Death Of A Citizen

Radley Balko and Hit & Run both have pointers to a lovely WaPo article about the police in Fairfax County shooting an unarmed, apparently cooperative suspect in the chest with a .45. Not surprisingly, the suspect died.
There’s a lot of commentary to be had about this issue, and the nice folks at Hit & Run are doing a bang-up job of picking what Mr. Walker and Mr. Balko didn’t cover. A partial list of possible fun topics for discussion:

• Piss poor gun handling by cops
• The over-militarization of the police
• The absurdity of prosecuting a bookie in a state with a lottery
• The double standards that protect cops

I could probably keep going with a little bit of thought, but why? I am saddened that some guy got a whole blown through his chest. Am I terribly surprised? No. We moved to Fairfax County when I was 9. I lived there until I joined the Army and for a little while after I got out. My father and sister still live there. As a result, I sometimes make the joke that my ethnicity is "white boy from the ‘burbs". I have a pretty good understanding of Fairfax County.

Fairfax County is classic American suburban statism at its ugliest. If it will protect the children or property values, they’re all for it. Justifying the absurd of amount of tax revenue the county sucks up is always pretty high on the list, too. The concept of limited government never occurs to anyone there, and the level of cognitive dissonance going on is staggering. The residents want the government to do everything except inconvenience them.

The really sad thing about the incident is that it won’t change anything. The only people that are going to give a rat’s ass are Mr. Culosi’s family and friends. The rest of the people that live in Fairfax County are fine with the police doing this shit. At least, until the SWAT team shows up at their front door because mommy and daddy’s little darling was dealing weed out of the basement rec room. Me, I’m thinking you shouldn’t get too pissed off about the police coming after you when you kept telling them to go after your neighbors. Sooner or later, you’re somebody’s neighbor.