Charlotte Shooting Shows Why Video Transparency Is Vital
If they don't provide video, or their camera was conveniently off. I have to assume they are lying. It may be unfair, but they need to be held to a higher standard, not a lesser one. "Protests and/or unrest after a shooting happens when a community a) suspects that an injustice has been done and b) lacks confidence that justice will be achieved by the institutions that are supposed to provide it. Both of those suspicions are all too often well-founded. A police chief can get up and assert that a shooting victim “exited his vehicle armed with a handgun as the officers continued to yell at him to drop it,” but in this day and age everyone has heard such stories before only to have them revealed later to be complete lies. A police chief may have nothing to go on except the word of his officers, and be compelled to support them—but unfortunately we have all learned we cannot trust that word. And, even where a police shooting is legal, that is not the same thing as a police shooting being necessary, due to the unfortunate state of the law in this area."
2 comments:
The sad thing here is that you assume they are lying. Painting the entire enforcement community with one brush. You never hear the good, decent stories because heck, who wants to read happy news? You've been victimized by the media. I would have thought better of you.
When it is more common for cops to close ranks around corrupt or abusive cops than to shun them and kick them up, it is hard to see any of them as not needing external accountability.
They have had free rein for far too long and with ubiquitous phones with cameras, we see that that trust was misplaced. They were supposed to police themselves, not cover it up.
They have lost the trust given and now have to earn it back.
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