I have a lot of feelings, mostly about society and police. Not too many about this specific situation, mostly because I don't feel like i've been given near enough of a picture to have a valid opinion.
I think the police are far to militarized in general, I think they are too removed from the communities they serve, in some places, especially large cities. I see it in small towns too though these days and I think things are generally better around here than others in terms of community and police relationships.
I think society in general is wanting someone else to take care of all their problems and then they get pissed off when they find out out how much power they've given someone else to be able to take care of everything they want them to.
and on top of that, I think we have a very, very irresponsible media in general these days and very irresponsible consumers of that media.
It has gone far beyond reporting news anymore and it is ALL about evoking emotions, spinning info, pushing agendas, get a response and hammer it home with every broadcast.
This could very well be a case of a young policeman that didn't have the mental capacity to be carrying a gun to keep people "safe" and he overreacted in a situation and an innocent young man is dead. because of a prior crime that occurred, his own personal bias coupled with misinterpreting the young man's body language, he may have overreacted and pulled his gun.
OR, just maybe, this guy was the one seen in video tossing a store owner like a rag doll so he could take his 50 dollars in swishers. maybe he did charge the cop and attack him in his car. He wasn't small and that point, I don't care what preceded or came after, nothing good is going to come of a situation when you physically attack a cop.
His buddy says the cop tried pulling him in the car? at least that's one account I read. I can't imagine too many places where they train an officer to "pull" a suspect into a car without them being restrained and under control first, but that's his account I guess. There are others that say his hands were up, giving up. There's others that say he was charging the police officer.
But what happened, what actually happened doesn't seem to be the goal or the focus in reporting. It's all about hammering home that an "unarmed teenager" was "gunned down" and that he was shot at least "six times"
and subsequently, the populace reacts. Everyone asking for justice and nobody has a ****ing clue what actually happened and nobody seems to care. I don't care if this "teenager" who was twice the size of a lot of grown men had a weapon. Did he charge the officer? Did he attack him? What was the lead up? Instead they just incite and evoke emotion with their soundbites. "nobody deserves to die for cigars" "police gun down an unarmed teenager" "he was shot at least 6 times" "one bullet hit the top of his head and could mean he had his head down giving up" , Or it could have meant he was charging so hard he was still falling forward towards the cop despite being shot 5 times. We won't know, they don't care to really tell us.
I wonder what would happen if they police or NG just left. I wonder what these "protests" would turn into?