- Capitalism and Alternatives -

I can't say for certain that I would have acted differently if I'd been in the cops' shoes.

In Reply to: Police Brutality posted by Joseph Sharpe on February 25, 19100 at 15:36:16:

: A Bronx resident, West African immigrant Amadou Diallo was shot at forty-one times by four officers in front of his apartment entrance and hit by nineteen bullets. The man was murdered instantly. The police officers claimed that Diallo had a gun and fired upon them, that a fellow officer was shot, and they simply reacted in self-defense.

Let me say first off that this was a real tragedy and Diallo certainly did not deserve to die.

BUT, I can't say for certain that I would have acted differently if I'd been in the cops' shoes. These guys were looking for a violent criminal. They were afraid for their own lives. And when they accosted Diallo, instead of freezing and quietly putting his hands up, he reached into his pocket, pulled out something, and pointed it at (held it out towards) them. Given the circumstances, Diallo's actions were insanely stupid (or, I might be willing to concede, insanely ignorant of what it is that police do,) and proved to have deadly consequences.

Again, a tragedy but, in a society with a police force, probably unavoidable.

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