Cops

Over the course of seeing patients for many years, I've referred some of them to have their bodies cut open for further examination even after their cardiac monitor tracing went completely flat. It's a detailed process of cutting and digging into each and every organ of a dead body. Not all patients have to undergo such critical examination. The medical term for this process, autopsy, is the last thing we want to hear after losing a beloved family member.

It seems an odd thing - it strikes me now as it did then - that I read about a black teenager's autopsies in The New York Times two months ago. Autopsies, not autopsy. I mean it. The 18-year-old Michael Brown, as it turned out, had gone through no fewer than three autopsies. The story of three autopsies for a dead body is unsettling.

Wait. It's even more unsettling when you read on: Michael Brown was shot at least six times, and all bullets were fired into his front. He died in a storm of bullets from a police officer. Most people believed Michael was innocent. In any case Michael was unarmed when he was killed by a white policeman.

The public uproar and outcry are best summed up in the #handsupdontshoot hashtag on Twitter, not to mention the tension during the nine nights of protests. Sure enough, requests for three autopsies (one for the locals, one for the feds, and Dr. Baden on behalf of the family) spoke volumes of disapproval and untrust. Dr. Baden, in case you don't know, reviewed the autopsies of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Two months after reading this story in St Louis, I witnessed how armor-clad cops treated the law-abiding protesters with tear gas and pepper spray in our city. Quite similar really, except that we're yellow, and not black.

What wrong did Michael and the local demonstrators do? Why did Michael deserve six bullets and why did Hong Kong protesters deserve the volleys of noxious chemicals? You tell me!