Com­ments con­tinue at The World over an arti­cle about the tragic break­ing of a suspect’s neck by Coquille PD offi­cers. This com­pletely pre­ventable tragedy is a lose, lose deal for every­one. The entire com­mu­nity, the vic­tim, his fam­ily, the offi­cers have all lost here, there is no bright spot.

Why are these offi­cers still on the street? Whether scared or overzeal­ous or angry or any com­bi­na­tion thereof, the dynam­ics that led to this tragic event need to be ana­lyzed to pre­vent them from ever hap­pen­ing again. With­out this the offi­cers involved and oth­ers trained and indocti­nated into the same enforce­ment cul­ture are a haz­ard to the entire community.

UPDATE: Dian is tak­ing a fair amount of abuse in the form of the usual Coquil­lian style of anony­mous ad hominem attacks. She always keeps her head up though and stays on course with her mes­sage, I have a lot of respect for Dian.

It seems that we jus­tify inap­pro­pri­ate police behav­ior by spread­ing fear, “what if a sweaty meth­head is at your door with a loaded gun, ten pounds of C-4, a five gal­lon can of ammo­nium nitrate, a cig­a­rette lighter and looks really mean”. Then we fur­ther glo­rify the police for putting their lives on the line for us. As one of my friends likes to say ‘let’s all just hide under our beds and be vewy, vewy afwaid’.