Shoot to kill???
A very rare thing happened yesterday: police apprehended a legitimate suspect in a violent crime with terrorist overtones without killing him (or her) on the spot.
I'd like to thank the police officer who had the professionalism to hit Ahmad Khan Rahami in the shoulder rather than in the usual lethal locations.
Did this officer just "miss?" Perhaps. Given our track record of killing unarmed suspects, there's a good chance the officer was trained to shoot to kill. And of course this expedited approach to justice is a key component of what's now often referred to as the "school to prison pipeline" we're running to get black men into the prison labor pool.
But, if not, I express my appreciation for letting us skip one more extra-judicial assassination.
My instinct is that it's particularly important in this case, because we don't know what Mr. Rahami had in mind or who he was working with. But I realize that's a moral mistake. We didn't know what those guys in Ferguson or in Syria or Boston or Iraq or California or elsewhere really had in mind, and we had no qualms about dropping them in their tracks. We kills quasi-political leaders in the Arab world without a second thought. We'll never really know what these people were doing because our militias killed them without a trial--and I suspect that's already contributed to a lot more violence against all of us.
Look at what Nurenberg taught us. Or even look at the mild successes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Would we understand Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" if we'd just gunned these sadists down?
I feel LESS safe every time we gun down a suspect...for anything. Please tell your police officers to stop shooting to kill. It's not doing any of us any good.
I'd like to thank the police officer who had the professionalism to hit Ahmad Khan Rahami in the shoulder rather than in the usual lethal locations.
Did this officer just "miss?" Perhaps. Given our track record of killing unarmed suspects, there's a good chance the officer was trained to shoot to kill. And of course this expedited approach to justice is a key component of what's now often referred to as the "school to prison pipeline" we're running to get black men into the prison labor pool.
But, if not, I express my appreciation for letting us skip one more extra-judicial assassination.
My instinct is that it's particularly important in this case, because we don't know what Mr. Rahami had in mind or who he was working with. But I realize that's a moral mistake. We didn't know what those guys in Ferguson or in Syria or Boston or Iraq or California or elsewhere really had in mind, and we had no qualms about dropping them in their tracks. We kills quasi-political leaders in the Arab world without a second thought. We'll never really know what these people were doing because our militias killed them without a trial--and I suspect that's already contributed to a lot more violence against all of us.
Look at what Nurenberg taught us. Or even look at the mild successes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Would we understand Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" if we'd just gunned these sadists down?
I feel LESS safe every time we gun down a suspect...for anything. Please tell your police officers to stop shooting to kill. It's not doing any of us any good.
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