A Pennsylvania cop is charged — The facts matter more than the politics (Opinion)
A 22-year-old college student is dead, and a police officer has been charged with voluntary manslaughter.
Those are the facts.
Everything else should be determined through evidence and due process, not headlines, hashtags or political pressure.
What happened before the officer fired?
Upper Pottsgrove Police Corporal Sean Farrell shot and killed Glenwood Pysher after responding to a report of someone attempting to enter a home shortly after midnight on August 23, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steel.
Pysher had reportedly been drinking with friends and mistakenly approached the wrong house.
It's also reported that while Pysher was trying to gain access to the house, and the homeowner thought it might be a home invasion and called police.
Prosecutors say Farrell’s body camera shows Pysher raising his hands and walking toward the officer after being ordered to get on the ground.
Farrell fired twice, while Pysher was reportedly 17 to 20 feet away and unarmed. The officer later reportedly told responding officers that Pysher charged at him while screaming.
Steele says the body-camera footage does not support that description and that Farrell had less-lethal options available.
That evidence sounds troubling, but a prosecutor’s accusation is not a conviction. Farrell is entitled to the same presumption of innocence as any other defendant.
The complete video should be released when legally appropriate.
We need to know why Pysher continued moving toward the officer rather than getting on the ground.
We also need to hear what Farrell perceived: whether he reasonably believed he faced an immediate threat and whether his actions met Pennsylvania’s legal standard for using deadly force.
Then a jury, not social media, should decide.
Would the reaction have been different if race were involved?
There is another uncomfortable aspect of this tragedy: the conspicuous absence of national outrage.
No celebrity declarations, no politicians racing toward the cameras before the investigation is complete, no violence.
That peaceful response is a good thing. It is how every case should be handled.
Regardless of the race of the victim and the police officer, every case should be evaluated on the merits and the facts.
I'm tired of charlatans like Al Sharpton making every case they can about race and acting as if white cops are preying on Black victims.
It also raises a fair question: If Pysher had been Black, would agitators and national media outlets have waited calmly for the evidence?
Or would the public have been given an immediate narrative about race, policing and systemic injustice before anyone watched the complete video or was presented with all the evidence?
Justice should not depend on a political narrative
Let's not revisit the complete lie that was "Hands Up Don't Shoot," which ruined a police officer's career and spiraled the nation into a near race war.
Or the deification of criminal George Floyd by the radical Left, who, as it turns out, did not actually die from the knee on the neck.
But the facts didn't stand in the way of a summer of horrible violence and the rise of Antifa and BLM.
Justice should not depend on the victim’s race, the officer’s race or whether a tragedy fits somebody’s political agenda.
Glenwood Pysher's family deserves a complete and honest accounting of why he was killed.
Sean Farrell deserves a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
Those principles should apply every time, or they do not mean anything.
The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Spadea. Any opinions expressed are Bill's own.
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