Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo Defend Cop in Ma’Khia Bryant Shooting: ‘Is One Life On That Scene More Valuable Than Another?’
CNN hosts Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon defended, at length, the police officer who shot and killed 16 year-old Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio on Tuesday.
At the top of Wednesday night’s edition of CNN Tonight, the hosts discussed the shooting of the teenager by officer Nicholas Reardon, which was captured on harrowing and heartbreaking police body-worn camera footage that was released to the public shortly after the incident. The shooting occurred shortly before the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial was announced.
Both hosts began by acknowledging the emotions surrounding the incident, Lemon saying “Ohio is tough, it is really, really, really tough,” and Cuomo telling viewers “It’s a hard one, I do not know how to explain this to people in a way that doesn’t make somebody very angry.”
“There’s a lot of anguish, people are a very emotional right now but we’ve got to be fair about what happens when police arrived at scenes,” Lemon said, adding “It is tragic that it’s a 16-year-old girl, just as it is tragic that it’s a 13-year-old in Chicago.”
But then he and Cuomo asked viewers to take the officer’s point of view into consideration, and the lives of the others involved:
Lemon: When police are chasing people, they don’t know how old they are. And they don’t run and say how old are you, I’m 13, you know? My mom let me but you don’t know that. Or I’m 16. When they roll up on the scene, they see people tussling around, someone has a knife and their job is to protect and serve.
Every life on that scene, and if they see someone who is in the process of taking a life, what is that decision — what decision that do they have to make? And I know that people say well, you know, you could do this you could do that. Tasers don’t work the way guns work.
Cuomo: Not at that distance.
Lemon: Not at that distance.
Cuomo: And not with that amount of time.
Lemon: Yes, right, tasers they don’t always connect. So, you got to get to, you know, two prongs or what have and it’s to connect, whatever. But I see it. If the woman in the pink was my sister, niece, wife, whatever, I — you have to make a decision. Is one life on that scene more valuable than another?
And if someone is trying to take a life on that scene, do you protect the life of the person trying to take the life or do you protect the life of the person whose life is an imminent danger at that moment. That’s why I’m not a police officer, but when I look at that I just it, as I said, it is tough because one is a 16-year-old. I don’t know how old the other person is. But that other person’s life was an imminent danger.
Cuomo told Lemon that “everything you’re saying is instructive and brave. Because people don’t want to hear you say that this was a justified shooting,” and added “We don’t know, but I don’t know that this sets up like it did when we first saw George Floyd.”
Lemon agreed, and the two also wondered why the head of the household hadn’t de-escalated the situation before police arrived. Lemon wrapped up by telling Cuomo “Thank you for these conversations, again we need a lot of grace. People are in their feelings right now, as well they should be.”
Watch above via CNN.
