Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find that rock and hard place everyone else gets stuck in? No? You'd be surprised the size, shape, and paths to those spots.
Family. Friends. Neighbors. Coworkers. The people you see every day all have a version of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Whenever I'm wedged between a rock and a hard place, over a lifetime it's happened many times, but I typically have time and a bit of some sort of room to help me put things into perspective, to help myself pull myself out of a spot.
I'm not a medical professional. I'm not someone who routinely saves, or takes, lives. I have saved a life or two through my own actions through the years; I've also been saved from potential demise at least twice.
My mind has run a few miles in my head over the last months, weeks, and days. There are good folks, there are folks who I'd rather not be around. There are good neighbors and not so good neighbors. There are good doctors and not such great doctors. Choices we make every day affect our lives from that moment on in some way, large and small.
When a medical procedure ends badly, not as expected, something went wrong. Typically it's not true malpractice but sometimes it is. Usually, there is a common way to perform a surgery or set a leg and seldom does that routine change. To be sure, each patient is different, each has a set of needs to be met. But no one expects to go into a hospital for a routine procedure and end up dead. It's a tragedy when it happens. I do not believe that there are many who hear of the tragedy and immediately question the doctor's or hospital's motives or lack of training. Seriously, there can't be a majority of folks who would think to outline what they'd have done in a surgical suite when x, y or z went haywire during surgery.
Those things that go wrong require a decision be made, typically in a split second.
Routine traffic stops and routine police calls are no different. There can't be any lay person qualified enough to determine from their dinner table when a police officer wrongly used deadly force. I can't imagine what they are going through when that happens. It is a tragedy.
Too many of us presume to know the ins and outs of a job that we haven't got the guts to do. Mistakes happen every day. No, they don't all cost a life.
Increasingly, it seems we hear and see an awful lot that happens in the lives of a police officer, any police officer, and we hear and see the things others feel they do wrong. I'm not so quick to say a judgment call is an 'intentional mistake'.
There is a part of me that would dearly like to see justice served to those who need it, whichever way that justice might be needed. But there is a process and there is a place and it's there for a reason. There is no need for me to formulate an opinion and share it down anyone's throat because, generally, I haven't got enough information to make even a random guess much less a qualified decision about any given situation, particularly those of these last several years.
Professional athletes should consider themselves blessed that they are not held to the standards our society has for law enforcement folks. The lapses of good judgment made on and off the playing field by athletes that so many kids look up to is frightening but very seldom is there the outrage one would expect, especially given the standards as I said above.
The rising number of tragedies that are widely known now, the types of incidents, and the names, faces of all victims of circumstance deserve a prayer, a positive thought, and to be allowed their humanity. Take this moment, right now, to simply forgive mistakes done against you and believe that there are good people in our world.
From my corner of this Freaking Utopia.
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