Chris Smith: One lesson of the Lemos case: We rush to judgment

WHAT'S HAPPENING in this picture?

Examine in your mind's eye a photo of a grimacing, uniformed officer pressing to the pavement a young person who looks to be crying out.

What's your assumption of what is going on there?

Is a cop brutalizing a victim? Or is an offender being subdued as humanely as possible?

These days especially, it's tempting to conclude that a criminal wearing a badge is attacking someone without cause. But if someone shows us images of a new instance of violence between officers and civilians and asks us what we think is happening, there's only one accurate answer.

I don't know.

Something like the clash between 19-year-old Gabbi Lemos of Petaluma and Deputy Sheriff Marcus Holton happens and instantly people are outraged.

But early on, before investigations and perhaps a trial are completed, we cannot know what happened. We can let our biases and world views draft scripts in our heads, and so often we do.

But how unfair, unproductive and even dangerous, should popular rage turn violent.

Fifteen months after initial images of the ugly encounter near Petaluma ignited passions and prompted condemnations of a deputy, a tried and convicted Gabbi Lemos - and her mother - are off to jail for their actions that night.

Until we know who did what to whom in such instances, all will be better off if we rein our prejudices and confirm that, honestly, we don't know.

_____

Windsor sleeps better because a townwide effort has at last rescued the endearing, frightened dog that roamed the streets and vineyards and fields for the past five months.

A vast campaign of lamppost signs and social media posts concluded Sunday when a large crowd of good people encircled Bond, an Australian shepherd, on Old Redwood Highway.

When the astonishingly elusive dog was sighted there, Windsor firefighters and employees of Aaction Rents and other adjacent businesses pitched in with volunteers who've toiled to catch the injured dog before it's too late.

Sherri Johnson, the animal lover at the center of the community effort, had been out that way at 4:30 a.m. Sunday. A caller reported Bond was in a field near the Garrett Ace Hardware and SBI Materials.

Johnson and a friend went and searched in the darkness, but Bond had moved on. She runs well despite holding aloft her left front paw.

About noon Sunday, a caller told Johnson the dog was back in an open area of that stretch of Old Redwood Highway.

“I called everybody I knew,” Johnson said.

Surrounded, Bond made a break. She'd have escaped - again - but an Aaction Rents employee dived and grabbed her like a fumbled football.

“She just was as sweet as can be,” Johnson said.

Bond went to a Windsor Animal Hospital vet who found she's in quite good shape, but her left shoulder is badly damaged, presumably when she was hit by a car. To be determined is whether that leg can be saved.

Sherri Johnson's joy was doubled by Beverly Chang, the Humboldt County resident who'd had the dog flown to SFO by a breeder and lost her during a potty break in Windsor. Chang invited Johnson to keep Bond.

Windsor now will see a lot of the two of them, linked by a trusty leash.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.