I would cope the way I always have when a car I was driving inexplicably died while underway (or when a belt broke and I lost power steering, brakes, and even worse, air conditioning ;)). I immediately shifted into neutral and coasted either to the side of the road or into the parking lot of a handy nearby business. At no time during my 52 years of driving have I ever had occasion to stop whatever vehicle I was driving in the middle of the road. And I’ve driven a lot!
But to put myself more firmly in the scenario you describe, I’d greet the officer from my self-sought vantage point of safety and the side of the road, cognizant of his concern as to why my vehicle was stopped in the middle of the road and the fact that as a policeman it’s his job not only to investigate but to keep the road clear for the safety of other drivers, and I’d smilingly say something along the line of “Sorry, my car suddenly lost power and I had to stop it there.” Then most likely the officer would ask for if I had any identification. I’d say “Yes, it’s in my billfold in my hip pocket.” Then he’d say, “Okay, go ahead and take it out.” (And depending on my appearance, demeanor and other circumstances he might also say something along the line of “…and for both our safety take it out slowly and don’t make any sudden moves, okay?”) Where upon I’d slowly and openly take my wallet out of my hip pocket and show it to him.
At this point he’d probably ask me what was wrong with the car, how it behaved just prior to stopping. I’d say something like “I don’t know. I was just driving along and suddenly it just died and the steering wheel wouldn’t turn and I could barely get it stopped.”
He’ll then likely want to check to see if I’m okay and will ask me to have a seat on the ground in front of the police car while he checks dispatch for wants and warrants. Finding that I come back clean, he’ll return my driver’s license and then take a look to see if he can figure out what’s wrong with my car or suggest that we push it to the side of the road out of traffic, whereupon he’ll probably offer to call for help if I have no phone or wish me luck and be on his way should I be able to call for help on my own. He may or may not put a sticker on my windshield giving me 24 hours to get it moved before a wrecker gets called to haul it off.
This is the kind of scenario that takes place when one cooperates with the police. Busted skulls, black eyes and sometimes bullet holes are the result when one refuses to cooperate (and perhaps even do battle) with the police.
Just out of curiosity, are you of a physical type that would be described as "a big bad dude,"as described by the helicopter pilot from above?
What if your id were in the car? I believe earlier you indicated that you could not imagine a scenario where he might have been instructed to get into the car.
Are you familiar with the gentlemen who cooperated with police and still ended up with bullet holes? Immediately coming to mind are the caretaker who got down in the street yelling about his autistic charge, and the man who got shot when he reached into his vehicle to get his license and registration while at a gas station.
I might be, but probably not. Even if I were however, my friendly and cooperative demeanor with the cop on the ground would disabuse him of that notion.
Sigh I would inform him of that, and of where in the car it was located. Then I’d follow his instructions as to what I should do to retrieve it, or what I should do while he retrieves it.
I don’t believe that was me.
If you’re speaking of Philando Castile, yes I am. I spoke of it already.
I said upthread that I’ve felt for decades that cops have been far too quick to shoot, trained to fire upon the belief that a threat is developing rather than once a threat has actually appeared. Nothing I’ve said supports unwarranted and unprovoked shootings. I’d be interested to know why you seem to feel it does?
No, not Castile. This guy and this guy. Sometimes cooperating still ends in tears.
As far as the comment about not being able to imagine being told to go back in the car, I apologize. It was part of your imaginings when you felt he had been pursued, and was specifically related to a man who had been so hotly chased being told to get into the car. Mea culpa.
(I do apologize for that. I should have scrolled back up and checked your comment. Again, I’m sorry for misrepresenting your earlier statement.)
And as to why I feel you may support unwarranted and unprovoked shootings? Well, you jumped into the thread specifically to spin your interpretation of what you felt obviously made this a warranted and provoked shooting, and didn’t bother to read any of the articles immediately linked prior. Based solely on your fantasy of what was so clear to you, you dismissed the possibility that there may be something questionable about this particular shooting.
And sometimes not cooperating ends in police family tears. It’s not a perfect world.
Thanks, but not a big deal.
In my opinion the video itself makes clear the shooting was provoked and likely justified. My speculation as to what proceeded it wasn’t a ‘fantasy’, nor was it ‘clear’ to me. It was just a possible explanation for what lead up to the shooting. As was my second scenario based on information I subsequently learned. All any of us are doing is speculating. But how anyone can view the video showing him being shot after defying police orders and reaching for the door handle and then claim he was shot just for being black is doing a much worse and more biased job of speculating than anything I’ve proposed.
In my opinion the biggest problem is that cops appear to be being trained to react to actions that may end in a threat rather than to the threat itself. Take for example the case of Philando Castille. The cop already had the drop on him and there would have been plenty of time to shoot between the time Castille’s gun became visible and the time it would take to get it the rest of the way out of his hip pocket and bring it to bear on the cop. Same with shooting guys for reaching into their pockets or refusing to take their hands out of their pockets without being warned first. In my opinion firing before a weapon becomes visible is in most cases wrong.
A exception to this would be if the officer warns the suspect not to take a certain action or he will shoot and the suspect takes it anyway. If the officer were to order the suspect not to reach under his jacket or into his glove box or try to open his car door or he will shoot and the suspect tries it anyway, then in my opinion shooting the suspect would be justified. He has shown that for whatever reason he’s willing to gamble with his life that the outcome for him will be better if he can get to whatever he’s going for, and because of the speed and amount of movement going on it would be considerably more difficult for the officer to draw a bead quickly and certainly enough to have a reasonable expectation of being able to shoot the bad guy before the bad guy could shoot him.
But you’ve said that in this case the cops didn’t need to shoot to kill since he was unarmed and not presenting a clear and imminent threat (not the exact language you used – if I got it wrong, please correct me).
If you agree that the cops didn’t need to kill this guy, how can we change police policy without legal consequences for unnecessary/unjustified shootings?
I didn’t say that. It’s obvious from the video that Crutcher’s reaching for the door handle was the event that triggered (sorry) the near-simultaneous firing of both the taser and the handgun. We don’t know for sure but it’s possible the gun was fired because the taser was ineffective. But at any rate I’d bet my last dollar that he was warned over and over again not to reach for the door but did it anyway.
Plus there were other trouble signs. I’m not buying that his car broke down. Most of it was well left of the center line, and he was belligerent and uncooperative from the very beginning. The police had every right and reason to suspect things could become dangerous at any moment. Since there wasn’t a gun in the car it’s obvious his intention wasn’t to retrieve one and use it against the police. Maybe his only motive was to get into the car and drive off, or phone his lawyer, or just seal himself off from the cops. But when you present yourself as a troublesome and defiant scofflaw, the police have little choice but to assume the worst.
What I’d like to know is why the necessity and benefit of compliance is always such a small and virtually ignored aspect in all these cop shooting threads. There is no single thing that will as instantly and certainly put a stop to almost all police shootings as effectively as will compliance, and yet it seems compliance is about the last thing the SJW crowd wants to see take place or is interested in talking about. But the reality is, if you really and truly want to see fewer deaths from police shootings, compliance is the quickest, easiest and most effective answer of all.
Compliance sounds easy but isn’t always. Consider someone who may have been mistreated by police before, or seen relatives mistreated. He may be absolutely terrified of police (as many black writers and professors have written about personally), absolutely believing in an encounter that the police are likely to kill him for nothing. Then there might be multiple cops yelling at him, possibly not all yelling the same thing, sometimes even contradictory things. When you combine the chaos of a bunch of cops yelling at someone with bone-chilling terror for one’s life, sometimes the person may not behave in the way that seems most logical in hindsight. But he wasn’t doing anything threatening at all. Opening a car door isn’t an imminent threat, if that’s what he was doing. He had his hands in the air. Why couldn’t the cops physically take him down and handcuff him? There were four of them. There should be consequences for taking the easy way out, when the easy way is deadly force.
Yes, yes, do exactly what we say, at all times, under penalty of death. This is not a Judge Dredd movie, S.A. There are many, many additional steps of escalation a well-trained police officer can take in a situation where a person is not being as cooperative as they’d like. That rationale is full of shit, stop leaning on it.
Well, in the first place I doubt anyone would find themselves being yelled at by a ‘bunch’ of cops unless they’d already done something pretty far out there to draw that much police manpower, and therefore I’d imagine they’d have more to fear from the possibility of arrests than would the average bear and therefore present more of a risk of violence. But even so I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of someone being shot because he didn’t get on the ground fast enough.
In every one of the police shootings that have gotten so much attention lately, the suspect wasn’t acting out of fear or trepidation or uncertainty as to what he should do, and in almost every one of them he was defying or physically resisting/attacking the officers involved and could easily have complied if he’d wanted to.
And as I’m sure you’re aware, another thing that makes compliance difficult is the possibility of warrants or parole violations that will send the miscreant to jail or back to prison. I’m not a cop but I’d be willing to wager that in the majority of cases where a subject defiantly or violently resists arrest, it’s because he’s going to go to jail if he gets arrested. So when a cop gets confronted with a belligerent or uncooperative or physically violent suspect, he has to assume that he’s dealing with a desperate person who’s likely to do anything to keep from being arrested, and this also heightens the likelihood the miscreant will get shot.
So once again it’s not a perfect world, and if you act like a wanted criminal you’re going to get treated like a wanted criminal even if your internal dialog is only that you don’t like the cops bossing you around.
So again, compliance is the answer almost all of the time. On those occasions when the subject either can’t or won’t comply, then the onus for what happens is on him. If he’s such a terrified or delicate flower than he can’t successfully handle an encounter with a cop without having a nervous breakdown, then he doesn’t belong behind the wheel anyway because the privilege to drive also includes an agreement to pull over when an officer signals you to, and to show your driver’s license, insurance verification and registration as required by state law. So anyone emotionally incapable of contact with the police has no business driving a car in the first place.
This works as a justification for literally any time a bunch of cops shoots an unarmed person. I don’t accept such an excuse – I expect more from cops than “the dead guy must have already done something pretty far out there…”, especially considering American history. What did the black protesters do that was “pretty far out there” such that Sheriff Bull Connor brutalized them?
I take it you’re not familiar with the Sean Groubert shooting – watch the video if you haven’t before. And try to imagine what would have happened to Groubert if there hadn’t been any video, and he had claimed that his victim had behaved dangerously. Is it at all possible that such a thing has happened before, with no video evidence? What would have happened if Jones died, and there was no video?
Cops are in control of their hands and their weapons. They can choose not to pull the trigger unless they’re absolutely in imminent danger. When they don’t, they should be criticized and held accountable, not excused by assuming that every victim is “physically violent” without requiring evidence (“uncooperative” and “belligerent” shouldn’t be grounds for deadly force unless imminent risk of death accompanies the behavior).
That’s not an excuse. Treating someone “like a wanted criminal” doesn’t require killing them. Killing someone should be a last resort, not the easy way out, and when it’s done without a damn good reason cops should be held accountable.
Did this apply through all of American history? Were black protesters in 60s Alabama incapable of driving because they were terrified of Sheriff Bull Connor?
If not, do you think this all went away immediately? Did all the Bull Connors of America disappear after the Civil Rights Act? Was he an outlier? Is it possible that there were many others like him in charge of police departments around America whose philosophy continued to varying degrees afterwards?
Oh, please. Where did I say anything remotely like do as we say under penalty of death?
And believe it or not, training is not a be-all and end-all in handling uncooperative miscreants. If you’re all doped up, or fancy yourself a badass cop-beater, or are desperate because you just beat the shit out of your old lady or shot your ex-wife’s boyfriend, no amount of time, patience and training is going to turn you into a calm, peaceful and acquiescent arrestee.
It would not only be nice but highly instructional and enlightening if people like you could ride around with some cops for a month or so and experience first-hand the kind of shitheads and dirtbags they sometimes have to contend with. You’d drop that ‘with enough time, patience, manpower and square footage, a well-trained cop can de-escalate anything’ notion pretty quickly.