Ferguson

Ali Gilbreath 

I try not to be too political on here but this whole situation is just rubbing me the wrong way. So many people have such strong opinions on this topic. Here's my take on the Ferguson, Michael Brown situation. It's easy obey the law, do the right things and make the right choices in life. Thinking you are above the law is not the right thing to do and is not the right choice. It is guaranteed to hurt you in the end, whether you are black, white, asian, mexican, etc. Respect others and they will respect you in return. I'm tired of people pulling the race card. It would have been the same outcome no matter what race either party was. I'll tell you right now, if my husband or son were police officers and someone tried to grab their weapon or assault them and they feared for their safety, I would hope they would take whatever means necessary to protect themselves. If they were the victims I would like to know why they felt the need to break the law and disobey an authority figure from the beginning. Unfortunatly I think alot of people are brought up that they don't need to respect authority and that the cops are "bad guys" and "out to get them". No, they are here to protect and serve, and thats what I truly believe. Any civil person who was brought up right knows to respect authority and to fear lying or disobeying an officer. I was raised to always tell the truth and to obey authority no matter what the circumstance, and I have learned this lesson the hard way for myself as a teenager and learned not to lie to officers and the outcome of being honest and obeying them worked in my favor. This unfortunate scenario is not how you go about confrontation with police. It's yes sir, sorry sir (or ma'am!) I do not believe this officer just pulled up and was malicious for no reason. If he was being malicious, why didn't the victim or the friend diffuse the situation and obey authority instead of not getting out of the road way and running when ordered to stop. I also believe that the officer didn't need to take that excessive of force on the victim to get him to stop. I don't know the truth so I can't say either way but that's just my take on the situation. End of story the victim didn't need to die but he made the choice to break the law, to not obey a police officer and on top of that assault the officer. On the other hand I personally don't think the officer made the greatest choice on how to stop the perpetrator from disobeying by choosing to shoot to kill. No one did the right thing in that situation in my opinion. We are human, mistakes will happen. Try to make the right choices in life to prevent things like this from happening. All we can do is learn from these mistakes. I pray the victims family can find peace in this troubling time. A death did not need to happen that day, but the choices made by both parties in those moments created an outcome that was catastrophic. I know this was a long rant but this is my point of view if you don't like it I'm not sorry. All opinions are my own and you don't have to agree.

This is my post today from Facebook. I felt the need to share it on here as well. I feel very strongly about this topic and I hope we as the human race can move past these horrible chapters of history and lived united as humans and look past the color of each others skin.