I have never posted a message before, but came here to find out what my fellow citizens are thinking about this death, the fourth such death (if deaths can be compared), since December 1999, according to the Pioneer Press, and my memory.
The horror -- not the horror of death, as I read the paper early this morning, but the horror that the death seemed almost normal, this news that a young, evidently disturbed man, walking down a city street in the afternoon, close to my Franklin Avenue path to and from Mass earlier that day, had been killed at the hands of police officers acting on my behalf. Five people, five guns, five billy clubs, five trainings in subduing unruly folks, and one dead man and his machete and his crow bar. Was anyone shocked when they read their papers or heard the TV news this morning? I spent seven years in another city, an Eastern city with its own reputation for violence. But until I came to this civilized, progressive, liberal city, I had never heard of police officers killing mentally ill people. And now, after almost five years here, I am not shocked when I read about another one. It is wrong, and it is a wrong done in our name, for our protection we are told, a reasonable action taken by reasonable people. How can we balance the pros and cons of whether it may be ok for our police officers to kill under these circumstances? We are responsible, we have allowed our power to be used in this way, again and again and again, and, now, again. Tell me please, just who is mentally disturbed? Who is the threat to public safety? I am much more afraid of us than I am of a sick young man with a machete and a crow bar. Eileen Shore _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
