By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author and political analyst
Now how do you explain this? Scott Paul Beierle casually strolls into Hot Yoga Tallahassee in Tallahassee, Florida and just as causally blazes away inside and when the smoke clears, two innocents are dead and a score others are wounded. Beierle is not gunned down by police but just as casually murders himself. Then explain this. Beierle was not some nameless, faceless kook, crank, or nut case who drifted in off the street to commit murder and mayhem.
He was a college graduate, and an army vet. He had a string of prior arrests for stalking, harassment, and physical assault. He cut legal deals in each case. The result: no jail time. That wasn’t all. He had a history which he didn’t try to hide of making virulent racist, misogynist, and anti-immigrant videos.
So, before Beierle’s murderous rampage, he was well-known to authorities and he posed a clear and present danger. Yet, this ticking time bomb walked free. That freedom cost lives, another community ripped apart in agony, and the by now all too familiar soul search about how this could happen. Federal and local enforcement officials were no help in giving an answer. In a recent series of interviews, they bemoaned the obvious fact that white nationalist groups have surged in the nation and much of the surge has happened right under their noses. Their answer was tantamount to a throw up of the hands when they flatly said they had no real answer to the threat.
There’s no mystery why the impotence in response to the grave threat guys like Beierle pose. He was white, male, educated, and a patriot. He had the right racial and social pedigree that immunized him from profiling, surveillance, scrutiny, and, judging from his repeated arrest record, vigorous prosecution, conviction, and a lengthy stretch behind bars.
Countless surveys and studies have repeatedly shown that that there’s no such rarified pass from scrutiny for black, or Hispanic males. The only time officials have slapped the domestic terror threat on organizations and have used every weapon, legal and illegal, to destroy the alleged domestic threat were to groups such as the Black