This white man is deeply perplexed at the outpouring of vengeful anger against the Victorian Police in light of the recent and tragic shooting of a 15 year-old teenage boy in a Northcote skate park. On that night the police did what they felt was the last resort to do - and for their own safety as well. It is easy in hindsight to hypothesise that the police members were "heavy-handed" in dealing with a youth running at them with knives threatening to kill them. All I would contend is that generally-speaking, whether or not you are a serving police member or serving in the military or even just a face in the general population, to kill someone, by accident or intent, is not just something that happens and you just move on and get over it. That is why I believe that the hatred being spewed all over the serving members who felt compelled to discharge their weapons against Tyler Cassidy last week is unfair and ill-considered.
How would those police be feeling right now? Do we really think they were happy to shoot down the kid like he was just some empty can in a shooting gallery? That course of action which they believed to be necessary will never leave those police members - they will wrestle with it for the rest of their lives. And today a grieving family lays to rest their 15 year-old because he tragically made a series of choices that led to his untimely death. No-one denies the scale of this as a personal tragedy that was in every way unfortunate. But to just lay the whole onus of responsibility on the police, who were doing their job in serving to protect our community, is uncalled for. I say let's be fair in examining the role and actions of our police before condemning them as trigger-happy kid-killers. After all, if that teenage boy or anyone else was threatening you or your family with his knives wouldn't you want the police to protect you in whatever way they felt necessary?
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