On the October 25, 2020 installment of FOX 5’s Georgia Gang, politicians were implored to remember the name of Secoriea Turner, an eight-year-old child gunned down in what was basically a criminal gang uprising in Atlanta. Disturbingly, almost no one seems to be demanding that any one chant Secoriea Turner’s name on command.
Why not? She was a faultless little girl, senselessly slaughtered because she was unfortunate enough to be in the gang-crime-denying City of Atlanta during official “stand down” orders to law enforcement. Shamefully, there is no clamor to “reimage” or “reform” the failed policing and prosecuting that led to her tragic death.
To the contrary, in far too many cases, when individuals sporting extensive criminal histories wantonly attack police it is they—and not the Secoriea Turners of the world— who receive the benefit of the Left’s compulsory “namesaying.”
Again, and again, left-wing bullying propels an inverse relationship between the degree of innocence of the deceased and the Left’s willingness to demand that we “say their name.” The more guiltless the victim, the less the Left’s outrage, and vice-versa.
Want proof? Here are a just a few innocents, in addition to Secoria Turner, whose names are getting said very little:
- Nicholas Sheffey: 11-year-old DeKalb County child murdered by a white Crips gang member while he lay asleep in his bed reading the Holy Bible;
- Janina Valenzuela: 14-year-old girl allegedly hacked to death in Cobb County as part of an MS-13 gang initiation rite;
- David Dorn: 77-year-old retired St. Louis police captain, murdered in what is clearly gang looting of a friend’s store which Dorn sought to help protect; and
- Cannon Hinnant: 5-year-old child shot and killed by a likely gang member with an extensive criminal history while he played with his sisters outside of his North Carolina home.
The Leftist disjunction is not limited to gang homicides. It includes officer involved shootings. The paucity of namesaying from the Left is evident where guiltless victims are killed as the result of the most vile and extreme cases of police misconduct imaginable. Here are examples of unarmed victims felled at the hands of out-of-control killers with badges:
- Jeremy Mardis: 6-year-old autistic boy shot and killed in a hail of gunfire by Louisiana law enforcement officers while his father had his hands raised in submission to their authority;
- Tommy Timpa: 32-year-old mentally challenged man who called police saying that he was scared and needed help, suffocated to death after being held on the ground more than 13 minutes by multiple officers who joked and laughed as he pleaded for his life; and
- Daniel Shaver: 26-year-old salesman, shot to death in while crawling on the ground in a hotel hallway while trying to comply with bellicose commands from a heavily tattooed, overly aggressive, screaming cop who had “You’re F—-d” emblazed on the military-style assault rifle he use to lethally carry out his threats.
All the names above, and countless others, memorialize victims who were blameless. They perished at the hands of malicious misconduct. Some was official (law enforcement), some criminal (gang). Neither should be tolerated. All should be condemned.
Yet we never seem to have been expected by the Left to say any of their names.
Would it be different if these hapless victims were gang members themselves? What if they had criminal records? How about if they were attacked police or home invading innocent citizens on their way to crossing the great divide?
Experience shows that it is then— and only then— that there would be a hope of the Left taking notice. In fact, with disturbing frequency, as the innocence of the deceased goes down, the greater the Left’s demand that we lionize them, starting with saying their names. In such cases, criminal unrest, mass murder and rioting (sanctified by the Left as “mostly peaceful protests,” appears to be all but encouraged by mainstream media and political elites as “justifiable outrage” as a supplement the Left’s other demands.
This is all while gang-related murders, fueled by mass-deincarceration of dangerous criminals skyrocket in Atlanta and across the nation.
Of course, gangs dominate far more than murder. In November, an alleged DeKalb County serial rapist was arrested. The mugshot showed what has been identified as a gang tattoo emblazed on the suspect’s throat. No mention of this salient detail was made in the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s “reporting.”
Seemingly complicit, the gang-crime-denying has refused to confront any of the four Georgia U.S. Senate candidates with what their plans are to abate the epidemic of homicide in Atlanta and across the country. Remarkably, none of the candidates seem to want to address the carnage.
So whose names matter to them?
Secoriea Turner was a little girl who deserved her life and her future. Her name is exactly the type of name that we should say first and loudly.
And, then, maybe, leaders will listen and we will not have so many names to say.
Phil Kent is the CEO & publisher of InsiderAdbvantage Georgia and James magazine.
