And another one showing what cops have to deal with, even during regular traffic stops (which happen to be when many officers are shot/assaulted/killed).
This is more in response to the claim that Officer Wilson shouldn’t have shot Michael Brown because he was unarmed.
Cops have to make split-second decisions that often have life-or-death consequences. In the vast majority of cases, cops have no idea if someone is armed or not.[/quote]
I agree with you in many ways. One difference, though, is that Officer Wilson intended that Michael Brown die (or be grievously harmed) whereas I do not believe the officers in the Eric Garner case intended, or had a reasonable belief that Eric Garner would die. Chokeholds are not a walk in the park (and I know they are not allowed by the NYPD), but I would say that the level of force used was less than with Michael Brown. It’s similar to the question of whether it’s worse to try to shoot someone and miss or to smack someone in the head who dies due to having an “egg-shell” skull.
Call me naive, but I’m not sure that either of these situations were racially motivated – I think there are a lot of power crazy police officers out there.[/quote]
Agree about the level of force involved. Officer Wilson shot to kill Michael Brown, but he was not an innocent victim, not by a long shot. Since the physical evidence shows that he was still traveling *toward* officer Wilson even after being shot, I don’t blame Wilson at all for wanting to eliminate the threat entirely.
The Garner case was different, at least in my opinion, because Garner was *clearly* not acting in a threatening way toward the officers. While it’s foolish to ignore police commands, cops do occasionally get on a power trip and do probably harass people who don’t necessarily deserve it. There’s a fine line between doing the right thing by cops and following police commands vs. allowing them to ride roughshod over a person’s civil rights. Not entirely sure where that line should be.
And I also believe that race is not the issue in either of these cases. IMO, if you changed their race to white, but kept all other variables (size, behavior, etc.) the same, these cases would have ended the same way. The issues that need to be addressed are police brutality, reasonable force, and the need for strong civil rights protections.
