Tamir Rice: A Case of Bad Parenting, Not Bad Policing

      The death of Tamir Rice, the young man who was shot and killed by Cleveland police in 2014 while he was in the commission of a crime, has sparked outrage among the race-baiters and their mob of the easily riled. Tamir Rice was indeed only 12 years old, but was five foot seven and weighed 175 pounds, not exactly the innocent 8 year old of the pictures plastered by the media for public consumption. And the "toy" gun he pulled on police was in reality an Airsoft pistol with the orange tip removed, which made it look even more like the Colt 45 it was made to replicate.
      Tamir was in the process of threatening people with the gun in a high crime area of Cleveland, an area where there had been past shootings, including police officers who wound up on the wrong side of those shootings. He was threatening enough for those working at the Cadell Recreation Center that day to call police for fear that he might hurt someone or worse. It was these facts that drove the urgency in the officers' response, and that urgency was heightented to an even greater level when Tamir was told to put up his hands and instead reached in his waisteband to pull out the pistol.
      To be sure, the untimely death of Tamir Rice was very unfortunate. But while everyone is feeling horribly for his mother, I have to ask, "Is there sympathy available in the reasonable heart for one who is so complicit in a loved one's death?" You see, Tamir Rice's death was not a result of bad policing, but bad parenting. It was not the police who allowed the young man to be waving a gun at strangers in one of the highest crime areas of Cleveland. And it was not police who could care less of the whereabouts of this young man until something tragic happened to him. It was not police who abdicated the parental responsibilty to guide their child into constructuive pursuits instead of neglecting his descent onto the path of wannabe thug-hood.
      The Cleveland Police Department, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and two out-of-state independent organizations all investigated the shooting, as well as it having recently been considered by a grand jury. All found from the evidence that the police did not act unreasonably or with any criminal intent. Of course for the mobs that now rule our cities, and are pandered to by local politicians, facts mean little when a black teen is shot by police. In their warped and mangled opinion, the police are always wrong and should have been willing to take a bullet, instead of the young deliquent who was threatening the citizenry with what looked like a real gun.
     So shame on Tamir Rice's mother for not making her son's life a cause before he threw it away. And shame on the professional agitators, who call themselves activists, for being active only after the death of a young man can be used to feather their public personas, instead of advocating for change in the black community that could prevent such deaths. Shame as well on public officials and politicians who allow our streets to be ruled by the mob because they do not have the courage to keep law and order. And finally, shame on all of us for ignoring the downward slide in our culture over the last 50 years from a society where young men wanted to be police officers, to one where they recklessly pull firearms on them and are held blameless for doing so.