The assassination in cold blood of two NYPD officers
helps no one, and, yes, everyone should decry it. I have empathy for our police
who put their lives on the line so we may live safely free of anarchy. I also
have empathy for Mr. Garner who was ridiculously choked to death by
out-of-control NYPD officers abridging their own codes of police conduct. Their assault and killing of Mr. Garner
because of a woefully minor offense allegedly selling "loosie"
cigarettes should be an affront to all of us.
One does NOT have to say one cares less about one
death and everything about another. All of the killings were bad. The
pertinent question, of course, is if Mr. Garner were not choked to death by an
NYPD officer and a sidecar of other NYPD pile ons would the assassination of the NYPD
officers yesterday have happened? It could have as the killer of the cops was
mentally deranged. He killed his girlfriend too. The question if the Garner
police killing did not happen would the two assassinated police officers be
alive today is unknowable.
My instincts tell me the shooting of the NYPD police
may not have happened if the African-American community were not, all over the
nation, so enraged at the perceived unjust treatment of them at the hands of
law enforcement. Moreover, the shoddy
prosecution of police perpetrators who commit egregious crimes should be an
embarrassment to the nation. It flies in
the face of prosecutorial justice and civilization's ethical codes of conduct
for police who enforce the law. The
police are, after all, the only ones the public trusts to protect us and to
carry weapons, the specific purpose of which is to threaten and/or kill.
While our blue mood nation may have lit the spark for
the policemen’s deaths we can never know that for sure because a whole
community did not kill the NYPD officers but one out-of-his-mind man did!
