The murder of 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean in his own home by Officer Amber Guyger and what appears to be a concentrated effort by the Dallas Police Department to cover up or otherwise muddle and distort what should be an open-and-shut case has become a flashpoint for civil rights activists.
An overlooked Facebook post by Dallas City Councilman Phillip T. Kingston raises a whole new set of questions about the lengths that the Dallas Police Department went to try to absolve their officer of culpability for the crime.
This is a screenshot of a comment made in a larger thread, which is still online and can be found here.
From the outset it was clear that something fishy was afoot, as it took the authorities two whole days before the Texas Rangers finally issued an arrest warrant for manslaughter and took Guyger into custody — not in the city of Dallas, where the murder was committed, but in the neighboring Kaufman County, where she is much, much less likely to face a black jury (last year’s census shows Kaufman County is 83% white, as opposed to Dallas, which is only 53% white).
Now we know why…if Kingston’s sources, some of which he says are in the Dallas Police Department, are accurate.
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Since then, the Dallas Police Department has gone out of their way to discredit and smear the murdered Botham Jean, who was beloved for his positivity and his wonderful church singing voice.
Police were quick to announce that marijuana had been found in his home, which is entirely irrelevant, and argued that he had failed to obey the “shouted commands” of the officer as if one is somehow obligated to obey the commands of an intruder into their own home.
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To make matters worse, two different versions of Amber Guyger’s story appear in two different warrants; one in her arrest warrant and one in the search warrant for Botham’s apartment.
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“In the arrest warrant, Jean is said to have been across the room. In the search warrant, he answered the door” reports the Root. “It is also worth noting that the arrest warrant does not include the statements of any of the neighbors, some of whom said they heard a confrontation at the door before Jean was shot.”
BREAKING: Two different witnesses have said that they are 100% sure that they heard Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger repeatedly knock/bang on the door of #BothamJean – demanding that he open the door.
A full contradiction of her statement that his door was unlocked & open
— Shaun King (@shaunking) September 14, 2018
Originally, Guyger stated that she thought that the apartment was her own and the door was locked but later argued that the door was unlocked and open, a claim that filmed tests of the self-closing apartment door mechanisms appear to debunk.
When coupled with the assertions by the Jean family lawyer, S. Lee Merrit, that several noise complaints were filed against Botham Jean’s apartment by the downstairs neighbor, Guyger, we can see that this looks much less like an “accident” and more like a disgruntled police officer abusing her power and murdering a black man because he inconvenienced her — and an entire police department appears to be complicit in the cover-up.
The original Facebook post can be found here.
