Things like this should. not. happen. ever.
A Texas man hailed as a “pillar of the community” was fatally shot by a police officer as he tried to break up a fight, according to local reports.
Jonathan Price, 31, intervened when he saw a man and a woman brawling outside a gas station Saturday night in Wolfe City, about 65 miles northeast of Dallas, witnesses told ABC affiliate WFAA-TV.
Family members and friends told the outlet that the man assaulted Price, and when officers responded to a report of the disturbance, a cop tased the good Samaritan, then shot him.
[...]
He noticed a man assaulting a woman and he intervened,” Merritt continued. “When police arrived, I’m told, he raised his hands and attempted to explain what was going on.”
The attorney claimed: “Police fired tasers at him and when his body convulsed from the electrical current, they ‘perceived a threat’ and shot him to death.
They “perceived a threat” as the man convulsed from the taser — they fired at him. How exactly does this happen? How are these people trained? They didn't have a good reason to tase him. They should have known his body would convulse. They had no reason — none, none at all — to use deadly force against this man.
This shit needs to end. Period.
We need a change in mindset. We need to start viewing these situations differently. 35 years ago the Supreme Court issued a decision which should have done the job, but obviously it hasn’t. This was decided in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985)
Primary Holding
Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect only if the officer has a good-faith belief that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.
Facts
A state police officer shot and killed Garner as he was fleeing the scene of the crime. Despite knowing that Garner was unarmed, the police officer believed that he was justified in shooting him to prevent his escape. Garner's father brought a constitutional challenge to the Tennessee statute that authorized the use of deadly force in this situation. The state prevailed in the trial court, but the state appellate court ruled that the statute was unconstitutional.
[...]
When a non-violent felon is ordered to stop and submit to police, ignoring that order does not give rise to a reasonable good-faith belief that the use of deadly force is necessary, unless it has been threatened.
This decision responded to the evolution of the common law, which formerly imposed a death sentence for most felonies. Shooting a non-violent fleeing felon historically would have been permitted because it would have been the same result as if he had been caught and convicted. This is no longer the situation, and the Supreme Court adjusted the rule regarding the use of deadly force to account for it.
Under this rule, a police officer is not allowed to shoot a non-violence unarmed suspect, unless he has probable cause that this person is a deadly threat to the officer or others in the area.
Jonathan Price was not a threat.
Rayshard Brooks was not a threat, he was fleeing.
The former Atlanta police officer charged with felony murder in the killing of Rayshard Brooks earlier this month was granted bond with conditions on Tuesday, meaning he will have limited freedom as his case proceeds.
Garrett Rolfe will face a 6 p.m. nightly curfew, has to surrender his passport, and cannot have contact with Atlanta police officers, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick said. He will also have an ankle monitor. Bond was set at $500,000.
Rolfe, seen on security video opening fire on Brooks after the 27-year-old ran off with a police Taser, was fired and faces charges including felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, criminal damage to property and violation of oath.
His attorney argues the shooting was justified and that Rolfe was defending his life as well as the mortal safety of others in the area, even as Brooks family attorney L. Chris Stewart has said a stray police round struck a third-party's occupied vehicle at the Wendy's restaurant parking lot where Brooks was fatally shot.
Sorry, no, he was not “defending himself” — Brooks had fired the taser twice, he couldn’t fire it again. He was running away, he wasn’t a threat to anyone. It is not like he was going to try and use an unuseable taser to car jack someone else in the parking lot. That’s not plausible, it’s not reasonable. There was no probable cause.
The Price case is even worse, he was hit with a taser. There are so many cases. Fernando Castile. George Floyd. Jacob Blake. Situations like this, should not be happening.
Why the fuck are the police shooting the guy with his hands up? Why are they even in this situation were an autistic man is handling a deadly TOY TRUCK?
This shouldn’t happen, but it does. Over and over again. It’s not acceptable. Police should not be a pack of roving killers on our streets ready to shoot someone down at the drop of a penny. it’s fucking ridiculous.
Our esteemed Attorney General claims it’s only a “handful” of cases and argues that Black Lives Matter isn’t really helping black lives, they’re just highlighting “props.”
The Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t care about Black lives but instead wants to use African Americans who were killed at the hands of police as “props” to advance its political agenda, Attorney General William Barr said.
“They’re not interested in Black lives, they’re interested in props,” Barr said Wednesday night at an event on constitutional law in Arlington, Virginia. “A small number of Blacks were killed by police during conflict with police -- usually less than a dozen a year -- who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda.”
it frankly doesn’t matter how many times it happens, once is too much, but in point of fact it happens dozens of times per year. According to the Guardian it happened 170 times in 2016, 42 of those people killed were black. In 2015 it happened 235 times, 79 of those people were black.
These people are not “props”. Technically it doesn’t matter if the victim is black or white, it’s just a more acute problem with black people because all around, police generally tend to target black people more often, regardless of their actual guilt. They claim that it’s because they are compelled to do this by “the data” but that isn’t true.
Because they ignore data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics which shows that regardless of their actual guilt black people - particularly black youth - are more likely to be stopped 20% of the time, they get searched for drugs 50% more often, they're more likely to be arrested 100% of the time, they're more likely to be encounter use of force 200% more often and according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice they're nearly 7.1 Times more likely to be killed by police than other groups are.
It’s also true that the level of violence used by police, particularly against black people, isn’t justified by their level of criminality as has been shown in studies.
1) That racially disparate crime rate is an insufficient explanation of racially disparate use of force rates for this sample of police departments. Given that these departments range widely in size and represent urban cities, suburban counties, and transportation police in geographically diverse jurisdictions, the results are suggestive that these findings may generalize beyond the sample
2) That significant attention should be paid to additional situational factors in attempting to quantify and explain racial disparities in use of force. For instance, might racial disparities in the tendency to resist, flee, or disrespect officers be implicated in the observed differences? Might cultural mismatches and/or officers’ perceptions of cooperation be influenced by residents’ race? There is some suggestive evidence that there are racial disparities in resistance based on research by Smith and colleagues for the National Institute of Justice. They find that the rate of officer injury is lower when arresting a White suspect than a suspect of another racial group (Smith et al., 2009). However, this finding should be taken only as suggestive, since suspect resistance was not measured in a robust manner and a number of circumstances could have contributed to this finding. Each of these possibilities gains in importance if demographics of crime do not undergird racial disparities in the use of force.
Consequently black people have been at the forefront of this “political agenda.”
However, as is often the response, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the force disparity is caused by a racial bias, it may in fact be a bias against the poor since they tend to experience higher rates of violence, regardless of race.
For the period 2008–12—
- Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000).
- Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8–2.5 per 1,000).
- The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels.
- Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).
- Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).
- Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).
And also poor blacks tend to live in urbans settings within close quarters while poor whites tend to be more rural and spread out. Consequently, you get clusters of violence in black urban settings, and the police respond to this accordingly to that violence with fear and hair trigger trepidation.
Also the poverty rate for black remains at about 28% while it’s nearly a third of that at 10% for whites.
As was pointed out in the Michael Brown case, most states have not incorporated the tenets of Garner into their laws. During the Brown grand jury, the instructions initially given the jury were based on the current Missouri law, but even after almost 30 years it hadn't been re-written to include Garner.
Lawrence O'Donnell: The Missouri Attorney General says "The Police Use of Deadly Force Law in Missouri must be changed." in response to my question to the Attorney General he said:
"Among the problems the Ferguson has brought to light is the need to update Missouri's use of deadly force statute. This statute is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's holding in Tennessee v. Garner. Consequently, it is important this statute be amended by the Missouri legislature to incorporate the Garner decision to avoid confusion in the criminal justice system"
Chris Koster
Missouri Attorney General
O'Donnell: As I have stated on this program there should be no confusion in the criminal justice system because the United States Supreme Court clarified the proper, and legal, and constitutional use of deadly force by police, 29 years ago.
It was five years ago that this statement was made. Has Missouri law been changed? Well this is what it is today.
Deadly force may be justified under the law if a person reasonably believes it’s required to protect themselves or someone else from physical injury, death or forcible felony. It may also be used against someone who illegally enters a dwelling or vehicle.
This is actually a fairly simple adjustment. Change the state laws to incorporate Garner, make it a crime — a felony — for an officer to kill an unarmed non-violent person. There should be no “oops” moment. There shouldn’t be any accidental discharges, or “they felt threatened” — they have to be actually threatened by someone with genuine deadly force.
Anything short of that has got to made a crime. Either manslaughter or murder.
This is the very first police reform that needs to be made, then we can move on to community policing, or shifting resources and priorities.
Make it a crime to kill an unarmed non-violent person. Do that, and police will stop, because they’ll have to. Or else.