[Vision2020] (no subject)

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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November 5, 2012
A Texas Injustice

Which is more unbelievable: that a state trooper in Texas decided to stop a
fleeing pickup by shooting at it from a helicopter, even though the truck
was crammed with people, or that nothing in the official policies of the
trooper’s employer, the Texas Department of Public
Safety<http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/>,
forbids such lethal recklessness?

Both statements are true, and two men are dead as a result. The shootings
happened on Oct.
25<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/us/outrage-in-texas-after-airborne-police-sharpshooter-kills-2-immigrants.html>near
rural La Joya, which is close to the border with Mexico. The trooper
allegedly thought the truck was running drugs. It was carrying immigrant
Guatemalans, including the two young men — Jose Leonardo Coj Cumar, 32, and
Marcos Antonio Castro Estrada, 29, who were hiding with several others
under a blanket in the bed of the truck. The director of the Guatemalan
Consulate in nearby McAllen, Alba Caceres, said Mr. Coj had entered the
country to earn money to pay for surgery for his 11-year-old son.

As appalling as the shootings were, a state representative who leads the
committee overseeing the Department of Public Safety insisted they were no
big deal and not worth a hearing or policy review. “It’s unfortunate some
people died,” the lawmaker, Sid
Miller<http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/member-page/?district=59>,
told The Associated
Press<http://m.caller.com/news/2012/nov/02/texas-asks-fbi-investigate-helicopter-shooting/>,
“but I guess the lesson is: don’t be running from the law. So there will be
no hearing.”

Thankfully, others disagree. The prosecutor in Hidalgo County said he would
seek a grand jury investigation. State officials are conducting inquiries
and have asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division to do the same. And some state lawmakers
want to rethink the agency’s insanely permissive shooting-at-vehicles
policy, bringing it into line with other states and the federal Border
Patrol, which have stricter limits on when — and at what — officers can
shoot. Abolishing the policy is the least that should emerge from this
outrage. As State Representative Lon
Burnam<http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/member-page/?district=90>said,
“Neither human trafficking nor drug trafficking deserves the death
penalty without a trial.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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