Thrall Police Department shares Kyle Rittenhouse selfie on Facebook as questions of bias, impartiality and validating a much divisive figure.
Police bias? Did a Texas police department go overboard when it tacitly approved of a much divided individual accused of harboring white supremacist notions, despite a jury last year acquitting the now 19 year old of murder during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin?
‘Make those stops, you never know who you might meet. Today it was Kyle Rittenhouse, welcome to Texas,’ the Thrall Police Department, which serves the city outside of Austin, wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, sharing a selfie of an unidentified officer smiling with Rittenhouse.
After receiving an outpouring of negative comments on the post (which wonders wasn’t the intent by sharing…?) the Thrall Police Department added a paragraph hours later, writing:
‘I must have missed something, I believed that this young man was arrested, charged, indicted and then found not guilty by a jury of his peers. Is this not how our country works anymore? The hate in these comments is terrible, if you have information that is contrary to that I would honestly love to hear it.’
As of Sunday, the post received more than 1,700 comments, 1,500 shares and 10,000 likes as of Sunday’s count.
How a 17yr old teen came to be the symbol of a polarized nation in discord
Rittenhouse was 17 and living in Illinois when he answered calls online to defend businesses during rioting unfolding in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2021 in response to the police shooting of a 29-year-old Black man named Jacob Blake while officers responded to a domestic dispute.
Amid the unfolding chaos, Rittenhouse opened fire, shooting three people, two of them fatally.
Rittenhouse testified that he fired in self-defense, with the teen’s legal team sharing video suggesting that protesters first chased down and attacked the then-17-year-old before he fired his rifle. In November 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted by a jury on all charges stemming from the shooting during racial justice protests, despite many condemning the teen as a white supremacist who should never have been allowed to carry an assault rifle during the unrest.
‘Sick you are making him out as a hero. Shame on your officer and this department,’ one Facebook user, Kari Ashpaugh, of Sattuck, Oklahoma, commented beneath the photo shared by Thrall Police Department of Rittenhouse and the officer smiling.
‘I get it, cause both can kill people without repercussions,’ another Facebook user, Joshua Davis, whose profile says he attended Lake Erie College, commented.
Several other comments criticized the post as a “disgrace,” questioned if Rittenhouse was stopped for a traffic violation and ripped the selfie as a waste of taxpayer dollars on police work.
‘Is this a joke? You’re welcoming a known killer into our state?’ Phoenix Woods, of Plano, Texas, commented. ‘This is completely disgusting.’
Kyle Rittenhouse is trending. Just remember.
Leave your cope at the door. pic.twitter.com/XsWXaBeaut
— X7gaming (@X7gaming91) August 7, 2022
Divided America
‘Imagine showing this kind of bias and getting away with it. This is like if a surgeon ran up to a pharmaceutical exec to take a selfie.’ Dennis Charles Layden commented.
Despite the predictable uproar, many users defended Rittenhouse in the comment section.
‘Welcome to Texas Kyle and have a great year at school. Ignore these haters. They wouldn’t know bravery [if] it bit them on the rear,’ Theresa Lounder, of Conroe, Texas, commented.
The now 19-year-old, from Antioch, Illinois, is reportedly attending Blinn College, a public junior college in Texas, with hopes of eventually transferring to Texas A&M University. Amid organized protests from student groups and an online petition opposing his enrollment, Rittenhouse said last year that he would no longer be attending Arizona State University, where he had planned to study nursing.
