Chicago police shot Anthony Alvarez at the end of March.  Because he was Hispanic, not Black, the outrage mob was less outraged than it would otherwise be.  However, the fact that he was shot in the back already has activists complaining that Alvarez didn't deserve to die at police hands. Just released footage of the shooting, however, shows that Alvarez was armed and refusing to comply with a police order when he died.  It's a reminder that, when it comes to guns, the activists care little about those threatening the police.

Although Alvarez died a month ago, the police refused to release footage of the shooting, spurring accusations of a cover-up because Alvarez had been fatally shot in his back.  On Thursday, though, the Chicago Police Department finally released a five-minute video showing that the officer shot Alvarez in the back because Alvarez was armed:

As with so many of the body cams showing police shootings, you hear the officer repeatedly say, "Drop the gun" before shooting.  When a fatally wounded Alvarez asked why the police had shot him, the officer replied, "You had a gun."

The fact that Alvarez was armed and in motion when the police shot him didn't stop the usual people from complaining that, as his aunt said in a Chicago Tribune article focused entirely on anti-police words and images, "He didn't deserve to get killed this way.  What these cops did to him, it's not right.  They murdered my nephew.  They killed [him] and they killed a part of me, a part of our family.  We're never going to be the same."

The only family member not referenced in the tear-jerking article that focused closely on Alvarez's two-year-old daughter was Alvarez's father.  It does not appear that there was a father in the picture.  Likewise, there's no indication that Alvarez was married to, or shared a life with, the child's mother, although I may be reading too much into the story to justify drawing conclusions about Alvarez's relationships with his father and the mother of his child.

Twitter shows that the usual anti-cop crowd is using Alvarez's death as a political cudgel:

anthony alvarez should be here today, just like adam toledo and laquan mcdonald, and rekia boyd and every single life that has been stolen and taken away from us in the hands of the chicago police department.

— catlyn. (@catlynsavado) April 28, 2021

The Chicago Police Department killed three young people aged 13-22 last week. Adam Toledo, 13. Travon Chadwell, 18. Anthony Alvarez, 22.

This was taken at the Rogers Park Solidarity Network’s shrine commemorating dozens of lives lost to violence the last couple of years. pic.twitter.com/jjYYaXokcZ

— Adam Mahoney (he/him) (@AdamLMahoney) April 4, 2021

Anthony Alvarez was murdered on March 31st by the Chicago Police Department.

He was running away.

Video expected today. https://t.co/8m3pF2tcHJ

— рџЊЅрџЊЅ Erica, The White Trash Socialist рџЊЅрџЊЅ™пёЏ (@herosnvrdie69) April 28, 2021

That last one is especially pertinent to this post: "He was running away," says the White Trash Socialist.

True, but Alvarez was also armed with a gun that he refused to drop.  As a reminder, this is how quickly a criminal can turn on the police:

The moment a bad guy has a gun, the dynamics in the situation change.  Whether the bad guy is facing the police or running away from them, he is less than a second from being able to kill them.

The whole point of the anti-gun movement is that guns are so dangerous that they must be banned entirely to save the world.  So it says something about the irrationality and hypocrisy of the anti-gun crowd that a gun in the hands of a young man who could have pivoted within a millisecond to murder the police officer was nevertheless insufficient justification to consider Alvarez a threat.

Image: Anthony Alvarez holding a gun.  Chicago PD body cam video.

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