In an editorial today, the Seattle Times warns that “Police shootings threaten the public’s trust.” Yeah, true. But you know what else these shootings threaten? The public.
The Times goes on to caution against “armchair quarterbacking or efforts to prejudge the police,” and again, I’d agree that the we have not yet had enough time or facts to determine whether any or all of our region’s seven recent police shootings were completely justified or not. But it’s never too soon to put these events in context and attempt to discern some truth that might prevent more such tragedies from occurring in the near future.
And the obvious context is that our recent spate of police shootings comes in the wake of a string of tragedies that left six police officers dead in 2009.
Human nature being what it is, and the memory of their fallen comrades still fresh, it is perfectly understandable, if not necessarily forgivable, if when confronted with a perceived threat, local officers are a bit quicker to react with lethal force than they might have been only a a year ago. Likewise, it is also understandable if supervisors, politicians, the press and the public are more willing to justify such violent confrontations than they might have been before last year’s tragedies.
In other words, it is reasonable to ask if last year’s tragic slaying of six police officers played any role in facilitating the spate of police shootings we’ve seen this year? And it is incumbent upon our law enforcement officers to ask themselves whether the heightened sense of danger they must surely feel has in any way endangered the public they are sworn to protect?
It is not illegal to openly carry guns, knives and other weapons in Washington state, and the failure to instantly respond to police commands should not inevitably result in a barrage of bullets. Police officers are presumably trained to quickly react to perceived threats, but they should constantly remind themselves that the public is not. Deafness, inebriation, confusion, stupidity or even perhaps a misplaced trust in the restraint of the officers confronting them, need not result in tragedy.
Our police officers choose to put their lives on the line on our behalf, and for that they deserve our respect and support. But we should be wary of using last year’s tragic police slayings as any justification for the unnecessary use of lethal force.
Police: “There are two kinds of civilian, criminal scumbags and people who haven’t been caught yet.”
I knew a couple kids in high school, who wanted to become cops when they grew up, because “you can do anything you want”. Both kids had uncles or fathers who were career police officers, so it is likely this attitude was instilled upon them by their elders.
In what other profession, can a kid graduate High School, do a couple years in the Army or Marine Corps, get out, do six weeks of training and be on the streets, armed and have the full force of the State at his back, with almost no accountability for his actions by the time he’s 20?
If my analysis of this post is correct, I do believe Goldy is suggesting one option the police should use when confronting an armed citizen who refuses to drop his weapon is … running away.
“In what other profession, can a kid graduate High School, do a couple years in the Army or Marine Corps, get out, do six weeks of training and be on the streets, armed and have the full force of the State at his back, with almost no accountability for his actions by the time he’s 20?”
Not in law enforcement. My cousin has a 4 year degree and extensive volunteer experience. This coupled with good physical condition got him in the door to police training. Most departments of any size aren’t hiring without at least an AA with a four year degree being preferred. A phsychological test for fitness for the job, credit check and references for general character are also required. Then he had to pass the training. After that 6 months probation before he was a fully set up deputy.
Clearly you hate the police. I don’t know if this is a bad experience, poor exposure or what. We need cops as surely as we need social workers if we are to live in a civilized society whether you hate them or not.
Sure constant vigilance and accountability are desired for a paramilitary force operating in urban areas. But your dismissal of all cops as control freaks with guns is simply foolish.
RE 2
Sorry Troll, but that’s a misreading as far as I can tell.
Police should be trained in de-escalating a situation as well as controlling one. A few years ago 3 teenagers were play acting with toy guns in Bellevue. The police responded to a neighbor calling, and ordered weapons dropped. Confused and fearful, the teens hesitated. By your reasoning, the police should have shot them for not immediately dropping the weapons. Add in drunkenness, being tired, or just being unable to quickly handle difficult situations on the part of citizens and police restraint is necessary, not cowardly.
I would support escalating to the point of clubbing troll. It may not knock sense in but it might knock a little stupid out.
@4
lost, you are a police officer who responds to disturbance call at a house. You knock on the front door, but hear something behind you. It’s a man holding a knife walking toward you. You draw your gun and tell him to halt and to drop the knife. He doesn’t and keeps walking toward you. Explain to me how your restraint works in this kind of situation.
We can’t overlook the effect of race and color on these police confrontations. While walking down a Seattle street some years ago, I was stopped by two police officers because I vaguely met the description of someone who was robbing parking meters.
I wasn’t ordered to lie prone on a dirty street. I wasn’t stomped on. I wasn’t called names. As a white man, I was treated with respect. I quickly showed them I wasn’t the guy they were looking for and was on my way.
If all SPD officers showed the respect and common sense that these two officers did, there would be a lot fewer citizen complaints, and I expect fewer tragedies to mourn.
Part of my cousins training was in non-lethal options like tazers.
You and I agree on a lot of political issues, but the police are a special situation. They are where personal freedom meets societies need for security most directly. As such, this will always be a contentious issue, a work in progress. Ask yourself though, what cop wants to go home with an unnecessary death on his conscience?
There’s another issue at work here. That is, police are a highly specialized group within the larger society. If not constantly reminded that their citizenship and yours are of equal value, that service and restraint aren’t incompatible, human nature will take over. They will acquire a sense of being above the law, intended or not. This isn’t because cops are bad people but because they are human beings. That’s why things like a citizen review board for police misconduct, and proper accountability within the departments are so important.
BTW, people, even if you don’t have respect for me, at least have some respect for the title of Senior Political Analyst.
7 police shootings and a lethal injection by governor gregoire for which rob mckenna and dan satterberg want credit.
barbaric. and perhaps entertaining to dave reichert’s main man, gary ridgway.
Deathfagg seems to be talking out of his ass…again.
Dude, if you are fucking clueless about something, then just STFU and let those that do have a clue discuss.
Thanks in advance, prick.
Event such as this frequently bring out a fine display of ignorance, prejudice, and lack critical thinking skills.
Let’s declare a trend, congratulate ourselves for our insight, and go home.
And if I call myself the King of England will you bow to me, troll? If I claim to be Pope will you kiss my ring?
There is an inherent conflict between maximizing the safety of the police and minimizing the risk to the public. Officers could fire away anytime they feel the slightist risk and all potential assailants would be stopped(note that I do not believe that is the current situation) or they could be disarmed and left vulnerable to the bad folks who most assuredly are out there. WHere the line is drawn, how sure of a threat must they be and how must they be exposed to risk is the question.
And as humans, they will on occassion make mistakes. They must be trained to minimize those mistakes.
re 3:
Could you point out where he said that. I’ve read the thing a few times and did not read anything like that.
Being critical of a certain classification of public servants does not imply hatred of them.
If that were so, I could tell you that you hate public school teachers.
re 9: I don’t think so. Teddy Roosevelt warned against it.
I’ve lived in other cities, ones reputed to have higher crime than here, and when I moved to this area years ago, I was shocked at how often I heard the news that Seattle police had to gun another person down.
Can’t speak to the latest seven shootings, but I don’t think this is a new phenomenon overall, and I’ve always wondered what was up with that. Would be interested to know how Seattle compares in police shootings to other cities.
Sr. Political Analyst!
Analyze this:
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.c.....z0z9p4Olvh
Oh and he had his “priorities” obviously straight:
The priority is to put women in shackles and murder doctors over making a rich man richer by working a minimum wage stint that 6 other people are competing for.
Get a job chickenshit Wurzelbacher!
lost @ 8
I hope your cousin learned tht tazers are frequently lethal. Read Digby if you don’t believe me
F*ck da police
i have no love for the police and they do not have my respect for only wearing the uniform.
as with the military today they are mostly those that could not work in the ‘real’ world. that is not where i base my feelings.
i have witnesses the DWB arrest….i have witnessed police taking the money from a street runner and not making an arrest. i have witnessed police taking drugs from someone and not make an arrest.
cops are just people….and that is where i base my feelings from.
I don’t hate the Police. I never said that. but I do know that Police officers are not my friends. That they are the sort of people who took the job for the power it gives them over others. Most of them are bullies. All of them will lie in open court to protect themselves and each other. They will take the word of of the original caller over that of the “other guy” every time.
Example:
Southern Texas, 1988. I Lived in a decent neighborhood. Nobody really hated each other, there wasn’t any real crime to speak of. The fella that lived across the street and three doors up was of Mexican descent. Nice guy. Nice family. They kept their house almost immaculate. Had the occasional BBQ and had a few neighbors over. Good people.
Carlos had an 11 year old daughter. A real beauty. Sweet disposition and pretty face and pretty damn intelligent. A really nice girl.
When I’d been there about 7 months, Ricky and his motley crue moved in across the street. after about a month of living there, they hauled in a large Kenworth Cabover tractor and proceeded to dismantle it in their front yard. Engine on a pallet in the driveway with oil running down into the street, Cab next to the porch, frame left in the weeds in the front yard. As this was in an unincorporated area, there was no one to complain to and no laws were being broken.
Carlos’s daughter would walk past their house going to and from school, or whatever, and Ricky and his little nest of freaks would regularly catcall her and whistle and say nasty shit to her as she walked past their house. After a few weeks of that, Carlos went over to their house and chewed Ricky’s ass out in his front lawn. Ricky’s brother/cousin/best freind came up behind the dude and proceeded to wail the tar out of him with a large (maybe 1-3/4 inch) box wrench, while Ricky’s sister/cousin/girlfriend called the police.
Cops showed up, talked to Ricky and his pals for about five minuites while Carlos sat on the curb, holding his T-Shirt up to the cut on the top of his head, bleeding like a stuck pig. Mr’s big strong policemen then walked right over to Carlos, jumped on him, rolled him over while pinning his neck to the grass with their knees, and arrested him. They never questioned him, they never even looked at the situation, they just took Ricky’s word for what he said happened. Carlos was in jail for a week, charged with assaulting an officer, making threats, trespassing and resisting arrest. When I called the prosecutors office to give a statement (I had witnessed the whole thing unfold, and knew the situation) I was told that my statement would not be taken, and I would not be allowed to testify in a trial, the reasoning being that I had a previously existing relationship with the defendant.
Carlos got out with most charges dropped, and time served on the misdemeanor trespassing charge. For being the victim (twice in fifteen minuites) of a serious assault. They moved out two weeks later, and I left a month after that.
Cops lie. Cops will always cover each others asses. Cops will always protect each other no matter what. I will never under any circumstances, ever trust a police officer.
We, as citizens, have chosen to ignore the militarization of law enforcement while simultaneously ignoring the freedom from consequences when the militarization runs up against the citizens. Wayback in my own wayback machine, i was a law enforcement official (CA State Park Peace Officer who needed no less than a Bachelors degree to serve) who was trained in defensive tactics and firearms. Today we don’t have the time or money to train highly militarized officers to use defensive tactics; nor could they fight hand to hand given the shields and weaponry they now carry. We barely train them to use batons, preferring tasers and pepper spray before shooting the perps.
Most police and sheriffs departments do not require bachelors degrees (and the smaller ones don’t even bother with AAs). They do require background checks, but once hired those are moot. They don’t test officers for performance enhancing drugs either, making law enforcement personnel some of this nation’s worst abusers. And the courts absolutely refuse to prosecute officers for their actions, even when off duty and drunk while shooting someone (Spokane is a hotbed of officer abuse). Radley Balko is the preeminent scholar of law enforcement abuses and should be read daily.
Each case is different, but it seems to be happening a lot. In the case where the person got shot for pointing a gun at police, one could make good arguments as to why a cop might decide to shoot.
I think that the reason the Seattle Police are being so conciliatory on the John Williams case is that it already is pretty clear that it was not a justifiable shooting at least based on several witness accounts who have said that it appears that Williams didn’t realize the cop was talking to him. If the accounts are correct, Williams was carving when the police officer pulled up and saw him with a knife. The officer got out of his car and started yelling at Williams and then shot him 4 times. One witness said that Williams back was to the cop. It happened in less than a minute from the time the cop pulled up in his car.
Lots of people have seen drunks around Seattle and the ones that are really bad off, like Williams, don’t move very fast, aren’t paying attention to anyone around them and really act a lot like someone with dementia. A minute isn’t a long time for someone in that mental state to figure out that somehow he’s the one the cop is yelling at.
He didn’t deserve to be gunned down. That there is no “blue wall” on this one tells me that no one else in the SPD thinks it was justified either.
Clearly the best solution is for everyone everywhere to arm themselves to the gills with the most effective weapons available, inflame the populace with scary rhetoric, reduce the time and money spent on probation officials and hope for the best.
If 7 or 700 or 7000 citizens and/or police officers need to die (apparently for no good reason), well ….
I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA!
And if that ain’t good enough for you, the widows, widowers and orphans, …..
Deathfrogg’s story happens more frequently than it should. If you read the comments on the Seattle Times on the story many people naively believe that if you are a “decent, law abiding” person you have nothing to fear from the cops. I’d like to think Washington is different from Texas but the “I’m going to beat the Mexican piss out of you homey” incident tells us that it isn’t. That guy was also minding his own business and got kicked by three different cops.
I think Troll’s escalation of the situation warrants the use of a PR-24. Not that many cops use them anymore.
Troll said:
“…one option the police should use when confronting an armed citizen who refuses to drop his weapon is … running away.”
I think that’s what the Canadian cops do, isn’t it?
Deathfrog said:
‘Police: “There are two kinds of civilian, criminal scumbags and people who haven’t been caught yet.” ‘
Cops should not use the word “civilian” when describing everyone who is not a cop. Somehow, the cops have go it in their heads that they are not civilians: they are! When a cop refers to the populace as “civilians,” he or she is dishonoring those who wore the uniform in the military. Cops are not the military, they never will be, and they were never intended to be. The cops should use the word “civilian” to describe everyone who is not in the military. The term “civilian” applies equally to the police as it does to the guy behind the counter of the on the local convenience store.
The military is the military, and the cops are civilians.
Goldy, I’m not sure if you included the shooting of Wayne Scott Creach in Spokane in this. The shooting of Creach looks pretty iffy to me.
The number of shoots, both of and by police, lately has me worried.
Oops, that should be # of shootings.
“I don’t hate the Police….Most of them are bullies. All of them will lie in open court to protect themselves and each other….I will never under any circumstances, ever trust a police officer.”
Yes, on reflection I can see a really balanced view of the police in your writing.
Most police officers are well intentioned men and women with a genuine interest in serving their communities. A few bad apples don’t mean the whole barrel is spoiled. Yes, we should hold those who abuse their power to account, but to tar the whole group with the calumnies of a few is dishonest.
Violence begets violence.
It’s just like that preacher in Florida who wants to burn a stack of Koreans.
Where does it all end?
“It’s just like that preacher in Florida who wants to burn a stack of Koreans.”
Mmm, roasted Koreans.
LAPD’s Bob Vernon, apres Rodney King, wrote that non-lethal choke holds were taken away as an enforcement option because the police sometimes used them. Then non-lethal tazers were questioned because they were used against Rodney King.
Then, in Seattle, it looked bad when the police stepped on the wrong perp’s hand and said racialist slurs about his piss. That means boots, shoes, and words are too strong for the arsenal of law enforcement in a free society.
What’s left? What do you prefer?
@6
In most cases the police don’t have a binary choice of kill, or be killed. In your hypothetical, even if I were to concede that the officer needs to shoot, and I’m not, the officer could just as easily drop the threatening man, by shooting to not kill.
It seems pretty clear to me that the latest spate of officer involved shootings is a case of the Stanford Prison Experiment writ large.
It’s become popular fetish to characterize all cops and firefighters as heros, even if the extent of heroism in their careers amounts to heroically eating donuts, or heroically picking up chicks with the ‘I’m a firefighter and 9/11 was so hard for me’ line. I know conservatives don’t have working brains, but even conservative retards should be able to figure out that before you blow smoke up someone’s ass about what a hero they are, maybe they should have to do something, you know, heroic.
Not all cops are bad. But cops are people. And in a region where none of the police forces have Citizens Review Boards, it’s easy to see how letting them investigate their own, leads to a culture of abuse and use of force beyond what’s needed, with impunity.
@ lostinaseaofblue:
“A phsychological test for fitness for the job…”
Putting aside ALL of the recent shootings for a moment (going in both directions), haven’t we seen abundant evidence in the last few years that the law enforcement establishment stands in abject failure with regards to this testing?
@36
The last murder in Gig Harbor was committed by a Pierce County sheriff who killed his in-laws and then himself.
Want to avoid being a “victim” of a “police shooting”? Don’t give any officer a reason to feel their life is threatened. It’s that simple.
Sure you can open carry – IN A FREAKING HOLSTER!!! You cannot carry a weapon in your hand in public, nor can you carry any other instrument in a threatening manner, like a raised baseball bat in both hands. Instead of spewing out a bunch of crap so you can slam police, how about reading the law? You know – the law EVERYONE needs to follow. If you have a weapon in your hand in public, you WILL be contacted, or even confronted, by the police. You display an attitude towards, or refuse to follow commands by, police, someone will get hurt most likely – and I’m talking about when you have a weapon. When police respond to a disturbance call and you refuse to follow their commands, you WILL be tazed. Police are expected to investigate suspicious or unusual behavior. If the police tell you to do something, refusal is NOT an option!!! Get it!!! If you believe you are wronged, do as your told, than file a grievance or sue the cop. I’m sure here is Seattle there are plenty of lawyers who will file a suit for you against the police. You, the people, confronting police aggressively could result in serious injury or death to you or the cop. Who, in their right mind, wants that??? So, quit your belly aching, obey the laws, do what the police tell you to do, or sue their pants off, and all will be good. There is a right way and a wrong way to defy government. Learn and exercise the right way; do the wrong way and pay the consequence. I hate nothing more than whiners who think everyone has to obey the law but them. Get over it.