The latest strain of the police hatred virus is incubated by wealth, class and power.

“I meant clamp, clamp, clamp, not scalpel.” 

Every year doctors make mistakes. They are under extreme stress. Sheer number of cases. Fatigued. Shortened times allotted for each call. Life and death decisions. Yale news claims the number of preventable deaths has been highly inflated. It’s only 22,000 per year. Preventable mistakes are made. Doctors are only human, after all.

While each one of these preventable deaths is a tragedy, we never hear about it. Why? You know why. By and large, the medical profession polices itself. If a crazy, mean family member demands an investigation and ultimately hires a determined trial lawyer and negligence is discovered–the insurance company settles and the case is swept under the rug. Sorry, it was a terrible mistake.

22,000 preventable deaths per year is the accepted, lower, uninflated number.

Now comes Minnesota Police Officer Kim Potter who had been a street cop for 26 years without even a blemish on her record. No citizen complaints. No inter-departmental complaints or reprimands. A working-class cop who came to the profession for all the right reasons. 

Officer Potter had the opposite reputation from that of a showboat cop or someone who enjoyed confrontation. She was seen as someone who wanted to make things better, sought out opportunities to help people.

No one denies that she shot Daunte Wright. No one denies that she was responsible for his death. However, the day of the incident and during her trial, it was made exceedingly clear that she believed she had pulled her taser and was using it to stop an armed suspect who was also a convicted criminal. 

“Taser, taser, taser,” Officer Potter can be heard clearly saying but she pulled her duty weapon and fired it. She admittedly intended to do one thing but instead did another and caused the suspect’s death. In those incredibly tense moments, she reached on the wrong side.

Officers don’t recruit themselves, hire themselves or train themselves. Political subdivisions do that. So, the municipal police department that she was employed by was in charge of her training. The elected politicians create the hiring matrix. When they chose Kim Potter it looks like they got their money’s worth. A stand-up cop that was completely invested in her community that served the citizens well. The state of Minnesota passes state laws establishing the criteria. Kim Potter was hired by the police department and licensed by the state. 

How long had it been since she had been through the scenario-based training where officers are leaning inside the window of a dangerous situation and are repeatedly put through every single situation that might happen? How long had it been since she had been required to repeatedly pull her taser vs her service weapon over and over and over? Well, we have no record of her being out of compliance with her training, so that wasn’t the issue. Who was in charge of setting the perimeters and frequency of the training? Well, that would be the city. 

However, you will never see the elected officials who adopt the General Order of the police department ever be questioned under oath. No one will ever threaten to take away their Qualified Immunity as officers of the City or County. The politicians skate for the same reasons the doctors do. The elite political class are in a different social strata than the rank and file working people of law enforcement. 

Notice the high and mighty attitude of the judge as she sentenced Kim Potter to begin serving the prison sentence. The judge is in the same club as the other elected officials. She washed her hands Pontius Pilate style for all of the holier than thou politicians and for all the folks of her class of wealth and power. 

Doctors are rich, at the top of the American class system that extends the highest privilege to the elite. There is no unrelenting political movement that disparages doctors, second guesses their motives or even highlights their mistakes that cost thousands of lives every year. That’s because doctors, politicians are part of the untouchable class until they are accidentally caught up in a situation where their class gives them up to rid themselves of the blight. Very, very rare.

22,000 Americans whose deaths were PREVENTABLE. Not one of those patients could have possibly been armed during surgery. Not one single patient was a threat to the life of the person who killed them. But it’s ok because the doctors didn’t intend to hurt anyone. It’s ok because they took the Hippocratic Oath. It’s ok because, you know, accidents happen.