Horowitz: Respected St. Paul cop fired for shooting naked man who livestreamed sexual assault of girlfriend

Do you want to know why Minneapolis is experiencing crisis levels of police retirements? Or why St. Paul already had a recruitment problem even at the beginning of the year? Well, in a dangerous game of cops and robbers, the robbers are now the cops and the cops are the robbers.

According to a criminal complaint from the Dakota County Attorney's Office, in the St. Paul suburb of Lakeville, Joseph Javonte Washington, 31, kidnapped his former girlfriend on Saturday and brutally raped and beat her while filming the attack live on social media. Police have the video to confirm the victim's testimony. So how did he turn out to be a victim and award-winning officer Tony Dean a villain?

When police finally caught up with the depraved man on Saturday night after Washington had broken into a home in north St. Paul, he was hiding out naked in a dumpster. They deployed pepperball to get him to come out. He charged toward them, and the responding officers "deployed Tasers and a K9 in an effort to stop him, and one officer [Dean] shot the man, who was struck at least twice," according to the police statement. Washington remains in the hospital.

So, in what has become an automatic ritual these days, St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell immediately fired Officer Dean and chalked this up to another unjust shooting of an "unarmed" black man. "When I ask myself if the officer's actions on Saturday night were reasonable or necessary, the only answer I can come up with is no," Axtell said at a press conference.

What is usually missing in nearly every one of these incidents is the broader context. According to Dean's attorney, Robert Paule, this is the other side of the story:

Many attempts by law enforcement to de-escalate the situation using a variety of non-lethal methods were unsuccessful and the suspect did not cooperate. These attempts were not shown in the short body camera video just released. In efforts to add to the transparency of the situation, the following should be added to the description of the scene.

The suspect claimed to have a gun and threatened to use it against responding officers, saying, 'I have a gun in here.' The suspect also exited the dumpster and charged at the retreating police officers, even rounding a corner at them rather than attempting to escape.

At this point, Officer Dean was acting as a cover officer and discharged his firearm to protect his fellow officers and himself. The information he had at the scene was an understanding that the suspect claimed to have a gun and had used a knife earlier that evening in a violent assault and rape.

Ramsey County prosecutors are now passing off the decision of whether to prosecute Officer Dean to none other than Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Tony Dean had been a highly respected officer in the Gang and Gun Unit and was nominated as Minnesota American Legion's officer of the year. He had served in the Marine Corps for eight years prior to joining the St. Paul police force.

Who is Joseph Javonte Washington? He has a long rap sheet of violent crimes, gun offenses, and burglaries.

This is the point so many people have overlooked. The cascading effect of this de-incarceration agenda is that so many people like Washington are out on the streets in recent months and years who had previously been locked up. Police are now confronted with exponentially more depraved and crazed criminals who do not respond to common sense and will violently attack them. Let's face it: When such a depraved criminal is white, nobody has a problem with these split-second decisions made by officers. Sadly, it only becomes a problem when the suspect is black.

Taking a broad view of what is going on today, we are seeing a vicious cycle of further pressure on police leading to more hands-off policing, which leads to more violent crime, which leads to more opportunities for police to get ensnared in impossible situations that place their lives in danger. For example, in Chicago, there has been a 300% increase in attacks on police this year.

Remember, even if police take a hands-off approach in black neighborhoods (which is actually not a good thing for law-abiding residents), what happens when they get called to a scene of a violent crime? Keep in mind that in this case, as in most of these other high-profile police shooting incidents, the police were not simply riding around looking for crime. Other victims, usually African Americans, call 911 and the police are dispatched. In this case, they knew they were dealing with a violent rape suspect who had just broken into a home.

Why on earth would anyone want to be a policeman these days other than to arrest business owners for violating the cult of coronavirus? I can sure tell you that had a business owner being arrested for keeping his business open charged at police, none of these people would have a problem with the "suspect" getting shot.

At this point, what is the purpose of having a police force? While Republicans engage in a fake fight with Democrats over abolishing the police, what few realize is that they already have abolished police. Democrats (except for the most honest and extreme voices) will never officially fire all the police; they will merely prevent them from doing their job, which is a de facto abolishing that is even worse. Democrats want police around to enforce unconstitutional mandates, for which they will have full backing from the politicians to use heavy-handed tactics, but never to deter violent criminals. In that case, perhaps it's time for conservatives to support a de jure abolishment of the police.