Written by Miguel Jimenez   

When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, my goal was to serve 4 years as an infantryman and then eventually use that training to help me obtain a career in law enforcement. However, after completing a tour of duty in Iraq, my career goal had changed. Although I contribute my participation in Iraq as the reason for not wanting to pursue a career in law enforcement, it was the atrocities I witnessed Marines commit that had the most profound effect on shaping my decision. I decided that I did not want to belong to any organization that has the authority to kill, innocent or unarmed people, with impunity. Unfortunately, as police officers have gone on a national killing spree of unarmed, predominantly black, people, it appears that you do not have to be in a war zone to get away with murder—a badge will work just fine.

In Iraq, I witnessed plenty of incidents were Marines opened fire on civilians. And with the exception of one incident, they were all unnecessary. For example, I witnessed a lady get blown away by a 50 caliber sniper rifle for simply pacing back in forth on her balcony. In another incident, a Marine who was manning a 50 caliber machine gun on a Humvee started shooting at a man whose only crime was that he decided to walk alongside a creek. And although there were other incidents, the last example I will mentioned is the family we almost killed because some Marines thought that people looking through their window constituted a legitimate reason to riddle someone’s house with bullets.

What all our victims had in common was that they made the mistake of making themselves visible to us. And in a war where we had difficulty distinguishing between civilians from insurgents, there were Marines who took full advantage of the opportunity to indiscriminately kill. After all, there was no reason to mourn the illegal killings of Iraqi civilians, because, as one Staff Sergeant stated, “they’re all potential terrorists.”

As we continue to hear about the recent spree of police killings of unarmed people, I cannot help but to wonder if the aforementioned Staff Sergeant’s simple logic has been implemented across our nation’s law enforcement agencies. Because it does appear, albeit black and brown people are not synonymous with terrorists, that their deaths at the hands of police officers, as was the case with the deaths of Iraqi civilians, are “justifiable” because they do not have to be armed to get gunned down. Apparently, police officers no longer have to bother with planting weapons on their victims to get away with murder.

Furthermore, the death of Eric Garner once again proves that if you are a cop or a member of the armed forces, it is highly probable that you can get away with murder. For example, Garner’s friend, Ramsey Orta, recorded Garner’s murder, yet the cop who was responsible for Garner’s murder was not indicted on charges, it was Orta who was indicted. In a similar scenario, the same thing occurred when whistle blower Bradley Manning exposed, via Wikileaks, how Apache helicopter pilots indiscriminately killed Iraqi civilians, some of whom were children. It was Manning, and not the murdering Apache helicopter pilots, who was indicted and eventually sent to federal prison.

Obviously, there are civilians who have sided with the officers because they believe that the murdered victims brought it upon themselves; in other words, they should not have broken the law. Or as in the case of Officer Darren Wilson, I have heard some ridiculous arguments such as “didn’t you hear the officer’s testimony? He didn’t have any other choice, but to kill him.” However, these same people do not take into consideration the 14 witnesses who stated that Mike Davis was gunned down with his hands in the air. Nevertheless, what good are witnesses when, for example, cops are caught on camera choking a man to death and are still able to evade justice?

There are people who have criticized the protesters for not having any empathy for the police officers involved in the murders of unarmed people. They have argued that cops have a tough job and they have to make sure they return to their families. To those people I say that I know how it feels to patrol through foreign city and rural neighborhoods and not have any idea if an Iraqi was going to wave at me or shoot me with an assault rifle. However, I never fired my weapon at unarmed Iraqi civilians because I did not abuse my power and I knew I had to be extremely careful since it was difficult to distinguish between Iraqi civilians and insurgents.

Overall, these cops killed unarmed people and that is something that cannot be forgiven. They have to be held responsible for their actions; otherwise, these kinds of atrocities will continue to perpetuate. We have to remember that the unarmed victims also had families who they will never see again.