Of course this is a tragedy. However, do I kneejerk support the cops whenever I see a story like this? I used to. I don’t anymore. Conservatives need to wake up to the fact that the government they already think is too invasive and omnipotent uses cops to enforce the kind of crap obama and his leftist cohorts pass by fiat or bullying or monopoly control or areas of this country.
The cops have a choice.
If Baltimore passes an oppressive, unreasonable knife law, the cops shouldn’t enforce it. They stopped enforcing the anti-sodomy laws used to target gays long before they were repealed. The concept of cop nullification exists and is accepted. If they expect support from conservatives they need to stop acting like government gestapo and start supporting the public they serve. That’s not even to mention the many many abuses cops in this country are engaged in. They are embued with huge authority to wreck people’s lives, and they do so with little regard to the consequences.
The “cop with the heart of gold” who buys the poor kid a basketball is a myth. Cops come to a call with an attitude and a proclivity to charge and jail people to fill their quotas. When more and more people who know the cops are coming expect to be treated unfairly, then more cops can expect to be shot. And you know what, this is actually the second amendment point that a lot of conservatives don’t want to talk about: guns aren’t a civil right to protect us from criminals, they are a civil right to protect us from the government and its agents.
Picking an individual case as a poster child, like this guy, or the guy defending his ranch from the Feds who turned out to be a racist is a bad idea because then you have to defend the individual and all his actions. However, public pushback against the cops is long overdue, and more and more conservatives are getting on board.