On Sunday, two police officers in Las Vegas were shot at with a semi-automatic handgun while sitting at a stoplight. Thankfully, both officers made it out alive, with one suffering only a bullet to the hand. The suspect was apprehended, although no motive has been released to the public.
Sunday’s incident has been the latest in a string of unprovoked cop killings. In August, Darren Goforth, a sheriff’s deputy in Harris County, Texas, was executed while pumping gas. More recently in Fox Lake, Illinois, Police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was shot and killed in a remote area while on duty.
The Alligator has not been shy about publishing its reservations over modern policing techniques. Although the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner last year served as the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back, this is a debate that has been stewing in the U.S. for a long time and seems to reach a fever pitch every decade or so.
Concerns over modern policing have even reached Gainesville. In April, Lucas Jewell, a 23-year-old Alachua County resident who ran in the Gainesville City Commission election in March, was pulled over by an armored police vehicle after purportedly flicking them off. Regardless of whether he did it, there is no justifiable reason for using an armored police vehicle to corner and interrogate a nonviolent private citizen.
Likewise, no matter how much police have drawn the ire of many in this country, there is no scenario where wanton murder is a reasonable response to public grievances. These crimes have only served to further heighten the tensions that currently exist between this country’s police officers and its citizens.
Just as many citizens fear what may happen to them if they irritate the wrong police officer, these high-profile cases have given police officers even more reason to view every citizen as a potential threat. This creates a feedback loop of aggravation, violence and hate that brings the U.S. no closer to remedying the very real issues that lie at the core of how police officers conduct themselves.
It is easy to categorically demonize an entire occupation of people, especially when many who belong to that occupation have brought about tragedy and engaged in patently criminal behavior. However, doing so would deny police officers their humanity.
Darren Goforth did not choke Eric Garner. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz did not brutalize Freddie Gray. These were men who were murdered doing their jobs, and they deserve the same respect as any individual who suffered a needless death.
Violence begets violence: It’s an aphorism as old as time itself, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t hold true today.
