BEAU BAKER & SOCIETY DESERVE AN INQUEST

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys Luisa D'Amato's Opinion piece titled "An inquest for Baker could help to save the next life". Luisa argues that regardless of the alleged threat that Beau Baker may have appeared to the officer involved that it is way past time for police officers to be trained to look at less than lethal options. Those options might even include withdrawing or backing down themselves if nobody else's life is in danger. In other words de=escalating conflicts or arguments versus using them as an excuse to kill the suspect.

The number of deaths per year by police in the U.S. are more shocking undoubtedly than they are in Canada. The question is how many in both countries could have been safely avoided with training looking at de-escalating confrontations rather than training emphasizing that police have the right to kill simply because the individual involved is ignoring their orders and commands. Refusing to drop a knife, a club or a shovel with no one else in any imminent danger other than the suspect and the officer closing in should not give the officer the right to kill the suspect. Are we still in mediaeval times or have we progressed even a little bit from those times? Especially when more and more citizens are either stressed to the breaking point or suffering from mental illnesses, murder should not be the standard operating procedure solution.