A Really Bad Day. Really?

When most of us are having what we call a “bad day”, we intend to mean that nothing is going the way we planned the day to go. If the day is going “really bad”, a few inappropriate words may come out of our mouths, but we tend to suck it up and try to make the best out of a rough day. When someone allegedly goes around and murders 8 people for only reasons known but to God, the last excuse that can be extended to that individual, cannot be, because that individual had “a bad day”. No, make that “a really bad day”. That is what a Georgia Cherokee County Sheriff said when he made a feeble attempt to get inside the mind of the alleged shooter who had been apprehended not long after the alleged shootings. The shooter was identified as 21-year-old Robert Long, who is alleged to have killed 6 Asia women. The fact that another mass murderer had been captured without incident, points to how some in America get treated when apprehended by law enforcement officers. Would the shooter had been taken alive if he had killed 8 police officers? Would that alleged suspect be in the jail population with all the other inmates or would he be in “protective custody” while in jail for his own personal safety? How can a “feasible” explanation be accepted by law enforcement officers before an interview is done by someone who knows something about human behavior, especially if it relates to a murder charge. How often do law enforcement officials take the word of an alleged suspect that he is not a racist, just because the suspect said that he isn’t? Isn’t there supposed to be an investigation conducted in order to gather more facts before making a definitive reason as to why a suspect commits a crime? Why would a police officer take it upon himself to cavalierly say that the alleged shooter was “pretty much fed up” and “at the end of his rope”, but he goes out and murders 6 Asian women because he has a “sex addition”? The sheriff, in his version of what was inside the alleged shooter’s mind, said that he “had to eliminate” those additions that he felt needed to be rid of. The only thing wrong with that, allof the women were Asian, not white Anglo-Saxon women. However, race WASN’T supposed be a factor in why the shooter only selected certain ethnic women for a target.

To say that the shooter “had a really bad day”, seems to take the concern away from the families of the deceased and say, “look at what the shooter” was suffering from. In other ways, the alleged shooter is being portrayed as someone who needed sympathy instead, and that he was a “victim” of circumstances beyond his control. The sheriff who made those comments to the media, has been replaced, as his superiors “apologized” for those comments, but had another problem on their hands. It seems that the sheriff who told the world about the “really bad day” suspect, was allegedly involved with individuals who were selling T-shirts with racist slogans with the word “Chy-na”, a reference to the Chinese people, who are of Asian descent. It seems as though law enforcement needs to “police” their own, now that we know that there were current/retired officers at the January 6 insurrection. We know that over the last decade, that there have been instances where police officers have been found to have associated themselves with antigovernmental movements. Now that we know from the January 6 insurrection, the public should want to know what its local police department is doing to make sure that an officer who answers a call, doesn’t come with pre-supposed ideas after knowing who the caller is.

The Monroe Dispatch has gone on record many times advocating for better relations between law enforcement and the community. When one sees how some in society are treated/interpreted by law enforcement because of their ethnicity, and when the finger is pointed to alleged bias within law enforcement, someone in local/state/federal government needs to step up. The first should be law enforcement, not only saying that there is “no room for bad cops”, but actually dismissing them when they KNOW that there are bad cops within their ranks. Words are good, but action speaks louder and better. We should never/ever hear of a police officer say that someone committed a murder or any criminal act, because they were “having a really bad day”. We all have bad days, but murder is not a reason. Remember, the world is watching. So is God.