Op-Ed by Rev. Horace Sheffield III/Tell Us Detroit
DETROIT (Tell Us Det) – “In the aftermath of the death of 7 year old Chennell Berry, Chief Craig was cited as saying something that I think he may want to rethink and restate.
Chief Craig after saying that this incident was “senseless, tragic, and over what?” then said “People get to argue, but they don’t get to use this kind of response to resolve whatever their differences are.
“People get to argue…..” Really. It seems to me that its these same arguments that lead to murder. So to give people permission to argue when it was an argument that caused Chenell’s death was at best not thought through and at worse a gross misunderstanding of the causes of many violent deaths in Detroit. Either way he should have another press conference and issue a statement telling us and stating that because too many of us don’t resolve conflicts in peaceful ways he’s officially banning arguments instead of inadvertently encouraging them.
Apparently the chief, after reviewing and commenting on all of these conflicts turned homicide, hasn’t come to the right conclusion – and that is that some people shouldn’t be encouraged to argue at all -because after all it’s precisely the argument, and the conflict which ensues, that most often turns deadly.
I’m just saying that if I were the Chief of Police, having witnessed homicide after homicide, death after death, and having personally commented on nearly all of them, given the deadly outcome of to many of these conflicts I wouldn’t encourage arguments I’d be pleading for civility and for lions to lay down with lambs”.
Rev. Horace Sheffield, III
“A Social Change Agent with a Spiritual Mandate”
Read original op-ed here.
