To the editor:

Well here we go again. Another dedicated police officer bites the dust. Kim Potter is convicted of manslaughter for killing a driver for trying to get away, defying officers’ orders to stop. All they have to do is do what the officer orders them to do and there would not be any trouble. The driver was endangering the officers’ safety by dragging them. All they have to do is be able to outrun the police to keep from being penalized for their actions. 

We are tying the hands of the police by making them afraid to do anything to stop the criminal. Every time I read where an officer is convicted for stopping a criminal within a couple days I read where a criminal injures or kills an innocent citizen because he was not stopped. Now I ask you, what is the officer supposed to do? He stops them and is charged for his efforts or lets them go and is blamed for letting them get away to hurt someone else. 

Now I ask you. How would you like to be in this position?

Kim said she intended to taze him and grabbed her gun instead. It is not hard to understand that happening while being dragged and in fear of your life. Come on people, get real; the criminal has to be stopped to protect the citizens. When the criminal defies the police they need to be stopped with any means necessary. 

Then you ask how do you know he is a criminal. He hasn’t been convicted yet. Well, when he refuses to comply with the officer’s order, he is committing a criminal act. 

A police officer is not a computer. He or she is human with human feelings and human reactions. They are making decisions in a split second. The outcome is not always what they want. They on occasion can make a bad decision. How many of you can say that you have never made a bad decision? What about the decision of the criminal to run? Does he have no responsibility for his bad decision?

Bernard Levings

Great Bend