Police: Off-duty St. Louis officer shoots, kills man who fired at him
By Ed Payne, CNN
"At the scene of yet another young man's death," tweeted St. Louis Alderman Antonio French. "This happens too often in our city. It's a crisis that we should all be concerned about."
This article stood out to me in amazement because yet another black young male was killed by an officer. My initial thought was why does this keep happening. After reading this article it led to me to think of how the citizens of St. Louis, MO. need to come together on a macro level. Everyone needs to come together as one community and recognize right from wrong.
In reading this article I noticed two similarities to Michael Brown, they were both black and young. This article allowed me to open my eyes and realize that police officers have jobs and families as well as everyone else, their jobs happen to be more challenging because they have to think fast with weapons. I think if everyone would remove prejudices from their heart and open up their mind to right and wrong us as an entirety would have a different mindset. People being killed is not justice and destroying police cars, vandalism, and retaliation definitely doesn’t help. I wish everyone would rise above. This article is sad, but it is the world we live in. We need to be careful not to conform.
It is time to come together - on gun control, on race relations, on building communities, and to retrain police officers to do their jobs in order to protect themselves and the law, but to not be so freakin trigger happy. Where do we start? How do we continue?
ReplyDeleteMary, I totally agree with you that it is time to come together on all the issues you mentioned above. I understand the protesting for justice and I also understand an officer protecting himself when cornered by dangerous situations. I cannot imagine how difficult it may be to be a police officer and make swift decisions that can be life changing. However, I think that we can all say that even under pressure, even when we are frighten and our adrenaline is rushing that shooting boy repeatedly "17 times" is far exceeding protection. I'm not seeing why this young boy was shot until he was dead; why not just shoot to stop him? It's simply sad, because despite what the boy was doing or may have stolen he should have not lost his life. And on the other hand the officer was defending himself and may have felt threatened, but as an officer he should know how to control his temper and when to ceasefire. As a society where do we start to address and change this social problem?
ReplyDeleteMary, I also agree but unfortunately that is easier said then done. I think that we will not be able to come together until we start building pathways to connect us. It is going to be a slow process and long road. I think to start with we need to have better education on cultural competence, racism, bulling and overall acceptance for our fellow humans. We need to start putting our time and money back into our committees and showing the youth the value in those things.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mary that there needs to be more training in regards to police officers and their weapons. But, I also think that if anybody saw someone in front of them firing a weapon, we would not think twice about defending ourselves. That is what I think this police officer was doing. I think that since this young black male was actually shooting at the police officer is a huge difference between the Mike Brown shooting and this one. I know that shooting 17 times sounds like an ungodly amount of times, but I've shot guns before and when shooting you do not know exactly where it is going to hit. Yes, these police officers have training and have to go to the shooting range so many times to get more accurate with their shooting, but I also think some probably aren't as accurate as others. I was talking to a police officer (who also hunts) and he said, "if you can't shoot well, shoot a lot." I feel as if this mentality is in a lot of police officers minds. I'm torn on this article because I can see both sides. So I'm not one to pass judgment on the police officer saying it was right or wrong. I hope I don't stir up too much controversy with this comment....
ReplyDeleteAllie I agree. This is a hard situation. I know that police are taught to unload their clip if they are faced with deadly force. However I also am curios how adrenaline plays into their reactions as well. I'm not sure we can truly answer that without being inn the situation. How things are going to change is through education. I do believe and have stated in previous posts that race relations and race sensitivity need to be bolstered in LE training. I agree with Allie that this article is the polar opposite of the Michael Brown situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of what everyone has said. I think a huge underlying issue is gun control. I feel bad for many officers for this very reason. In a society where guns are so easily accepted, how can you not assume someone is armed? I can only imagine the thought process. I know that officers are trained to deal and not react with fear, but people are people and just because you're a police officer, does not mean you all of a sudden are fearless. I'm not defending Darren Wilson but more about the comments made by people about police officers as a whole group.
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