New Bill Gets Cops Fired Up
While watching the 6:30 evening news on WPIX-TV, New York, I caught their quick rundown of stories they’d be covering once returning from commercial break. One of the stories featured was on a bill sponsored by two Brooklyn Assembly Members, Annette Robinson (D-Bedford Stuyvesant) and Darryl Towns (D-East New York) that would mandate police officers to shoot to wound rather than to kill a suspect. Patiently, I waited until the program returned from break to hear the details. They quickly reported the; who, what, when, where, why and moved on. Later in the program the matter was addressed in an editorial segment titled “Lionel” which, to sum up, is an old white guy ranting about the good old days. I found myself to be incensed by his insensitive, unsympathetic, uninformed, and irresponsible diatribe on the issue. Describing the bill as something that would require police officers “to shoot gun-wielding suspects in the arm or leg rather than shoot to kill” and declaring the people that the bill would protect to be “thugs”,
