I have all respect for police officers, considering the
nature and danger of their job, but there is the matter of responsibility. And
self-control. Regarding the series of events in recent years wherein (usually)
white police officers kill black men or teens who are usually either unarmed or
armed with lesser caliber weapons than the officers, a thought occurred to me
after hearing (yet again) how the (usually) white police officer shot the black
person because the officer "feared for his life."
You would think if there was one occupation where the
ability to control NOT being in fear for your life would be a required
prerequisite, being a police officer would be that job. And since many police
officers are combat vets, you would think being able to maintain your calm and
NOT let a dangerous situation make you act violently and impulsively out of
fear would be something they were already familiar with.
But maybe investigation would find that the majority of
these officers who do shoot black people were combat vets and that maybe THAT
is the problem in itself -- being involved in chaotic firefights where you
might be tempted to "let all hell break loose" in a fearful encounter
out of fear for your life or in revenge after seeing your fellow soldiers and
friends killed.
More needs to be done to train police officers to be able
to respond appropriately and proportionally to threats. I find it very hard to
buy the "I feared for my life" response when the officer has a gun
and is 10 feet away from a suspect who is armed with a rock or a knife or
nothing at all. Maybe it’s a matter of prevention. Perhaps better psychological
evaluations are needed to prevent ex-vets with PTSD from becoming police
officers in the first place.
And for those officers already in the field, why don't they
train them to use Tasers, or to shoot for the legs in such situations instead
of "kill zones"? And I can't help but wonder what the statistics are
for incidents of officers killing unarmed or lesser-armed suspects who are
white instead of brown, compared to the scenarios we've been seeing over and
over again.
Is it just a matter of white officers fearing black males
as opposed to white males in an otherwise similar police / suspect encounter?
What's sad is that I even have to ask such tragic questions at all in this day
and age. Sometimes I feel like D.W. Griffith’s unapologetically pro-Klan and
unabashedly racist film "Birth of a Nation" was made a year ago
instead of a century ago.
