An important second step is doing something about it. I support the police. I vote for their levies, I even used to send in donations when the FOP would call me up. I like having a well screened and trained law enforcement agency that helps to promote order in our communities.
I personally think that we should pay the police far more than they make now, give them shorter shifts. Those work conditions alone are preventing many more qualified applicants from applying for the job. Instead, we get the people that couldn’t secure themselves a better job, and there are many better jobs than being a police officer.
The comment is often made, “If we expect ‘X’ from the police, then we won’t find anyone willing to do that”. Well, yes we will, we just aren’t willing to pay enough to find officers who are willing to do the jobs that are asked of them by their communities.
Body worn cameras (BWCs) are basically GoPro-type digital cameras in a protective enclosure. They only have a certain amount of battery life and storage space, so they can’t just run continuously throughout a shift. The also have to be turned off for privacy reasons, such as when an officer is going into a bathroom, and there may be valid procedural reasons for deactivating a camera, although muting the sound in order to have a discussion coordinating post-shooting details can’t help but look suspicious. And all the data on the camera has to be logged and (ostensibly) reviewed at a cursory level, which because the technology is still in its infancy is still a largely manual process which adds to administrative overhead.
Setting aside the imperfections of BWCs, though, it is clear that requiring them to be worn does not in and of itself address the fundamental problem of institutionalized racism and unnecessary force.
From what I understand, the police spend most of their duty time looking for trouble. Those times, there is not much need for the camera to be running. When they do think that they have found what they are looking for, then the cameras should be on. The camera should come on when they report their status as preparing to initiate an encounter with a potential suspect and should remain on, including audio, until they have returned to the “beat” or to the station.
As a very strong supporter of BLM and a supporter of law enforcement in general, I think there’s insufficient empathy from the whole population at large about what it’s like to be acting under the effects of adrenaline and having to make split-second decisions that could possible have life-or-death consequences. This applies to the law enforcement officers AND the suspects equally. Most human beings in America will never be in this situation on either side of it; most of us live a life far-removed from physical conflict (unlike our ancestors.) Among black people who are under increased scrutiny from law enforcement in certain and arguably all communities, there are simply more people who have to be in physical fear for their lives than in the population at large. And of course, most white Americans have no idea what it is like to either be a law enforcement officer or a combat soldier, or someone who has to incur great risk from non-human danger such as a fireman. We live lifes of such comfort.
You know who else got shot in the back and killed? Civilian Vietnamese in black PJ’s running away from US forces when they see them, running in fear of their lives for being shot. Then they are shot anyway. They ran, therefore they are guilty (or NVA, or whatever).
yup. I’ve seen plenty of folks who don’t believe there’s a problem.
Body cams are an excellent first step in demonstrating that we do, indeed, have a problem. And not incidentally, when the police are justified in killing a suspect, they are excellent evidence to support the officer. There was a case in Boston a couple of years ago where an officer killed a black man in a struggle, shortly after some controversial police killing was in the national news. There was talk of rallies and marches. The police department released the video, which clearly showed the guy was armed and trying to attack the police, and it dropped out of the news within days. That’s a win for justice, too.
The autopsy conducted by the doctor hired by the victim’s family has been released. Has the autopsy conducted by the state’s pathologist/ME been released?
The doc, Dr. Bennet Omalu, is probably the world’s leading expert in chronic traumatic encephalopathy. From comments he’s made about the lethality of the wounds,
I’m not convinced his expertise extends to evaluating the lethality of traumatic injury caused by firearms. At the least, his comments don’t correspond with the visual aid he had next to him.
As to whether Dr. Omalu’s findings contradict the statements from police, in light of the bodycams I cited to earlier, I don’t see they necessarily do. Mr. Clark got shot because he turned to the cops with a dark object in his hand, after running from them, and after the cops were alerted to look for a guy breaking into cars. As handguns are notoriously poor at stopping people, I could reasonably find that the cops felt Mr. Clark wasn’t immediately stopped while he was lying on the ground, and therefore shooting him until he was stopped, was appropriate.
Or, I couldn’t find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their shooting him then was unreasonable, given their point of view. Which is what you’d need to find in order to convict them criminally. Do I think it was a “good shoot?” No. Do I think they acted sufficiently without regard to their training that their qualified immunity from suit should be obviated? Probably not.
But he was already shot which is what brought him down in the first place! Sometimes dying people move around some before expiring. I think once that happened (him being dropped by x number of rounds to make him fall down) that the officers should have ceased firing and slowly moved in on him to ascertain a better grip on the situation.
Yep, and when they have a gun, they can still move around enough to shoot you too. You’ve heard of the maxim, “In a knife fight, the winner’s the one who gets taken to the hospital?” Same thing can be somewhat true when two people armed with handguns fight each other. There are numerous cases in the literature of guys being mortally wounded, and still being able to kill people with their firearms before dying.
Shoot until the deadly threat is stopped. All I’m saying is that, if he’s got a gun, the deadly threat may still be present, even if he’s on the ground.
In practice, and I think the videos showed this, the cops stopped firing when Mr. Clark stopped moving. Which was about a few seconds after they started firing. (Contra the Laquan McDonald shooting in Chicago.) I’m pleasantly surprised they didn’t shoot to slide-lock, as happens in a lot of these cases. (Maybe one of them did, though I didn’t think so from a cursory viewing of the videos.) You can shoot quite a few shots in a few seconds though with a semi-auto pistol. And a revolver if you’re an expert with one.
Did the, admittedly-grainy, video show something dark in Mr. Clark’s hand, in a darkened back yard, after he’d been told to show his hands, and after he knew the cops were trying to catch him? (Guys looking for him, walking in the middle of the street, with flashlights = cops.) Yes, it did.
Is that enough to constitute an immediate deadly threat in the minds of American law enforcement in this day and age, given the immediate situation in that back yard? In practice, I’d argue it unfortunately does. Did he still have the dark thing near his hand when he hit the ground? I couldn’t tell from the video.
I’m belaboring this not because I think it will change anyone’s mind, but because I think it can save your life someday. At this time, with the way American law enforcement is trained for deadly force encounters, and with the way the law is being interpreted for them: [ul]
[li]Do not have something in your hands that a police officer can interpret to be a weapon [/li][li]Keep your hands visible and [/li][li]Ask them if you need to reach for something.[/li][/ul]
Is this degree of caution ridiculous in the land of the free? Yeah, I think so. But it’s the way things are at the moment.
You claim he was told to “told to show his hands.” Why would he not have a “dark thing” near his hands if he was told to “show his hands?” What the fuck did you expect him to do?
I happen to live in a country where the police are not regularly armed, yet have to deal with identical situations as this. Your advice is not required to save my life: I live in a country where the police are well trained in de-escalation.
Bullshit. There are 18,000 different law enforcement agencies in America and they are all taught and trained in different ways.
The problem isn’t that people are not “putting their hands up fast enough.” There is nothing in that video that suggests Stephon Clark is responsible for getting shot. The police pulled the trigger, not Clark. You can do everything “correctly” and still end up dead. When police do not adequately evaluate the risk then people end up dying. That is exactly what happened here. There was no “deadly threat.” The video didn’t show a “deadly threat”. The police perceived there was a “deadly threat” but they got it fucking wrong.
