Is it possible that some police killings of unarmed people happen because there are some police officers who are addicted to killing?
The United States has been continually at war since 2001. In fact, as the Washington Post pointed out; since its founding, the United States has been at war for 222 Out of 239 Years.
Many of our nation’s police officers are former military personnel. I talked about police brutality in my last post and wondered how many of the officers involved in police shootings were combat veterans. CNN anchor, Brooke Baldwin raised this same question during the Baltimore protests; however, she later apologized for her comments, most likely under pressure, but her point was valid.
Several years ago, the Baltimore Sun published an article, “Veteran’s Essay on Killing“, about an Iraq War veteran who had returned home and enrolled in a community college. In an essay the veteran wrote for an English class he stated the following:
“War is a drug. When soldiers enter the military from day one, they begin to train and are brainwashed to fight and to handle situations in battle. We train and train for combat, and then when we actually go to war, it is reality and worse than what we have trained for. We suffer through different kinds of situations. The Army never taught how to deal with our stress and addictions.”
“War is a drug because when soldiers are in the Infantry, like me, they get used to everything, and fast. I got used to killing and after a while, it became something I really had to do. Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States because turning this addiction off was impossible. It is not like I have a switch I can just turn off.
It is something that I do not just want, but something I really need so I can feel like myself. Killing a man and looking into his eyes, I see his soul draining from his body; I am taking away his life for the harm he has caused me, my family, my country.”
“Killing is a drug to me and has been ever since the first time I have killed someone. At first, it was weird and felt wrong, but by the time of the third and fourth killing it feels so natural. It feels like I could do this for the rest of my life and it makes me happy.”
The veteran who wrote the essay is not as far as we know among the veterans in the video, but they do express similar sentiments. One person mentioned how soldiers would plant items around the people they killed, to make the situation seem legitimate. How many people like this end up on police forces all around the country?
