WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal grand jury will soon begin hearing evidence about Rep. Cynthia McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Police officer, a lawyer familiar with the case said late Wednesday.
The lawyer, who declined to be identified because of grand jury secrecy, confirmed that federal prosecutors had agreed to get involved in the case in which a black lawmaker is accused of striking a white officer after he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a security checkpoint.
Hold it right there.
I object to the AP's highlighting of race in its account of the incident, as if skin color has something to do with how the officer handled the situation.
Federal prosecutors are involved because it's criminal to fail to stop and then to strike an officer. That's what the case is really about.
The AP is just perpetuating McKinney's ploy to make the matter about race.
U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said McKinney turned the officer's failure to recognize her into a criminal matter when she failed to stop at his request, and then struck him.
"He reached out and grabbed her and she turned around and hit him," Gainer said on CNN. "Even the high and the haughty should be able to stop and say, 'I'm a congressman' and then everybody moves on."
...Gainer said that racism, however, was not a factor.
"I've seen our officers stop white members and black members, Latinos, male and females," he told CNN. "It's not an issue about what your race or gender is. It's an issue about making sure people who come into our building are recognized if they're not going through the magnetometer, and this officer at that moment didn't recognize her."
"It would have been real easy, as most members of Congress do, to say here's who I am or do you know who I am?" Gainer added.
I think it's time for the AP and others to quit playing into McKinney's race-baiting.
As Gainer says, it's not about race.
It's about McKinney's failure to wear her pin, her failure to stop when the officer told her to, her failure to identify herself, and her failure to have enough self-control to keep from striking him.
Race is not the issue. McKinney would like it to be, but it's not.
The Capitol Police deserve to be honored for their service, not maligned by a Congresswoman who may have broken the law.
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