Thursday, April 17, 2008

Scary stuff

Lots of scary things happening lately. I was going to steal Cruiser's tradition of a Thursday rant and complain about Bettendorf, but I'll save that for later.

I spent too much of the night reading articles and (foolishly) the comments on them, about the shooting yesterday in East Moline. I'll admit that I had an early reaction of thinking "One guy arrested for the double murder in RI, one arrest for the armed robberies, and another killed for shooting a cop. 3 criminals off the street." However... its never a good idea to feel good about people going to prison or being killed. On the flip side, there are a lot of people defending the man who was killed yesterday as being practically a saint. Clearly this was not true. As always things online seem to boil down to the extreme sides electronically screaming at each other. One side says good riddance, the others argue that the cops killed the man for no reason. Neither side is really expressing the right emotion if you ask me.

It may be good that some of these criminals are being taken off the street, but its not good that things are having to end this way for people.

Watching the near-riot that was captured by KWQC cameras makes me even more worried. In reading all the news stories and watching TV news, it seems the media is being very careful not to come out and say that the Officer was shot by Mr. Trice. It seems to me that the police are pretty sure this is what happened, but want to make absolute sure being publicly saying it. The only thing worse than people finding out that the Officer was hit by another cop would be for that to come out after people have been told otherwise. Seeing how out of hand people were getting last night, I am frightened to imagine the reaction if this incident turns out to be friendly fire. I hope that all involved can remain calm and let the situation settle down to prevent more violence from occurring.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

QCI,
Not a problem. We don't have a copyright on rants. Actually, you looked at a side of this that we would have overlooked. Thanks for the insight.
cruiser

Anonymous said...

We need to go back to "Momma's" advice that is, "I want you inside when the street lights come on!" Sound advice, if your asking me. Funny thing is that was the first 70 deg day since October, more to come along with the violence.

Anonymous said...

I'm interested in your rant about Bettendorf..

QuadCityImages said...

Oh, its coming.

Anonymous said...

I believe I heard on the TV news that neither of the other police weapons had been fired, but they were confiscated for testing anyway. What it comes down to for me is, "If he was innocent, why did he run?" Would you run if approached by a police officer?