Everyone Got The Pulse Massacre Story Completely Wrong

canada goose store Every mass tragedy begets a frantic search for answers, for a common understanding of what happened, for a narrative, and the 2016 Pulse massacre was no different. canada goose store

Canada Goose Jackets Not long after Omar Mateen opened fire inside a bustling gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the media scrambled to understand his depraved actions. Almost overnight, a narrative emerged that until now has canada goose outlet belgium been impossible to dislodge: Mateen planned and executed an attack on Pulse because he hated gay people. Canada Goose Jackets

Canada Goose online “Let’s say it plainly: This was a mass slaying aimed at LGBT people,” Tim Teeman wrote in The Daily Beast. The massacre was “undeniably a homophobic hate crime,” Jeet Heer wrote in The New Republic. Some speculated that Mateen was canada goose outlet toronto factory a closeted gay man. He was likely “trying to reconcile his inner canada goose uk site feelings with his strongly homophobic Muslim culture,” James S. Robbins wrote in USA Today. Canada Goose online

canada goose clearance sale There was compelling evidence of other motivations. Mateen had pledged allegiance to the self described Islamic State during the shooting, and explicitly said that he was acting to avenge air buy canada goose uk strikes in the Middle East. “You have to tell America to stop canada goose parka outlet uk bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people,” he told a crisis negotiator over the phone while at Pulse. “What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there. You get what I’m saying?” canada goose clearance sale

But this was a tricky thing to get a handle on 49 dead and another 53 wounded, so many of them members of a historically marginalized and persecuted group. How could they not have been targeted? To say that the attack was not “rooted in homophobia,” one commenter wrote in USA Today, was to “erase the LGBT community causing only more pain by invalidating their experiences.”

Over the past two weeks in Orlando, Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, was tried for having allegedly helped him canada goose outlet in chicago plan his attack. canada goose outlet black friday The popular understanding of the Pulse shooting as a carefully targeted massacre was on trial as well. And in acquitting Salman, 31, on Friday, a jury canada goose womens outlet also delivered a verdict on the story we’d told ourselves about the killings: We’d gotten it wrong.

canada goose deals In the wake of the shooting, the media and public focused on certain canada goose outlet details, many of which were later determined to be unfounded, and discounted others, like Mateen’s own explanation for his actions. If Mateen had indeed been motivated by something other than homophobia, the grief and terror of the gay community were no less real and no less urgent for it. But the narrative that was repeated and turned into fact that Mateen had picked Pulse because of who its patrons were and what they represented had the effect of obscuring another, smaller injustice: the prosecution of Mateen’s wife. “‘FRY’ HER,” his sign read, “TILL SHE HAS NO ‘PULSE.’” It didn’t seem to occur to many people that Noor Salman might have been a victim of Mateen, too. canada goose deals

“The media missed the story,” Charles Swift, one of Salman’s lawyers said, “because they depended on the government to tell it to them.”

Salman’s trial cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen. (There were daily, obsessive searches about ISIS, however.) Mateen had extramarital affairs with women, two of whom testified during the trial about his duplicitous ways.

Mateen may very well have been homophobic. He supported ISIS, after all, and his father, an FBI informant currently under criminal investigation, told NBC that his son once got angry after seeing two men kissing. But whatever his personal feelings, the overwhelming evidence suggests his attack was not motivated by it.

As far as investigators could tell, canada goose outlet hong kong Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statementthat Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex. They presented evidence demonstrating that Mateen chose Pulse randomly less than an hour before the attack. It is not clear he even knew it was a gay bar. A security guard recalled Mateen asking where all the women were, apparently in earnest, in the minutes before he began his slaughter. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the attack “an act of terror and an act of hate” and pledged to examine all possible motivations for Mateen’s actions.

Canada Goose Outlet Seven months after the shooting, Salman was hit with federal terrorism charges for canada goose outlet 80 off allegedly aiding and https://www.canadagooseisverige.com abetting her husband. But hate crime charges never came “and now you know why,” said Swift. Despite the overwhelming public consensus, there apparently wasn’t enough evidence for a hate crime classification. In fact, the 2016 Hate Crimes in Florida Report does not include the 49 victims of the Pulse canada goose outlet woodbury shooting in its official canada goose outlet locations in toronto total. “These crimes canada goose outlet near me were not classified as hate crimes by the Orlando Police Department in the Uniform Crime Reporting Information System,” the report noted. Canada Goose Outlet

canadian goose jacket From the start, the evidence against Salman was paper thin and hinged on a “confession” that an FBI agent hand wrote for her after an 11 hour interrogation in the immediate aftermath of the massacre that was neither filmed nor recorded. Her lawyers maintain the statement was coerced. canadian goose jacket

In it, Salman claimed she knew Mateen was headed to canada goose outlet real Pulse that night, canada goose outlet buffalo and that they’d scouted the location together. But within a few days of the massacre, the government had reason to believe her statement was false. If Mateen didn’t know where he was going that night, how could his wife have known? How could she, in the words of the June 15, 2016, New York Post cover, “have saved them all”?

Canada Goose Parka Prosecutors decided to pursue charges against Salman anyway, knowing full well that the statements she gave the FBI could not be corroborated. Canada Goose Parka

cheap Canada Goose “[T]he agents had coerced Noor into agreeing that Omar Mateen had cased the Pulse and selected the nightclub as his target,” said Swift in an email, “and it was not in canada goose uk the government’s interest to contradict that narrative.” cheap Canada Goose

Beyond canada goose outlet online the courtroom, the canada goose outlet canada narrative had taken on a powerful dimension in Orlando. All over town, in bars and restaurants, canada goose outlet in usa you could see signs reading, “We will not let hate win.” During the trial, I spoke canada goose outlet uk fake to canada goose outlet store montreal one LGBT community leader there who said he would always know, in his heart, that Mateen picked Pulse to kill gay people, and that Salman knew canada goose outlet usa of his plans. No amount of evidence would canada goose outlet online uk change his mind, he said.

canada goose black friday sale Despite the thinness of the case against her, there was no public reckoning over whether the aggressive prosecution was warranted, or just. In my conversations with dozens of people in Orlando, canada goose coats uk I did not encounter a single person who thought Salman might be innocent. canada goose black friday sale

Canada Goose sale In May of 2017, Jacquelyn Campbell, a leading expert on domestic violence who evaluated Salman at the request of her attorneys, confided in me that she was extremely concerned about the case, and wanted to make sure it was on my radar. But where was everyone else? Where were the sort of liberal pressure groups that normally could be counted on to bang the drum about domestic violence, Islamophobia, overzealous terror prosecutions? Canada Goose sale

canada goose coats There was an undeniable sadism in how canada goose vest outlet the government went canada goose jacket outlet uk about its case. Salman had originally been granted bail by a magistrate judge in California, but prosecutors appealed, asking a federal judge to keep her behind bars. They pointed to her confession that she had scouted Pulse with her husband even though by this point they had strong canada goose outlet website legit evidence to the contrary as a sign she was a danger to society. At the time, Judge Paul Byron sided with the government and canada goose outlet online store kept Salman imprisoned before her trial. canada goose coats

canada goose clearance During the trial, when an FBI agent testified that he had determined “within days” of the massacre that Salman had never been in the vicinity of Pulse, based on her cell phone data, Byron stopped him. canada goose clearance

You knew within days? he asked.

canada goose coats on sale My superiors, the agent replied. Byron asked for their first and last names. Later, after excusing the jury, he asked prosecutors to explain themselves. Why had they misled him when they asked him to deny Salman bail? canada goose coats on sale

buy canada goose jacket cheap “I’m very concerned by that,” Byron said. It seemed he had taken it personally. His decision on Salman’s bail, based in part on faulty information, was responsible for her long separation from her child. By the time of the verdict, Salman had spent 14 months in jail. buy canada goose jacket cheap

The judge’s scolding of the prosecution was perhaps the most dramatic moment in the trial. It suggested to those listening that the government’s tactics canada goose outlet germany were shady and not to be trusted. It was something many of us in the courtroom, myself included, were already starting to suspect.

buy canada goose jacket Between the lines, a different story from the government’s was being told in the courtroom, about a different sort of quintessentially American crime. “She was not his partner, she was not his peer, and she certainly was not his canada goose outlet winnipeg address confidant,” one of Salman’s lawyers, Linda Moreno, said. Mateen was a domestic abuser who treated Salman with disrespect and violence. “Her only sin was that she married a monster,” she said buy canada goose jacket.