In Retaliation

My husband loves his morning routine.  He gets out of bed and begins to heat water for coffee.  He then turns on the computer and starts reading the morning onslaught of news.   He recently found a video on YouTube of the New Years Eve East Bay BART shooting.  The man who was shot by an officer was lying face down.  After the gun goes off the officer who pulled the trigger looks a little stunned.  Almost as if he knows what a horrible mistake he made.  The family of the dead man are suing the BART system for 25 million dollars.  Protests and eventually riots were staged shortly after the cellphone video clips were aired on YouTube.

Many people seem to the think the officer should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.  To me this just seems to add more tragedy to situation already fraught with tension and anger.  (Johannes Mehserle just had a new baby.)  Everyone makes mistakes, some even cost multiple lives.  I agree that the man should be punished but why ruin more lives.  Is there nothing that can be learned from this accident?

This entry was posted on January 11, 2009 at 10:19 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.