Fetterman, Not The Better Man

And there goes the career of Pennsylvania Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who I talked about yesterday as a possible rising star in the party, crashing to earth in less than 24 hours later.

At the height of protests last year over police violence against Black people, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, called for police officers to be better trained to defuse incidents where those involved did not threaten public safety.

“We must fall on the side of de-escalation every time,” Mr. Fetterman wrote, citing his experiences as mayor of the town of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh.

But as Mr. Fetterman — one of Pennsylvania’s most prominent Democrats — enters the race for U.S. Senate this week, an incident from his past highlights his own judgment in the heat of one such moment.

In 2013, when he was mayor, Mr. Fetterman used his shotgun to stop an unarmed Black jogger and detain him, telling the police that he had heard shots fired near his home and spotted the man running, according to the police report. “Fetterman continued to yell and state that he knows this male was shooting,” the police report says.

An officer who patted down the man, Christopher Miyares, then 28, found no weapons. The officer noted that Mr. Miyares was wearing running clothes and headphones. Mr. Miyares was released.

On Tuesday, in response to questions from The Times, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign shared a new two-and-a-half minute video in which the candidate described the incident and defended himself — a sign that his campaign anticipated that the events from eight years ago would resurface with potential political fallout for his Senate bid.

In the video, Mr. Fetterman says that he was outside his home with his 4-year-old son when he heard “this crushing burst of gunfire,” and “I immediately made a series of split-second decisions.”

He said he saw someone “dressed entirely in black and a face mask” running in the direction of an elementary school. Noting that the date, in January 2013, was not long after the Sandy Hook school shooting, Mr. Fetterman said, “I made the decision to stop him from going any further until the first responders could arrive.”

According to accounts Mr. Fetterman gave in 2013 to local media, he chased the man in his pickup truck and used a 20-gauge shotgun he kept in the truck to hold him until the police appeared.

“I believe I did the right thing,” Mr. Fetterman told WTAE-TV at the time. “But I may have broken the law in the course of it. I’m certainly not above the law.” 

 

At no point in the video or in the article does Fetterman apologize for what he did to an unarmed Black man, aiming a shotgun to him because Fetterman thought he must have been a criminal.  Worse, Fetterman was not a police officer but he believed he had the right to aim a shotgun at another human being and detain him anyway.

 

He doesn't even try to apologize.

So yeah, thus ends the Senate aspirations of John Fetterman, because I will gladly donate to his Democratic primary opponent, even if the leading contender is a Blue Dog like Conor Lamb.

Didn't even make it 24 hours. Never should have been Lieutenant Governor, either.

He finished a distant third in the 2016 Senate primary for a reason, turns out.