White ‘kiddos’ would have gotten the same treatment

People at a recent forum denounced charges against two black men shot by an Olympia policeman. One speaker said it was hard for her “to imagine that my (white) kiddos would have been dealt with the same way.”

Really? If her “kiddos” surrounded a policeman and threatened to bash his head with a skateboard, I suspect they would have suffered the same fate.

Another speaker “questioned why (the policeman) placed himself in a position in which he feared for his life.” So policemen are at fault if they don't flee from danger?

How many people charging the policeman with racism are exhibiting their own prejudice by assuming he was at fault, without learning the facts? Those men were videotaped in that store earlier that night, apparently stole a case of Coors, then tried to steal a case of Corona. When an employee tried to stop them, they threw the case at her.

The police were called to report an assault. The policeman found them near the store. If two men larger than I am had tried to grab me, raised a skateboard over my head threatening to hit me with it, tried to attack me simultaneously from two directions, I probably would have saved myself as that policeman did.

When policemen are at fault they should be prosecuted. But it does no good for anyone to attack a policeman and a prosecutor in a case like this.

Here's a link to the report: co.thurston.wa.us/pao/critical-incident-report.htm.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 8:46 AM with the headline "White ‘kiddos’ would have gotten the same treatment."