal justice system. It would seem that being easy on Mr Smith didn’t teach him any lesson.

Mr McCain began his post on the subject with a seemingly rhetorical question:

What is the goal of the Black Lives Matter movement? To make it impossible to arrest and prosecute criminals? Because that would seem a logical inference from recent events in Minneapolis.

Those “recent events” are several nights of rioting, burning and looting Mostly Peaceful Protests™. But Mr McCain hit the nail on the head: to the American left, the victims of crime might as well be written off. They are already dead, or maimed, or robbed or raped, and bringing their killers or assailants or robbers to justice doesn’t make those victims any less victimized, it doesn’t bring the dead back to life. Pursuing ‘justice’ at this point simply contributes to ‘mass incarceration.’

But when the American left promote lawlessness, they may find that they get lawlessness. And when the mob take over, the left will find themselves among the first stood up against the wall.

: