Kajieme Powell was executed last weekend by two St. Louis police officers who were either too scared to properly do their jobs or too incompetent to properly know when an ambling young man with a small knife goes from being a criminal nuisance to being a threat to life.
If you have the stomach to watch the video of this execution, after you recover from the flood of adrenaline and emotion that will inevitably follow, you might notice something.
As the police vehicle approaches, Powell himself walks backward before finally moving toward the officers as they draw their weapons. He goes close enough to the officers to draw their ire, and understanding that this event may lead to his death, he takes a final look backward.
He sees the attendant of a store standing right behind him. He sees a civilian filming the event. Both of those men were directly in the line of fire had any of the police's bullets missed Powell.
Kajieme Powell knew, even in the midst of what some might call a mental health emergency, that the St. Louis police could not be trusted to do their job in a way that would minimize the danger to the people of that particular community.
He looked back and saw two people might very well be killed or injured in a hail of gunfire, and as a result, he chose to move left, hopping a small wall. His instincts were correct, as police ended his life a few seconds later in a manner so callous that it shocks the conscience even of people who have been following unjustified police slayings for the better part of two weeks.
The contrast is stark. And it's clear. Kajieme Powell, the man we're led to believe was a danger, made a decision in whatever decision-making fog he operated under, to keep two men's lives out of danger. He showed the sort of human decency and care toward the lives of others that we respect in law-abiding society.
His executors - those great defenders of our collective - did the exact opposite.