Murder victims of police violence
Just because something is legal does not make it ethical.
An innocent man may be found guilty in a court of law, lose all of his appeals, and be executed for a murder he did not commit. Everything about his case may have been legal, but not ethical. Executing a man for a crime he did not commit can never be just.
At its innermost core, this is the argument against police brutality.
It may have been completely legal for the NYPD to fire 41 shots at Amadou Diallo as he entered his home from a hard day's work—completely unarmed, but it was wrong to do so.
It may have been completely legal for the Salt Lake City Police to shoot and kill Dillon Taylor as he walked outside a local convenience store. The officer may have claimed he believed Dillon to be armed, but the bottom line is that he wasn't. Shooting him was excessive and wrong. He broke no laws and posed no threat.
As you read this, police unions are arguing that the murders of Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Akai Gurley were all completely legal. This is a travesty in and of itself, but the bottom line is that none of them posed even a little harm to officers and did not deserve the force they received.
The same is true for John Crawford. It may have been fully and completely legal for police to shoot and kill a man as he talked on the phone inside a Walmart while holding, in a non-threatening fashion, an unloaded air gun that was for sale in the store, but he did not deserve to die. He was a non-violent man, a father, a son, a provider and posed no threat to anyone at all. Killing him was wrong and unjust.
There is more to read about these legal but unethical incidents below the fold.
We cannot even say that the punishment didn't fit the crime in most of these cases, because Amadou, Tamir, John, Akai, and Rekia weren't breaking the law when they were publicly executed.
Tanisha Anderson and Anthony Hill were beloved to their families and were experiencing medical mental health emergencies when people called 911. They were unarmed and needed to be hospitalized. Instead, they were killed. This is wrong.
Eric Garner should still be alive today. He should not have been choked to death. The legal system of New York City may have deemed his death acceptable by law, but it was morally reprehensible.
It was wrong for Florida police to shoot and kill Jermaine McBean. The officers may have won awards for killing a man who posed no threat to them, but doing so was excessive and unethical - as was covering it up afterwards.
We must continue to fight to make excessive force and police brutality truly illegal, but until then, we must widely accept that legal or not, it is wrong for our police to play judge, jury, and executioner when their lives are not in danger.