In this world, it is often shoot first and, if wrong, do not worry because you will be cleared by the court later.
In this world, it is often shoot first and, if wrong, do not worry because you will be cleared by the court later. 400tmax / Getty Images

The Lake City shooting spree that occurred on Tuesday, March 27, 2019, and resulted in two deaths, is by no means a simple issue. It has a ring of complexities that disturb both right and left political certainties. For the left, however, the matter is, as always, certainly far more complicated than it is for the right. Here is why. If you read the official report of the incident, it makes it very clear that an officer of the SPD encountered the suspect—a white male identified as Tad-Michael Norman—after he allegedly killed a man and shot up a Metro bus, wounding the driver. Indeed, the 911 call stated that a man was "shooting a gun on the street in the area of 11734 Sand Point Way NE." But when the officer arrived and confronted the suspect, he did not shoot him on the spot.

The report:

Officer Alpaugh believed that this may be the suspect, so he started high risk vehicle stop procedures. He started issuing verbal commands to the driver of the vehicle. The driver was later identified as above listed suspect, Tad-Michael Norman dob 01-16-1986. Officer Alpaugh observed Norman look back briefly and then immediately start to drive away south bound.

The suspect drove right into a northbound vehicle. This collision killed a 76-year-old man, identified as Richard Thurber Lee, who lived near the place where his life ended abruptly.

Now, here is the dilemma for the left. For many, the amazement that the life of a man suspected of gun-popping on a busy city street is still with us today can only be answered by the color of his skin—white—and the US's long and deep history of racist policing. Many believe a black man would not have survived a situation like this. But there is even more complexity to consider.

Was the officer wrong not to shoot and kill/wound the man? Apparently, the suspect was in hearing distance of the officer. And the officer could even see the suspect's face ("look back briefly"), but, according to the report in the prosecutor's office, he did not fire at what was most likely ("I believed this may be the suspect") an active shooter when he had the chance. (I asked the SPD to identify the race of the reporting officer, Officer Alpaugh, but have yet to receive a response.)

The left rightly demands that great caution be taken before police bullets fly. The souls of many blacks might be with us today—like the suspect of the Lake City shooting is—if real trigger seriousness was applied to hot situations. So, not shooting at the Lake City suspect was, we must agree, the right thing to do, even if it cost Mr. Lee his one and only life in cosmic time. But there is another fact that is framed by the two kinds of worlds that define humankind: the one that is and the one that ought to be.

The world that is has many (indeed, too many) situations involving black men who are not met with caution (trigger seriousness) by white police officers. In this world, it is often shoot first and, if wrong, do not worry because you will be cleared by the court later. And so, as a person on the left, does one want white suspects to have the privilege of living in the world that is, for blacks, the world that ought to be? Or does one accept the world that is and press the SPD on the question of why one of their own did not shoot and wound/kill a suspected active shooter. The consequence of this trigger-serious policing was the abrupt destruction of the life of a man going about his own business.

Also, will those of the right be the ones to demand that police be harder (trigger happy) on white suspects as they are on blacks, considering the outcome of this incident? I have heard nothing about the matter in this direction from the right.