A cell phone video of a female student being thrown from her desk by a police officer has sparked many debates over the past few days. It's another classic case of police versus victim and who's to blame.
On one side you have people arguing that the officer did nothing wrong and the student took a swing at him first. On the other you have people saying it doesn't matter you do not lay your hands on a student. Finally there's the side that blames both parties, saying each was at fault.
In all honesty all of these sound wrong. Now I'm in no way defending one over the other because there's a much bigger issue here than a police officer who could've gotten carried away or a teen who chose to start a fight. Our society has too much violence in it.
First for those of us who were not at the scene we only have two ways of knowing what happened, witness statements and the cell phone video. Now we can't always take what everyone says seriously because how do we know they're telling the whole story? As for the video well there's some argument over whether that gives an accurate look into the scene too.
Some claim that you can see the teenager take a swing at the officer first and he only reacted as he was trained to. But after having viewed the video, albeit only once because I was too disgusted by it, I have to say I couldn't tell for sure whom attacked whom. Even the dialogue is hard to hear.
But as I said we have a much bigger problem. We as a society have become far too violent over time to the point that we act in an almost barbaric manner. This goes for everybody not just cops or victims.
Although we are taught from a young age to not hit, kick, punch or use any other forms of violence to solve problems or for really any reason unless someone else attacks us. Like all other animals we do have what's known as the fight or flight instinct which essentially means if we feel threatened or unsafe in any way our basic natural instinct is to fight back or run and try to find safety.
But obviously there are people out there who are prone to violence or maybe come from a violent environment so that's all they know. However, this does not excuse the fact that we are all fairly violent to a degree. It can happen among families, friends, even complete strangers.
A disagreement ensues, usually over something trivial and not worth a second thought, and someone decides to throw the first punch. And as a result people are hurt or worse killed. It gets worse when those who are supposed to be protectors are involved.
There's no reason we should be raising fists to each other at all. We need change our resolution tactics or risk seeing more grainy cell phone videos with disturbing accounts of who threw the first punch.
