Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Good Shouldn't Suffer For The Bad

Nothing would bring the rebel out of me when I was in school more than when a teacher tried to punish me for something someone else had done. She comes back in class, sees one person out of their seat acting crazy and wants to give everyone detention. I don’t believe in the good suffering for the bad someone else has done.

There’s an article on the front page of the Times Picayune that says, “Witness said civilians fired guns on span” According to the defense attorneys in the article, the witness testimony can back up allegations that there was a shootout. If anyone looks at the title of the article without reading the whole thing they will probably assume that there is a justified reason why all those people were shot on the Danziger Bridge. Once you read the article things get a little more questionable.

The witness that claims someone was shooting near the bridge that day was Lance Madison. He was arrested on false attempted murder charges that day and his brother Ronald Madison was shot in the back by the same police officers his testimony may help. According to the story he testified that a group of teens ages 14-18 were chasing him and they started shooting first. So, Mr. Madison lost his brother by the hands of the people who were supposed to be helping him? He almost went to prison for attempted murder because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Nothing screams discrimination to me like someone thinking that it’s alright to harm innocent people just because they happen to be around some bad people. At the least it compromises the community’s trust in the police department. You are not allowed to do anything you want to me because a criminal may be around. You are supposed to protect me from the criminals not turn me into one. The thing to remember here is that none of the people who were shot had a weapon. At some point those officers had to realize none of the group they were shooting at was shooting back. The Madison brothers definitely weren’t shooting back because they were running. It kind of reminds of the movie Rosewood where one lady made an accusation and the mob tried to take out everybody. It’s the same principle.

Sometimes in the neighborhood a guy may get some information about someone wanting to do him something. Depending on the environment and tension in the air at the time he may decide to take matters into his own hands. He gets his guns, jumps in his car and goes to whatever block or corner the threat is supposed to be to handle things. When he gets there he doesn’t know if anyone has a gun and if someone does who it is in particular. They just come through blasting on everyone to eliminate the enemy. It never fails that an innocent bystander or two are injured, maybe even killed. When the police catch up with that guy, and he tells the judge that he shot all those innocent people because he heard someone had a gun even though no one on the scene or anyone he shot actually had one, he’s headed straight to the penitentiary. No one knows this more than the kind of officers involved in the cover-up of this case because catching people that engagein behavior like that was their job. That’s why they put everything on the line for their officers and tried to cover it up. The sooner we all accept that, the faster we can get justice done and move on.

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