Cross-Examination

To the police officers of New Jersey who participated in the hunting of black bears in the early 2000s, which resulted in the deaths of over 500 in three years:

Do the justifications you use to systematically disrupt and destroy the lives of an entire population help you sleep at night? Do they wake you in the morning and plant a smile on your face, clean your pores, scrape your teeth, fill your stomach, and tie your shoes? Do they shine your boots, starch your collar, button your shirt, pin your badge, clean your gun, and load it? Do they protect your partner and position, validate your unit, pave the way for promotion, or win elections for your superiors? Do you believe in zero-tolerance? What scares you most? Is it blackness? Is it difference? Do you not understand? Has your complete lack of cognitive evolution left you in the grips of anxiety about worlds unknown, about worlds you can’t know? Do you still have to know something not to fear it? Do you still have to own or control something not to kill it? Did you know that you would always kill? Do you know that you will always kill? When you’re scared, does it feel like fear? Does it feel like anger? Does it feel certain? Do you feel righteous? Did you protect children? Did you collapse the world of hundreds of others to preserve? Did you protect anyone? Did you fire to kill to protect? Did you drag the bodies off the streets before the last bell rang to dispose of them before the children would see the pulp? Did you gag over perforated tissue? Did you call someone else to clean that shit up? Did you run an experiment to see how many holes it would take? Did you publish the results? Did you make a commission? Does your gun make you unimpeachably correct? Did you know self-preservation is a myth? Did you know stand your ground is bullshit? Do you know that your life isn’t more valuable than another? Do you have regrets?