 |
| courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public Domain |
Thursday night in Dallas, during a peaceful demonstration by,
among others, the group Black Lives Matter, during which protesters and police
officers posed together for pictures and everyone seemed to be getting along
well, shots began to ring out and when the echo of the gunfire died away five
police officers lay dead on the ground, seven others were wounded, including
two civilians. One of the shooters, later killed in a standoff with police,
told the hostage negotiator who tried to talk him into surrendering that “he
was upset about the recent police shootings…upset at white people [and] stated
he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”[i]
Two recent shootings of black men appear to have sparked the
ambush of police officers at the Dallas rally. The shooting death of Alton
Sterling in Baton Rouge during a response to a call of an armed man making
threats outside a convenience store, and the shooting death of a motorist,
Philando Castile, during a traffic stop in Minneapolis. There are some vast
differences between these two shootings.
Reportedly, Sterling was not cooperating with officers’
instructions and resisted their attempts to discover if he had a weapon, which
he did, a handgun. As a convicted felon with a criminal record going back 19
years, Sterling could not legally possess a handgun. Sterling also had a
history of violence against police officers, including trying to pull a gun on
an officer in 2009.[ii]
None of this excuses the two police officers who shot him multiple
times while he lay on his back, after being Tasered, with his illegal handgun
in his pocket. But it does infringe on the narrative that he was an upstanding,
unarmed, black man just trying to make a living.
The situation with Castille is completely different. Castille
had no criminal record, was a licensed concealed carry holder, told the officer
that he had a concealed carry permit, that he was carrying at the time, and
otherwise cooperated fully with the officer. The officer then asked for
Castille’s license and when Castille reached for it, the officer shot him dead.
Castille had done everything right, everything the police and others say a
person, of any race, should do when stopped by a police officer, and still he
was shot dead.[iii]
Anger about both shootings is understandable. While the
authorities may somehow be able to justify what happened to Sterling, given the
new paradigm of legal interpretation inaugurated by FBI Director Comey
recently, there is no possible justification for what happened to Philando
Castille. The officer responsible for killing Castille has now been identified.
No charges have been filed against him yet.
Before either of these shootings happened, another incident occurred
on the west coast where an unarmed white teenager named Dylan Noble was shot
dead by police.[iv]
There was no national coverage of this incident. There was no cry of outrage.
No protest marches will be held over his killing. Did his life matter?
The parents of that unarmed white teen, shot dead by the Fresno,
California police might be asking themselves that question. On June 25th,
police shot their unarmed 19-year-old son to death when he refused to obey
police instructions to show his hands. Instead the young man lifted his shirt
and reached into his waistband. Believing he was going for a gun, police
officers reacted by shooting him once, and then, 14 seconds later, shooting him
again.[v]
According to police, the young man uttered the statement “I hate
my [expletive deleted] life” just before turning around and advancing on the
police officers.[vi]
The investigation is ongoing, but it sounds as though the young man may have
been committing suicide-by-cop.
Is the lack of attention and outrage over Noble’s death because
he was white, or is it perhaps because the circumstances made it clear the
police were justified in believing themselves in mortal danger?
After the events of this past week, culminating with the
shootings in Dallas Thursday night, we are a nation in mourning. As Dallas,
Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, and the families of the slain try to come to grips
with what has happened, we as a nation have a moral obligation to ask ourselves
why these things happened and, more importantly, what do we as a nation have to
do to prevent such things from happening again.
As always, I remain,
The Exhausted Educator
[i] http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breakingnews/five-police-officers-killed-in-dallas-seven-others-injured-during-shooting-at-protest/ar-BBu5IC9?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp
[ii] http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-bishop-0708-20160707-story.html
[iii] http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/falcon-heights-shooting-minnesota/
[iv] http://www.dailywire.com/news/7274/cops-shoot-white-guy-fresno-nobody-pays-attention-hank-berrien?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=benshapiro
[v] ibid
[vi]
ibid
No comments:
Post a Comment