TIME TO HEAL?

For a year now, the tragic events of Dec. 10 have loomed over this
community. In the months since, while key evidence has been withheld and
testimony sealed, we've waited for official disclosures that might somehow
make sense out of the death of Kenneth Walker on I-185.

What we knew almost from the outset was bad enough -- that Walker and three
other men in a Yukon left a site of known drug activity and were suspected
of being armed drug dealers; that something went horribly wrong and a
deputy, whom Sheriff Ralph Johnson later identified as David Glisson, shot
Kenneth Walker twice in the head; that no drugs or guns were found in the
vehicle.

Now, with the release of police videos of the incident and transcripts of
Glisson's testimony, Walker's death makes even less sense than before, if
that's possible.

There's something especially chilling about the immediacy of those police
videos, despite the silence and the grainy, indistinct images. But as
horrifying as those videotapes are, they aren't any more so than some of
the statements most of us have just heard for the first time. Glisson's own
description, in his administrative hearing, of having a suspect "feel that
weapon... the pressure of that barrel" points to a total breakdown of
procedure on his part. The revelation in the videotapes that Walker lay on
the ground mortally wounded for two minutes before anyone administered any
kind of first aid can be explained in part by the possibility that the
other officers on the scene were in a state of shock -- as well they might
have been.

No citizen with a reasonable grip on common sense or reality is oblivious
to the dangers of law enforcement, or to the adrenaline-fueled stress of a
situation in which officers think they might be in jeopardy. It is
precisely because of such situations that training matters and procedure is
everything.

Yet a grand jury that we understand was deeply split and that heard --
perhaps unlawfully -- unsworn testimony from Glisson himself, and that
included a blind juror, declined to indict. Whether or not that ultimately
proves to be the right decision, it is the opinion of this board that there
has not been a thorough legal vetting of the facts of this case, and that a
U.S. attorney should be brought in to pursue the matter further.

We are not suggesting an indefinite, open-ended process -- just one open
investigation, and one public trial. We have had neither, and this
community deserves both.

Many have said what we need most is healing, and moving forward. An open
and public airing of the facts by an independent prosecutor is the only way
true healing of this wound will be possible.