We all have to respect the challenging and dangerous conditions our police forces face in the line of duty. Officers never know which car or which bar a nut job will stagger out of or what the consequences will be. Every police man and woman expects and deserves to finish the end of every shift. While they protect us they have imminent domain to protect themselves.
You have to be a special person to be in the police. I grew up thinking I'd like to be a policeman. When I was finally old enough, I figured the pay wasn't worth the lifestyle. It's a 24/7 job with a lot of crap to tolerate from all parts of society, including the police department and city council.
We're all better off with highly trained professional police that can adapt and react to a wide variety of situations. However, police are real people with real emotions, real fears; others have real egos and some have real problems just like the rest of us. While the vast majority of police officers uphold the law to the highest degree, human nature dictates that there will be bad police too.
Wearing a gun and a badge is sometimes taken as a license to play overlord. With bullets in pocket you can be judge, jury and hangman on the spot. If you follow the rules to the letter, a simple gesture by a suspect can mean death. Better the alleged bad guy than the police, but an alarming number of Americans die because of trigger happy good guys.
If you are stupid enough to pull a gun or shoot at police, the old "survival of the fittest" rule applies. You deserve to be shot before you shoot someone else. Shot to death? Maybe not. More disturbing are police shootings when the bad guy has a weapon other than a gun. Sure knives, pipes and sticks can be lethal, but surely other options such as bean bags shotguns and now tazers can disable the most obnoxious suspect.
This week a man with a sledgehammer shot was to death by LAPD. How much range does a hammer have? Use a long stick to whack the idiot. I also watched via TV helicopter as a delirious, staggering woman was tazered after a car chase with no police even near the picture. I would have just walked up and wrestled her down. Are the police that scared of bad guys or gals (often defenseless) that they can't take more reasonable steps to resolve the problem? If necessary surely a bullet to the shoulder or leg would disable most problem children. Is it fear or is it legal joykilling?
How many times a month do you hear that someone was killed while reaching under their belt when there turned out to be no weapon? How do we know this is even true when that's the story given? The police buddy system ensures that full support will be provided for such choices.
The lower level, troublesome people in society have families, lovers, friends, jobs, and other real life things. Some of them do stupid enough things that are deserving of life lost. Even so, police shooting to kill should not be an acceptable automatic option.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment