On the evening of Nov. 13 a highway speed chase lead to the death of Ramiro James Villegas, a 22-year old male, stunning the East Bakersfield community. Only a five minute drive or fifteen minute walk from the Bakersfield College campus, Bakersfield Police Department officers shot Villegas after he refused to stop in a routine traffic stop.
The details are uncertain, yet the discrepancies are like the result of playing telephone with a hundred people. The only people that know exactly what happened are the officers that were in pursuit of Villegas and the suspect himself.
The facts are unbeknownst to anyone except the eyewitnesses and those who were on the scene of the incident, undisputable by the man killed.
With tons of eyes watching, the parking lots of Del Taco and Starbucks, just off of Mt. Vernon Street, became the impromptu ground zero for containment. Witnesses were contained for an hour or longer. Each license plate, driver and passenger was photographed by BPD.
This is a scare tactic if I ever have seen one, to make the witnesses fearful to report the facts, had the witnesses seen the police officers kill intentionally; out of fear or intimidation, there is no certainty that the truth will ever be brought to light.
Highway 178 had been evacuated and drivers were forced out through the Beale Ave. exit, in the hopes that BPD would retrieve a weapon that the officers searched the bushes and stretch of freeway all night for. They came up short. No weapon was found on Villegas, either.
This young man shot a reported three times, in an overkill of overzealous police officers, which disobeyed their own procedures. After giving chase, there were four officers on the scene, and only one fired his tazer instead of his handgun.
In this day and age of police apprehensions, officers have the aid of tazer guns, nightsticks, beanbag guns, pepper spray, and the Billy club. The handgun should be the last resort to a violent perpetrator who has varnished a visible weapon.
The three men who took Villegas life are officers we do not need on the force.
It is the “gangbanger” mentality that has spread through the lines of honor, reminiscent of the thousands of cases, like the Ferguson trial, where police resorted to street justice.
The mentality of officers like these is the slippery slope to a police state, which results in officers shooting first and asking questions later.
Procedures are set to protect the officers that serve the community. When Villegas ran from the police he didn’t run from his American citizenship, he still had the right to a trial.
Villegas and the thousands of others killed at the hands of police officers who aren’t ever punished is amounting to the little rights we have, being demolished.
May the reprimand of anyone who takes another’s life not be prejudicially based on what side of the badge they are on.