Life in these Untidy States: Reasons TO Emigrate

[athelind]

How are we not the Evil Empire, again?

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Comments

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

Evil Empire? No. Unable to contemplate the moment? Yes.

One agent loses his cool, shoots -- hits a kid in the head. There are better ways to handle a situation like this. And the better way is how LAW ENFORCEMENT is supposed to handle it -- because they are police, not military. They are to PROTECT and SERVE, even if they are duty bound only to US citizens.

If rock throwing is a problem, wear a helmet -- honestly, I thought our agents were trained better than this. If not, then they should be. It should be as simple as that.

But reading the comments on the NPR story...
...everyone's perspective of this single incident is just fucked up.

If a single agent loses control of a situation and commits a homicide -- don't point fingers at politicians, drug lords, employers, Wall Street executives, and so on -- as if to say their mistakes justify the agent's mistakes. The agent had a job, and he couldn't do it, and someone died because of that. Deal out the punishment and fix the problem that led to the mistakes.

[hinoki.livejournal.com]

To add from that same article Athe noted:

' ..but from the NPR piece:"According to the statement, the group surrounded the agents and began to pelt them with stones."

That seems to me to possibly cross the line from 'rock-throwing' to stoning, which is certainly a potentially lethal act - it's an execution method after all"

Surround border agents? Start throwing rocks?

No. Sorry, no.

Shoot. To. Kill. Self defense, plain and clear.

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

If the situation was really that clear, you'd see no need to add a "sorry" to your statement...

From the same article you quoted, there is also this: "Mexicans regularly throw rocks at border agents"
--which to me says, they should have been better prepared for this. They should have at least had gear on that would protect from rocks -- preventing the need for a lethal response.

But really -- was the situation so dire that the agents couldn't just back off their two suspects? Most highway patrol officers know when a car chase is too dangerous and to let the suspect go before an innocent bystander is caught in the mess. Was it so necessary to arrest those two that they HAD to use their firearms instead of back down? Were they really "surrounded" to the point that they could only shoot their way out?

I doubt it. And if you try to imagine several scenarios where the agents would HAVE to use their firearms, it seems unlikely that the scenario would have been brought under control with the shooting. It seems very unlikely the end result would look like this.

Odds are more likely that the agents did not feel their same protocols were in effect since they were not dealing with US citizens, and they took other measures in favor of their fears and frustrations.

But what are speculating here? For all we know, the agents were lying about what led to the incident. As you can guess -- the stories are not matching up: "This one (Hernandez) hid behind the wall. He looked out and that's when (he) was shot," he said. "The agent shot at him twice ... He shot at him once, which left him stunned, and then he shot him again. It seems he was hit in the head."

so... if the situation is as you say it was, then I agree with you. But if not, then I stand by my statement. However, I think we might disagree about what an officer's responsibilities are and what calls for a lethal response.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Of course, contemplating emigration is only really worthwhile if there is a place to emigrate too.

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

...considering the drug-war unrest in the area, it's looking less like 'somewhere to emigrate too', in favor of 'someplace to escape with my life intact'.

But then, criminals related to the drug-war are also crossing the border. So, what's a Mexican to do :P