Senseless Violence

Thirty plus years ago I was watching the local news. One of the main stories was of a young man aged 20 being murdered. Not by a criminal, or his friends, but by the police.

The boy who had mental issues was running around the apartment with two knives pointed at his chest yelling, “I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF; I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF!!” The boy’s father calls the police explaining that my boy wants to kill himself. The police arrive. They have five officers arrive at the scene. The boy became agitated when the police arrived. He climbed out of the window and onto a fire escape. The police lowered the ladder down to street level. The boy came down the ladder but refused to drop the knives. Officers tried to strike the knives out of his hands with their nightsticks. That didn’t work. Next, several officers took mace and sprayed his eyes repeatedly. This caused the boy to drop the knives. His father was watching this whole ordeal unravel from his window. The boy became infuriated, lunged at the cops and within several feet, the five officers drew their 38 caliber guns and shot the boy 9 times! Now, we all know what one 38 caliber slug can do to the body. Imagine 9 shots entering this boy practically at point blank range.

This left a horrible impression with me for a very long time. The footage of the family talking live to the news crew was tragic. The father, grandmother and sister were hysterically crying. They made no sense to this ordeal, and they had no one to turn to. These five cops destroyed this family forever. I never read or heard what the outcome was for the officers. Probably a slap on the wrist or small fine.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident with the police. We’ve heard about this time & time again. I don’t side with eradicating the police, but I don’t agree with their ignorant handling of many cases.  This is all senseless violence.