Upstanding Officer Jekyll and criminal Mr. Hyde

Wednesday, November 6, 2019  

Late last month a Rapid City police officer broke up a fight between two female students at South Middle School. The way he went about his duties, and the understandable negative reaction of the Rapid City Indian Community, are byproducts of a worsening trend in law enforcement— to resort to aggressive, violent, and sometimes lethal force, and then justify it by wantonly mischaracterizing the situation in distorted police reports.

These excessive responses are generally excused by subsequent internal investigations as “the officer feared for his safety.” In the case of Richard Holt, he could not have feared for his safety when trying to keep two middle school girls from scuffling.

It was understandable he needed to stop the fight, but the force he applied, created a dangerous situation, where an unexpected twist or lurch by one or both of the girls could have resulted in serious and permanent injury to a child. No parent should ever have to send their child to school and worry that law enforcement will harm their kids, no matter how law enforcement justifies that overreaction, after the fact.

Fist fights occur at almost every school, all over Rapid City. Parental concern over these fights, the desire that the school protect children from getting beat up, does not mean that the police can stop fights by transforming from upstanding Officer Jekyll into criminal Mr. Hyde, the most dangerous creature on campus, and justify their behavior by flashing a badge, or worse still, a Taser, baton or gun.

Law enforcement should never choose protecting one of their own, over protecting children from that officer’s excessive policing.

In 2003, an officer named Richard Holt used lethal force against a Rapid City man, during a domestic disturbance call. Speaking to media, the then police chief made the inexcusably asinine observation, that officers cannot trust “trick shooting” to stop armed suspects. It was asinine because he equated shooting a weapon out of a suspect’s hand to shooting them in the leg.

If the chief was kidding, it was humor in extremely poor taste, and if he was serious, the man is a dead solid perfect moron. It is as easy to shoot a suspect, armed with a knife, and at some distance, in the leg, or both legs, as it is to target center mass, and we KNOW this because Holt fired five shots, and never hit center mass! His first shots struck the man in the lower part of his body, and then he finished him off with shots to the upper half of his body, a shot to the shoulder being the shot that killed him.

Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today