Tales of two trials

People are missing the obvious takeaway from the Kyle Rittenhouse and Ahmaud Arbery trials, the negative consequences of vigilante justice. Police officers go through months of academy training, learning what they legally can and cannot do before being given a badge and gun. Even with this training, mistakes will get made, sometimes with tragic results.

The vigilantes in these two trials, without a lick of training, appointed themselves cops and, to be charitable, got way in over their heads. As a result, people are dead, and some people are going to prison.

It is offensive to argue that untrained novices can do a better job than the police, and frankly, a serious country right about now would be having a national conversation about the acceptability of vigilante justice in a free society.

Too bad we’re not a serious country these days.

Pete Miesel, Broomfield

Now that the jury has delivered the proper verdict in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, it would seem instructive to compare it to another verdict.

In the Kyle Rittenhouse case, a man who had committed no crime was chased and threatened by another man. Rittenhouse shot that man and shot two others who came at him later, one with a gun, saving his own life, but was charged with murder.

In the Arbery case, a man who had committed no crime was chased and cornered by three men, one of whom had a firearm that he aimed at Arbery. Arbery had no weapon and was killed. I see no difference between the two incidents, except that one victim lived and one died. Why then did our media and prosecutors attack Rittenhouse? If Ahmaud Arbery had been armed and had shot those who were attacking him, would he have been charged with murder?

Ambrose Rikeman, Aurora