Not all police shootings are racist actions

Credibility should always be the focus of protest groups if they want to be taken seriously. Extreme, negative behavior or exaggerated claims quickly lose them sympathy with the general public. The Black Lives Matter movement should pay attention to this truth.

I fully understand that law enforcement in general within this country has traditionally come down hard on young black men and has incarcerated them at an unforgivable rate. But that doesn’t mean every time a cop shoots a black person that it is by default a racist action. Sometimes black people are actually guilty of committing crimes of assault that justify the use of lethal force.

Everyone’s seen the videos of white officers gunning down black men with no cause and obvious malice. However, when white officers are clearly justified in using lethal force against a black person, those videos don’t go viral. Nothing is seldom all one way or the other; everything exists on a gradient, and the trick to being right is figuring out where on the chart each individual incident belongs.

Regarding the shooting of two black men in west Olympia a year ago, saying the cop did it because he’s white and therefore racist is a totally racist statement. Ignoring that the officer was allegedly attacked by two large men (one of whom was swinging a skateboard) in the dark, while alone in the woods, without backup, is situational blindness.

Try the young men for assault, and if convicted, their punishment should be pain/suffering served.

This story was originally published June 3, 2016 at 8:25 AM with the headline "Not all police shootings are racist actions."