Okay, I think I'm ready to try to grapple with this one:
Look, incidents like this don't do anyone any good. Certainly not the dead. I'll have to look up negligence and manslaughter statutes in Oklahoma, but something needs to happen here. While a civil suit for wrongful death certainly seems warranted, it's not enough. I'm not saying the police set out to kill or hurt anyone. Far from it. But it's a freaking gun. I understand there's a difference between the alleged "last resort" of killing someone, and whacking a snake. But the convenience of snake-whacking should not obscure the question of what happens when you miss the target. Now, maybe Oklahoma doesn't have good wildlife services, and that would be an issue to consider. But yeah, if you're the cop that gets this call, it would seem you're stuck with it for a while. The question on that point is whether wildlife services were not available, or whether it seemed too inconvenient to wait for them. Additionally, and this is just me, and I am not a fan of guns and thus don't fire the things, it seems to me that if you're going to be shooting at a snake, a shotgun might be the better idea. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe police in Noble, Oklahoma don't have shotguns. But, yeah, shredding the hell out of something that scares you so badly to shoot at it seems the better idea when the target is long and narrow like a snake. Playing Deadeye Dick seems a bad call on that one.
The list of excuses we can make for the police is long, but nothing should diminish the fact that a five year-old boy is dead, and apparently of police gunfire. This is a tragedy at the least, and seems like an obscenity.
My first thought was to draw and quarter the officer. My second was that D&Q is too harsh, and that branding him with the letter "M" (for "moron") would suffice. So I walked away from it for a while because that wasn't useful. Blood vengeance gains nothing, there's the Eighth Amendment, &c., &c. But in the end the only important thing is that there is a dead child, and frankly, I might be able to care less how badly the officer feels. Feeling badly about killing a little boy just won't fix the situation.
I will certainly care less if the perpetrator walks on this one. I would probably be fine with flaying the skin from his still-living bones, at least in the "savages will as savages do" context, but we are supposed to be a civilized society. Thus, pay off the family and send the perpetrator up for a decent clip . People need to know they can trust the gun-toting professionals, else Hell will rise and Satan stride to and fro about the Earth with happy heart.
Austin Haley was fishing with his grandfather, Jack Tracy, when Tracy said he heard a shot and saw something hit the water just a few feet in front of the boat dock where he was standing.
Moments later, a second shot hit Austin in the head ....
.... A Noble police officer who had responded to a report of a snake in a tree apparently fired the deadly shot while trying to kill the snake on Friday, City Manager Bob Wade said ....
.... Tracy thought someone must be trying to kill him and his grandson, so he put the child on the back of a 4-wheeler and drove to his daughter's house about 200 yards away.
"Then two officers came out of the brush over there," he told The Oklahoman. "They didn't tell us they were the ones who had been shooting or that they had shot him. They didn't admit a doggone thing" ....
.... "I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose," he said. "But let me tell you -- if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that." (CNN.com)
Moments later, a second shot hit Austin in the head ....
.... A Noble police officer who had responded to a report of a snake in a tree apparently fired the deadly shot while trying to kill the snake on Friday, City Manager Bob Wade said ....
.... Tracy thought someone must be trying to kill him and his grandson, so he put the child on the back of a 4-wheeler and drove to his daughter's house about 200 yards away.
"Then two officers came out of the brush over there," he told The Oklahoman. "They didn't tell us they were the ones who had been shooting or that they had shot him. They didn't admit a doggone thing" ....
.... "I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose," he said. "But let me tell you -- if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that." (CNN.com)
Look, incidents like this don't do anyone any good. Certainly not the dead. I'll have to look up negligence and manslaughter statutes in Oklahoma, but something needs to happen here. While a civil suit for wrongful death certainly seems warranted, it's not enough. I'm not saying the police set out to kill or hurt anyone. Far from it. But it's a freaking gun. I understand there's a difference between the alleged "last resort" of killing someone, and whacking a snake. But the convenience of snake-whacking should not obscure the question of what happens when you miss the target. Now, maybe Oklahoma doesn't have good wildlife services, and that would be an issue to consider. But yeah, if you're the cop that gets this call, it would seem you're stuck with it for a while. The question on that point is whether wildlife services were not available, or whether it seemed too inconvenient to wait for them. Additionally, and this is just me, and I am not a fan of guns and thus don't fire the things, it seems to me that if you're going to be shooting at a snake, a shotgun might be the better idea. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe police in Noble, Oklahoma don't have shotguns. But, yeah, shredding the hell out of something that scares you so badly to shoot at it seems the better idea when the target is long and narrow like a snake. Playing Deadeye Dick seems a bad call on that one.
The list of excuses we can make for the police is long, but nothing should diminish the fact that a five year-old boy is dead, and apparently of police gunfire. This is a tragedy at the least, and seems like an obscenity.
My first thought was to draw and quarter the officer. My second was that D&Q is too harsh, and that branding him with the letter "M" (for "moron") would suffice. So I walked away from it for a while because that wasn't useful. Blood vengeance gains nothing, there's the Eighth Amendment, &c., &c. But in the end the only important thing is that there is a dead child, and frankly, I might be able to care less how badly the officer feels. Feeling badly about killing a little boy just won't fix the situation.
I will certainly care less if the perpetrator walks on this one. I would probably be fine with flaying the skin from his still-living bones, at least in the "savages will as savages do" context, but we are supposed to be a civilized society. Thus, pay off the family and send the perpetrator up for a decent clip . People need to know they can trust the gun-toting professionals, else Hell will rise and Satan stride to and fro about the Earth with happy heart.
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