Avoidable tragedy

The best way to avoid some tragedies is not to give them fertile soil in which to germinate

I've had several people ask my thoughts on this week's tragedy in Minneapolis. OK. Here's my two cents, probably worth much less.

Was the officer justified in firing? I don't know. And neither do you. He did not have the luxury of video views from multiple angles, enhanced, zoomed and replayed a thousand times before making his decision. He had milliseconds. Sometimes the answer to this question is easy and obvious. This is not one of those times.

He will have to be judged based on the same legal and departmental criteria any other law enforcement officer would be subject to in a similar incident.

But this is what my brain keeps going back to. It is what I like to call the Law of Reasonable Expectations.

If I tried to impede an LEO who was making an arrest, it is reasonable to expect they would physically stop me.

If I aimed a two-ton vehicle at them, it is reasonable to expect I would be shot, or somehow neutralized to make sure I didn’t have a chance to do that.

That's why I do neither of those things.

To wit: I philosophically oppose random sobriety checkpoints sometimes conducted by State Police. I believe they are a violation of basic human rights. They ignore the presumption of innocence that we are supposed to enjoy under our system of jurisprudence.

But if I drove my car into a VSP checkpoint to blow my horn and generally disrupt the troopers from performing their perfectly-lawful duties, I would not be helping anyone or anything. There is no potential good that would result from a stunt like that. All I would be doing is making things worse for everyone. And I would be needlessly putting myself and others in harm's way. And the checkpoint would continue.

Such a stunt would be silly, reckless, foolish and just flipping stupid.

There is a time and place for everything. In the middle of a tense arrest is neither.

The evidence is clear that this woman was part of a semi-organized effort to physically thwart ICE officers in the performance of their legal duties. There is NO good that can come from such actions. ICE is not going to relinquish anyone in their custody. They're not going to pack up their van and go home.

Indeed, the actions of zealots like these makes it impossible to debate the issue in any meaningful way. And yes, this is an issue that is worthy of debate. The wise allocation of limited public resources is ALWAYS something we should weigh.

For what it is worth, I do NOT think the resources we are spending right now on ICE enforcement is the highest and best use of our resources. I would prefer more time and energy be spent uncovering fraud and making sure we don’t have to return violent criminals to the streets because we lack the capacity to house them.

I also know that driving my car into the middle of an ICE operation is not going to get anyone to agree with my views on the proper allocation of public resources. Indeed, such childish actions will more than likely have the very opposite effect. It will force those who DO support such policies to dig in their heels and stifle any potential debate on the issue.