Ball State's Michael McKinney was shot and killed on Saturday, November 8, after he wandered from a bar to the porch of a nearby neighborhood home apparently thinking it was his friend's home. McKinney began banged on the door, panicking the resident, who called police. Rookie officer Robert Duplain responded to the call. Duplain said he verbally ordered McKinney to "stop" and "get down," then fired not once but four times after, he said, McKinney lunged at him from the porch.
As Ruth Holladay had mentioned in her article on November 11 in the Indy Star, when parents send their children off to college they are expecting them to be safe, at least from being gunned down. Michael McKinney wasn't just gunned down by an ordinary person on the street, but rather the exact opposite. He was murdered by the force that was designated to prevent Ball State's students, such as McKinney, from being eradicated. The question then is why Michael McKinney was slaughtered opposed to other methods of suppression? .
Why didn't Duplain try to subdue McKinney with one of several other methods that he should have been trained to do? Well one reason may be the campus force dispatched the seven-month rookie with a lethal weapon, yet didn't supplement it with a less-deadly alternative. The campus force should have not allowed this rookie officer to go on duty alone without proper equipment placing blame directly on the department itself.
After hearing about the recent shooting from articles, such as Ruth Holladay's and several others that correspond, it begins to make students wonder exactly how safe they are here on Ball State's Campus. As previously mentioned parents are expecting their children to be safe from such horrors. The campus police are here for our protection, and being that this is a college campus, I believe that the officers who are selected to protect the students should undergo extra training in dealing with alcohol related incidents.
