Media focuses on irrelevancies in GVSU shooting

I’m sure everyone in Michigan has heard by now about the shooting of Grand Valley State University student Derek Copp last week during a raid on his apartment. The police say that they were serving a drug-related warrant, but have so far refused to say whether they found any drugs in the apartment or whether the warrant was for possession or trafficking. What I find astonishing in the whole situation is how the media is focusing on irrelevancies.

The Grand Rapids Press took a look at Copp’s Facebook page and found that it had “drug references,” as though that had some bearing on whether he should have been shot or not. They found out that the student had expressed “his advocacy and interest in reforming marijuana laws” and that he had declared himself to be a “left wing hippie peace-keeping liberal.”

But wait, there’s more. He had advocated the passage of last fall’s proposal to legalize medical marijuana in Michigan. And he liked the movie Drugstore Cowboy, as well as – gasp! – Martin Scorcese movies. Worst of all, he had quoted Grateful Dead lyrics.

This strikes me as the drug war equivalent of asking what a rape victim was wearing. Given that the police have admitted that there was no confrontation at the scene, where five armed officers were there with one unarmed college student, why do they think that has any bearing at all on what happened? The implication is obvious: The kid is a druggie and therefore…..well, therefore what? The fact that he smokes pot and likes the Grateful Dead has no relevance to whether he should have been shot by the police.

Believe it or not, people who smoke pot have a right not to be shot and killed for no reason just like people who drink martinis do. So far the police are saying very little. Let’s hope it doesn’t take as long to get to the bottom of the situation as it has for a similar shooting in Connecticut last year, where the state police have continued their silence for 10 months now.