Shoot First -- Now Ask Questions

OK.  I'm not a lawyer.  I'm not a cop.  A gun owner, a parent, a district attorney, or a neighborhood watch guy.  I'm just a fictional bus driver. (Unless you're currently on the ShortBus, in which case, I'm just kidding.  Same time tomorrow.)

So while I'm certainly not an expert on law enforcement, I do watch the news.  And the worry du jour for the last couple years has been:  The right number of teams for the College Football Playoff.  Well, and also police shootings.

The Internet and the news and social media and the talk shows -- they've all been flooded with stories of the big bad policeman shooting down the unarmed in cold blood... or incompetence, or just stupidity.  And it's a problem.  I won't deny that.  It needs to be addressed.  But I do think that sometimes people get swept up in a frenzy and forget to see the forest for the trees.  Dateline:  Cleveland.


https://gma.yahoo.com/prosecutor-announcement-tamir-rice-grand-jury-investigation-183917904--abc-news-topstories.html#

Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy, was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer in November of last year.  He was on a playground.  A playground.  And they just drove up to him and shot him.  Oh, the humanity.

Well, except for one thing:  The "kid" was 5'7", weighed 160 pounds, and there was one other thing.  What was it... ah!  HE WAS POINTING A GUN AT PEOPLE!!! 

That's right.  If you've paid attention to the story, you've seen the surveillance footage.  And that footage shows that Tamir was pointing a toy gun at people as they were walking by in the park.  Are you kidding me?  12 or not -- what kind of a fool does that in this day and age?  Granted, it turned out to be a toy gun.  But last time I checked, citizens call 911 and get in contact with the police department, not the Psychic Hotline.  Some citizen out there was concerned enough about the situation to call the police in the first place.  So to expect the police officers who respond to be able to tell in a moment's notice whether the gun was real or fake is a pretty tough ask.

Ultimately, a grand jury saw it my way and declined to issue charges today.  Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty called the shooting:

"a perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day (but) the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police."

Lawyers for the boy's family aren't ready to let it go.  Going so far as to accuse the prosecutors of rigging the case against.  Hiring experts to line up testimony favorable to the officers.  Maybe, maybe not.  Hey, investigate your ass off as far as I'm concerned.  If there's nothing to hide, there's no problem.  But from where I'm standing, the kid fucked up.  It's tragic that he died because of it, but it would be a further tragedy to smear two cops as violent thugs because the country has a boner for police brutality stories at the moment.

Police brutality IS a problem that needs to be dealt with.  And good cops need to be part of the solution.  Defending other cops blindly gives good cops a bad name.  But let's not lose all ability to look at facts here, either.  Can't blame the cops for everything. 

Let's be real here:  We're the gun country.  We have the 2nd amendment and the NRA.  We have more mass shootings than we have days of the year.  THERE ARE GUNS EVERY FUCK WHERE.  So it's not unrealistic to think cops, who could frequently be staring down the barrel of them, could overestimate the level of danger rather than underestimate it.  You want guns?  (and I don't) This is part of the price you have to pay.  Trigger-happy citizens lead to trigger-happy police.

I don't really have a snappy ending for this one, so... I'm out.