Two words on: Ferguson and United States of America - Ferguson (part I)
Here I come, writing my second dangerous post.
So, I tried to slip away from this subject and indeed, in the past months, I've talked about Ferguson only once, in a brief discussion with my father, that lead to nothing.
But the truth is that the situation in Ferguson is not improving, the situation in the USA neither and that a lot of information has been thrown against the viewer and a lot of different opinions have arisen.
I try to stay away from opinions, as somebody may have noticed, when I write or talk officially. I love opinions when I speak and discuss with somebody, as long as it's agreed that they are opinions (personal or common).
Anyway, in the case of Ferguson what struck me is not the opinions, but the simplest facts.
Here they are:
- a 18 years old man has been killed on the 9th of August
- the man was shot 6 times by a police officer
- the man was unarmed
- the shooting occurred at mid-day, on a open street
- the police officer was on patrol alone
I know that there are a lot of more facts, that a lot of talking, witnesses and everything else have been said and done.
But I would simply like to focus on these 5 points. The sadness of a lost life, a kid, all of that I will not take into account. Neither the fact that he was black, the police officer white and so on. All of this is not important to this discussion.
I think that the horror of everything that happened is already there, in those 5 points. A police officer felt the need, or the urge, or was so scared or whatever to kill a human being in full light, with no evident threads and for no apparent useful reason.
Police should protect unarmed people from dangers, not be a danger by themselves. Police should not shoot people, at all. But if they should shoot, at least there should be a physical need for it, to restrain, stop a fatal danger to hit people. And even in the case that police should shoot, they should be able to shoot with skills and with confidence, and without losing control.
In this case, without having to dig deep into what happened, the first thing that I cannot stand is that a police officer shoot at somebody, in plain light, with no obstacles in between, who was unarmed. That should not happen. That was not good policing.
Why did the police officer shoot? Because he felt in danger? Because he felt that a dangerous people was escaping and would have caused harm to other people?
Something like this should not happen, not in a civilized country, not in plain day light, not with a police officer involved. If the police is not able to protect people, well, the worst that can do is shoot them. There is no excuse on that.
But here I begun entering into the opinions field, and I said I wouldn't. So I will go on, but what I feel are facts and what I feel are opinions (and, of course, this is already an opinion...).
fact: the man carried no weapon
fact: there were no impediments for the police officer to see that the man had no weapons.
fact: the police officer shot dead the man, with 6 or more shots
opinion: I strongly believe that the police should not shot and, worst, kill any unarmed person
opinion: I have the feeling that the police officer got carried away because enraged or scared and thus shoot too many times
opinion: I have also the opinion that he had nor the mastery of the weapon he was carrying, neither the training to effectively use such weaponopinion: I have also the feeling that he initiated a confrontation when there were no need of any
fact: the police officer was alone on patrol.
opinion: as it is now, 1 officer alone on patrol can only lead to problems, for himself, and for the community.
fact: a police officer killed a man
opinion: in my world police protect people, never kills them. In my world if somebody is guilty of some felony,will be captured by the police, brought in front of a judge and fairly judged
These are my opinions, those are part of a bigger thought I have had in the last weeks... I'll go on about this later, probably.
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