Too Damned Close...

 It was rather surreal a few years ago when a young man, driving with his wife and daughter, were stopped on a road near where I used to live - and then the police shot him.  No, he wasn't a drug dealer, he was a school lunch worker - lunch man - and the police apparently chose to make judgements upon the man due to the color of his skin.  

Then we had the situation last spring where a depraved individual who wears the uniform and carried the badge of a police officer, who knelt upon, and killed, another man.  And as his trial was playing out, a young man who had reason to be afraid made a bad decision.  Almost as bad as the police officer who murdered him accidentally.

Today, this afternoon, in fact, a young man, some 20 years old, took a car from someone.  Then he tried to take another car.  And when that didn't quite work out, he got out of that car and tried to get away - and he didn't.  He made choices that led to the end of his life.

That last story played out and ended a little over a mile from where I now live.  The others were within 20 miles.  But they were, and are, all wholly terrifying.  Because a young man wanted a car and chose to take it because he had a gun is probably the least disgusting of all of these situations.  He chose to make a bad choice, and it ended him.

The other individuals had the misfortune to run afoul of a law enforcement community which, for whatever reason, chose to judge them without knowing them.  I have been pulled over a fair number of times.  Off the top of my head I can recall eight times.  I'm not a particularly terrible driver.  The first was a speeding ticket in my home town when I was 19.  I was doing 40 in a 30.  The second was in La Crosse, Wisconsin, when I encountered an intersection with five different roads intersecting, and I mis-identified which light was mine.  The third was in Bloomington, Minnesota, when I was driving a car with expired tabs.  The fourth was in Bloomington, Minnesota, when I was driving a friend home.  The fifth was in Burnsville as I was on my way to pick my children up from their daycare and their mother from a bus stop - and I'd not paid a ticket I thought had been paid.  So I was driving on a suspended license.  The sixth time I was pulled over again in Burnsville because I was late for work and I was speeding.  The seventh time once again was in Burnsville when I made a turn on red where the sign had been knocked down, and replaced with one about ten feet behind where the other sign had been - so it wasn't in sight at the corner, which the officer acknowledged when I told him I thought the missing sign meant it was no longer prohibited.  The last time I was on my way home from work and in a bit of a hurry - but the officer let me go.  

I was never in fear of my life at the time.  And I do not understand, at a blood-and-bone level, of what some people do experience when they are pulled over or stopped by police.  This does not mean that I do not acknowledge they do not have reason to fear, and this does not mean that I do not think they should be afraid.  I think we ALL need to be afraid when a system can be perverted to kill people because the person making the determination has a flawed understanding of the world, the encounter, the other person, and how things work.  

So yeah, I think we have a real problem with policing in this country, and I think we need to get it fixed.  And I think it starts with reasons that police officers have to be afraid.  Because they do have legitimate reasons to be fearful in certain encounters.  And so we need to start with what is it that causes them to react with violence when no violence was implied or threatened.  We need to give these officers a few more tools.  Not the sort that will weigh down their belts, but rather tools that might ride next to them or behind them in their vehicles.  And we need to treat each and every cry for help as exactly and specifically that.  It is a request that someone provide a blanket of safety during a situation where they do not feel safe.

And that means we need to make sure that the people who are there when the police officer arrives understand that this person is also one of them, another human being, and that person has to make some pretty difficult judgment calls with limited information.  And we need to make sure that when these encounters occur, everyone who is willing to commit to it can walk away alive.  And if, in certain situations, when there are individuals who have chosen to commit acts which will end their lives, those police officers must be able to document and present the evidence of the situation they were in because they need to show proof that they did not in fact have any other options.  It is what it is.  And we need to recognize that.  And we need to make damned sure this insanity stops.  Bad people are still going to do bad things.  We need to make it possible for the good people having bad or misunderstood days can survive them, instead of dying on the ground, their hands cuffed behind them, while they're calling for their mothers.  Or dying from accidental police-fired gunshots while on the phone with their mothers.

This has got to stop.  Now.