My point is that I have no idea about all the other shootings. They might have all been unjustified, although I doubt that. My point is that the article is written to inflame, rather that inform. It is intended to get exactly the reaction it got, anger directed at the police. It is the same type of rhetoric the left has used against the US military since Vietnam, and there is a simple formula.
First, tell a story that will waken the emotion you want in the readers. In this case it is the story of police shooting and killing a poor, homeless, mentally deficient man who was unarmed, except for a couple of knives.
Second, make it a subset of a similar group of actions, and intentionally omit any facts that will explain why there is a difference. Here the writer made it a part of all police shootings, without mentioning justified shootings. To have done so would redirect some of the reader’s anger at the police to sympathy, not the reaction he intended.
Last, wrap the whole thing in a list of numbers and statistics that, while they may be accurate, have little or nothing to do with the subject. If someone were to do casual research into the numbers he used, they would find they are substantially accurate, and would be more inclined to accept the writer’s point of view.
This writer took it a step further by mentioning that all the shootings had already been investigated and none were found to have been unjustified, then promptly slammed those findings as being unreliable, a cover-up. He did all the legwork and thinking for you, now just sit back and let it sink in the way he intended
No doubt the article is filled with anger, with 24 dead human beings, someone ought to be angry. Here's something to think about. Investigated? By whom and reviewed by whom? This is the fundamental problem with these cases nationwide. Most do as was done in Albuquerque, police department internal investigation followed by a rubber stamp from the local prosecutor. This one even had the gall to say that he had no choice but to accept whatever the police said.
You are criticizing the article. I am criticizing the behavior of the police and the prosecutor and I believe that this behavior has become endemic in the United States. It is murder by government and we cannot tolerate. As for writing, that is a skill soon to disappear from the American scene.