On "The Five" Friday afternoon, co-hosts Eric Bolling and Kimberly Guilfoyle speculated that Samuel Dubose and other black males wouldn't be murdered by police officers quite so often if they were just more servile in their interactions with law enforcement.
"It's tough because look, first of all it's a tragedy," Bolling began. "There's another instance where someone had a missing front license plate and ends up dead." After noting that the footage from Tensing's body camera is proof that such devices should be universally employed, he shifted gears, explaining that "everyone is rushing this."
The prosecutor, Bolling said, "just said the cop was guilty of murder. He's already indicted him, and I'm not defending this at all, but people have to realize you can't resist arrest."
"This guy is taking off," he continued. "I don't think that cop was fearing for his life, so I think he'll probably be found guilty, but stop resisting."
Guilfoyle picked up the victim-blaming baton and ran with it. "I hear what you're saying," she said. "Saying this is unnecessary -- why put yourself in danger?"
"Exactly," Bolling replied, "time and time again, it always comes down to someone getting hurt, getting killed, by bad decisions by a cop. But those decisions wouldn't have been made if the perp didn't run away. Can you imagine what society would be like if everyone thought, if I just run away that cop can't chase me? We'd be a lawless society."
Guifoyle again agreed, saying that if you're pulled over with probable cause -- as Dubose was -- "that is a justifiable stop" and black males should "just comply."
"Don't lose your life because you don't know who's on the other end of it," she said, before acknowledging that "it shouldn't be this way." On that point, at least, she's absolutely correct -- African-American men shouldn't have to "just comply" with every order, lawful or otherwise, given by a police officer in order to avoid being killed during a routine traffic stop.
Watch video of the exchange below via Media Matters.
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