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Category: Police

  • “Why become a cop?”

    My latest piece at CNN.com is up. They titled it: “Why would you want to be a cop?”

    I speak to a lot of police officers, retired, on the job, and soon-to-be. Anybody who knows cops knows it’s in their nature to complain (there’s an old barb about there being just two things cops don’t like: change and the status quo). But the idealism of my students can be lost with on-the-job realities: incompetent bosses, nasty working conditions, and any quota system (be it for revenue or arrests) that demeans their professionalism.

    Police officers try to maintain their pride and idealism on the job, but it can be a tough battle when faced with a hostile political structure and a misunderstanding public too quick to blame police for society’s ills. Blaming one officer for the misdeed of another is neither fair nor productive. To have the hashtag #blacklivesmatter held against you is both frustrating and absurd. The general public doesn’t seem to care about black lives unless a cop is involved. Police see and help victims every day while most murders don’t even make the evening news.

    Police do become thin-skinned to criticism — too quick to take offense to even well intentioned criticism — because the job isn’t just what you do for a living, it ends up defining who you are. The job damages you physically and, more worrisome, drains you emotionally.

    Policing demands a level of hyper-alertness synonymous with post-traumatic stress disorder.

    …

    So as best they can, police officers make do with the job they have. Certainly police can and should play a role in rebuilding the public’s trust. But the public should have more empathy for those who have no choice but to deal with society’s problems — poverty, massive incarceration, racism, crime — that we, collectively and to our shame, cannot or will not fix.

    [Special thanks to Sgt B and to A.D. for his comment on a previous post. I probably could have done it without you, but it certainly wouldn’t have been as good!]

  • “Generating New Revenue Streams” by policing

    Sometimes it’s important to remember how you got to Point B from Point A to where you are today.

    You don’t just stumble into a system like Ferguson’s where the city tries to get 30 percent of it’s total budget from fines, citations, and court fees. Ferguson isn’t unique.

    I just stumbled across this article from 2010, writen by a police officer, that lays out the potential of using police for revenue:

    Based on the research for this article, there is a clear presumption of need for law enforcement to generate new income streams. A first necessary step in that process is to examine possible revenue-generating ideas.

    …

    Their most prominent recommendations were:

    • fees for sex offenders registering in a given jurisdiction,

    • city tow companies,

    • fine increases by 50 percent,

    • pay-per-call policing,

    • vacation house check fees,

    • public hours at police firing range for a fee,

    • police department-run online traffic school for minor traffic infractions,

    • department-based security service including home checks and monitoring of security cameras by police department,

    • a designated business to clean biological crime scenes,

    • state and court fees for all convicted felons returning to the community,

    • allowing agency name to be used for advertisement and branding,

    • triple driving-under-the-influence fines by the court,

    • resident fee similar to a utility tax,

    • tax or fee on all alcohol sold in the city,

    • tax or fee on all ammunition sold in, the city,

    • public safety fees on all new development in the city,

    • 9-1-1 fee per use,

    • police department website with business advertisement for support,

    • selling ride-a-longs to the public, and

    • police department–run firearm safety classes.

    …

    Modeled after other California agencies, the party ordinance allows an administrative citation to be issued at loud parties where the music is plainly audible 50 feet from the property line. The first citation is $100, a second $200, and a third or subsequent citation within 12 consecutive months is $500. The goal of the ordinance is to reduce repeat party calls, improve the quality of life for surrounding residents, and generate a revenue stream to offset the cost of response and enforcement.

    It’s just so blatant and wrong to see police (or the courts, or prisons) as a source of generating revenue. If you need money, that is what taxes are for.

    Anyway, for what it’s worth, West Covina, CA, does not seem best to be a particularly bad offender in terms of milking its residents, best I could understand their municipal budget. And some of those ideas above are actually pretty good ideas.

  • Value Over Replacement Cop

    This was gonna be my idea! “Bobbies and Baseball Players: Evaluating Patrol Officer Productivity Using Sabermetrics.” So kudos to Luke Bonkiewicz because he actually researched and wrote the article and I didn’t. Here’s the abstract from the current issue of Police Quarterly (2015, Vol. 18(1) 55–78):

    Police officer productivity is an understudied topic in police research. Prior studies on productivity have primarily relied on rudimentary statistics, such as calls for service and arrests. A more advanced method for evaluating productivity should (a) account for the diverse activities of patrol officers, (b) weight different productivity outputs, (c) evaluate officers in terms of available minutes for self-initiated activities (productive time), and (d) offer agencies the flexibility to select, prioritize, and weight patrol activities most relevant to their jurisdictions. Borrowing from a baseball sabermetric called Value Over Replacement Player, we create and test an innovative statistic called Value Over Replacement Cop. This metric analyzes 12 patrol activities and generates a single number by which to quantify and evaluate a patrol officer’s productivity. Using data from a midsize U.S. Police Department (325 sworn officers), we find strong support for the validity of this new metric.

    This is a good start. But the problem is that this measure doesn’t take into account crime, the prevention of which is the primary purpose of police. Crime needs to be the main variable, not indicators of police officer “productivity” (which aren’t unimportant, but still).

  • Shootings up in NYC

    Shootings are up 20 percent this year. Bratton is blaming marijuana. I doubt it. But maybe. I’m certainly willing to consider the idea. Most liberals, I find, never ever consider the idea that their advocacy might have unintended consequences, like more young black men getting murdered.

    That said, Bratton pointed to drug dealers getting killed. That was illegal last year and remains illegal this year. So I’m not certain how not arrested people for small scale marijuana possession really changes anything. (For public safety or Broken Windows, that is. It certain matters for the guy getting arrested or not.) If the increase is as Bratton describes it, these killings seem more like old-fashioned Prohibition killings than decriminalization killings.

    But… it could be that criminals are more brazen in response to less aggressive policing. And maybe some robber smoking a joint last year would have gotten stopped by the po-po. But not so in 2015. I’m not saying that is the reason. But it’s possible.

    Here’s the story in the Times. Worth reading if you’re into this kind of thing.

  • Dan Aykroyd continues to “embrace the police”

    Dan Aykroyd is making a donation to the children of slain Philadelphia Police Officer Robert Wilson III. Wilson was killed by two robbers last Thursday. Seems Wilson just happened to be in a store, in uniform, when armed robbers decided hold the place up:

    Officer Wilson stopped by the GameStop store to purchase a video game for his son as a gift for doing well in school. His 8-year-old son’s birthday is on Monday. He also leaves behind a wife and a 1-year-old son.

    It’s a nice gesture from Aykroyd, who has always supported police.

  • President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2): The Problem with Procedural Justice

    Three years ago I wrote about the problem of “procedural justice.” If you’ve misplaced your copy of William Stuntz’s The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, just read Leon Neyfakh’s review in the Boston Globe.

    Procedural justice still matters because the Presidential Report places emphasis on it: “Police and sheriffs’ departments should adopt procedural justice as the guiding principle for internal and external policies and practices to guide their interactions with the citizens they serve.” I disagree.

    Now procedural justice seems like something that is hard to be against. But one opposite of procedural justice isn’t arbitrary justice but moral justice. If one emphases moral justice over procedural justice, you’re saying police and the criminal justice system shouldn’t just be judged on following the rules.

    Sometimes you need discretion and the ability to bend the rules — to break procedure — to do the right thing. I write about this in Cop in the Hood at the start of Chapter 6. [Long story short: Grandmother hits 17-year-old grandson she is the legal guardian of because, well, she had good reason. He calls police to report this assault. I do not arrest grandma. Instead I threaten to arrest this “kid”.] As a police officer, whenever I could, I used my discretion to value moral justice over procedural justice. (Not that I would have phrased it that way at the time. I was just “doing the right thing.”)

    Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker, a big fan of my writing, also described the issue:

    “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice,” was published, last fall, is the most forceful advocate for the view that the scandal of our prisons derives from the Enlightenment-era, “procedural” nature of American justice…. In a society where Constitution worship is still a requisite on right and left alike, Stuntz startlingly suggests that the Bill of Rights is a terrible document with which to start a justice system–much inferior to the exactly contemporary French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

    …

    The trouble with the Bill of Rights, [Stuntz] argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Be just! The Bill of Rights says, Be fair! Instead of announcing general principles–no one should be accused of something that wasn’t a crime when he did it; cruel punishments are always wrong; the goal of justice is, above all, that justice be done–[the Bill of Rights] talks procedurally. You can’t search someone without a reason; you can’t accuse him without allowing him to see the evidence; and so on. This emphasis, Stuntz thinks, has led to the current mess, where accused criminals get laboriously articulated protection against procedural errors and no protection at all against outrageous and obvious violations of simple justice. You can get off if the cops looked in the wrong car with the wrong warrant when they found your joint, but you have no recourse if owning the joint gets you locked up for life. You may be spared the death penalty if you can show a problem with your appointed defender, but it is much harder if there is merely enormous accumulated evidence that you weren’t guilty in the first place and the jury got it wrong.

    There’s also Alex Vitale’s critique of the Presidential Task Force in The Nation. Now Alex and I disagree about many police issues (such as Broken Windows), but I like people I disagree with. And he makes this point well:

    Today’s Task Force falls into this same trap…. Such procedural reforms focus on training officers to be more judicious and race-neutral in their use of force and how they interact with the public.

    …

    Similar goals were set in the late 1960s…. Similarly, Johnson’s initial draft of the 1968 Safe Streets bill called for resources to be devoted to recruitment and training of police, modernization of equipment, better coordination between criminal-justice agencies, and innovative prevention and rehabilitation efforts, and had the support of the ACLU and other liberal reform groups…. Over the next decade, the result was a massive expansion in police hardware, SWAT teams and drug enforcement units, and almost no money towards prevention and rehabilitation.

    …Community policing also tends to turn all neighborhood problems into police problems…. The tools that police have for solving these problems, however, are generally limited to punitive enforcement actions such as arrests and ticketing.

    …

    By conceptualizing the problem of policing as one of inadequate training and professionalization, reformers fail to directly address the ways in which the very nature of policing and the legal system served to maintain and exacerbate racial inequality. By calling for color-blind “law and order,” they in essence strengthen a system that puts people of color at a structural disadvantage.

    …

    What is not discussed in the report is dialing back in any meaningful way the war on drugs, police militarization or the widespread use of “broken windows” policing that has led to the unnecessary criminalization of millions of mostly black and brown people. Well-trained police, following proper procedure, are still going to be engaged in the process of arresting people for mostly low-level offenses, and the burden of that will continue to fall primarily on communities of color, because that is how the system is designed to operate–not because of the bias or misunderstandings of officers. A more respectful and legally justified arrest for marijuana possession is still an arrest that could result in unemployment, loss of federal benefits and the stigma of a drug arrest.

    …

    We cannot produce true justice by reforming police procedures. Instead, we need to call into question why we have come to rely so heavily on the police to manage social problems.

    Thinking about it another way, punishing Ferguson cops who write racist emails on the job is certainly the right thing to do, but blaming cops will do next to nothing to change an unjust system in which police officers are mere pawns.

  • “13 Years in the Slammer … for Two Joints?”

    I’m generally quick to point out that there aren’t too many people doing long time for small scale drug possession. (Usually this in the context of pointing out that drug decriminalization will not empty our prisons.)

    But it does happen. And it shouldn’t happen. Ever.

    How is anyone in prison for 13 years for possessing two joints? It’s possible if you’re a “habitual offender” and in Louisiana:

    In Bernard Noble’s case, getting caught with a couple of joints morphed into more than 13 years behind bars because of the way the state’s harsh marijuana laws intersect with its harsh habitual offender law (known colloquially as “the bitch.”) Because Noble had two previous drug possession offenses, one 12 years old and one 24 years old, he fell under the purview of the habitual offender law.

    Even though his current offense was trivial (pot is decriminalized in nearly 20 states and possession is legalized in four others and DC) and even though his previous offenses were low-level and non-violent, the statute called for the 13 years, without parole.

    Taking into account Noble’s minor criminal history, his work record, and his role as the breadwinner for a family with seven children, and making special note of his overpayment of child support to children not living with him, his sentencing judge departed from the statute and sentenced him to only five years. Orleans Parish prosecutors appealed the lower sentence to the state Supreme Court and got the 13-year sentence reinstated last year.

    What is wrong with us?

  • DOJ: The Whole Damn System is Guilty!

    [My other posts on the DOJ reports, 1 & 3.]

    The DOJ’s report of Ferguson isn’t just about police or just about race. A large part of the report — to me the more disturbing part — is about a whole system of government using the criminal justice system as a tool to legally steal from its residents. It’s feudal, but more arbitrary. That makes it despotic. And it’s not unique to Ferguson.

    When the mafia ran a town, at least they knew they were the mob. But this is a system working under the cover of the law. But in its operation it’s nothing more than old-fashioned criminal racket.

    I don’t want to say you shouldn’t see this in a broader context of race and racism (I mean, the people getting exploited are poor and black). But one could be blind to race and still be outraged. Just don’t be not be outraged because the victims are poor and black. Presumably there are poor whites facing the same problem somewhere else in small town America. I don’t know. It’s wrong.

    Here’s how it works: the political system makes rules and tells the police to issue fines. Not for crimes, mind you, but for small stuff, traffic violations and municipal violations. The stated goalis to raise money. The court system multiplies those fines. The goal — the stated goal — is to get 30 percent of funds (the legal limit) through such skullduggery. From the DOJ report:

    It is rare for the court to sentence anyone to jail as a penalty for a violation of the municipal code; indeed, the Municipal Judge reports that he has done so only once. Rather, the court almost always imposes a monetary penalty payable to the City of Ferguson, plus court fees.

    …

    The City Manager also requested and secured City Council approval to fund additional court positions, noting in January 2013 that “each month we are setting new all-time records in fines and forfeitures,” that this was overburdening court staff, and that the funding for the additional positions “will be more than covered by the increase in revenues.”

    …

    In its budget for fiscal year 2013, the City budgeted for fines and fees to yield $2.11 million; the court exceeded that target as well, collecting $2.46 million. For 2014, the City budgeted for the municipal court to generate $2.63 million in revenue.

    …

    The Finance Director wrote to Chief Jackson that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year. What are your thoughts? Given that we are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall, it’s not an insignificant issue.”

    …

    Even as officers have answered the call for greater revenue through code enforcement, the City continues to urge the police department to bring in more money. In a March 2013 email, the Finance Director wrote: “Court fees are anticipated to rise about 7.5%. I did ask the Chief if he thought the PD could deliver 10% increase. He indicated they could try.”

    “As the RLCs [Red Light Cameras] net revenues ramp up to whatever we believe its annualized rate will be, then we can figure out how to balance the two programs to get their total revenues as close as possible to the statutory limit of 30%.”

    How do you work in such a system and maintain a clean conscious? Well…

    City officials’ application of the stereotype that African Americans lack “personal responsibility” to explain why Ferguson’s practices harm African Americans, even as these same City officials exhibit a lack of personal–and professional–responsibility in handling their own and their friends’ code violations, is further evidence of discriminatory bias on the part of decision makers central to the direction of law enforcement in Ferguson.

    In other words, if you knew the right person, your tickets and fines simply disappear. So the idea of “personal responsibility” didn’t actually extend to oneself. It was only used for other people.

    As to the police, I think the focus on racist emails sent by police is kind of a red herring. I mean they are racist. And? And — since these emails are sent on the job on their job email accounts — this racism is part of the accepted culture. OK. (This goes beyond private tasteless gallows-humor jokes about crime scenes and victims, with which I have no problem).

    Racists jokes don’t actually make the joke teller become a racist person. Racist jokes let other people know when person is racist. So I’m kind of happy to see these jokes because now I know. But it doesn’t shock me that there are racists in the police department. It would shock me if there were not. Liberals seem to revel every time a racist is outed. Conservatives love saying racism doesn’t matter. But of course there are racists and of course it matters. But here’s why I kind of shrug my shoulders when stuff like this comes out. It’s not like racists disappeared when the 13th Amendment was passed. Racist didn’t suddenly let their daughters date black men after the passage Civil Rights Act of 1964. We don’t need to solve racism to make things a hell of a lot better.

    And debating whether a joke is racist or only in bad taste is not an argument worth having. I think many of the cops are racist. But, like Jefferson’s bible, we can say the F.P.D. is seriously messed up without even talking about race.

    You might still think Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. You might be the most conservative Eric-Holder-hating cop. You can think every example of police action in the DOJ report is OK. You can do all that and still read this DOJ report and be outraged at the facts that not subject to ideological interpretation or “liberal bias.” (But don’t forget this is the same DOJ that did not throw Darren Wilson under the bus.)

    Ferguson uses its police department in large part as a collection agency for its municipal court. Ferguson’s municipal court issues arrest warrants at a rate that police officials have called, in internal emails, “staggering.” According to the court’s own figures, as of December 2014, over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants that had been issued by the court.

    Ferguson has a population of 21,000.

    Cops understand this emphasis on fund raising:

    One officer told us that officers could spend more time engaging with community members and undertaking problem-solving projects if FPD officers were not so focused on activities that generate revenue. This officer told us, “everything’s about the courts . . . the court’s enforcement priorities are money.” Another officer told us that officers cannot “get out of the car and play basketball with the kids,” because “we’ve removed all the basketball hoops — there’s an ordinance against it.”

    There’s some irony there in moving kids from off one “court” to on to another.

    [Also, this DOJ report places strong blames on 12-hour shifts as hurting community relations. It links 12-hour shifts to lack of defined beats. I’m not certain why those would go together. This is news to me. Feel free to comment.]

    Overall the police organization comes off as pretty incompetent. Again, not hard for a former cop to imagine. But this level of institutional slackness is pretty bad:

    In Ferguson, officers will sometimes make an arrest without writing a report or even obtaining an incident number, and hundreds of reports can pile up for months without supervisors reviewing them.

    That’s messed up.

    Officers invoke the term “ped check” as though it has some unique constitutional legitimacy. It does not. Officers may not detain a person, even briefly, without articulable reasonable suspicion. To the extent that the words “ped check” suggest otherwise, the terminology alone is dangerous because it threatens to confuse officers’ understanding of the law.

    Along with issuing a “wanted” (basically issuing warrants for people without probably cause. ) I’ve never heard of a “ped check.” It’s unacceptable. As is this:

    In our conversations with FPD officers, one officer admitted that when he conducts a traffic stop, he asks for identification from all passengers as a matter of course. If any refuses, he considers that to be “furtive and aggressive” conduct and cites–and typically arrests–the person for Failure to Comply.

    And it lead to things like this:

    One woman… received two parking tickets for a single violation in 2007 that then totaled $151 plus fees. Over seven years later, she still owed Ferguson $541 — after already paying $550 in fines and fees, having multiple arrest warrants issued against her, and being arrested and jailed on several occasions. Another woman told us that when she went to court to try to pay $100 on a $600 outstanding balance, the Court Clerk refused to take the partial payment, even though the woman explained that she was a single mother and could not afford to pay more that month.

    The report concludes:

    Our investigation indicates that in Ferguson, individual officer behavior is largely driven by a police culture that focuses on revenue generation and is infected by race bias. While increased vertical and horizontal diversity, racial and otherwise, likely is necessary to change this culture, it probably cannot do so on its own.

    So these two reports tell us that Darren Wilson is innocent (and the protesters were indeed wrong at a very basic level about the facts). But one can’t in good faith say one DOJ report is spot-on and the other is terrible, biased, and based on lies. Ferguson is a seriously fucked-up place! The system is racist. Even if it’s not racist (which it is), it’s immoral and broken. And the Ferguson Police are a part of that system.

    So wouldn’t it be great if liberals could say, “Gosh, sorry. We were wrong about Michael Brown and Darren Wilson.” And then conservatives (and cops) could say, “Apology accepted. But you know what? A system of government run as extortion using police as the muscle to extort money from poor people is racist and wrong.” Oh, what a wonderful world it would be.

  • DOJ: Blaming the Cops

    [My other posts on the DOJ reports, 1 & 2.]

    I have read (most of) the incredibly damning DOJ’s report on the Ferguson P.D. I tried to read it a bit as Thomas Jefferson edited the Bible. Thomas Jefferson thought that even if Jesus isn’t the son of God, even if there are no supernatural events, there’s still something good to be learned from Jesus’s life and ethics. So Jefferson edited out all the “special” bits from the Bible. And what was left was still a good book.

    I mentally did the same with this DOJ report. I don’t think the authors “get” policing. So their criticism of specific policing incidents runs shallow at times. Others I think are wrongly interpreted. Some details are probably not true (know from their Wilson/Brown report that witnesses sometimes make shit up). But just as one can cut the miracles and supernatural out of the New Testament and believe Jesus was still a pretty cool dude, a skeptic can excise huge parts of this DOJ report and still clearly see Ferguson is a deeply — deeply — fucked-up place. And that will be the next post.

    But first, here are my quibbles:

    An officer broke up an altercation between two [girls] and sent them back to their homes. The officer ordered one to stay inside her residence and the other not to return to the first’s residence.

    That seems like good policing to me. At first he doesn’t give a ticket. He doesn’t make an arrest. But these fighting fools don’t know when to call it a night. Girl Two goes back to Girl One’s place to restart the fight. Girl One goes to the street to fight.

    Later that day, the two minors again engaged in an altercation outside the first minor’s residence. The officer arrested both for Failure to Comply with the earlier orders.

    Well now they should get locked up. Still seems like good policing. This officer chooses “Failure to Obey.” Maybe a bad choice of charges, since you can’t order somebody to stay in their house. But so what? Call it disorderly conduct or loitering or a minor assault or loitering. It doesn’t matter because these charges are going to get dropped regardless. The arrest is the punishment. But the report makes the officer’s actions seem downright sinister: “The officer’s arrest of the two minors for Failure to Comply without probable cause of all elements of the offense violated the Fourth Amendment.”

    So the cop should have charged the girls with something more serious? Or charge their mother’s with neglect? Or is the answer is to just let them fight it out until you can get them for felony assault? I don’t like this emphasis on procedural justice (also seen on the Presidential Report) as somehow more important than moral justice. The two sometimes conflict. And I’d prefer to go with what is right that the letter of the law. (Often the law demands you lock somebody up when morally it’s the wrong thing to do.)

    Later the report criticizes an officer, who, in a similar case of fighting girls, is too quick to make an arrest. Two 15-year-old girls are fighting in class. School staff separate the girls in a hallway. An officer shows up and tells the girls to walk to the principal’s office. Instead, one girl rushes the other girl, “trying to push past staff toward the other girl. The officer pushed her backward toward a row of lockers and then announced that she was under arrest for Failure to Comply.” Seems fair enough. She restarted a fight and had to be physically restrained, which is no small deal. What if she keeps charging the other girl? When is it OK to arrest somebody? The report doesn’t answer that.

    A third officer is criticized for arresting a person who, after being free to go, decides not to leave the scene of his (very minor) crime, and instead responds to the officer:

    with profanities. When the officer told him to watch his language and reminded him that he was not being arrested, the man continued using profanity and was arrested for Manner of Walking in Roadway.

    The DOJ blames the officer for “Retaliating against individuals for using language that, while disrespectful, is protected by the Constitution.”

    Say what? If I exercise discretion and don’t arrest you, and then you then thank me by getting in my face and saying, “fuck you,” of course I’m going to lock you up. Don’t believe me? Next time a cop pulls you over and gives you a warning instead of a ticket (which doesn’t happen in Ferguson) and says “drive safe and have a nice day” say “fuck you” instead of “thank you” and see what happens. Cops can legally change their mind. (The legally dubious arrest is for saying “fuck you” when you’re not committing another crime.)

    So the report blames one officer for telling fighting girls to go home, another officer for not doing so, and a third for a discretionary arrest. One might conclude that the best policing in no policing.

    The report also criticizes cops for using a statute (§ 29-19) that is “likely unconstitutionally.” Well thank you for your legal interpretation, Mr. I-haz-graduated-from-law-school. But until the courts actually say otherwise, cops can use the laws that are on the books.

    Another curious assertion in the report (citing Brown v. City of Golden Valley and Mattos v. Agarano) is the claim that police cannot use tasers against minor criminals in non-threatening non-compliance situations. I hope this is true, but I don’t think it is. I know the courts have been chipping back at wanton taser use. But is the DOJ correct here in this report? What is the law of the land on this matter?

    All that said — even if one doesn’t accept some/many/all of the criticisms of the police presented — this Ferguson report is still a shocking indictment what is business as usual (emphasis on business) in Ferguson.

  • DOJ on Michael Brown Shooting: Justified

    So many reports. So little time. [My other two posts on the DOJ reports: 2 & 3.]

    First the easy one: the DOJ report on Darren Wilson shooting Michael Brown. The press seems more interested in the other DOJ report, the one that reams the whole criminal justice system in Ferguson a new one (more on that, later). But what about Darren Wilson and Michael Brown: the shooting that started it all.

    This DOJ report really is a complete vindicate of Police Officer Wilson. 100 percent. And you can’t really say that this is some racist white-wash from Eric Holder’s rah-rah pro-police Department of Justice.

    Now you may say the protests were about so much more. OK. You may say that Ferguson Police overreacted with too much force against protests. Sure. I agree. None of that means Ferguson isn’t a fucked-up place, racially and institutionally. And maybe it’s good that now we know about the business of racial injustice in Ferguson (that’s the other report).

    But let’s not change the subject. Darren Wilson was legally and morally justified in shooting Michael Brown. The whole “shot while surrendering” part? It simply did not happen. To say otherwise approaches the wacky level of Creationists, climate-change deniers, and the anti-vaccine camp.

    After I read the grand jury testimony, I was convinced: Darren Wilson’s version rings true. The DOJ agrees. If you don’t believe me, read the whole report. But the bottom line is this:

    The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson’s uses of deadly force were ‘objectively unreasonable’ under the Supreme Court’s definition. Accordingly… it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution.

    The end. Now that might not sound like huge statement in support of Officer Wilson. But the devil is in the details. The purpose of this report was not to exonerate Darren Wilson but to see if there was any reason to charge him federally. There isn’t. But the details of the DOJ’s report, based on all the evidence, presents a pretty unambiguous picture. These are now the facts:

    Brown stole several packages of cigarillos. … An FPD dispatch call went out over the police radio for a “stealing in progress.” Wilson was aware of the theft and had a description of the suspects as he encountered Brown.

    …

    Wilson … told the two men to walk on the sidewalk…. Wilson then called for backup, stating, “Put me on Canfield with two and send me another car.” Wilson backed up his SUV…. stopping Brown and [Dorian Johnson] from walking any further. Wilson attempted to open the driver’s door of the SUV to exit his vehicle, but as he swung it open, the door came into contact with Brown’s body and either rebounded closed or Brown pushed it closed.

    Wilson and other witnesses stated that Brown then reached into the SUV through the open driver’s window and punched and grabbed Wilson. This is corroborated by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and scratches on his neck, the presence of Brown’s DNA on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants, and Wilson’s DNA on Brown’s palm.

    …

    Brown then grabbed the weapon and struggled with Wilson to gain control of it. Wilson fired, striking Brown in the hand…. Brown used his right hand to grab and attempt to control Wilson’s gun…. Brown’s hand was within inches of the muzzle of Wilson’s gun when it was fired. The location of the recovered bullet in the side panel of the driver’s door… also corroborates Wilson’s account.

    …

    There is no credible evidence to disprove Wilson’s account of what occurred inside the SUV.

    …

    The autopsy results confirm that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back as he was running away.

    …

    Brown ran at least 180 feet away from the SUV…. Brown then turned around and came back toward Wilson, falling to his death approximately 21.6 feet west of the blood in the roadway.

    …

    Several witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson as he moved toward Wilson…. Wilson fired at Brown in what appeared to be self-defense and stopped firing once Brown fell to the ground.

    …

    While credible witnesses gave varying accounts of exactly what Brown was doing with his hands as he moved toward Wilson … they all establish that Brown was moving toward Wilson when Wilson shot him.

    As to witnesses who said things that contract these facts:

    As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time. Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media.

    That’s it. So you can keep whatever world view you want. [I am the only person on the Venn Diagram who was convinced that George Zimmerman was guilty and Darren Wilson was innocent?] If you thought Michael Brown was executed in cold blood by a racist cop, you were misinformed about the facts. Now you should change your opinion.

    [In an otherwise informative piece, Ta-Nahasi Coates admits Wilson’s innocence as charged but says, “Darren Wilson is not the first gang member to be publicly accused of a crime he did not commit.” Oh, snap. But Wilson may be the first innocent person in the 21st century to inspire mass public protests assured of his guilt.]

    What about Police Officer Darren Wilson? The mob of public opinion declares him guilty. As far as I know he’s still in hiding. He’s innocent. Is he really an agent of a criminal operation? Or does he get his life and job back?