I didn’t write a column yesterday, I couldn’t think of something to write about. It just never came to me.
Then last night while I was watching TV, something did.
With all the uproar over race relations and the issues that are surrounding our country right now regarding the mess in Ferguson, Missouri, I thought maybe we should look at things and talk about them a bit.
(OK, I’ll write, you read, and then comment on Facebook, but you get the idea.)
There was another officer involved shooting this year that is eerily similar to the details regarding the case in Ferguson.
A young man about 20, saggy pants and a hoody, leaving a convenience store with some other male family members were stopped by a police officer and ordered to the ground.
It seems that a man with a gun was reported in the area.
Two of the three young men got to the ground, and the third was apparently hitching up his pants to do so, when he was shot in the chest by the police officer that stopped them.He couldn’t be sure of what the young man was doing, and the young man didn’t comply with the officer’s orders, so the officer took what he determined to be defensive measures. It turns out that the young man possibly had headphones in and couldn’t hear the officer.
The police officer was black, and the man in the hoody white. It happened in Salt Lake City. But aside from a few small mentions here and there in the media, you didn’t hear much about this shooting.
What’s the point of this column? I guess it is that being a police officer is a VERY dangerous job, and they, unlike us, have to be on point and alert to possible threats constantly. They have to take steps to make sure that when their shift is over they go home alive, to paraphrase The Untouchables.
What other profession, save the military, do you know of that has this as an issue? That your very profession could be trying to kill you? None that I can think of.
Do I think that race was an issue in either of these circumstances? I wasn’t there. And as a member of the media it is my job to avoid coloring the news with my personal slant. (Yes, this is a column, and I could editorialize, but don’t we get enough of that from FOX NEWS, and CNN, and MSNBC? I think that I will choose not to.)
The story in Ferguson is such: A young man was killed by a policeman. After an altercation with that policeman. The Grand Jury didn’t even have enough evidence to go to trial, let alone convict the officer of any wrong doing. That says a lot. At least it should.
We elect our local officials, or support their hiring by living in the areas they preside over. Their jobs are to find justice and sort out the mess that the law can be at times.
Are the police and judicial system perfect? No. They’re human, so of course they make mistakes.
Tell me you never screw anything up at work. Please. If I attribute a quote to someone on air and they didn’t say it, I correct myself and move on. If a police officer misquotes someone, or has a typo on one of countless forms, the wrong person can go free, or be sent to jail. It’s a tough gig.
They’re trained constantly to avoid such costly mistakes as the ones talked about in this column, but mistakes will happen. There are checks and balances for this kind of thing.
Like a jury hearing if one is warranted. The officials in Ferguson looked into the case of Mr. Brown. As it turns out, there was not enough supporting evidence that the officer acted maliciously to even warrant a trial, let alone to convict.
The city knew what this would mean. That there would be angry people who could possibly riot. That was taken into consideration. It had to have been. It stands to reason, if we think calmly and rationally about it, that the officer did, in fact, do nothing wrong. Otherwise, the city would not open itself to the type of repercussions it is suffering right now.
Honestly, I don’t know what drives people to think that destroying property of people that have nothing to do with an issue, or burning cars and buildings gets a point across, unless of course that point is that those who’ve committed those acts simply so not care about the law.
What happened to the peaceful, non-violent approach to making points heard and disagreements known? How about, instead of violence to protest violence, you use something else.
I believe there was once a certain Baptist preacher who used to advocate that very thing.
And I am sure he would be weeping right now, if he could see this.
Ben Cox is the host of “Ben Cox in the Morning” weekday mornings from 6 to 9 on KQBZ, 96.9 FM in Brownwood Texas. He is the in-stadium voice of the Howard Payne Yellow Jackets football team and is also a mobile DJ for weddings, parties and the like. He can be contacted via this website.
The thoughts and comments reflected in this column are those of the writer alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Wendlee Broadcasting, or its affiliates.
