Iowa Police Shooter a Confederate-Flag-Waving Racist

I woke up to the news this morning that two Iowa police offers were shot and killed overnight, ambush-style.  As of 9am ET, the gunman was still on the loose.  Predictably, the comments to any news story about this were disgusting, and many comments were aimed at blaming #BlackLivesMatter for the shootings.

Yet — it appears the suspect, Scott Michael Greene, who is now in custody — was hardly a #BLM adherent and is, in fact, a Confederate-flag waving white man who is aggrieved because he was told to stop waving his confederate flag in front of African Americans at a local football game.

The Washington Post has more on this:

One of the officers was fatally shot next to Urbandale High School. A video uploaded to YouTube last month by an account named Scott Greene was titled “Police Abuse, Civil Rights Violation at Urbandale High School” and appeared to show a person recording the footage arguing with police officers asking him to leave the area.

In the video, the man recording the footage, who is identified by one officer as Greene, is heard telling the police that he was assaulted and almost mugged while “peacefully protesting” at what appears to be a high school. An officer is later seen explaining that the Confederate battle flag he was waving violated the school’s code.

“In the current social climate that we’re in, when you fly a Confederate flag standing in front of several African American people, that’s going to cause a disturbance, whether you intended to or not,” the officer said. As a result, the officer said, this man was no longer allowed on the school’s property.

Another video posted by the same account showed a still image of a man holding a Confederate flag in what appears to be the stands at an athletic event.

And finally — as if we didn’t know where this was leading, this:

https://twitter.com/GrantMRodgers/status/793832954975793152