Life, sometimes, ain't pretty

So where I am I sometimes get advance notice of certain things. Such things as this 'Red Sox Fan Dies in Boston After Police Shoot Projectile Into Postgame Crowd.'

The story I first heard was that the police where shooting paintballs. I asked why would the police be shooting paint balls, shooting paint balls makes no sense.

The dude telling me the story heard the story and didn't understand it but that didn't prevent him from talking about it.

"That's what I heard! They were shooting paint balls." I knew of pepper balls but I didn't know that my city was using them.

The police were shooting pepper balls into the crowd. A pepper ball is similar to a paint ball but obviously the paint is replaced with a pepper substance. A pepper ball is used for crowd control. A paint ball is used primary for recreational purposes. Dude probably heard 'pepper ball' and asked what a pepper ball was and was told it was like a paint ball.

All I expect is from you to think just a little bit about what you are hearing.

...

The big news today is the death of the college student at the hands of the police. One of the local paper ran a front page photo of the victim laying on the ground and blood could be seen, inside the same paper another photo shows her bleeding eye injury with blood coming from her mouth and nose. Folks are outraged that such photos would be run in a local paper.

They ask "What about the family's feelings?"

When I first saw the photos, I was a little bit shocked but I think it's important to run such photos. These photos best demonstrate what price was paid for crowd control. Seeing nice head shots of the victim in happier times doesn't show the harsh reality that is sometimes life and sometimes death.

Only showing nice safe photos do not expound the results of the decisions we make.

I'm all for locking rowdy people up and giving them a police record for the rest of their lives. Even, video taping them and go after them later. But I'm not certain that shooting anything into crowds of folks is the correct response, mainly because you don't know who you are actually shooting at.

It only takes a moment to go from fun loving crowd to destructive mob and once you're in the thick of it, it's very hard to escape the physical restraints that exist when there are a large number of people.

...

So there was this incident and the cop said he was sworn at, which my friend denies.

But I know we both say fuck more than we should and he most likely said something like "I don't fucking believe this" which isn't swearing at the cop but the donkey of an enforcement officer would say that it was.

Don't argue with cops even when they are fat foolish anuses who suffer from feelings of insecurity.

...

I was asked if I had a map and I was asked to stand and look at the one he meant, which hangs on a wall across the way with two other maps. I said I have it right here and started to reach for it, and the guy asking gets a little irritated and asks "How do you know which map I want?" I informed the guy that there are only so many questions in the world and they all come around full circle, I said "Wait, without me looking over there is this the map?" and I pulled the map from the place I keep it" it was the map he wanted.

"How did you know?"

"I live in this world and I sometimes pay attention."

I knew why he was asking and there was really only one map that would have the information that he wanted so it wasn't anything spectacular. The trouble was I had just did something similar to him the other day when he got a letter of complaint about a certain intersection. I told him what the problem was and he got irritated because I hadn't read the letter.

How do I know? Full circle, dude.