Mass Shootings, Gang Shootings, Police Shootings

Our recent spate of social tragedy has been visited upon our numbed citizenry by mental defectives, drug-gang members, and our entrusted law enforcement personnel.  While we have limited influence over the first two of these groups, the latter should be directly within our span of control.  We need to reform, at a federal level, a minimum set of standards for the use of lethal force by all law enforcement.  

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is an oft-quoted phrase in our Declaration of Independence. Those words outline three examples of the unalienable rights which the Declaration says have been given to all of us, and which governments have been created to protect.  Too often of late, we have seen where our sometimes-undertrained police personnel make tragic mistakes, over-react, or otherwise escalate a situation that might have been handled without the loss of life. 

Years of Police Shootings Make Headlines

As a country, we have been conditioned to accept a certain amount of violence.  We have lost respect for the sanctity of human life.  This is wrong.  Our law enforcement personnel should be trained to de-escalate situations and avoid the use of lethal force except to prevent further loss of life.  It should never be the first response to a stressful situation.

We rightly resolve most criminal enforcement of our laws within our states and local government jurisdictions.  This policy only becomes a problem when police actions, sometimes coupled with local politics, interfere with justice being served.  When lethal force is used against our citizens in an irresponsible manner, people may die unnecessarily, and sometimes those who die are just innocent bystanders.  Our citizens can too often become the victims of the “whoops-factor” of police mistakes, poor police training, and/or racial intolerance with little or no accountability.  This is wrong and can be addressed.

We don’t need to defund our police, in fact, the opposite of this may be true.  We need to perhaps spend a bit more and realign our priorities when it comes to police training, police policy, and the screening of current personnel and new hires.  Perhaps we should disarm some of our police force and put them into the communities to become a factor in preventing crime in the first place.

We have all seen evidence during our war on drugs, where police forces receive monetary windfalls through forfeiture or in response to terrorist activity and that money is spent on equipment and not training.  We see large purchases of armored personnel carriers, more powerful weaponry, larger SWAT units, and virtually anything that makes our civilian police forces look more like an army geared to attack a foreign enemy.  Couple this militant attitude with a few racists among the ranks of our police forces and you have a formula for disaster. 

Florida Highway Patrol vehicle at 2003 FTAA demonstration in Miami
(photo Jack Dallas)

When it comes to police policy, no officer should be tempted to draw a lethal weapon to control any criminal behavior that does not otherwise put lives in danger.  Traffic stops, serving arrest warrants, attempts to flee custody, etc., should not be cause for lethal force unless that action would risk other loss of life in a foreseeable manner. 

For a 26-year veteran police officer to yell, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” before drawing her actual firearm and firing one shot before screaming “Holy shit, I shot him,” is more than just a tragic mistake, it is an example of inadequate training.  Her muscle memory was more geared to drawing her lethal sidearm than her Taser.  Was Duante Wright at that moment an imminent threat to anyone?  Should even a Taser have been used in this situation?  Tasers are less-lethal, not non-lethal; (one in 400 may die from being Tasered).  If you watch the video of this incident, you will see that even the officer who held Mr. Wright’s hands behind his back didn’t know how to proceed and apply the handcuffs he was holding. 

I respect but do not envy the job of law enforcement.  Those jobs should be well-remunerated and only offered to those physically and mentally equipped to handle the task.  Train them, screen them, test them, and train them some more.  Reevaluate them on a regular basis.  We need to overhaul police training which currently emphasizes technical and tactical aspects of policing over mediation, problem-solving, and cultural competency.

The doctrine of qualified immunity that protects all government officials acting within the scope of their governmental duties, needs to be more qualified.  Too often that sense of immunity creates an atmosphere of shoot first and we will not be held accountable.

Protesting Qualified Immunity

Overhauling civil rights legislation to create federal standards for the use of lethal force by police against its citizens, should not be a partisan issue, but these days, everything is.  Life matters and the term Black Lives Matter should just be accepted as a rhetorical statement of fact.  The evidence shows that people of color are more likely to be the targets of police shootings when race population sizes are factored in.

Qualified Immunity defined

So, we have two issues that need to be addressed.  The first factor is that police shooting “accidents” happen far too often and the second being that these “accidents” happen to people of color disproportionate to their numbers.  How you explain that latter statistic, without considering an element of racism among the ranks of our police, escapes me.  Despite Sen. Tim Scott’s assurances last night after President Biden’s speech that, “America is not a racist country,” the only people who may believe this would have to be in medically induced comas or similarly indisposed.

I strongly support our local police forces, but I also recognize that their task is being made more difficult with poor training, a few “bad apples” slipping into their ranks, and an unclear message of when lethal force is justified.

There is an irony here in this police force being deployed
in front of the Torch of Friendship
(photo Jack Dallas, FTAA demonstration, Miami, 2003)

Police reforms, addressing qualified immunity, legislative changes to federal statutes, independent review panels, improved transparency, etc., are all easy to identify as necessary, but hard to enact as a matter of national policy.  If we haven’t been able to pass gun legislation to help curb access to guns by mental defectives in the 9 years since Adam Lanza killed 20 six and seven-year-old children, and eight adults at Sandy Hook, then police reforms seem like a long shot.  But being difficult is not a sign to stay silent on the matter.