The discussion we seem to be missing at the local and national level is what kind of policing do citizens want, and how do citizens get what they want in terms of the police forces occupying our towns.
At the national level, we’re barraged with images of masked ICE agents without warrants taking people from workplaces, neighborhoods, and cars. This isn’t supposed to happen in the United States. Anyone in the United States is supposed to be protected by the Constitution, and to be arrested or detained, there needs to be a warrant for their arrest, and/or reasonable articulable suspicion for a detainment while an officer investigates. We also have at the national level soldiers occupying the nation’s capitol ostensibly there to help ‘police’ that city and supposedly there to help with perceived, but unproven, changes in crime patterns. That being said, the military does not seem to be in neighborhoods but more on ‘display’ in public places.
Here in South Bend, Indiana, we have another event where a police officer violently takes down a citizen without probable cause. The child thrown to the ground was doing what they were asked to do and what the 9-1-1 caller wanted from the child, which was for the child to leave the McDonald’s. There was no crime being committed, and the officer did not need to detain the child with force.
The South Bend Police Department whined that they had to work on the weekend to answer community questions about this event. Their press agent suggested that people worked on their ‘off time’ despite salaried people not having ‘off time’ in most instances in modern America.
Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski suggested that an officer was shot in the past by someone the same age as the victim of the police brutality in this instance. Does this mean that if someone your age shoots a police officer, then your age group is automatically a suspect? I believe this is, in fact, Ruszkowski’s logical process, and it ABSOLUTELY explains other profiling that goes on in our community, by his officers and others.
Officers, the Review Board, and their Press Secretary are all trained in obfuscating facts to make officers, and the department hold a publicity stunt to exonerate their officer in advance of what should be a slam dunk or a lawsuit for the family.
Ruszkowski pointed to his longevity as a police officer as evidence as to why he is correct in his assertion that this is not police brutality or that the officer involved was ‘right.’ I suggest that his long-term experience has led him to not know right from wrong in these instances, and I call for his immediate dismissal and the appointment of someone with extensive training in de-escalation of violence.
If the Review Board and the Chief believe that the officer involved was doing the right thing, then we need to legislate that putting hands on citizens, especially when there is no imminent threat, is a felony for which officers can and will lose their pensions and their qualified immunity.
We the people should decide what we want from those who police us and not let them tell us that they’re keeping us safe until they show us that in non-violent situations, they know how to de-escalate or not make violent contact with citizens.
