In his recent column “Open eyes to Solve Race Problems” (July 17), Alan Caron seems to get things backwards regarding the response to police shootings. He declares that “in virtually every instance, [conservatives] have accepted the officer’s version [of a police shooting]” prior to the investigation, and that they put too much faith in the results of internal investigations.

In fact, the general pattern seems to be that liberals and the mainstream media tend to immediately believe the version most damaging to the police, even after it is completely debunked. For example, we were initially presented with the idea that Michael Brown was a “gentle giant,” which was quickly debunked with footage that appeared to show him robbing a convenience store. Moreover, the idea that he was surrendering, i.e., “hands up, don’t shoot,” was still being promulgated on CNN long after the evidence indicated that he attacked the police officer.

While it did not involve a police officer, the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was treated similarly. We were fed a narrative of an innocent child (complete with pictures of him taken years earlier) who was shot by a trigger-happy cop wannabe. That Martin was beating Zimmerman at the time was largely ignored.

No one wants police to behave abusively, but the idea that liberals are the ones being evenhanded in these situations and that conservatives are the ones who close their minds is laughable.

Michael Jose

Augusta