When we juxtapose Rice’s quick and final seconds of life to the almost inept response of law enforcement to react Ammon Bundy and the other Oregon protesters, it only reinforces the two Americas in which we live.
The white men with an arsenal of weapons, daring the U.S. government or police to approach them unless their political demands are met, are terrorists. They pose a threat. A child playing on a playground, startled by a police car coming toward him, does not.
This is not the America I was taught to believe in. This is not the community policing and restraint that is shown when police are called to white neighborhoods. The fact that the police drove their car so close to Tamir reflects a mentality that had no regard for black life.
The same lack of care and inhumanity shown by the police that gunned down Tamir Rice was also shown by the district attorney who recommended that the grand jury not indict those officers. It is implausible to think that a prosecutor would find no reason to recommend charging the police officers when, if nothing more, Ohio is an open-carry state, and had Tamir been carrying an actual gun and officers truly believed that he was an adult, Tamir would not have been breaking any laws.
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