It didn’t take long for the two camps — pro- and anti-police — to emerge in the wake of an officer-involved shooting in Juneau this weekend.
In fact, it took about nine minutes on the Juneau Empire Facebook page for people to begin posting divisive comments on an article about the shooting, apparently having already made up their minds about who was to blame.
“Wow just open fire on a person locked in there (sic) car. This just goes to show react first think last,” the person wrote, before others chimed in that police are “hiding behind the badge,” and can’t be trusted.
On the other side of things, “JPD are heros (sic),” another person wrote, one of several siding with the police officer.
It’s easy to make comments online, but we’re hopeful that people offline are being more cautious about jumping to conclusions. The fact is that we don’t know the facts in this case. As of Monday afternoon, police have not shared the circumstances leading up to the shooting, due to the ongoing investigation by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Special Prosecutions and other agencies.
We do not know why the police officer shot the person. We do not know what led up to the shooting. We do not know if the person was an imminent threat to the police officer. We do not know if the shooting was justified.
And even if we did know some of these crucial facts, typically these situations prove to be complicated and nuanced, with no clear “right” or “wrong” answer.
All the facts and details in this case will be investigated and then shared with the public at a later time (hopefully sooner rather than later). Only then though does it make sense to form opinions, react, heed a call to action, etc. Until the facts are known, it is premature to speculate about what happened, and doing so only needlessly divides and hurts our community.
We’ve seen what happens with communities Outside that form sides and are pitted against each other before all the facts have come to light. Let’s not let that happen in Juneau. Instead, let’s learn from other communities’ mistakes and deal with situations like this with aplomb and compassion. At the very least, let’s wait for the facts.
