I grieve over what has happened to the nearly 300 Nigerian girls who have been kidnapped and possibly sold. That such a heinous act could happen today is sickening.
But so is the fact that a 93-year-old woman was allegedly shot and killed by a young, white police officer in Hearne, Texas. http://nydn.us/1npJbvX
Nobody is talking about it.
It is as though the Nigerian girls’ plight is almost an excuse NOT to talk about the heinous things that go on in this nation …still.
Pearlie Golden is dead. She had a gun and she was wielding it, relatives said. She was apparently mad because she wanted the keys to the car and nobody would give them to her.
So, they called police on her, and the police, of course, came. They told her to put her gun down, three times. When she didn’t, they shot her. She died a short time later at the hospital. (http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/07/us/texas-police-shoot-elderly-woman-93/index.html?iref=allsearch)
Neighbors and family called her “Ms. Sully,” and they said she was nice…
Nice or maybe not-so-nice, she is dead, allegedly shot by a young, white cop, who is now on paid administrative leave while the police department “investigates.”
Over and over, we hear these stories, and so few of them get the attention they deserve. Yes, it’s horrendous that the elderly man in Georgia was murdered and decapitated and nobody can find his wife. That is horrible.
And yes, it’s horrible that those Nigerian girls are gone and it took what seems forever for the American press to cover it.
It is horrible that the brand of rabid racism of Donald Sterling still exists.
But it is equally as horrible that police can still kill people, some unarmed, some not, but too often in questionable circumstances, and the media ignores it or denigrates its significance in this nation.
As the Gordon G. Cosby Fellow for the SpiritHouse Project in Atlanta, GA, I have listened to and studied stories about people shot and killed by police. The families are left to grapple with their pain at the loss of their loved one and their anger that so often, there is no justice to be had.
In the case of Jack Lamar Roberson, shot and killed in Georgia, relatives called EMS for help because he was apparently out of control. He reportedly had a knife in his hand, a table or case knife, they said. He supposedly had taken an overdose of diabetic medicine. His mother didn’t want police; she said that specifically on the 911 call, and neither did his girlfriend. They wanted help. They wanted someone to take him to the hospital …or something.
EMS didn’t come. Police did. They rolled right on up to his house and entered. Within second (literally; I heard the tape), police opened fire on Roberson. A number of shots were fired; in the crime scene photos, I counted five shots in his back. There were also shots in his wrists; it looked like, from the way his wrists were injured, that he had his hands up in a defensive position. And oh yes …there was a shot in his head.
The news reports indicated that he was so out of control that a refrigerator had been knocked over …but again, I saw the photos of the crime scene. The refrigerator was upright, contents intact.
So, what? Why aren’t these stories getting media attention, and why can’t the families of these victims get help in order to get justice?
The family of “Ms. Sully” joins the group of families who have been assaulted by police officers…If history bears out, they will not get justice …meaning the officer who is accused of shooting her will probably be cleared. It’ll be said that the shooting, the killing, was “justifiable.”
That just blows me away…
It happens way too often, and we just won’t deal with it…
A candid observation …
Candid Observations 