What would ‘justice for Tony Robinson Jr.’ look like?
We forced ourselves to read the Page One story in Thursday’s cyber-hacked Wisconsin State Journal. The headline:
“It’s been 10 years since a police officer killed Tony Robinson”
Where DOES the time go! The subliminal headline, as any Madison WI progressive knows, is “White cop kills unarmed Black man.” Critical race theory 101: white slave-catcher cops hunt down the black man like Teddy Roosevelt on safari. The actual newspaper subhead: “Reforms salient, but slow at times.”
Not slow enough. After throwing a six-figure stipend at consultants (from Berkeley CA no less), the City of Madison created the Department of Woke Policing, i.e., a police monitor and a paid civilian oversight board, once headed by cop-basher Shadayra Gilfoy-Flores. Four years in, the clinking, clanking, clattering contraption has YET to complete an investigation into a single complaint. Not that there’s a torrent.
Nowhere do newspaper reporters Anna Hansen and Lucas Robinson quote said monitor — paid $138,381 annually. Must be on one of his (excuse us, her) paid leaves.
Kids, don’t be like Tony!
At age 19, Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. was already a convicted felon. Unemployed. Investigators for the WI Division of Criminal Justice (Report 15-1188/145) determined that on the evening of 03-06-2015 Tony Jr. was orbiting Jupiter on a cocktail of hallucinogenic mushrooms (psilocybin), THC, and off-prescription Xanax. Seething with unresolved anger over an absent, imprisoned father, Tony began attacking random strangers on the street. (“He looked like he was going to kill me, one of them told investigators after Robinson tried to choke him.) Tony T. was also fighting his companions in the apartment in which he was staying, on the second floor of a house at 1125 Williamson St. The fight was so violent, said the tenant downstairs, that her ceiling lights were shaking. The several friends partying with him were, like Tony himself, young men at the peak of their strength but they could not handle the enraged and hallucinating tornado. They did what you or I would do, they called the cops.
The other reform said to arise from that March day ten years ago is the creation of Community Alternative Response Emergency Services — unarmed mental health experts responding out of the fire department, not the police. Imagine CARES responding to this:
Hearing screaming and the sounds of a fist fight coming from the second floor apartment, the responding police officer had a decision to make. Wait for back-up or rescue whomever might be in physical danger. (If you recall, the police responding to the school shooting at Uvalde TX also waited.) Ascending the narrow stairs, the officer was confronted by Tony Robinson Jr. who, apparently, struck the police officer in the head. The officer said he feared losing control of his firearm in the struggle or being thrown down the stairs. Would the unarmed CARES people have saved the innocent person thought to be in peril? Or been victimized themselves?
Bad cases make bad law
The WI State Journal reporters seemed to make a point of hanging the responding officer’s name out to dry as often as possible, starting with the very first sentence. The man has been vindicated by an in-house departmental investigation, then by the independent WI Department of Justice. District Attorney Ismael Ozanne concurred; he had no grounds to prosecute. A Dane County judge ruled there was no authority to appoint the special prosecutor requested by the youth’s obsessed grandmother.
The city’s insurance company did pay out $3.35 million to the dead man’s white mother and her attorneys. Insurance companies are bottom-line feeders. Often it’s cheaper to settle than lose a civil case before a progressive-minded jury that might award many more feel-good millions of someone else’s money. Speaking of justice, Tony’s mom was convicted of dealing cocaine late last year and given three years probation. Despite her jury award, Andrea (Irwin) Johnson, indigent, was represented by a public defender.
The WI State Journal celebrates another reform owed to Tony Robinson Jr.’s alleged martyrdom: evicting school resource police officers from Madison’s four troubled public high schools. (Within the last two weeks: Police respond to fight at renamed Vel Phillips high school; a robbery at what is still called East high school; a brawl involving 30 to 40 kids at La Follette high school.) A defunder of police is quoted — but no parents.
The crime of disproportionality
The police monitor is also said to be tracking police cellphone GPS data to determine if officers are spending too much time in low-income minority neighborhoods. Apparently, no one is concerned whether police presence is proportionate to the incidence of crime.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Murals, marches, speeches, candlelight vigils, and other forms of breast beating. It’s a matter of time before the school board guilt-names one of its schools after Tony Jr. Admittedly, his death is a sad tragedy. That does not make Tony Robinson Jr. a victim of racism. If there is blame to be laid, it is found elsewhere.
20 responses to “Please, no more ‘reforms’”
Amen…..
Maybe MMSD can change La Follette high school to Tony Robinson high school. after they do that the street division can paint the road in front of it with “Black Lives Matter”. They changed the name of my high school from JMM to something else so keep going.
What about justice for Kyla Robinson, Tony’s younger sister?
It’s been almost 4 years and the man accused of homicide in her death has still not been tried.
And what about Althea B., who came to world-wide attention after being nearly burned to death by four white frat-cops wearing Hawaiian shirts (and cloaking devices)? The Civilian Oversight Board and the Police Monitor seem to have no interest in investigating THAT cover up!
What about Tony’s Mom and the serious drug charges against her recently? Is it true she’s broke and blew her wad?
Read the blog.
Sorry senor’. 11 felony counts and 3 years probation? What would a hard working yte boy get under similar circumstances?
The fact that, after 10 years, this narrative still has legs, should underscore the importance, to all good Progressives, of withholding body cameras from the Police Department.
It’s disturbing how the WSJ—once a refreshingly even-handed and independent paper—has now stooped to the lows of injecting progressive propaganda into their headlines. If they had a real sense of fairness, they’d publish an accompanying piece about Officer Kenny and how this incident and the local politics around it impacted his life and career.
The WSJ has now become a borderline SHOPPER with a little Progressive news scattered among the ads.
Madison’s answer to the Arlen Bystander.
Wow! You’ve got to have an epic coke addiction to blow through (pun intended) $3.5 million in less than ten years. I must take exception to your characterization of Robinson’s demise as a “sad tragedy.” (Are there any happy ones?) It’s the predictable outcome of bad parenting–for which Andrea Johnson is the poster girl–combined with absent parenting, in this case whoever Tony’s father is. All of which is aided and abetted by living in a city like Madison where, if you’re black, you’re not held responsible for your behavior, especially the criminal kind–that’s the fault of racist cops.
On an unrelated note: Just read an article about the closing of Paul’s Used Book Shop, a fixture on State Street for over 70 years. Another bookstore closes, another luxury high rise opens–Madison in a nutshell.
OMG NO! Paul’s Bookstore on State is part of my DNA. Paid a visit a few months ago to take a photo of the bookcase topped by the carving of Shakespeare standing in back of the store. A true antique.
Damn.
To add to the pathos, they sold off all the little knicknacks like the one you mention as well as the books–another sacrifice demanded by the great god Progress, to whom we are all expected to bow. Before long, Madison will be as bland as vanilla yoghurt.
Damn. 🙁
And too bad about Nick’s. (Thursdays meant the hot turkey sandwich special with mashed potatoes all smothered in gravy and diced carrot), although it was a family decision to close the restaurant. They served real food, nothing gimmicky.
Relative newcomer Hawk’s seems to be a popular State Street bistro; and there’s often a line to get into the Short Stack eatery.
But I digress.
I think she walked away with much less after the lawyers and Tony’s father getting their cuts.
It’s not hard to blow through large sums of money. She did the right thing by getting out of Madison. Imagine a lot of people came out of the woodwork asking for money. Moving to California was probably not a good choice and the boyfriend likely didn’t help.
I’ll trust Mike Koval’s judgment of the mother.
If there’s any justice in the world, she moved to the part of Malibu that got reduced to cinders.
If we gaslight people about TR and many other anti-standards crusades, they won’t figure out why white Madison liberals do everything they can to avoid coming into contact with the black underclass.
What I had read at the time (not in local papers) based on eyewitness accounts and photos, was that as the officer ascended the staircase to the apartment door, Tony Robinson attacked the officer and punched him in the head, knocking him down the staircase. As the officer fell, it took out part of the staircase railing. As he lay at the bottom of the stairwell, Tony then charged down the stairs at him, screaming. The officer had no time to use a taser or other non-lethal defense.
After shooting Tony, he immediately started CPR on Tony Robinson.
If he followed his training, he would not have used a taser in this situation. As I understand it, Madison police policy forbids the use of tasers unless there is another officer on the scene prepared to deliver deadly force if the taser fails to subdue the suspect. That is to protect the lives of the officers and to keep their weapons away from perps, as it should be.