No all police are corrupt, self-serving, fascist pigs.
Of course not. I am occasionally reminded by friends that you should not judge all police by the bad behavior of a few. They are right, of course. But when you read a story like this, you begin to wonder if the people who advocate defunding the police aren’t right. Here you have a police officer arriving at a scene in which a emotionally disturbed young man is threatening to take his own life. The sensitive, kindly, thoughtful State Trooper demands that the man drop his weapon. When he doesn’t– he had it taped to his neck– the distinguished officer shoots him dead.
Now, it is one thing to argue that this outcome was unfortunate. It is one thing to argue that this outcome was unnecessary (the man in question was in his own room in his own house and not threatening to kill anybody but himself). It is one thing to argue that the situation was unclear. But it is something else entirely to give the officer an award for “Trooper of the Year”.
The officer, Jay Splain, went on to kill three more people. Is there a bigger award than “Trooper of the Year” we can give him?
So the institution of the state police are all in on it. So many of them felt so strongly that there was nothing wrong with this outcome that they called public attention to it and gave him a prize and a commendation.
Even some conservatives will tell you that this kind of incident could be avoided with a little common sense: there was no need for the police to even escalate the situation at all.
But he had a gun. But isn’t that his god-given all-American Jesus-Loving wholesome family values right?
Mr. Martin saw nothing wrong with allowing the police to investigate themselves.
Mr. Martin thinks people like me think people like him are stupid. He’s right.
But I would love to ask Mr. Martin, since the principle of allowing police to investigate themselves is alright with him, would he mind if allegations of welfare fraud were investigated by, say, local black church leaders? Drug dealers? Let’s get representatives of the pharmaceutical companies to judge. Traffic violations? I think NASCAR should send us some reps.