Wednesday, August 19, 2009

We're the Only Ones Standing By Enough

Two Marin County sheriff's deputies watched from 50 feet away while a man killed two people with a shotgun on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge last week. [More]
It may surprise you to find I agree with Sheriff Doyle, and I'm not playing "Monday- morning quarterback" for the officers' actions/inaction.

What I will criticize is the perception that the police will protect you. That and the way much of California, particularly Marin County, makes it highly improbable that any but an "Only One" will ever legally have a gun on their person in a public place with which they can defend themselves.

Oh, and also Sheriff Doyle's insistence on keeping things that way...

[Via Ed Stone]

2 comments:

Sean said...

To neither serve, nor protect, but to shoot handcuffed people in the back, and taze 16yr old boys with broken backs 19 times and claim later he was mouthing off about cops.I'm only suprised they didn't get out and hold up traffic, to make it less stressful for the shooter, or maybe they could offer their service guns. Keep them donuts hot........

straightarrow said...

I am no lover of cops, just because they are cops, although I love two of them for sure, a brother and a son. But, from the sketchy description of events I cannot see that the officers had an opportunity to do anything else.

The headline is simply yellow dog journalism.

I am 100% aligned with Sean's disgust cited above in those and incidents like them. But, here I cannot see that the cops share any fault, except of course, as David said the fact that Sheriff Doyle prefers this outcome to one where either of these victims may have had a chance, if not for Doyle's policy on the law abiding carrying defensive arms.