“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”
— Thomas Jefferson
We’ve had another incident. Late Wednesday night, a hostile crowd gathered near the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, the site where an 18-year-old black man had been killed by an off-duty police officer earlier in the evening.
Chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these killer cops have to go,” the angry people were often interrupted by individuals shouting things like, “That was somebody’s baby” and “Think about your own child,” according to CNN’s Ed Payne. One of the city’s aldermen, Antonio French, tweeted, “At the scene of yet another young man’s death. This happens too often in our city. It’s a crisis that we should all be concerned about.”
According to St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, the 18-year-old man fired first, discharging three rounds at the officer, who was unharmed. At that point, according to early reports, the officer fired back. Seventeen times. And here’s the kicker, in case you didn’t already know: The police officer is white; the dead youth is black...