What You Should Know About the Suspected Shooter of the Iowa Police Officers
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Two local police department officers in Iowa were shot to death while sitting in their patrol cars on Wednesday morning, according to The Washington Post.
Officials said that Urbandale Officer Justin Martin was killed first and then the Des Moines Sgt. Anthony Beminio was killed two miles away.
Officers arrested 46-year-old Scott Michael Greene as the suspected shooter, but they do not yet know the motive.
“We’re not anywhere close to that,” said Sgt Paul Parizek during a press conference. “We may never know what motivated this act.”
Before Greene was identified as a suspect, some Twitter users rushed to blame the Black Lives Matter movement.
The reactions follow the aftermath of several high profile "ambush" style killings of police officers.
In July, Micah Xavier Johnson shot and killed five police officers at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas. The rally was to protest the controversial killing of Philando Castile by police officers in Minnesota.
Later that same month, Gavin Long shot and killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the same place Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police, creating national outrage.
Greene's history doesn't suggest a tie to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Court documents found by The Des Moines Register show that Greene was arrested in 2014 for harassment after threatening to kill a black man in the parking lot of his apartment building.
“I will kill you, n*gger, kill you,” he said, according to the register. There are also reports that Greene waved a confederate flag last month in front black people at a football game.
Officers asked Greene to leave the football game in Urbandale, Iowa, because his flag was causing a disturbance. Greene posted a video of the interaction with the police officers to his Youtube page.
In the video, Greene repeatedly tells officers that he was assaulted by black people in the stands when they stole his flag.
“I’m a citizen of the United States of America and I would like my property back that was stolen from me,” he says in the video. “I want to report the theft of property from myself. I was actually assaulted. I would like to report an assault.”
The New York Times Lydia Polgreen pointed out that media outlets are often quick to support a storyline of a race war led by the Black Lives Matter movement.
For example, the New York Post infamously declared a civil war after the murder of the Dallas police officers in July.
The New York Post - nypost.com
There have been 48 gunfire deaths of police officers this year, according to the Officer Down Memorial page. There have been 892 people killed by police in the U.S. this year, according to The Counted project by the Guardian.
