RIGHT SPEAK: 'Black Lives Matter' Crowd Resists Truth About Resisting Arrest

A South Carolina teen was sitting in his car on a date last month when a white cop pulled up and fatally shot him with his .45 caliber handgun. The 19-year-old was unarmed, parked outside a Hardee's restaurant.

Police say that the cop was responding to a drug deal and fired in self-defense. But the victim's family isn't buying it and has demanded a civil rights investigation.

Another unarmed black man shot to death by police? Actually, no. In this case, the suspect is white.

The only racial element is the lack of national outrage.

Zachary Hammond's family thinks race is playing a role in the deafening silence.

There's been no statement of sympathy from President Obama or investigation by the Justice Department. No press conferences held by civil-rights lawyers or demonstrations by activists outside the police station. No "White Lives Matter" placards.

But the Seneca, S.C., case does have one key thing in common with the publicized black deaths — virtually all suspects resisted arrest or threatened the police who fired the fatal shots.

While 10 grams of marijuana were found in Hammond's car, his fatal mistake appears to have been not complying with police commands to come out of the car with his hands up. Instead, according to police, the teen hit the gas and drove toward the arresting officer, who opened fire out of fear of being hit by Hammond's vehicle.

Such mitigating circumstances surrounding recent police shootings have been lost in the media coverage. On the anniversary of the Michael Brown shooting, the Washington Post sensationally reported that police have since then shot dead two dozen "unarmed black men."

The article's headline, "Police Still Killing Unarmed Black Men One Year Later," made it seem as if all these men were targeted by racist police and gunned down while minding their own business — that they were, in effect, executed in cold blood.

"They're just shooting them down," the Post quoted one mother saying of police treatment of black men.

But if you drill down on the cases first cited by the Post, you quickly learn that almost all those African-American suspects were killed after resisting arrest or, like Brown, assaulting police officers. Or reaching for what police thought was a weapon. Or using their vehicle, like Hammond, as a weapon.