A week ago, bullets from a gun held in the hand of a known gang affiliate, tore through the bodies of three Rapid City Police Officers. One officer died that day. Another died today. One more lay in a Rapid City hospital. When the three men woke that morning and readied themselves for duty they followed a ritual that includes arming themselves with their duty weapons, which should mentally prepare a person for the possibility of using lethal force on a suspect endangering the lives of people they swore to protect or themselves. In reality, that fateful morning was probably just another day on the job and they were thinking about their to-do lists at home, upcoming events, who knows. They knew they had a dangerous job but they never thought that responding to that call would have ended in gunfire and the loss of human life.
As a former PIO for the Collier County Sheriff's Office and a wife of a man who served on the SWAT Team, not a day went by that I didn't think about the reality of the criminal mind and how any day could be the last day. I must admit every time I part from my uniformed friends, I say a little prayer that I will see them again. I respect their calling as defenders of life and property.
I had not heard of this tragic incident until a Lakota friend from South Dakota sent me a text that said, "An Indian punk shot three cops in Rapid City... Two cops died and shooter died... Indian was named Daniel Tiger." The text made me stop what I was doing and pause to catch my breathe. "Indian punk shot three cops..." That statement alone made my head spin. As I read the links to the story and saw how this incident could lead to even more strained relations and quite possibly more deaths, I wondered what I would do... I wondered how this was being handled by the Mayor, the Tribes, the residents (both native and non-native) of a town with no more than 63,000 people.
I began to read the coverage and saw how the community and the Police Department are charactizing this incident along racial terms, "Indian man shoots three white police officers." This incident is not an issue of race - even for western Rapid City, South Dakota, a town widely-known in Indian Country for its racist activities.
I beg you all to look at this for what it is... A young 22-year old gang affiliate shot three innocent men doing their job. If this man is a known gang member, this is an issue of gang violence and its impact on society. This is a time for communities to get behind law enforcement to determine whether there is sufficient training in place for officers to identify known violent street-level offenders. Let's examine this issue for what it is and not for what we want it to be.
The issue of racism and oppression is REAL. Let's concentrate on the real issues at hand and let's explore the solutions together. Let's get people like Walter Lamar (Lamar and Associates) into these communities and provide proper training to both law enforcement and community members on the issue of gangs and all of the criminal activity that surround them.
Let's not cheapen the importance and significance of our men and women in law enforcement. Let's not ignore the effects of living in a racist society either... These incidents remind me of my favorite Bob Marley song, War...
"Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior, is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, there is war. Until the day when the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, there is war...."
We know it exists but let's look at what really happened here, at that given moment in time when 22 year old Daniel Tiger made the conscious decision to use his concealed weapon to fire upon the three police officers who confronted him about an open container and a disturbance. He did not shoot at three WHITE police officers, he fired a lethal weapon at three police officers. That decision belonged to Daniel Tiger.
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