After two recent police shootings, there is much civil unrest in Charlotte right now, but ironically (for lack of a better word) that shooting probably was justified (update: or not, see below), while the one in Tulsa almost certainly was not. But this probably has more to do with the demographics in those respective cities than it does with the merits of the cases. (The percentage of African Americans in Charlotte is over twice that in Tulsa.) Also, the officer in Tulsa has been charged with felony manslaughter, while in Charlotte a lot of the protest is about the police department releasing the videos they have of the shooting. I find this obstinacy by Charlotte P.D. troubling and strange. It completely flies in the face of the police transparency movement that is supposed to help build trust between law enforcement and residents. (Although, North Carolina recently passed a bill that will go into effect in a week that makes it illegal to release police footage without a court order. So North Carolina seems to not really be down with this police "glasnost" concept at all.) The police chief in Charlotte claims that he’s not releasing the videos, because there is no compelling reason to do so, and that it might further inflame things. But my thought is – Isn’t thousands of people protesting in the street a compelling reason? And aren’t things already quite inflamed?
With that said, looking at the evidence dispassionately, I do think the man who was killed in Charlotte, Keith Scott, was in fact holding a gun and refused to let it go when he was shot. Reading the transcript of the video released by his wife who was recording the incident on her cell phone (I can’t bring myself to actually watch these videos) the police officer -- who it is worth noting is African American -- says the following: “Gun. Gun. Drop the gun. Drop the fucking gun.” Then later he says several times more to “drop the gun.” So either (a) Scott actually had a gun; (b) the police office straight-up fabricated it on the spot; (c) the officer confused something else for a gun and the department is now covering it up (they said they recovered the gun on the scene). In order of likelihood, these go (a), (c), (b) for me. Although I certainly don’t begrudge people – especially black people – for thinking (c) deserves more weight than I’m giving it. As we have learned from other tragic incidents, such as the Laquan McDonald shooting in Chicago, the Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina, and the Samuel DuBose shooting in Cincinnati, police officers will lie to cover their asses -- or at least they will "massage" the facts, consciously or subconsciously, to produce a version of events very favorable to themselves and very divergent from reality.
I read a lot of articles on stuff like this, and then, on occasion, I do something that I know I shouldn’t do, but I do it anyway: I read the comments section. It's an awful habit of self-flagellation. If you are ever feeling too optimistic about the current state race relations in our country, read the comments of an article about the shooting of a black man by police. You are guaranteed to cringe at least twenty times by the third comment.
Once you get past those cringes, though, you do notice the same recurring arguments for justifying the actions of the police officers, no matter what (even in the cases where the officers actually get charged with a crime). I thought I would list out the most prevalent of these arguments and debunk them in turn.
The victim wasn’t following the officer’s orders. Had he complied he wouldn’t have been shot.
There are many problems with this argument. One that I rarely hear mentioned, but is true to my own experience, is that it isn't always easy to follow police instructions. Once I disobeyed a "no turn on red" sign that I didn't notice, and I got pulled over by two police cars. The officers had me get out of my car and do a sobriety test. (I think it was a quasi-drunk driving sting, as it was near the main bar district in a college town at around midnight.) Although I was sober, I completely failed their field test, because I was having a lot of difficulty following their instructions. My adrenaline was pumping like crazy, so I was struggling to retain the things they were saying, and then I couldn't tell who was talking exactly because they were shining their lights in my face, and they weren't exactly epitomes of clear communication. So the whole thing was a mess. They were about to arrest me, but, of course, they gave me a Breathalyzer, and I only blew a 0.03 (the legal limit is 0.08). "You are the winner tonight, my friend," said one of the officers before they let me go and drove off. Yes, I didn't go to jail for a crime I didn't commit -- winning!
It's completely understandable that in an incredibly stressful situation, somebody wouldn't be able to fully process the commands a police officer is shouting at them. And even if they can, non-compliance is not a capital offense! In America, we have a process in which people are tried before a jury of their peers for crimes -- even truly heinous crimes. They aren't executed on the spot. That's for fascist dictatorships. (So it's completely unsurprising that most of the "comply or die" crowd support Donald Trump, whose role models of strong leadership are fascist dictators.)
With that said, looking at the evidence dispassionately, I do think the man who was killed in Charlotte, Keith Scott, was in fact holding a gun and refused to let it go when he was shot. Reading the transcript of the video released by his wife who was recording the incident on her cell phone (I can’t bring myself to actually watch these videos) the police officer -- who it is worth noting is African American -- says the following: “Gun. Gun. Drop the gun. Drop the fucking gun.” Then later he says several times more to “drop the gun.” So either (a) Scott actually had a gun; (b) the police office straight-up fabricated it on the spot; (c) the officer confused something else for a gun and the department is now covering it up (they said they recovered the gun on the scene). In order of likelihood, these go (a), (c), (b) for me. Although I certainly don’t begrudge people – especially black people – for thinking (c) deserves more weight than I’m giving it. As we have learned from other tragic incidents, such as the Laquan McDonald shooting in Chicago, the Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina, and the Samuel DuBose shooting in Cincinnati, police officers will lie to cover their asses -- or at least they will "massage" the facts, consciously or subconsciously, to produce a version of events very favorable to themselves and very divergent from reality.
Update: Apparently since I started working on this post, they have released the dashcam footage. Here is what a friend of mine on Facebook said about it. I'm going to quote him verbatim and leave it at that since I agree with him.
(1) No police officer is going to get charged if Mr. Scott had a loaded gun in his hand at the time he was shot by the police--regardless of whether it was pointed at the officers or not. (2) There was no reason for police to engage with Mr. Scott, who was sitting in his car minding his business (and maybe rolling a joint) in the first place--especially after the wife told them he had a TBI. Why would they order him out of the car and force a deadly confrontation? Why not secure a perimeter, take safe cover, and wait it out? Nobody had to get shot or die that day...I mean, just look at the Tulsa case. If the video on that didn’t definitively show that the victim, Terence Crutcher, was not a threat when he was shoot, I guarantee the officer would not have been charged. She could have told her side of the story about being scared and thinking he was going for a weapon – and who would have refuted her? The other cops on the scene? (As we've also learned, first and foremost cops protect one other.) It’s not that she would have been lying necessarily; it’s that her perception of the events would have been a wild distortion of what actually happened, and nobody would have been able to really challenge her on it. That’s one of the truly insidious things about disputed killings. Often the only person who can credibly contradict the killer’s narrative is dead.
I read a lot of articles on stuff like this, and then, on occasion, I do something that I know I shouldn’t do, but I do it anyway: I read the comments section. It's an awful habit of self-flagellation. If you are ever feeling too optimistic about the current state race relations in our country, read the comments of an article about the shooting of a black man by police. You are guaranteed to cringe at least twenty times by the third comment.
Once you get past those cringes, though, you do notice the same recurring arguments for justifying the actions of the police officers, no matter what (even in the cases where the officers actually get charged with a crime). I thought I would list out the most prevalent of these arguments and debunk them in turn.
The victim wasn’t following the officer’s orders. Had he complied he wouldn’t have been shot.
There are many problems with this argument. One that I rarely hear mentioned, but is true to my own experience, is that it isn't always easy to follow police instructions. Once I disobeyed a "no turn on red" sign that I didn't notice, and I got pulled over by two police cars. The officers had me get out of my car and do a sobriety test. (I think it was a quasi-drunk driving sting, as it was near the main bar district in a college town at around midnight.) Although I was sober, I completely failed their field test, because I was having a lot of difficulty following their instructions. My adrenaline was pumping like crazy, so I was struggling to retain the things they were saying, and then I couldn't tell who was talking exactly because they were shining their lights in my face, and they weren't exactly epitomes of clear communication. So the whole thing was a mess. They were about to arrest me, but, of course, they gave me a Breathalyzer, and I only blew a 0.03 (the legal limit is 0.08). "You are the winner tonight, my friend," said one of the officers before they let me go and drove off. Yes, I didn't go to jail for a crime I didn't commit -- winning!
It's completely understandable that in an incredibly stressful situation, somebody wouldn't be able to fully process the commands a police officer is shouting at them. And even if they can, non-compliance is not a capital offense! In America, we have a process in which people are tried before a jury of their peers for crimes -- even truly heinous crimes. They aren't executed on the spot. That's for fascist dictatorships. (So it's completely unsurprising that most of the "comply or die" crowd support Donald Trump, whose role models of strong leadership are fascist dictators.)
Parents need to teach their kids to respect police! Yes, sir, no, sir! Do as they say! Then this type of thing wouldn't happen. I know this will never happen to my kids because I taught them how to behave around police officers!
This is just a different way of phrasing the same argument as above. And I would be willing to bet that the person who wrote this is white. Well, I know he is white, because I wrote it. But I see comments like this all the time, and I bet those commenters are white. Because from what I've heard from black parents, they do talk to their kids about how to behave around police, and they are still scared to death of them getting shot because they flinch and an officer has an itchy trigger finger.
Also, white parents, I bet your kids aren't as well behaved around police as you think. I know this because I went to college with a whole lot of white kids, and I'd go to parties where there was pretty much only white people, and the police would show up to break it up, and it was not "yes, sir, no, sir," I assure you. Kids would run away; kids would talk back; kids would lie; kids would mockingly hug officers; and kids would occasionally challenge officers to mano-y-mano fistfights (this actually happened, more than once). And what happened? Well, these kids would sometimes get citations for disorderly conduct or minor in possession or something of the like. But you know what never happened? Nobody ever got shot! I never even saw an officer so much as motion toward his or her weapon. For some reason, the police officers, despite the obstinacy never viewed us as threats. Now why would that be? If we were a bunch of young black kids, doing the exact same thing, it would have been totally the same -- right?
Yeah, but black people commit a far higher percentage of violent crimes than any other race. So police should profile them. It's not racism; it's just facts.
Okay, but it's also a fact that a very small percentage of people of any race are going to commit a violent crime at all -- particularly killing a police officer. So shouldn't the risk assessment be "How much of threat is person going to be to me?" not "How much of threat is this person going to be to me relative to somebody of another race?" If it's the former, which it should be, then the answer is that a person is almost never going to be a mortal threat to you, because most people, even those who get stopped by police officers aren't killers.
And why are we so quick to lump together "black people" when it comes to crime, anyway? We don't do this for white people -- or for men. I mean, men commit a far higher percentage of violent crime than any race does. But can you imagine if police treated all men the way they treat black men, and women defended it by saying "hey, men are more violent than women!"? How would that go over?
The real problem is black on black violence.
No! That's not the real problem because there is no single real problem. Police brutality toward people of color is a problem; gang violence (which is what I think most people mean when they use the awful term "black of black violence") is a separate problem. Why are you bringing up the latter when we are discussing the former? Imagine if we used this logic in other areas:
"We need to stop foreign terrorists from getting into our country!"
"Actually, more Americans kill Americans than foreigners kill Americans. So that's the real problem!"
"We need to find a cure for cancer!"
"Actually, more people die of heart disease. So that's the real problem!"
It's nonsensical.
All these people are criticizing the police, but if somebody broke into their house, who would they call?!
I would call the police. It's their job to protect people. I would also like it to be part of their job that they not kill so many unarmed black people. Is that too high a standard for you?
That's all I got.
Until next time...
This is just a different way of phrasing the same argument as above. And I would be willing to bet that the person who wrote this is white. Well, I know he is white, because I wrote it. But I see comments like this all the time, and I bet those commenters are white. Because from what I've heard from black parents, they do talk to their kids about how to behave around police, and they are still scared to death of them getting shot because they flinch and an officer has an itchy trigger finger.
Also, white parents, I bet your kids aren't as well behaved around police as you think. I know this because I went to college with a whole lot of white kids, and I'd go to parties where there was pretty much only white people, and the police would show up to break it up, and it was not "yes, sir, no, sir," I assure you. Kids would run away; kids would talk back; kids would lie; kids would mockingly hug officers; and kids would occasionally challenge officers to mano-y-mano fistfights (this actually happened, more than once). And what happened? Well, these kids would sometimes get citations for disorderly conduct or minor in possession or something of the like. But you know what never happened? Nobody ever got shot! I never even saw an officer so much as motion toward his or her weapon. For some reason, the police officers, despite the obstinacy never viewed us as threats. Now why would that be? If we were a bunch of young black kids, doing the exact same thing, it would have been totally the same -- right?
Yeah, but black people commit a far higher percentage of violent crimes than any other race. So police should profile them. It's not racism; it's just facts.
Okay, but it's also a fact that a very small percentage of people of any race are going to commit a violent crime at all -- particularly killing a police officer. So shouldn't the risk assessment be "How much of threat is person going to be to me?" not "How much of threat is this person going to be to me relative to somebody of another race?" If it's the former, which it should be, then the answer is that a person is almost never going to be a mortal threat to you, because most people, even those who get stopped by police officers aren't killers.
And why are we so quick to lump together "black people" when it comes to crime, anyway? We don't do this for white people -- or for men. I mean, men commit a far higher percentage of violent crime than any race does. But can you imagine if police treated all men the way they treat black men, and women defended it by saying "hey, men are more violent than women!"? How would that go over?
The real problem is black on black violence.
No! That's not the real problem because there is no single real problem. Police brutality toward people of color is a problem; gang violence (which is what I think most people mean when they use the awful term "black of black violence") is a separate problem. Why are you bringing up the latter when we are discussing the former? Imagine if we used this logic in other areas:
"We need to stop foreign terrorists from getting into our country!"
"Actually, more Americans kill Americans than foreigners kill Americans. So that's the real problem!"
"We need to find a cure for cancer!"
"Actually, more people die of heart disease. So that's the real problem!"
It's nonsensical.
All these people are criticizing the police, but if somebody broke into their house, who would they call?!
I would call the police. It's their job to protect people. I would also like it to be part of their job that they not kill so many unarmed black people. Is that too high a standard for you?
That's all I got.
Until next time...
You are my favorite political commentator. I find myself quoting you often.
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