Cops walk off the off-duty job at Minnesota Lynx home game

Here are the facts.

At a recent home game members of the WNBA Minnesota Lynx wore these t-shirts before the game.

Four members of the Minneapolis Police Department who off-duty and working as security for the game chose to walk off from their jobs after they saw the message on the shirts.

Minnesota PD Lieutenant Bob Kroll, president of the police union, commended the officers who walked away from their off-duty employment at the game.

Minnesota is an at-will employment state, meaning that an employer or an employee can end the employment relationship at any time.

In a prepared statement, the Minnesota Lynx said, "The Lynx organization was made aware about the concerns of the off duty Minneapolis police officers who had signed up to work Saturday night’s game vs. Dallas. While our players message mourned the loss of life due to last week’s shootings, we respect the right of those individual officers to express their own beliefs in their own way. At no time was the safety of our game in question as Target Center staffs extra personnel for each and every game. The Lynx and the entire WNBA have been saddened by the recent shootings in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and St. Paul. We continue to urge a constructive discussion about the issues raised by these tragedies."

As Joe Friday might have said, those are the facts.  The internet has of course exploded over this, with some supporting what the cops did, and some calling their commitment to "protect and serve" by walking off the job without notice.  Some are calling the #BlackLivesMatter movement an anti-police message.  It is not.

Again, for those who haven't yet got the message, let me break it down for you.  It is true that all lives matter when viewed as a whole, but when blacks are being killed by cops at a rate three times that of the rate at which whites are being killed by cops, there is a problem that needs to be addressed.  The fact this perverted ratio exists would seem to indicate that cops don't view black lives as being of equal value to other lives. 

I do not believe for one moment that any of the vast majority of law enforcement personnel go out onto the street with the goal of ending the life of a black person before end of watch.  There may be a tiny fraction among the more than 700,000 of those cops in the U.S. that might wish they could accomplish such a thing, but I don't think that this disparity is caused by premeditation.

It is caused by a lack of non-lethal means of subduing suspects in the hands of cops.

It is caused by a lack of deescalation training in police departments across the country.

It is caused by the growing inequality of income that drives the economically deprived to turn to criminal behavior in the absence of alternatives; or because criminal behavior has the potential to be far more lucrative than earning an "honest living."

It is caused by the intense pressure of having to make life and death decisions in split second time-frames while technology enables society to second-guess the choices made thanks to the fact that there are cameras everywhere, recording everything; mixed with the fact that being a cop is one of the most dangerous and thankless jobs in our society.

When we see a white police officer shooting a black man in the back when there is no danger being presented to the cop or anyone else, the question of why needs to be explored as much as that cop needs to be prosecuted.

While Michael Slager, the cop who shot Walter Scott in the above video has been indicted for murder, the message of his death and so many others is a compelling indictment of how some cops simply aren't fit to do the job.  Why aren't they weeded out? 

I cannot help but agree with the sentiment of the Lynx players that the time for Justice and Accountability is long overdue.