How close we came to a disaster Friday…
Good evening, Netizens...
A single man was armed with a shotgun, and half a dozen or more police officers were shooting at him. One would reasonably conclude that the shooter would be riddled with bullet holes, but not according to the autopsy report. According to the Medical Examiners report, the man with the shotgun had just two bullet holes in his body. Witnesses and audio tapes of the shooting all show perhaps as many as 40 shots being fired by police. There were bullet holes in surrounding houses.
On the other hand, a KREM-TV report states there were 29 bullet holes in a building owned by the Spokane Tribe of Indians on Northwest Boulevard. Today, simply because I was curious, I went and looked at the building in question, and I could plainly see the bullet holes in their building and numerous windows.
The question that immediately arose is are the Spokane Police that deplorable at shooting? Even as a young man, I was taught to always make certain I had a good field of fire before pulling the trigger, making certain there was nothing behind or near my target which could be hit by gunfire. Until now, I presumed they taught young students at the Police Academy the same common-sense rule. Get a good field of fire and make certain of your target before you pull the trigger.
While I was visiting the building, I was also able to verify that college students and school-age children regularly use the facility. In fact, on most normal Fridays, students would have been present in the room where a hail of police bullets came through the windows. It didn't take any imagination at all to conceive of wounded children being sprayed by police bullets. We could have easily had a major disaster here, narrowly averting it only because the kids were not in class that day.
Something is wrong here, folks, but don't hold your breath awaiting justice.
It seems unlikely that any of the police officers who are on administrative leave are going to be charged. The bullets that went through the windows or outer walls were anonymous, much the same as they would have been had they hit students in the room.
Dave