burying the lede

[cellio]

Since this is national news -- I just saw an LA Times story that omits this very important fact entirely,¹ though most just bury it -- let me add an important detail from here in Pittsburgh:

Antwon Rose was fleeing the scene of a shooting when he was shot by a police officer. While we have major problems with racism in this country, including disgusting, senseless violence without remedy from white police officers against everybody who's not white, in this case there was a clear and present danger to the community.

I'm sad that the man died and I feel bad for his family. I wish the officer been able to stop the fleeing man without it being fatal (which is hard). But convicting the police officer would have been a triumph of revenge over justice. We're better than that. We've all seen videos of police officers beating, tasing, and shooting people who were doing nothing to resist, who were cooperating, and yet they were attacked anyway. Those are the police officers we need to convict and remove from our streets. Those are the cases we need to focus on when seeking reform. Counting Antwon Rose's case among them weakens that cause. Don't do it. Sometimes the police officer is actually right; let's focus on the many cases where they're wrong as we pursue justice in our broken country.

[1] The article I just saw said that police shot him at a traffic stop, making it sound like the guy was sitting in the car when it happened.

Comments

[cellio]

Fabricated cases: ugh. And yes, I know that happens, and that our jury-selection process works against juries calling it out.

Trials like this boil down to trying to get into the cop's head, a cop who of necessity acts in the heat of the moment and from training that I assume is instilled firmly (like with soldiers). I am very glad that I've never had to make life-or-death decisions; I suspect strongly that I couldn't do it.

One thing that puzzled me during the (reported parts of) the trail was how much time the prosecution spent trying to prove that Antwon Rose wasn't the killer. This meant they had to contend with unfavorable evidence, and it seems utterly irrelevant in *this* trial. They weren't trying Rose; they were trying the cop, who at the time he had to make the decision certainly didn't know whose prints were on the gun or which window (front or back) the shots had come from. He had the known car and somebody running away. The focus needed to be on what was reasonably known, what threats were honestly perceived, and what level of force was called for by law.

I don't know what the right answers are. We certainly don't want police shooting people on suspicion of misdemeanor theft, we do want them to stop active shooters, and there's a vast space in between where things are fuzzy and decisions are hard. I'm pretty uncomfortable with the idea that it's *never* ok to shoot someone who's fleeing, though; had the Tree of Life murderer broken free, would it really be ok to stand by and let him run if he didn't currently have a visible gun? He was headed to another synagogue after that one if he hadn't been stopped, and he had more guns.

I want the police to stop imminent threats in populated areas. It's really hard to nail down "imminent". I also want police to be well-trained and well-screened for mindsets that interfere with objectivity, from racism to "gung-ho macho". I don't know how we do that either. (Tangentially, I think if I were a cop (which I'm really glad I'm not), I'd want to be able to insist on a black partner.)