By Bob Weir
June 12, 2010
For all those hand-wringers out there who are shaking their collective heads in disbelief that a fifteen-year-old Mexican boy was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent because he was attempting to brain the guy with a rock, let's be clear. A rock, colliding with your skull, can kill you just as surely as a bullet.
When you watch some of the videos of what these Border Patrol agents have to put up with every day, you have to wonder why more rock-throwers are not shot. I've known police officers who were killed with blunt objects and some who were crippled for life after being bludgeoned by someone they allowed to get too close. During the Columbia University war protests in 1968, a cop I had worked with a few times was assigned, along with other officers, to try to contain the marauding students and keep anyone from being injured. Well, many cops were injured while trying to be gentle with that bunch of spoiled brat radicals. One of them was my erstwhile partner. As he was keeping his eyes on a rampaging group several feet away, many of whom were throwing rocks, bottles, and other solid objects, some of which were bouncing off his helmet, he paid no attention to a student who had scaled the ledge of a one-story building, just above him.
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