Two African Americans who deserve national recognition

Daniel Greenfield writes at Doug Ross @ Journal,

...the media that helped cause the Baltimore riots with their non-stop coverage of the Freddie Gray death haven’t been covering the trials.

Not only is their Freddie Gray hoax being destroyed, trial by trial, based on the lack of evidence, but the destroyer is an articulate and principled African-American judge. Worse still, Judge Williams had prosecuted police misconduct cases for the Justice Department. And when he takes apart the Gray hoax, as he has done in multiple trials, it’s from the standpoint of a uniquely qualified expert.



You can see why the media is staying away.

...Judge Williams has destroyed the Freddie Gray hoax by asking one question after another. By demanding to see the evidence and by following the law. Despite his devastating statements in court, he has sought no publicity and done no interviews on the case. Instead he did something that is at once ordinary and extraordinary. He did his job.

It’s why he will never be a national figure.

But Judge Williams is not the only African-American hero who shut down the Freddie Gray hoax. There was yet another courageous figure who will also never achieve a national profile because she did the right thing.



Detective Dawnyell Taylor was the lead detective in the Freddie Gray investigation. The prosecution handed her four pages to read to the grand jury right before her appearance. Detective Taylor found inaccurate and distorted statements there. Prosecutors then prevented her from answering questions and didn’t want her case notes on the investigation. So she turned them over to the defense.

The notes included a medical examiner’s statement to her that Freddie Gray’s death was a “freakish accident, and that no human hands can cause this” despite claiming at trial that it was homicide.

The prosecution attempted to silence her again, but Judge Williams allowed her to testify.

In a disturbing moment in the courtroom, a member of the prosecution team insisted that she had been removed from the investigation. Detective Taylor replied, “You made the request, but you don't have the authority to remove me.” That moment summed up the corrupt machinery at work in Baltimore.

The Freddie Gray hoax was a rigged game. It took courage to expose it. And that’s what Judge Williams and Detective Taylor did. Despite the threat of riots and warnings of more violence, they did their jobs. Despite the damage to their careers for opposing the agenda of the national and local governments, they stood up for the truth. Despite the encouragement of the media, they did what was right.

The Freddie Gray hoax has made national figures out of hacks like Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, but has left the heroes like Judge Barry Williams and Detective Dawnyell Taylor in the dark. And that is something that we should remedy.

Despite the claims of racism, the Freddie Gray hoax was fought in a mostly black city between black officials. Even half the police officers charged in the case were black. The Freddie Gray case came down not to black or white, but to telling the truth and doing the right thing. And we should remember that despite what we often see on the news, despite the riots and the murders of police officers, there were African-American heroes in Baltimore who stood between the #BlackLivesMatter lynch mob and the police.

Read more here.