“An Oklahoma state trooper fatally shot a man who was involved in a fight with two troopers who were trying to rescue him and another man from floodwaters,” CBS News reported today. Apparently the cop and his partner came up two inebriated yokels trying to save their truck from rising floodwaters, and tried to get them to come out of the water, but they didn’t want to abandon their truck. The situation then escalated when one of the drunks assaulted a trooper, who shot him dead in self-defense. It’s not clear at this time whether the deceased was armed. A local TV station identified him as Nehemiah Fischer, 35, an assistant pastor at Faith Bible Church in Tulsa.
There was a time when police didn’t automatically shoot civilians who failed to immediately obey their commands, shoved an officer, or resisted arrest. Things have changed. Perhaps due to our lax gun laws and aggressive gun culture, cops now have to assume that everyone they encounter is a potentially deadly threat. In any case, we now live in a society where the police who are supposed to protect us now shoot first and ask questions later.