Ma’Khia Bryant
The narrative about Ma’Khia Bryant’s death has finally started to come around to the point I was laser-focused two weeks ago. The foster care system failed Bryant and police officers should have taken special precaution because this was a highly volatile situation involving a foster care child.
The debate immediately after her death was focused on whether the police officer was justified in using lethal force to stop Bryant from injuring another person. I don’t like it when the police kill anyone, I would prefer they use non-lethal methods to apprehend an individual over lethal methods, and I prefer these methods to be as humane as possible. We task law enforcement with the responsibility of enforcing the law. Their job is not to kill fellow citizens and it not to employ inhumane methods to apprehend a suspect. The former should only occur in the most extreme of circumstances and the latter should never happen.
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Children in foster care suffer from an incidence of PTSD as high as 25%. Over 80% of children aging out of foster care have received some type of diagnosis from a psychiatrist. Children respond to trauma in a variety of ways, from a responses seemingly anodyne as having a nightmare on occasion, to more serious conditions like development of bipolar disorder later in life or periodic bouts of hyperaggression. This is a population of individuals who will endure many traumatic events within a short amount of time, at no fault of their own, and we as a society need to take that into consideration when we’re sending law enforcement officers to their homes.
The debate immediately after Bryant’s death was focused on whether the police officer was morally justified in using lethal force. I think we should be asking why law enforcement officials aren’t taking special precaution with children whom our medical doctors and psychiatrists have said statistically present with mental heath issues at a higher rate than the general population.
