I don't know who those detainees were. As of this writing their names haven't been released. As far as I know they'd done nothing deserving death, and were in the custody and under the protection of our peace officers. We failed in that protection, and they were shot in the place of our people.
Maybe it's that failure that leaves me with the sense that the dead and wounded need--not honor, but some kind of official respect. I confess that the sense is enchoate and I can't pin down a good reason or appropriate response.
It may be that the dead was a vile criminal--or someone picked up by mistake. I can't shake the notion that we owe something, somehow, in either case.
"Maybe it's that failure that leaves me with the sense that the dead and wounded need--not honor, but some kind of official respect."
ReplyDeleteRespect is a form of honor, and official respect doubly so. You're right, though: even if these were hardened criminals -- and we don't know that they were -- they were killed for reasons of our own, not because of their crimes. We owe them some recognition for the fact that their lives were spent in our cause, our struggle, rather than any cause of their own.
I wonder if shooting them was entirely accidental. It might be; the shooter could be really incompetent. Yet assaulting a police officer generally carries much higher penalties under the law, and murdering one is effectively always a death sentence where one is available. Shooting detainees and not injuring officers could result in lower penalties; it could be a tactical decision.