Roger Chesley is an idiot.
The Virginian-Pilot continues to pay this man and I swear that, in these days of thinning newsrooms, I can not conceive why.
His latest missive, which I won’t even dignify by linking to it, is called “Policing the Police.”
My brother-in-law is a policeman. My cousin is a policeman. And they don’t exactly have the cushy patrols. They are in big city, inner city precincts. They’ve seen partners and brothers of the shield get hit with no warning. They see what most people don’t want to see and fight what most people don’t want to face.
And Roger Chesley still can’t figure out if the police are the good guys.
“It’s still extremely rare for officers to be charged with crimes in such cases. Last year, The Washington Post reported that, since 2005, only 54 officers nationwide were charged in fatal shootings. That’s a tiny fraction of the thousands of people shot fatally by police over that period. Historically, it seems to me, officers have received too much benefit of the doubt.” (Virginian-Pilot which publishes Chesley’s idiocy).
What Chesley PURPOSELY covers up in his statistic hunt for the “thousands” of people shot fatally by police is that over 90% of those shot were armed. Yes, armed.
Excuse me, Roger, but if someone is pointing a gun at my brother-in-law, it seems to me, you have the benefit of my doubting your sanity, intelligence and objectivity. Guess whom I don’t want to get shot?
See, Roger, when you point your pen at the brave men and women who risk their lives every night to patrol streets you wouldn’t trust with your family at hours of the night that find you safely asleep in your home, people like me wonder why you aren’t writing about criminals.
You know….the bad guys?
I swear, with folks like Chesley stirring the pot, I really wonder who would volunteer to join the police force today. The reward for standing between law-abiding citizens and criminals is to read Chesley’s anti-police diatribes.
There are over a million police officers in this country. Well over a million. That means that the shootings Chesley is highlighting amount to less that one-tenth of a percent of all police officers in America.
One-tenth of one percent. Is that an epidemic?
I’ll take 99.999 percent excellence any day, any week, any month.
But, not Roger Chesley, who uses his precious pen and minimal newspaper space to call for more “Policing the Police” for those 0.001% of police officers who fatally shot someone, 90% of whom were armed.
Here’s the really sad part.
A few weeks ago, Chesley wrote a column urging citizens to work with their local police departments by providing information and tips about crime in their areas. Seems homicides are rising and too many stay silent.
Wonder why that’s happening?
If people have started to lose trust in their local police, Roger, read your column about “Policing the Police” and then check a mirror.
And maybe blame a crime on a criminal once in a while.
