Cops Should Do What They Need To Do To Defend Themselves

by John Hawkins | October 15, 2003 12:55 am

I was reading an editorial by left-wing columnist Harley Sorenson[1] about a liberal cop he was talking to and these two paragraphs really jumped out at me…

“(The officer) is vehemently opposed to the kind of training cops get these days, training that in essence teaches cops to shoot first and ask questions later. He is appalled by the number of mentally ill people killed by the police, unarmed people killed by the police, innocent bystanders killed as a result of reckless police chases.

In our discussion last week, I told him that I cannot imagine myself shooting a 97-pound woman armed only with a knife, as cops have been known to do. “No, you wouldn’t shoot her,” Neil replied, “nor would anyone who has not gone through police training.”

Now without question, there are some cops out there who are too quick to pull a trigger. Furthermore, it goes without saying that there are cops out there who are corrupt, do a poor job, and are generally rotten apples who don’t deserve to be defended.

That being said, what Sorenson and his liberal cop friend are saying there is pure nonsense. Whether a woman weighs 97 pounds or not, if she’s wielding a knife she can still kill you dead as a stone. As far as I’m concerned, her weight, sex, mood at the time, etc, mean absolutely nothing compared to the fact that she has a knife.

The same goes for people with mental disorders. Just because they’re crazy doesn’t mean that you won’t be hurt if they hit you with an axe or shoot you with a shotgun. It’s tragic when the police have to kill someone who’s out of their mind, but if the choice is between shooting a lunatic and letting them endanger the lives of an officer or an innocent victim, I say pull the trigger and let the chips fall where they may.

Then there are the unarmed people who get shot by the police. This is something that you almost have to examine on a case by case basis, but from what I’ve seen, most (but not all) of the unarmed people who get shot by the police bring it on themselves. Maybe that sounds harsh, but if the police try to pull you over and you lead them on a high speed chase, run, attack the officer, etc, etc, & then make a sudden movement that might be perceived in the dark as going for a gun, you’re making a potentially fatal mistake. That doesn’t necessarily mean the police should shoot you, but the further you get from, “I sat in the car and waited for the police with both hands on the steering wheel” the more likely I am to give the police the benefit of the doubt if they blow you away.

What all this adds up to is that the police do incredibly difficult, dangerous, and dirty work for a low salary and they shouldn’t be asked to unnecessarily put their lives in danger just because it’s politically incorrect to shoot a woman or someone with a mental disorder. Just because they’re cops doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to come home alive to their families every night like the rest of us.