….and the reporter uses none other than Omar Jamal as a source for her story!
“After Minneapolis officer in police shooting is named, Somali community braces for backlash”
I had no intention of writing again today about the alleged shooting by a Somali police officer of an unarmed white woman in Minneapolis, but I couldn’t resist when I saw the Washington Post raising the obligatory issue of fear of Islamophobia in the sensitive ‘Somali community’ and quoting Omar Jamal.
Longtime readers know we have followed the storied career of WaPo source, Omar Jamal, for years. (See my huuuge Omar Jamal file, here)
“Community leader” Jamal was convicted more than a decade ago on immigration fraud charges, but was never deported. Since then, he has managed to become the Somali ‘Jesse Jackson’ always ready and willing to run to the media to speak for (and cover for) the ‘Somali community.’
Perhaps one of his best media spin jobs occurred in 2008 when he said, move along, there was nothing to see, only a Somali nut job, dead in a hotel room in Denver, in advance of the DNC convention with enough cyanide in the room to kill hundreds.
LOL! I am posting this to keep my Omar Jamal file up to date in case any reporters first google information on their sources!
Here reporter Katie Mettler at the WaPo revealing how the ‘Somali community’ and Omar Jamal went to work to figure out which of their Somali police officers was being fingered as the shooter. (Emphasis below is mine)
When Mohamed Noor joined the Minneapolis police force and was assigned to patrol the city’s southwest corner, the Somali community there — the nation’s largest — threw a party for him to celebrate.
He was the first Somali American officer to serve in Minneapolis’s fifth precinct and one of fewer than a dozen Somali American officers in the department. His presence on the squad brought Somali activists some pride and reassurance at a time of Islamophobia in America and nationwide racial tension stoked in part by shootings of black people by white police officers.
Now that same Somali community is bracing for a backlash against Noor that has already begun.
[….]
…..several Somali leaders in Minneapolis said in interviews with The Washington Post that they were aware of the officer’s involvement.
“There is no question that he is the officer,” Somali activist Omar Jamal told The Post. “We knew this right after the shooting, but we didn’t want to release the name.”
[….]
Witnesses at the scene Saturday night said that the officer who fired his gun appeared to be Somali, Jamal said, so he and others in the community began contacting all the Somalis in the department. They knew the shooting took place in the fifth precinct, where Noor is the only Somali officer.
“We came to know that, ‘Oh gosh, that’s him,’ ” Jamal said. “Then the word spread fast.”
[….]
The report stoked fear among Somalis in the Twin Cities, who have worked for decades to become part of the city’s fabric. There are now Somalis on the police force, the city council and in the Minnesota House of Representatives. But the largely Muslim population of Somali Americans in the region still face Islamophobia and innuendo about terrorism.
“They fear this will be just another event used to create animosity toward the Somali community,” Mohamud Noor, executive director at the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, told The Post. [See my Mohamud Noor archive—ed]
[….]
Other Somali officers in the police department are “nervous,” Jamal said.
“They’re not talking at all,” he said. “You can feel the pressure, because you know, the difference now is ‘one of you guys did it.’ ”
“The fact that the police involved in the shooting is Somali makes it a different matter,” he said.
Oopsy! Now the narrative has changed!
Mohamud Noor, who is not related to the officer, is also a city council candidate. He and others in the Somali community have protested other police shootings in the region along with Black Lives Matter, but this one “changes the narrative,” he said.
Usually, they are protesting the death of black men at the hands of police, he said. Now it is a white woman reportedly shot by a black officer.
He hopes the conversation will focus on police reform, not racial stereotypes.
So will the Somali political activists divorce themselves from Black Lives Matter?
There is more from reporter Katie here.
Maybe readers of the Washington Post are wondering why and how Minneapolis got its large Somali community in the first place and Katie can start here with her next report….
Thank first and foremost Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services (federal refugee resettlement contractors) for changing the demographic make-up of Minneapolis. Now other cities in Minnesota are going the same way. See here.