Sheriff Javier Salazar told reporters somberly at a press conference that "any one of us" in the department would "gladly have traded places with that boy." Nice sentiment, sheriff, but I really doubt any of them would have actually taken Kameron's bullet for him. The reason the police unloaded their weapons at Jones was precisely because they are so afraid of being shot they'd kill an unarmed woman without hesitation, and not worry about innocent bystanders either.
The point is, cops and sheriff's deputies should know that a trailer doesn't offer much protection against a bullet. A standard-issue police .45-calibre projectile will tear right through the light tin of such a structure and thus pose a grave risk to anyone who might be inside.
The deputies should have assumed immediately that it was possible there might be people inside. That is or should be a key part -- actually the key part -- of their job: Protecting the public. They failed miserably at that.
They just blew the perp away, and they blew away an innocent six-year-old child along with her.
Sheriff Salazar placed the four deputies who killed Jones and little Kameron on five days' suspension, but he also told reporters, "In my opinion it's a tragic accident that led to the death of this young man (sic). We are looking into all of it. Internal Affairs is still investigating it. But again preliminarily it appears that policies and procedures [on use of deadly force] were complied with."
First of all let's get one thing straight, Sheriff Salazar, Kameron is not, and now never will be a "young man." He was a six-year-old little boy, and that's the way he should be described as we examine at what happened.
Secondly, if this sorry chase and slaughter was done by the book, as you say, with all Sheriff's Department policies "complied with," then those policies you have in your department on use of force need to be scrapped and completely redrawn.
I am sick to death of reading about innocent people, and especially young kids, dying because some "brave hero" cop "feared for his life" or thought someone "might" have a gun. Then the story is always the same: the cops fight to keep their jobs, and the investigation ends up clearing them. (When have we seen a cop who kills an innocent person, especially a child, through carelessness or cowardice come forward and say he or she is quitting the force because of doing something awful?)
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