Floyd death should lead to change, not guns in Tri-Cities parking lots | Editorial

The horrific video of a stoic Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee on the neck of an unarmed black man until he dies has shaken the country out of its COVID-19 numbness.

The death of George Floyd, caught on cellphone cameras, was not a heat-of-the moment encounter with police. It was slow. It was intentionally cruel. And it has rightfully caused outrage in the Tri-Cities and around the country and world.

Peaceful protests are justified. They are desperately needed, in fact.

After such a sickening display of police brutality, we would be dismayed if people did not denounce such blatant viciousness.

Floyd’s senseless death could be a defining moment in the fight against racial violence — a hard pivot that finally leads to change, peace and understanding in our country.

But already anger, selfishness and fear are taking over. Looters have hijacked peaceful demonstrations for their own gain, causing more harm and anxiety in an uneasy time.

Despite its smaller size, the Tri-Cities found it is not immune to these crimes. While large urban centers like Portland and Seattle were overrun with violence in the streets, looters also tried breaking into the Burlington store and two other businesses in Kennewick on Sunday night.

The band of vandals smashed the glass doors after setting off fireworks in the store parking lot.

And now a group of Tri-Citians has rallied and plan to post themselves around shopping areas to protect against looting. The private Facebook group calls itself “Defend the Tri,” and already has attracted 5,800 members.

We know they mean well, but somehow the thought of civilians armed with guns and bats staked out in parking lots is not comforting.

So much could go wrong.

Kennewick police have acknowledged that members of the group have a right to assemble, and a right to bear arms as long as “both are exercised within the confines of the law.”

We also acknowledge that they have these rights, and that these are people who want to help the community.

However, we hope this citizen effort is short-lived.

Police are trained to handle confrontations, and as we’ve seen before, that isn’t easy even for seasoned officers.

We hate to think what might happen if a civilian with a gun feels threatened — and it could be that the threat is only perceived and not real.

The last time we had major protests over police action was in 2015 after Antonio Zambrano-Montes was shot and killed by Pasco police as he was throwing rocks on a busy street corner.

At the time, if Washington state officers killed someone on the job, they could not be convicted of a crime if they acted with a “good faith belief” that the action was justified, and if they acted without “malice.”

That threshold was the highest in the nation.

The law has since been changed and now the malice standard has been replaced with a more objective standard that includes an officer’s safety concerns. The Zambrano-Montes case also helped lead to better de-escalating training for Washington state police officers.

Locally, it helped refocus police efforts to better connect and communicate with the Latino community and others..

The changes to the state law took years to accomplish, and much compromise between citizens and law enforcement officials. But it is progress, and it is a step other states could emulate.

As a country, Floyd’s death has exposed America’s racist, ugly underbelly. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 52 years ago, and the next day Sen. Robert Kennedy spoke of the “mindless menace of violence” in the United States.

That violence is sadly still with us today.

We must — all of us — make a stronger effort to peacefully fight racial injustice in our country. After watching the video, how can any of us continue to look away?