Police in Stephon Clark Shooting Were Justified in Using Force

At the risk of boring you, gentle reader, I find it necessary to revisit, for the third time in a week, the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Graham v. Connor, which defined how all courts (and everyone else) should evaluate a police officer’s use of force.

“The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force,” wrote Chief Justice Rehnquist for a unanimous Court, “must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. ... The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments -- in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving -- about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.” It’s important to note that Graham arose from an incident in which police used force on a man who had not committed a crime, but whose behavior gave officers a reasonable suspicion that he had.

Which brings us to Sacramento, Calif., and the case of 22-year-old Stephon Clark, who was shot to death by two police officers in circumstances that were in every way tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving. On the night of March 18, two officers from the Sacramento Police Department responded to a radio call regarding a man who was seen breaking car windows in the city’s Meadowview neighborhood. The officers, each driving a marked police car and both in uniform, were on foot and checking the area when deputies overhead in a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department helicopter directed them to a possible suspect, later identified as Clark.

Clark was seen running through a backyard and jumping over a fence, then looking into a car parked in the driveway of what was later revealed to be his grandmother’s house, where Clark himself lived. The events that followed were captured on the two officers’ body-worn cameras and by the infrared camera in the helicopter. The Washington Post edited the videos and the accompanying audio, putting them together in a concise presentation that can be seen here.

As shown in the videos, an officer approaches Clark and at gunpoint orders him to “show me your hands.” Clark flees, running toward the backyard. The officer follows, soon joined by the second officer. Clark is ordered to stop, but instead he runs around the corner of the house and out of the officers’ view. The officers round the corner, then quickly retreat as one of them shouts, “Show me your hands! Gun!”

Both officers peek around the corner, at which time one of them shouts, “Show me your hands!” followed immediately by “Gun, gun, gun!” Both officers open fire, killing Clark.

It was later found that Clark, who was black, was carrying a cellphone, not a gun. His death has sparked protests in Sacramento, where demonstrators have shut down a freeway, blocked streets, and prevented ticketholders from entering the Golden 1 Center, where the Sacramento Kings and the Atlanta Hawks played before half-empty stands.

>>I wish every commenter on these kinds of posts would go through a “Shoot-Don’t Shoot” drill and see for themselves how hard it is to make a split second decision when their life is on the line.

I did in 1992. Man with a knife vs me with a revolver. Apparently my thought processes run much faster than those of cops. Everyone survived that encounter.

But please don’t insult our intelligence by claiming that we wouldn’t be defending our freedom in court if we shot a guy with a cell phone in his hand and then claimed that we feared for our lives. Even if we shouted “gun” over and over again to CYA.

I wouldn't mind if they applied the same standards to the common citizens as they do these animals that are apparently more equal than others.

On the other hand, society is now safer with this criminal dead.

Although I oppose police brutality for my people (the law-abiding), I support the extralegal killing of criminals by police.

We need it to suppress the violence and irrational savagery of the underclass.

If the police murder criminals, and that results in increased safety for my family, I approve.

Maybe some day when the criminal underclass starts to behave, I will think different.

PS: I caught a guy about to break into my truck last weekend at 4am. My heart is hardened.

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