I’m done reading the facts in the M. Brown shooting and I’ve found some clarity, at least for myself.
Taking the facts as they have been presented to the grand jury, I have to say that I agree with the decision. I took a moment to put myself in the officer’s shoes. I’ve already been roughed up by the suspect to the point that I know I won’t win a hand to hand fight. The suspect is rushing me and I don’t have any non-lethal recourse to slow him down. I point my weapon at him and demand that he stops. He continues running at me. At this point there are two choices: flee or stand. When I wrote about the ridiculousness of the stand your ground laws, I was taking into account that these people standing were not in fact officers of the law. The police have an oath to stand their ground. They are the bulwark against the negative elements of our society. So, when a suspect is running at them and they have no other choices but shoot or flee, I say shoot. I don’t say aim for the head.
So here is where the real controversy comes into play for me. I am not going to question a scared officer’s right to shoot in this instance. I do believe the system failed him in multiple ways. He wasn’t trained to incapacitate with his weapon. He wasn’t provided non-lethals. He didn’t have any back up. What happened between young Mr. Brown and Officer Wilson was a tragedy sparked by the attitudes of a police force and the attitudes of a community. So much more could have been in place to prevent this from escalating to the point of death. What I hope more than ever is that there are systems put in place now to help embed the officers in the community to the point where they are seen as asset instead of enemy. These days, everywhere is Compton with people screaming F– the police and violence towards officers becoming more common, or at least far more televised.
There is a lot attached to the Micheal Brown shooting. What happened that day is a symptom of a much larger situation stemming from decades of racial tension not just in this particular town but globally. It is long past the time that we stop sweeping race issues under the rug and hiding behind the supposed racial equality proven by a black president (thanks, Obama). We are a nation that pretends to be color blind, but social science tells us this is impossible. We just pretend not to see race and in that pretending we ignore the utterly devastating effects of indirect racism.
Some Thoughts:
- Yes, I still believe Obama is a great president. Yes I get that the economy has sucked his entire time in office, but it isn’t about the economy, stupid. We are supposed to be a democracy and we are supposed to believe in higher principles. What Obama got wrong was believing that this country could rise about petty greed and cynicism. Where he failed was where he excelled. He provided hope and then ran into the brick wall of bureaucracy and horse trading that is the U.S. Government. The people initially in place around him to help him get stuff done all moved on to greater personal positions and he was left in the oval office with the B team. Then the republican media engine kicked in and made the world look like everything was Obama’s fault. Thanks, Obama became a meme and stupid people believed it. Now we are headed back into Afghanistan and doing darn near everything we can to go back to 2007. Of course, 2007 is where it all went wrong… Why would we want a do over?