Breaking: Grand Jury Issues No Indictments of Police Officers in Fatal Shooting of Wal-mart Shopper

[SpankMe]

16. This will be the outcome every time a black guy is killed by a cop.

Those of us interested in real justice will have to resign ourselves to that reality - that cops always get to hide behind their authority - and win - when they need to get away with murder. Not that deadly force isn't necessary in some cases. But, these recent events don't pass the smell test to me.

The plan of attack on this should be to change police procedures regarding the rules of engagement nationwide. Civilian oversight, if not outright civilian control, of police departments is the way to go. These citizen committees or commissions should be elected bodies - or appointees vetted and approved by the city council - who actually write the manuals and procedures to follow when police face a threatening individual.

If the assailant has only a knife or club and is more than, say, 25-feet away from you, then you may not shoot to kill...procedural rules or guidelines like that.

Police are given too much discretion to judge how much of a threat to them an assailant is. Lately, it seems to me that if it's a white guy with a knife, the cops will physically wrestle him to the ground and cuff him. But, if it's a black guy - with not even a weapon in sight - they shoot to kill saying they "felt threatened" and that they were allowed to shoot per the current procedures.

The cops come up with some BS about some past event where the assailant didn't appear to have a weapon and when the cop tried to use non-lethal force to subdue him, the assailant suddenly produced a weapon out of nowhere and killed the cop. So, now, the cops are using those types of past events to justify killing assailants preemptively because "you just don't know what he (the assailant) has hidden on his person".

Cops don't take risks today like they used to in order to take assailants alive - they don't even want to get their uniforms dirty nowadays. I'm beginning to question whether present day cops deserve all of the reverence for "putting their lives on the line" for us. Many of not most really do put their lives on the line. But these "excursions" from that rubric are expanding vastly and are shaking my faith in the police.