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Police are part of the problem, not the solution
The Advocate
It’s odd being 20 or 30 yards away from people being gunned down, and eating dinner while it happens. It’s depressing on one hand and scary on the other.
My friend Jesse and I were in Wall Street Pizza in downtown Gresham, across the street from the M&M Lounge, last Friday night when the shootings took place. There are three dead; one a suicide, two murdered, and one still in critical condition.
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We were walking up to the back entrance of Wall Street, from the parking lot in the rear; there was a break in the music that was blaring from the M&M. Sweet Home Alabama starts playing as we walk inside. Witnesses report that’s when Jeffrey A. Grahn, an off-duty Clackamas County sherriff’s sergeant, started shooting.
We didn’t see the murders, or the suicide. We did see the aftermath.
We saw countless people softly crying, with glazed over looks in their eyes; some in shock, some not. Some were talking to police, some were just standing there, looking around, looking like they wanted something to do, or to not be where they were at that moment. Some looked angry, like they wanted to do something, but it was far too late for them to take any sort of action.
And there were the dead; two in the alley behind the M&M, crumpled like garbage waiting to be picked up, with people staring at the bodies and quietly whispering to each other.
The police were out in force, obviously, hostile and suspicious of everyone, running up and down Main Street with M4 and AR-15 assault rifles, police dogs sniffing and snarling at everything.
What a weird time it was. Downtown had gone quiet as if a blanket of ash or snow was muffling all sound for miles around. There were no sirens, no screaming, no commotion.
Later, after we left, Jesse and I, who have a small arsenal between us, wondered why we never take those guns with us when we leave the house.
I have a concealed handgun permit, for God’s sake, and never put it to good use or any use. I don’t have the thing because I’m afraid of my neighbor, or burglars, or you. But I have a deeply ingrained fear of men with clubs and guns and the authority and lack of oversight to do whatever they want with them.
I feel pretty safe in Gresham, or anywhere there are no police officers. Despite my liberal ideals, I still own guns. I don’t own them because they make me feel powerful, or that I have control over myself or anyone else. I own them because the Second Amendment is there not so we can protect ourselves from each other, but from the police and our own military.
Need is evermore present when we hire law enforcement based on how aggressive and authoritative they are. When those same people feel the need to fire beanbag rounds at 12-year-old girls at MAX stops, and tase the mentally ill until they’re dead. When they shoot 23-year-old kids in the back. Or when they walk into a restaurant and kill two people because they did something they didn’t like.
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