Thursday, November 20, 2014

Police Shootings: No Truth Now, Truth Later


+WonderfulWorld

There are so many holes in what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in the police shooting with Officer David Wilson and Michael Brown. We will never know the damned truth. Never.

For me, the answer to this case is for all future cases. Let's protect good cops and good citizens!

Cop Cams!

I've heard people complain about the potential costs of Cop Cams . . .

 

 

What about the cost of:

LOST LIVES
        regardless of guilt or innocence with no ability to determine guilt or innocence.

MISTRUST
         between citizens and the police, because there is no accountability or transparency, there's not even a registry or statistics of police shootings and killings of citizens, regardless of guilt or innocence.

LOST BUSINESS
          many real estate deals went south in Ferguson and in areas where police shootings of citizens are common. Communities become outraged when questions inevitably go unanswered in anyway that is reasonable or ever seems complete enough to match the six feet under of their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandsons and granddaughters.

LOST TAX REVENUE
         from the lost business and the lack of trust and the loss of lives and the loss of jobs.

I could go on . . . but this is just the truth . . . we will never know the truth of what really happens in these police shootings until we have at least some video evidence from at least one perspective from close proximity. We will never know the personal account of the person that has bullets riddled in their body, regardless of that person's guilt or innocence.

The cop and the corpse are and were human beings. Since the technology exists, why are we not rectifying this? Why are we not protecting our police? Why are we not protecting our citizens? Why are we not protecting our businesses? Why are we not protecting our communities?

Why are we more concerned with being outraged and blaming someone or someone else being wrong and us being right? Why are people defending the shooting of anyone with nothing but scraps of info? Why do both sides of the media descend like vultures to raise hell and never ensure that there is ever resolution? Oh yeah, media gets paid for going on and on and on about anything 24/7.

Instead, let's RESOLVE the underlying problem. Let's find out what happens in future situations involving police shootings involving the citizens they pledge to serve and protect. The police have the toughest job. They have to get it right always, and their lives are always on the line. So are all of our lives when guns are on the streets.

So, let's be PRO-something . . . PRO-solution.

Pro-Cop Cams.

2 comments:

  1. Someone brought up some good points. Here is my thoughts on that ensuing discussion.

    Some people jump to conclusions in defense of Michael Brown, but so many more others jump to the defense of the police officer.

    The point of this entire tragedy is that we will never ever know what happened. Which, is the worst part of the tragedy. This police officer will for the rest of his and his family's lives have this hanging over them . . . for the rest of Michael Brown's family's lives, they will forever think justice has never been served, because it never could be served.

    Instead of focusing on blame in this situation, which should be sorted out in as fair a process as possible, the population, police and government should be focused on rectifying the underlying issue as to why the officer's family will suffer and the dead 18 year old's family will suffer . . . let us at least have ONE perspective that is neutral and non-nuanced.

    That is the role of the Cop Cam. Someone wisely espoused of the potential for Cops, and employees and family of the criminal justice system to interfere, disrupt or delete the data collected from CopCams. This is how much distrust there is within the citizens in America of the police. This dynamic has to begin to change.

    Mistrust of the police and the criminal justice system is like a cancer. Transparency is what can cure it. It protects the best. We should all be for that.

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  2. Whenever any citizen is shot and killed by a cop, though, there should be a thorough investigation. The problem is that often there is not a thorough investigation, and half the perspective is dead, so odds are the narrative that 'wins' in the court of public opinion and in front of a grand jury (in the case of Ferguson,MO) is that of the cop that did the shooting.

    Maybe others are being judgmental in their damnation of this officer, but that is not what I've spoken out about even once.

    I'm about moving forward, attempting to foster more trust between communities and the police that are pledged to protect and serve them.

    This knee jerk reaction many have to defend the police officer regardless of anything is really emblematic of something else entirely. Any scrap of evidence that comes out that may support his story is hoisted out as proof positive of his innocence, but any shred of evidence that supports other than that narrative, then we must all wait for all the evidence to be heard. Funny how that works.

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