Second Guessing the Cops
November 19th, 2007 at 05:10am Mark Noonan
We’re at it again:
NEW YORK (AP) — A candy bar, a wallet, even a pair of baggy pants can draw deadly police gunfire.
The killing of a hairbrush-brandishing teenager last week was the latest instance of police shootings in which officers reacted to what they erroneously feared was a weapon. It has revived debate over the use of force, perceptions of threats and police training.
“We have cases like that all over the country where it can be a wallet, a cell phone, a can of Coca-Cola and officers have fired the weapon,” said Scott Greenwood, a Cincinnati attorney who has worked on police use-of-force cases across the country and who is a general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It does not necessarily mean it was excessive use of force,” he added. “However, those types of incidents do give rise to greater suspicion on the part of the public about how police use force and they call into question the training departments are using to train officers to perceive and respond to threats.”
The New York Police Department says the officers who fired 20 shots at 18-year-old Khiel Coppin on Nov. 12 were justified in their use of force. The mentally ill teenager approached officers outside his mother’s home with a black object in his hand - the hairbrush - and repeatedly ignored orders to stop.
The officers were responding to a 911 call in which Coppin could be heard in the background saying he had a gun. But in a second 911 call Coppin’s mother told the operator her son wasn’t armed, and after officers arrived she repeated that to them.
“Why did the police not heed the warnings … that her son was unarmed?” said Paul Wooten, the family’s attorney. “Why was it necessary for the overwhelming use of deadly force? Five police officers, 20 shots, eight hits. Is there no proportionality?”
In the news story, the mental illness the dead man suffers from is not defined. Other news stories I read indicate Coppin was supposed to be taking un-named anti-psychotic drugs, but still no definition that I can discover of his precise mental illness. I have found out that Coppin has a history of run-ins with law enforcement; various robberies and assaults for which he was arrested. This time, say the cops, when they were called - by Coppin’s mother - Coppin was challenging the cops to kill him; while doing this, Coppin brandished an object in his hands which turned out to have been a black hairbrush. It was night time when the incident occured.
So, what we’ve got is a young man with a record of violent crime threatening cops that he has a gun, at night, while brandishing a dark object. Naturally, ACLU types are calling for an investigation. Of what? Presumptively, given that Coppin is black, that he was shot by cops because of racism. We can expect, shortly, that Shaprton and Jackson will get out there and blow some smoke over the issue.
Nothing is more stupid in the issues of American law enforcement than the concept that black Americans get shot by cops because of racism. Certainly, there are racist cops out there - but why would a cop, or a group of cops, risk their careers and pensions (not to mention the risk of jail time), just because they had a racist feeling against black people? Suppose you were to find that each cop involved in this shooting was a card carrying member of the KKK - it would still be a complete absurdity to claim that Coppin was shot because he was black and/or because the cops are racist.
Coppin wasn’t shot because he’s black - he was shot because he was a violent man who refused to obey the orders of the police. And if he was mentally ill, then he was on the streets because many years ago, the ACLU types who are now asking questions about this case sued to allow insane people the right to refuse psychological care - in spite of what the left want you to believe, homelessness wasn’t created by Ronald Reagan, but was created when we emptied the lunatic asylums and made it very difficult for cops to arrest people for vagrancy. Put insane people on the streets and let them eventually start acting aggressively against the police and they will end up shot. Period.
If a police man orders me to halt, I halt. Once halted, I will treat the officer will all the respect due to his position as an officer of the law and his inherent dignity as a fellow human being (natually, I fully expect the officer to extend this to me). I won’t mouth off; I won’t use foul language; I sure as heck won’t get aggressive or attempt to resist the instructions of the officer. If I am being unjustly detained, I will obtain legal help and have the matter set right in a court of law, not in my acting like an ass out on the streets with an armed cop. Mr Coppin would be alive today if one of two things had happened:
1. If insane, had he been committed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment of his illness.
2. If not insane, had he simply obeyed the law and the dictates of common sense.
It isn’t the cops who shot him who need investigating, but those groups which prevent us from getting lunatics of the streets, and those influences in modern life which instruct a young man of unstable mental and moral character that its ok to argue with the man who has a gun pointed at you.
Entry Filed under: Social Issues
4 Comments
1. Diana Powe | November 19th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
As someone who spent 30 years as a police officer, with all but 2 of them in uniformed patrol, I would agree with your point with two caveats.
One, all instances of the use of deadly force by police are and should be investigated. In those instances where a suspect is killed the results should always be presented to a grand jury. If a police officer kills someone, regardless of the circumstances, a homicide has occurred. Under almost all those circumstances, the homicide is found to be justified under laws designed to allow the police to defend themselves and the public. However, the process is essential. There can be no more profound act by the government than to take someone’s life and law enforcement professionalism requires that those officers who do so must be held to the most profound scrutiny.
Two, although American law enforcement is becoming increasingly less prone to overt racism, the word racism itself can cover attitudes and mental states short of something like saying, “I hate all…people.” In the fractions of time available to most officers in deadly force situations, there is often little opportunity for calculation. A question that can properly be asked in the specific instance you have cited is, “If the same circumstances were present and the suspect was white would the officers have used deadly force?” I have no idea what the answer is and an answer of “yes” does not automatically mean the use of deadly force would not be legally justified. However, if the officers were to any degree more likely to feel that they were at risk of serious bodily injury or death because they were confronting a black man with a possible firearm, then that is valid information. It is also valid information to know to what extent the act of the first officer discharging their weapon may have influenced other officers to discharge theirs. Again we could ask a question, if the suspect was white and one officer felt that deadly force was justified and fired would the other officers have been as ready to fire as well? I don’t know the answer and an affirmative response does not mean that the use of deadly force was not justified.
However, professionalism means being subject to heightened scrutiny and part of that scrutiny is looking at uncomfortable questions.
2. winnowhead | November 19th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Mark, the police will I’m sure be exonerated. That doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions about how a mentally ill man was killed because he had a hairbrush in his hand.
Your immediate dismissal of any questions is pretty telling. The police are here to keep us safe, not simply be authoritarian figures who we must answer to. Those authoritarian figures ultimately answer to us all, and we share responsibility for how they operate.
3. Mark Noonan | November 19th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Diana,
I guess the first time I came across this sort of issue was when I was about 15 or so and a black man was shot by the San Diego police and there was almost instantly the obligatory, “the cops have declared open season on black people” by the usual-suspect race hustlers.
The cops do need to be strictly held to account - ok, winnow? - but to get upset over the fact of a cop shooting someone is to second guess a cop who had to make a split second decision, at night, usually in a bad area of town, almost invariably in connection with some man who is behaving in a threatening manner. I’m just not going to do that.
4. winnowhead | November 19th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Well, you should “do that.” These types of things are common - two similar cases in my smallish town of 200,000 in the past year. Certainly it’s a matter of police training, 911 coordination with police on the ground, restraint, etc. If you “don’t do that,” you’re saying there’s nothing that can be done to further minimize these types of situations.
And your tone is just out of line. The article you link you has none of the race baiting or accusatory language you ascribe to it.