Letter to the Editor: Americans Need to Understand Police Shootings Better

We, (the people of America) need to start understanding the true problem of police shooting deaths better, then just blaming them as racist related when we see a video on TV. 

Yes what we see is totally horrifying, but let’s get to the facts. 

1. There are more white deaths by police than of color during the year. 2. They are most often during an arrest that is being resisted where a threat or fight is happening. 

We don’t know what has been reported to the officer prior to their arrival, as in when I had a Washington State Patrol trooper pull up on me one summer 30 years ago with his gun drawn and requested me to drop my weapon repeatedly before cocking the hammer of his pistol. I understood that it was not the time to argue it was the time to do whatever he asked me to do. He arrived seeing my gun in its holster and reacted in a matter one would only expect they would, not knowing who I was feeling a threat of possible injury.  

Had I resisted by my actions or lack of I would have been shot. Officers are not trained to be bare knuckle fighters. They’re normal people like you or me who don’t want to be hit in the face or wrestled unconscious leaving themselves defenceless with someone violent with their weapon. 

Yes from time to time there are racist officers but more than not it’s due to at this moment of the unknown, heart beating resistance when shootings occur. Officers don’t wake up in the morning thinking about who and where they get to shoot someone. 

Protests are part of our rights and a way of a voice but let’s use it justly. I agree there are times when bad people get hired for this hard but needed job of law enforcement and they need to be removed but to say all are bad is crazy. 

Our freedom is in part because of the laws and safety that the police enforce for everyone. Don’t get blinded with fear or the lack of knowledge so that we fall for the wrong agenda of those in power as an answer. Again, all lives matter but don’t forget we are blaming as a whole not just as a few. Equality should be for everyone.

Carl Bohlin

Centralia