First - my transcript of the short video:
"Investigators interviewed him this morning and they got the impression that yes, he understood the gravity of it, and he was pretty much fed up and kinda at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did"
There was fault. Thriller found it. I found it too. There is no good justification for going out of the way to be so understanding of the murderer in this press setting.
We see this behavior (excusing white criminals) over and over and over again, pretending it's not happening isn't the option I'm going to take.
In this case that's so cut and dry it likely just leads to softer language in a press interview (actually I can already see the building and classical for white criminals 'insanity' case), in other cases across our justice system it leads to very real world outcomes that negatively effect minorities in our country.
So the police seemed to take a sympathetic perspective towards the killer. They should have focused on the victims and the lives lost and the devastation that will have on the people close to the victims and their community. 100%
You and Thriller have also 100% failed to acknowledge the victims or show any concern or compassion for them or the people who will be affected by this.
I'm not trying to defend the police on this other than to say that the stupid comment of that one stupid police officer isn't really an effective condemnation of the police in general and if this murder spree is up for discussion, the police shouldn't be the primary focus of that discussion, in my opinion.
I'm not some "back the blue," "thin blue line," "blue lives matter" police brutality apologist. I'm typically pretty down on police for their hyper aggressive approach that absolutely happens more often in poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods with majority minority populations. We live in a nation with significant systemic racism and that systemic racism is amplified in our police departments. I would certainly hope that police would take a more neutral position and simply enforce our laws.
So what criticism could I have of the officer who made those statements? That he wasn't as much of a raging jackass in regard to this perpetrator that he would have been if the perpetrator had been black? No! What I would say is that I hope he would have as much empathy for the next suspect of color as he has shown for this one. His attitude towards this suspect should be a guide for how he should treat all suspects, not a point of condemnation.