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levoiI met one of my dearest friends in Savannah, and she lives there still. Last night she was celebrating the Fourth downtown when a gunman came into City Market and shot four people ten feet from my friend.
Caitlin is physically fine, but of course she's terrified and traumatized. Savannah is such a slow, beautiful city, and at night it just feels magical, and how awful, to be terrorized in a place where you felt so safe.
The people who were shot lived. One was in critical condition until this afternoon, and is now stable. The other gunshot victims' injuries were not life threatening.
The police responded to the shooting, trying to pull over the suspect as he fled the scene in his car. The suspect ran, and the police chased him down the small, winding streets. Downtown Savannah is small. Some of the streets are cobblestone, and there are many pedestrians. People are always out at night, walking by the storefronts and around the beautiful squares. There are dozens of squares in Savannah, and they take up blocks where you have to slowly circle the streets counterclockwise; normal car traffic is slow because of the state of the streets and the design of the roads and all the people on foot.
The chase ended in a crash. Six pedestrians were struck. One was killed. Two of the passengers in the suspect's car were killed.
It seems like every day in America there is a story of a police officer using unnecessary force. The shooter in this case committed a crime. He did a bad thing. But it's hard for me to believe that the police escalating this situation as they did saved more lives than it took. Deciding to chase a fleeing suspect through such a difficult area with so many innocent bystanders doubled the number of victims. I know being an officer of the law is stressful, and I'm sure it's difficult to remain detached and objective, but any time I see things like this--like the high speed chase in Indiana last week, in which 22 police cars pursued a purse snatcher for an hour through a college campus and farmers' fields--I can't help but feel that the driving force here is not protecting and serving but not being bested. The individual police officer's desire to win. And we're not doing anything to combat this law by machismo, and we're not holding accountable cops who cross the line because they cannot control themselves.
The suspect in the shooting, who is 17 years old, has been charged with three counts of felony murder for the people killed in the crash. The victims were 30, 20, and 17.
I don't know what else to say.
Caitlin is physically fine, but of course she's terrified and traumatized. Savannah is such a slow, beautiful city, and at night it just feels magical, and how awful, to be terrorized in a place where you felt so safe.
The people who were shot lived. One was in critical condition until this afternoon, and is now stable. The other gunshot victims' injuries were not life threatening.
The police responded to the shooting, trying to pull over the suspect as he fled the scene in his car. The suspect ran, and the police chased him down the small, winding streets. Downtown Savannah is small. Some of the streets are cobblestone, and there are many pedestrians. People are always out at night, walking by the storefronts and around the beautiful squares. There are dozens of squares in Savannah, and they take up blocks where you have to slowly circle the streets counterclockwise; normal car traffic is slow because of the state of the streets and the design of the roads and all the people on foot.
The chase ended in a crash. Six pedestrians were struck. One was killed. Two of the passengers in the suspect's car were killed.
It seems like every day in America there is a story of a police officer using unnecessary force. The shooter in this case committed a crime. He did a bad thing. But it's hard for me to believe that the police escalating this situation as they did saved more lives than it took. Deciding to chase a fleeing suspect through such a difficult area with so many innocent bystanders doubled the number of victims. I know being an officer of the law is stressful, and I'm sure it's difficult to remain detached and objective, but any time I see things like this--like the high speed chase in Indiana last week, in which 22 police cars pursued a purse snatcher for an hour through a college campus and farmers' fields--I can't help but feel that the driving force here is not protecting and serving but not being bested. The individual police officer's desire to win. And we're not doing anything to combat this law by machismo, and we're not holding accountable cops who cross the line because they cannot control themselves.
The suspect in the shooting, who is 17 years old, has been charged with three counts of felony murder for the people killed in the crash. The victims were 30, 20, and 17.
I don't know what else to say.
