Mass Shooting in Columbus, OH? and Trump being Trump | #TheBlackWire003

Good Morning Black America,

Today is Monday, March 19, 2023. I am not going to lie to y’all I prefer not to cover the Former Occupant 24/7 but he makes that hard at times. So, in The Black Wire’s coverage of him, we are looking at the Secret Service’s role in all of this.

Secondly, I have always wondered how is mass shootings defined. Today, I think I have finally answered the question.

Here are today’s top two stories:

Former Occupant of the White House: Day of Reckoning is Coming But What is The Secret Service Role

By now if you open any social media app or go to any news website we have all heard that the Occupant is saying, he “will be arrested on Tuesday.”

Him saying that and reports from NBC News and other outlets reporting that the DOJ, NYPD, Secret Service and Mattahan District Attorney’s office is coordinating the logistics of it all. That led me to ask the question of what would be the U.S. Secret Service's role in this whole ordeal.

By all accounts of the preparation for a potential arrest, the Secret Service seems to have remembered that its role is to avoid the limelight. Tellingly, the Secret Service is not, in the terminology of site protection, “the coordinating entity.” The agents on Trump’s detail are not taking charge of site protection or securing the courthouse, and not performing advance work for a public appearance. They are leaving that all to the NYPD police. If Trump wants to incite a crowd or call for protests, as he has, so be it. That isn’t the service’s problem!

The service just needs to show up with the suspect and let the court conduct its typical process, recording the necessary information. In New York, that involves taking the defendant's name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. That the man who entered politics by questioning the birth certificate of President Barack Obama will now be reduced to verifying his own identity in court is a delicious bit of irony.

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What counts as a “mass shooting”? The definition varies

Here in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday morning, by all accounts, one would think that there was a mass shooting: two were killed and four others were injured after the shooting.

With six being shot and for over 24 hours no media outlet calling it a mass shooting, that led me to ask the question. What categories or defines a mass shooting?

The United States Congress defined "mass shootings" as three or more homicides in a single incident. The definition was intended to clarify when the U.S. Attorney General could assist state and local authorities in investigations of violent acts and shootings in places of public use.

By their definition, the shooting this past weekend wouldn’t qualify as a mass shooting. But, the phrase along is defined differently by a variety of organizations depending on who you ask.

A stricter definition was in a 2015 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that defined "mass public shooting" as a multiple-homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms in at least one or more public locations, including schools.

Over the weekend, I reached out to multiple sources within The Columbus Division of Police and they told me that local law enforcement agencies don’t have a clear-cut definition of what a "mass shooting" is. I’m told that the main reason is that once someone is killed it is investigated as “a homicide” and when someone is shot it’s investigated as “a felonious assault.”

Considering that explanation from my sources and the other definitions above the term mass shooting is only used by the media as a descriptive term to refer to the shooting of multiple people that has just taken place.

Black America, let’s wish our brotha Spike Lee “Happy Birthday!”

Here are 3 things you probably didn’t know about Spike:

1. His first major film “She’s gotta Have it” was an Independent film - directed, written, produced, and acted in by him. No big movie studio, no gigantic budget, no huge marketing firm support. The film did exceptionally well and laid the foundation for his filmmaking today.

2. Spike Lee’s thesis film “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Hair” won a Student Academy Award. A 45-minute film that he produced as a part of his master’s degree put him on the map from the start.

3. He’s co-authored two children’s books, with his wife Tonya Lewis Lee. They’re called Please, Baby, Please and Please, Puppy, Please, and are both available on Amazon.

Before I let you go, I must tell you one final thing.

Whether the Former Occupantant is finally made to pay for some of his sins tomorrow or not. I am going to be back here to break down the day’s latest issues relevant to us.

Until next time Black America! Remember to keep it real because your conciseness depends on it.