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Tag: police-involved shooting

  • Reporting the Police and Naming Names

    David Simon, of The Wire, Homicide, and The Corner fame, has written a very powerful article in the Washington Post.

    The Baltimore Police stopped releasing the names of officers involved in police-involved shootings. Personally, I like reading the names in the paper to see if it’s anybody I know. Sure I could call up a friend and find out. But usually I don’t. Odd are I won’t know the officer.

    I also know that if I had been involved in a police-involved shooting, I wouldn’t want my name released. I’d have plenty to worry about without my name in the papers. Reporters love presenting “both” sides of the story. But for most police-involved shootings, there is no “other” side. Often, as hard as it is for some to believe, the police are simply telling the truth.

    I wouldn’t want to read about the bastard’s mother saying what an angel her son was, at least since the last time he got out of jail for shooting somebody. I wouldn’t want to read about “witnesses” (who weren’t there) say how that white officer shot him in the back for no reason at all. No, I shot him because the S.O.B. was trying to kill me.

    Yet names should be released. If nothing else, this policy isn’t fair to officers who names are released. It leads one to think they’re guilty. The department is being sued by one of them.

    But what it comes down to for me is that deep down I strongly believe in the press (mistakes and all). My uncle was a newspaper editor before I was a cop. Before I ever held a gun I was raising hell writing for the Evanstonian, my high-school newspaper. You might believe in the Second Amendment; I believe in the First.

    Freedom of the Press is listed in the First Amendment for a reason. As a free country, we need a free press. In a free society, police should be held accountable to the public. What’s the alternative?

    Read Simon’s piece. He’s a good writer. It’ll make you think. And that good.

    In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

    Part of the reason this country is in such a mess right now is because not enough people know what’s going on. They don’t read newspapers. They don’t know the facts. They’re ignorant.

    Talk radio and the morning zoo is not a recipe for a well-reasoned worldview. Even the best TV news is horrible (except for the NewsHour). Between the right blaming “The Media” for almost everything (the answer to media bias is more media) and the economic realities killing the newspaper business, I worry. A less powerful press is not good for our country or our freedom.

  • Robber Killed

    This is the kind of shootings that makes cops smile. Bad guys gets what he had coming. Reminds me of the time in roll call when the sergeant was describing a complicated shooting in Sector One on Barclay St. or Greenmount Ave. It was a confusing tale of a Mexican guy, a black guy, a woman (perhaps girlfriend to one and prostitute to the other), money, a gun, and finally a man shot and killed.

    A friend of mine interrupted to ask, “Who got shot? The robber or the rob-ee. I kind of like it when the robber gets shot.” But in that case is was the rob-ee.

    Not here:

    Sometimes people are surprised to learn that yes, you can (and should) shoot a man holding a gun at somebody. No you don’t need to say anything. No, you don’t need to give a warning. In fact, doing so could endanger an innocent life. If somebody is threatening people with a gun and he points it toward you or anybody else, you cap him. Double tap. Plain and simple. That’s a good shooting.

    In this case it just so happened that an on-the-ball 65-year-old retired police captain was working security. If there had been no security guard, it is true that the odds are nobody would have been killed. But those are odds I wouldn’t want to play.

    The retired officer shot the robber four times (quadruple tap?) and is not being charged. Nice bit of shooting, I would say.

    This robbery and violence related to a legal and regulated drug. That goes against what I say about regulation and drug violence (namely that the former prevents the latter). Too bad there was no legal way for the addict to get his drug. If there were, robbery prevented, addict lives to stay addicted another day, and the retired police officer wouldn’t have to shoot anybody. Everybody wins.

  • He didn’t follow orders

    I feel like it was just yesterday I wrote:

    “If police think you might be armed and you won’t follow orders… well, it’s on you. Sorry. It may not be right, but that’s just the way it is.”

    Here’s a Baltimore case in point.

  • BART Shooting (II)

    Here’s a link to a The Raw Story and clearer video of the police-involved shooting of Oscar Grant on a Bay Area BART station. Thanks to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog for the link.

    In court, the officer’s actions will be judged by the standard of a “reasonable police officer.” It does not matter what the people shouting for the BART train felt. In fact, their shouting undoubtedly contributed to the general sense of danger the officer felt.

    My guess… but I don’t know (let’s remember that none of us know; we weren’t there)… My guess is that the officer will be charged and criminally convicted of something like manslaughter that is based on negligence but not dependent on intent.

    Is this a racial issue? Yes and no. No, police don’t go out saying let’s kill black people. In this situation, would white frat boys have been treated differently by police? Who can say for sure. It always depends on the situation. But it’s very likely.

    Anybody who thinks that police behavior isn’t affected by race and class is crazy. In different neighborhoods, both the the public and the police act differently. Don’t think for a second that all police act like the police you know and see and deal with.

    A few points on guns:

    1) Police handguns (at least all the ones I know) do not have a safety.

    2) Guns fire when the trigger is pulled. You may accidentally pull the trigger. But guns don’t “accidentally” fire. That’s important to remember. Your finger shouldn’t be on the trigger unless you’re taking aim and are seriously considering shooting. As a police officer, you are responsible for each discharge. Period.

    3) In most jurisdictions, pulling a gun from the holster is not considered “use of force.” In my time on the street, I probably had my gun out of its holster every other shift. But I only pointed it at somebody two or three times. And I never pulled the trigger.

    I was free to pull the gun out whenever I felt the need to. That was very often (say when searching a vacant building).

    But when dealing with suspects, the gun is often just an intimidating bluff. If the suspect calls your bluff and nobody’s life is in immediate danger, you can’t shoot them. You have to holster up and pull out something you can actually use as a compliance device. In my case that was mace. And even that I only used once. (But I wasn’t on the street for long.)

    Look, this shooting certainly looks terrible. Facts may come out that justify the officer’s action. But I doubt it.

  • BART Shooting

    The big police news of the week is probably the police-involved shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant (a black man) at a Bart Station in Oakland. Riotshave followed. I hate riots and those who justify them. Like there’s any justification to bust up a hair salon called “African Braids”.

    And here’s to Oscar Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson. She is quotedas saying: “I am begging the citizens not to use violent tactics, not to be angry…. You’re hurting people that have nothing to do with the situation. Please stop it, just please stop.” That’s a very noble thing to say after your son is killed.

    At the time of the shooting, I was just across the bay in San Francisco. I actually heard a few gun shots in Noe Valley. But not these shots.

    There are tons of You Tube clips about this shooting. Just search for “Bart Shooting.” This is probably the best report:

    From what I’ve heard, this guy was unarmed. But it could very well be justified to shoot an unarmed man. I’ve also heard he was handcuffed. He wasn’t (best I can tell).

    Like it or not, police will assume you might be armed until you prove otherwise. Especially on New Year’s Eve when you hear the constant crackle of gun fire.

    If you’re pointing a gun at somebody and telling him to freeze and he’s fighting and then his hands are under him and then he doesn’t freeze and out from under his body come his hands holding something you think is a gun…. As the cop with the gun you either do nothing and get shot or shoot.

    If police think you might be armed and you won’t follow orders… well, it’s on you. Sorry. It may not be right, but that’s just the way it is.

    For the record, once I was brawling with and unable to controlan unarmed handcuffed man (lesson: never arrest anybody when you’re alone). Still I didn’t shoot him.

    I’ve heard that perhaps the cop thought he was Tasing the guy. I don’t know. I’ve never held a Taser, but I don’t think you can mistake a Taser for a gun.

    But really, this shooting looks terrible. From the officer’s reaction immediately after firing, it looks like he’s surprised and didn’t mean to fire. That makes it both a horrible mistake and a crime.

    And whether or not the cop fucked up, and odds are he did, I hope all those schmucks yelling at the police from the train take a second to think about how they too contributed to this man’s death.

  • Robbery suspect shot dead

    Robbery suspect shot dead

    I think the most amazing thing is that he kept the cigarette in his mouth the whole time! Pictures are here.

  • Cop’s gun “accidentally” fires

    Cop’s gun “accidentally” fires

    The Daily Newsreports that a cop’s gun “accidentally” fired. No it di’int!If there’s one thing I learned as a cop, it’s that guns don’t fire by themselves. You gotta pull the trigger.

    Now there is a chance, if your finger is on the trigger, that you could get hit by something and accidentally squeeze the trigger. But if you did, the bullet wouldn’t hit the driver. No way. With the luck of police, if would probably hit your best friend.

    It was a good shooting. Here’s the abridged version of what’s in the Daily News:

    Stolen car. Backup called. Four uniformed cops approached, guns drawn. 25-year-old driver repeatedly slams into a parked SUV, tearing off the vehicle’s rear wheel and forcing its rear half onto the sidewalk.

    One of the two passengers runs, is caught. The car jumps the curb and drives into a store gate. The driver spins the car about 270 degrees, striking the lieutenant. “As the car hit the cop, he accidentally fired his gun, sending a bullet through a rear window and striking the driver.”

    So why would the cop say the gun accidentally fired when he took a good shot that needed to be taken in a tough situation? Because it’s against the rules to fire at or from a moving vehicle (I’ve always liked that “from” part).

    Now it makes sense that you generally don’t want to kill the man in control of a car. But sometimes you need to. And this one one of the cases. But the rules don’t allow for that.

    What’s an officer to do? There are three choices (and you have 1/2 second to decide):

    1) Do nothing, get hit by a car, and have the car zoom off before it crashes into someone or something?

    2) Do the right thing, shoot, be honest, and potentially get in trouble for shooting at the driver of a moving car?

    Or 3) do the right thing, shoot, tell a little white lie, and be called a hero?

    It’d do the latter. So did the lieutenant.

    So this accidental bullet just accidentally happened to fly through the car rear window and accidentally go right into the area of the driver’s seat where the driver just happened to be sitting. He was accidentally killed. If this was an accident, what a lucky accident it was!

    I wish departmental rules would allow cops to do their job, stay safe, tell the truth, and not get in trouble. But they don’t. And since they don’t, I say well done, L.T.!

  • Shoot Don’t Shoot

    My former firearms instructor sent me this link.

    It’s a fun little game. Shoot the guys with the gun, not the guys with wallets and cell phones. You won’t do it perfectly (and neither do cops).

    You face around 100 people, my guess is half are black, half are white, half are armed, half are unarmed. All in all, it takes less than 5 minutes (including loading time).

    When it’s over it gives you a score and also the response time for armed and unarmed white and black men. Here’s mine:

    Game Over
    Your Score: 660
    Average reaction time:
    Black Armed:621.32ms
    Black Unarmed:728.96ms
    White Armed:688.96ms
    White Unarmed:655.96ms

    I think my overall score is pretty good. But the racial difference in response time is interesting. Of course I don’t think I’m more likely to shoot black men. Besides, like any good cop, I’m not looking at race. I’m looking at their hands.

    But the numbers show that I’m quickest to respond to an armed black man and slowest to respond to an unarmed black man. Mind you the difference is only 7/100th of a second, but still….

    This kind of racial bias in consistent with most academic research that finds differences in response time towards white and black armed and unarmed suspects.

    Feel free to cut and paste your scores in a comment.

    Here’s the websiteof the researchers.

  • Off-Duty Detective Who Shot a Gunman After Drinking Is Restored to Full Duty

    I should hope so!

    The right thing was done. In the end. Too bad it was even an issue to begin with. This cop did everything right. The important thing isn’t if off-duty cops are drinking, it’s if they do the right thing.

    It’s one thing if Mothers Against Drug Driving imposes it’s Prohibitionist and puritanical views on our driving laws. But hands off the NYPD!

  • Meanwhile, in the NYPD

    The brass is throwing the book at the officers involved in the Sean Bell shooting.

    What’s so unsatisfying about this, is that such discipline makes cops paranoid, and for good reason. What’s the moral? For police, it’s that if the department wants to get you (if Al Sharpton shouts loud enough), they will. Obviously the order had been given that heads must roll. But at the same time the anti-police public won’t be satisfied. Anything less than jail, being fired, and perhaps a public flogging in considered a slap on the wrist.

    The New York Times reports:
    If the charges, known as administrative charges, are upheld, the officers could face discipline ranging from loss of pay to retraining to firing. But the internal investigation has been suspended as federal prosecutors weigh civil rights charges in the case.
    If you think 31 bullets was obsessive, go for that guy. Clearly, as I have said, mistakes were made. Do I think police were criminally guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. No. Do I think punishable things may have been done. Yes.

    But to charge someone with “failing to thoroughly process the crime scene”? That’s bullshit. Don’t go after the guys who showed up after the bullets stopped flying. The idea of crime-scene integrity is a myth. You try and preserve a crime scene with multiple shooting victims. I have. It’s not easy. The O.J. trial set the bar too high.

    CSI it’s not. Police and paramedics have jobs to do and lives to save. Do you order your commanding officer to stay out of the scene? People and cars and belonging are searched. Somebody steps on some blood or kicks a shell casing. I know I have. And you know what, it doesn’t really matter. It’s policing. Policing in the real world with real people. Get real.