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lauradi7dwhttps://lexobserver.org/2026/04/18/deadly-police-shooting-in-lexington-saturday/
This was the second time in four years that a police officer shot dead someone doing threatening things with a knife in Lexington. The claim was that they tried twice to get the knife away. What did they try? In this case it was an officer from Wilmington, not Lexington, who killed him, but many of the neighboring police forces practice shooting at a firing range at the composting facility on Hartwell Ave. One can hear them from the bike path. I usually yell fuck guns or something similar. It's my impression that they are trained to shoot to kill, not to shoot a knife out of someone's hand, but still, they could have tried something like that. Or gone after him with a baseball bat. I don't know, anything might have been better than killing him. In 2020 I wrote to all my town meeting representatives* asking that they make a local law that the Lexington police not carry firearms. Of the 9 folks, one sent a reply about how hard a choice it would be. Another said that there are crimes in Lexington, so they had to carry guns. I responded that I had lived in Lexington for decades and could not think of a crime that had been deterred by armed police officers. The two murders that came to mind would not have been prevented (but one of them might not have been a murder if we had had better dispatchers at the time. The victim bled to death before anyone was sent. That at least resulted in a much better 911 system). None of the other reps responded at all.
Lexington legally doesn't allow gas-powered leaf blowers, but a number of the landscaping companies ignore that. The enforcement mechanism is supposed to be that a neighbor of the yard being illegally stunk up calls the police non-emergency number, and the police show up (no sirens or flashing lights, since it's not an emergency) and issue a ticket. I hate gas powered leaf blowers with a fiery passion, but would I call the police? Heck no.
* unlike some New England communities, we don't have town meetings that include the whole populace. Instead, we have a representative town meeting system, with folks voted in by precinct. There are standing committees and such. It works fairly well. We also have a select board, school board, and planning committee that get voted on separately.
This was the second time in four years that a police officer shot dead someone doing threatening things with a knife in Lexington. The claim was that they tried twice to get the knife away. What did they try? In this case it was an officer from Wilmington, not Lexington, who killed him, but many of the neighboring police forces practice shooting at a firing range at the composting facility on Hartwell Ave. One can hear them from the bike path. I usually yell fuck guns or something similar. It's my impression that they are trained to shoot to kill, not to shoot a knife out of someone's hand, but still, they could have tried something like that. Or gone after him with a baseball bat. I don't know, anything might have been better than killing him. In 2020 I wrote to all my town meeting representatives* asking that they make a local law that the Lexington police not carry firearms. Of the 9 folks, one sent a reply about how hard a choice it would be. Another said that there are crimes in Lexington, so they had to carry guns. I responded that I had lived in Lexington for decades and could not think of a crime that had been deterred by armed police officers. The two murders that came to mind would not have been prevented (but one of them might not have been a murder if we had had better dispatchers at the time. The victim bled to death before anyone was sent. That at least resulted in a much better 911 system). None of the other reps responded at all.
Lexington legally doesn't allow gas-powered leaf blowers, but a number of the landscaping companies ignore that. The enforcement mechanism is supposed to be that a neighbor of the yard being illegally stunk up calls the police non-emergency number, and the police show up (no sirens or flashing lights, since it's not an emergency) and issue a ticket. I hate gas powered leaf blowers with a fiery passion, but would I call the police? Heck no.
* unlike some New England communities, we don't have town meetings that include the whole populace. Instead, we have a representative town meeting system, with folks voted in by precinct. There are standing committees and such. It works fairly well. We also have a select board, school board, and planning committee that get voted on separately.
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Date: 2026-04-20 01:41 am (UTC)I know someone who almost died by police in this exact way. They were called for a wellness check. He was holding a knife because he was not well. His mother, unarmed, put herself in the line of fire to protect him and the incredible part is that she was not shot dead herself. It is insane that I can tell this story. It is insane to have the police be such a heavily armed threat that I cannot imagine calling them for anything short of an equivalent level of violence. I don't know how hard you can say you tried to defuse a situation when the other person still ends up dead.