Liberty Minute December 19 2013

Krystal Barrows, a 35-year-old mother of three, was resting on the couch in her living room in Chillicothe, Ohio when her life was needlessly brought to a violent end by a police officer during a narcotics raid. Barrows was not a suspect.

Ross County Prosecutor Matt Schmidt insists that none of the police deliberately fired his gun into the home. While not ruling out what he called ?user error,? Schmidt suggested that a ?malfunction? might have been responsible for the errant gunshot.

The Chillicothe Gazette said that the round was fired ?from the weapon of a law enforcement officer,? a conveniently ambiguous preposition intended to disguise or diminish the fact that the gun was fired by a police officer.

It is commonplace for government-aligned news outlets to engage in euphemism and circumlocution when police kill innocent people. It is also the well-established custom to describe incidents in which a lone, unarmed citizen is beaten by several officers as a ?fight,? a ?struggle,? a ?scuffle,? or in similar terms.

Media reports about such incidents begin with the premise that police are entitled to commit aggressive violence ? an assumption with deadly consequences for both innocent victims and the rule of law itself.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.