NEW YORK, NY June 16 (DPI) – Readers of The New York Times were quick to point out important distinctions between the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. But The Times did little to highlight those distinctions, and instead downplayed intelligent reader comments – or eliminated them altogether.

There’s been only a single comment board on the NYTimes. com site linked to the news reports of the shooting death by police of Rayshard Brooks, and that board and the accompanying article yesterday got pushed off the front page of nytimes.com in short order.

But the top 3 most recommended of 400 reader comments zeroed in the important facts of each incident:

I’m liberal and strongly support BLM, but Mr. Brook’s death is nothing like George Floyd’s senseless death. Mr. Brooks started a fight with the police when they tried to detain him, and in so doing, repeatedly reached for police weapons, eventually getting hold of a taser. When he ran, he was naturally pursued by the officer. Mr. Brooks turned around and fired the taser at the officer, prompting the officer to fire his gun. Two arguments have been advanced that this was another act of racist motivated police brutality: 1) that Mr. Brooks was only asleep in a drive-through – he didn’t pose any danger; and 2) that a taser is not a deadly weapon, and should not have been met with deadly force. What these two arguments miss is that most acts of violence involving the police start in mundane circumstances. That’s why cops are often nervous at traffic stops and domestic disturbance calls. Second, the police officer who fired his weapon had no way of knowing that he wouldn’t get hit by the taser, and that if he had, Mr. Brooks wouldn’t have gone for his gun. Unlike Mr. Floyd’s death, the officer had every right to fear for his life in this case. We need to be extremely careful in parsing facts and evidence, and not view every police action involving a black man as rooted in racism. It is absolutely right to charge the Minneapolis police officers with murder. The facts in this case are different, and charging the officers would be wrong if politically expedient.

“He did not seem to present any kind of threat to anyone,” – UNTIL he punched and beat 2 cops, threw one to the pavement, stole a police officers weapon, and tried to use that stolen weapon to shoot a police officer. With a criminal history of violence, even against children. Seems like he was a threat at that point, and it aint got nuffin to do with the color of his skin. It has everything to do with his choice of action.

When someone is able to fight off two police officers and takes a even non-lethal weapon from one of them they are presenting a real threat. District Attorney cannot say there was no threat when he was not there. He was not the one who could have been incapacitated by the Taser. Not the one who would have had his firearm taken from him once incapacitated and not the one who might have been killed with that firearm if it had been taken from him. One person is responsible for escalating this to deadly force. No one else can be responsible.