I'm as concerned as any sane person is about permit holders or other lawfully armed (or even unarmed), peaceful citizens getting shot without justification by cops who are not held to account. For that matter, I'm none too happy about an incident a few years back wherein a known felony was shot in the back by a cop as the cop was effecting the arrest. Felon was fully complying. Cop had an ND with his shotgun. If fully complying doesn't prevent getting shot, we all have real worries.
Where police officers violate rights, I want them held to account. When those violations include loss of life or limb, the consequences had better be serious. When the violations are the result of malice or gross negligence or incompetence, I want the bad cops strung up and hung out to dry (metaphorically and legally speaking, of course).
But let us remember that "hands up, don't shoot" turned out to be a bald faced lie in a couple of previous cases. Let us also remember that videos don't necessarily tell the whole story and seeing half a story without the other half can be as deceiving as a fabrication from whole cloth. With good reason is the oath in court to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
And even if it is eventually proven, in a court of law with full due process (something we'd all want for ourselves if accused of a most serious crime) that a cop, with malicious premeditation, deliberately executed an innocent man, that is not moral or legal justification for open season on all police officers. We are not at war. Police officers are not wearing an enemy uniform. Despite the police unions, brotherhood, or the "blue line", police departments and police officers are not monolithic in this nation. The police are not a foreign, occupying force. Even the most serious criminal conduct on the part of one or two (or 100) officers, cannot justify murder of other officers, and doubly not so officers in a different department in a different State.
Some reports today out of Dallas indicate that one of the murderers indicted a desire to kill "white police officers." Why? Because black cops are less likely to violate rights than white, Asian, or Hispanic officers?
Assuming the reports about the racial nature of the attack are accurate, this is as much a hate-crime as it is an attack on police officers. It is an attempt at a race war every bit as much as a war against cops (good or bad) or the authority of the state. We likely won't hear that angle in the mainstream media. But think about it. Guys who will gun down "white" cops, will just as readily gun down "white" non-cops if they figure that will send the message they want to send.
Even ignoring any racial angle, those who will murder police officers will murder any of the rest of us as well. Dallas was not a case of cops trying to arrest someone. No chance the perpetrators over-reacted or were justly defending their rights. They shot cops who were providing security to what amounts to an anti-cop rally. This is not good for society at any level.
Charles
