In late 2010, Officer Daniel Alvarado of San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District Police saw Derek Lopez, a troubled 14-year-old boy, punch a classmate at a bus stop. The classmate who was punched later testified, “He just hit me once…It wasn’t a fight. It was nothing.” However, Alvarado, as many police do, took a minor scuffle and escalated it to homicide. Alvardo shouted at Lopez, who then took off on foot. Alvarado eventually chased Lopez down and shot and killed him.

Alvarado lied in his report, stating he feared for his life, as the suspect was inches away from him and lunged at him. Aside from the fact that a 14-year-old-boy lunging at a fully armed police officer should not cause any reasonable police officer to “fear for his life,” an autopsy subsequently revealed no evidence of close range firing on the wound, and no gunpowder stains were found on the victim’s bloody t-shirt (more here and here).

You and I could not chase down a 14-year-old and shoot and kill him if we had witnessed him punching someone. The reason for this is because killing a person for punching someone is disproportionate punishment. It is excessive use of force, it is immoral, it is an overreaction, and the act of killing someone in this circumstance most definitely creates more danger and violence than the original transgression of punching someone. When it comes to you or me the idea that killing someone for punching another is fundamentally unjust and draconian seems to be an obvious one.

So why can the police do it? People will likely resort to a few common justifications. The first is that police were doing their jobs. However, this is only a logical justification if their job is to kill people and wreak havoc. The sham that is the blood-sucking government does its best to have people believing the police’s jobs are to protect, serve, and benefit society. Yet, if the goal of policing jobs  is truly to protect people and bring more benefit than cost to society, then certainly killing a rowdy 14-year-old for punching someone is not in any sense of the word “doing the job” in a competent manner. Even assuming police deserve and rightly have a monopoly on violence and law enforcement (by no means a valid assumption), the fundamental purpose of such a monopoly was to facilitate police in protecting and serving people, not to grant them a blank check to murder children. The mere fact that police (allegedly, and I beg to differ on this point) serve a valuable purpose and have important jobs should not excuse incompetence or murder.

That all too often, “doing the job” is indeed an excuse for murder and/or incompetence says to me that their job is not to protect people or benefit society, but is to leech taxpayer money and engage in violence at will. If their jobs were truly to help people, they would be punished when they utterly fail at that job – like a cashier gets fired for stealing from the register, or a barista gets fired for screaming at a customer.  Since police rarely get fired, are almost never criminally prosecuted, and instead are frequently shielded by qualified immunity and other constructs of the law for various excessive force, murder and incompetence they may engage in on the job, the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that their job tolerates, excuses, and permits excessive force, murder and incompetence.

Alvarado did not get fired. Alvarado did not go to jail. Based on news stories reviewed thusfar, there was no attempt to seriously punish him or subject him to criminal process. No charges have been filed. On the other hand, if Alvarado were any ordinary member of society, he would most certainly have gone immediately to jail, and unquestionably would have been charged. Thus, by implication, it appears the legal system, and the police profession, are perfectly fine with murdering children (as long as the murderer is a police officer), and reasonable people may want to consider the true purpose of the police profession is not in fact to protect and serve. That may be the stated purpose, but when the stated purpose is refuted time and time again by reality, and repeatedly is proven to be rhetoric, it is only the blind or the brainwashed who will continue to insist that police do in fact exist to protect people.

The police profession is one that attracts the mentally unstable, the trigger happy, and it is essentially a gang in which the members protect each other at all costs. I might come to a different conclusion if police who recklessly killed people were actually punished. I might reconsider this position if various legal immunities against liability were not in place for police and their law enforcement accomplices. Then, it might actually be feasible to argue that while police do make mistakes, this is not the intention of the system, and that there are laws to punish the police who screw up.

However, that simply is not the case. Ian Birk murdered a man in cold blood and was not held criminally liable. Mehserle should have been convicted of murder, but only received a manslaughter conviction. Burge repeatedly escaped prosecution and was permitted to torture suspects into confessions for decades. Alvarado too, is still on the job.  If they were anyone else but assholes in uniform, they would be in jail. If the purpose of police is to ensure safety and punish crime, it makes no sense to exempt them from punishment when they themselves commit crimes. Who on earth actually thinks it is a good idea to have murderers serving as police officers? Does anyone think that pedophiles should be teachers, or that teachers should have some kind of immunity from civil suit when they beat or molest kids on the job because the job is so “difficult?”

Another justification will inevitably be that Lopez ran from the cop, and he thus deserved it because he did not comply. Judging by the fact that he ended up dead, perhaps he was running for good reason. Further, if we are to accept that the appropriate punishment for punching a classmate and running away is death, then perhaps people should just be honest and stop claiming Americans have any rights, stop claiming to be against cruel and unusual punishment, and stop making children everywhere blabber empty drivel like “with liberty and justice for all,” every morning, or absurdly perpetuating the idea that this is the land of the free and the home of the brave. There really is nothing free about being shot for committing a relatively minor offense. There certainly is nothing brave about shooting a 14-year-old miscreant on the run.

If the appropriate punishment for running away from an officer after committing a very minor offense is death, I fail to understand why is there so much hoopla about Sharia law. Why is there so much paranoia and hatred with regard to Sharia law? Fundamentalist Sharia law is exactly what it sounds like – it’s the law. It is (purportedly) severe, harsh law that allegedly says women can be killed for being immodest. It is fundamentally and disproportionately harsh and unjust – much like doling out the death penalty to a 14-year-old for punching a classmate.

If the law is the law, and it all must be obeyed, I fail to see how any kind of harsh punishment under the bogeyman of Sharia law is the least bit morally inferior to shooting a 14-year-old under these circumstances. At least people have notice of how Sharia law works. Women aren’t allowed to show certain body parts or consort with men who are not their husbands or family members. At least this understanding is clear and women know they are breaking the law and could be severely punished or killed for such behavior. For all the alleged sexism and severity, at least they are honest. My guess is that Derek Lopez, having been forced to drone, “with liberty and justice for all” and learn about how free and great this country is, and how the system will not stand for depriving people of life, liberty or property without due process of law, did not have any reasonable expectation that he was going to be shot to death for punching a classmate.