Response too often over the top

With this latest surge in police/civilian related deaths, I am sure that many of us have become concerned. I truly understand the split second decisions that face the police. However, they are expected to be above what you and I, the public, would do in the same situation. Perhaps it is lack of training, adrenaline rush or whatever, but people should not be dying because they “failed to follow the officer’s commands.”

I am sure that everyone has at least seen the “COPS” show, if not witnessed a police confrontation at some point in real life. When did all the screaming/yelling by the officers, and often by many of them, begin? It is not unusual to see a dozen police officers standing over one suspect. When I see this stuff on our local news, it appears that everyone of them wants a piece of the guy. This was painfully obvious when viewing the stomping of the Hispanic man in Seattle. One officer even walked over to stomp on the suspect, who was lying on the ground, and then she calmly just walked back to her spot.

I have seen as many as a dozen officers trying to cuff someone. They are all screaming “Stop resisting” and it is obvious that he had already stopped any kind of resisting, and sometimes they are even unconscious!

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Something is terribly wrong here. If these kinds of situations continue, people will be afraid to call the police. Maybe their friend or relative is mentally ill. That should not be a death sentence.

Linda Varon

Marysville

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THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
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