Posted on 11/29/2014 9:50:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There were no surprises to come out of Ferguson, Mo., last week. Neither the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, nor the riot that decision engendered was unexpected by anyone with even a modest familiarity with the matter. And just as predictable has been the left’s attempt to undermine the former and thereby justify the latter. They are to be excused in their rioting, we are told, for the grand jury’s decision is illegitimate.
To cite but one example of this, we turn to the New Yorker, where people of a leftist persuasion turn for guidance on how to think about current events. In a Nov. 25 post at the magazine’s website [1], legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin criticizes St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for what Toobin sees as a failure to follow the “customary rules” of his profession. “If McCulloch’s lawyers had simply pared down the evidence to that which incriminated Wilson,” Toobin writes, “they would have easily obtained an indictment.”
Perhaps so, but an indictment in the case would have led to a trial that McCulloch knew, as Toobin himself should know, would result in Darren Wilson’s acquittal. Reasonable doubt was everywhere in the case, and prosecutors are ethically bound to proceed to trial only if they are confident of their ability to convince twelve jurors that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It wasn’t going to happen.
So, unless the Justice Department brings civil rights charges against Darren Wilson – still a possibility despite little chance of success – he will not face the public criminal trial that Jeffrey Toobin and so many others wished to see. And even a civil trial arising from a wrongful death claim against Wilson and the city of Ferguson is far from a certainty. Yes, there will be a lawsuit, of course, but it will likely be resolved through a settlement rather than a trial. If a trial were to take place, both sides would have much to lose. If a jury finds for the plaintiffs, the city faces the possibility of a multimillion-dollar judgment, and even if it prevailed, the city might face further rioting and disruptive protests. But lawyers representing Michael Brown’s family have risks to weigh as well. In a civil trial, Brown’s juvenile record would almost certainly be introduced. If it revealed serious violations of the law, a jury might be less sympathetic to his family request for damages. And is there anyone who believes he has no juvenile record?
But even as Michael Brown’s death recedes from the front pages, there are still aspects of the case that require examination, not least of which are the tactics employed by Darren Wilson in the moments leading up to the shooting. Though I’m in agreement with the grand jury’s decision in declining to charge Wilson in Brown’s death, it doesn’t mean I agree the shooting was unavoidable. If we imagine a counterfactual scenario and back up, step by step, from the moment the first shot was fired, we can come up with a way in which Michael Brown might have been arrested without the use of deadly force. This is not intended as a criticism of Darren Wilson, but rather as a reminder to police officers who may someday find themselves in a similar situation.
Among my first thoughts on hearing of the Michael Brown shooting was to wonder if the officer was working alone. An article in Police magazine [2] points out that of 536 police officers killed from 2000 to 2009, only about a third were working alone, suggesting that it’s somehow safer to work without a partner. I’m certain that a deeper exploration beyond the raw numbers would show this to be untrue, but let’s examine the issue as it relates to the Darren Wilson-Michael Brown confrontation.
We are told that Wilson was unaware of Brown’s involvement in the convenience store robbery until he had already initiated contact with Brown and his companion, Dorian Johnson. Had Wilson had a partner, there would have been an extra set of ears in the car to monitor the radio traffic, perhaps allowing the officers to learn in advance of the initial contact that they were dealing with robbery suspects rather than simple traffic violators.
But putting that aside, even if our two hypothetical officers had not been apprised of the robbery, they might have taken an extra moment to discuss how they would handle a pedestrian stop of two men, one of whom weighed 300 lbs. And Michael Brown might have been more hesitant to challenge two officers than he was to take on Darren Wilson alone.
Now take a partner officer out of our scenario. How might an officer riding alone have handled the encounter differently? Wilson told the grand jury that his request to Brown and Johnson to get out of the street was met with expletive-laden defiance. Wilson then radioed for backup, as indeed he should have. But rather than wait for that backup to arrive, he reversed his car and pulled within a few feet of Brown and Johnson, thus giving Brown the opportunity to attack him. The more prudent course would have been to keep the two men under observation from the relative safety of the police car until other officers arrived, then initiate a stop. Had Brown and Johnson attempted to run away, the officers could have set up a containment perimeter and found them through a systematic search. And even if Brown and Johnson eluded the search, how many people living on Canfield Drive are 6-3 and 300 lbs.?
Again, none of this is to imply that the grand jury reached the wrong decision in declining to charge Darren Wilson. But he made the choice to put himself in a vulnerable position while confronting two men, one of whom outweighed him by 90 lbs. Wilson told George Stephanopoulos his conscience was clear, but I can’t imagine he doesn’t harbor some regret at having placed himself in so precarious a position.
Of course, since we’re indulging in counterfactuals, we can imagine that Michael Brown didn’t rob the store, didn’t walk down the middle of the street, got out of the street when told to, didn’t punch Officer Wilson and try to take his gun, didn’t turn around as he ran away, and did lie on the ground when ordered to.
Change any one of those decisions Brown made and he’d be alive today.
Also read:
He says that as though it would be a good thing.
Reality WILL kick your ass if you ignore it for too long. Reality hates being ignored.
CC
I think so, too. If Wilson had had a partner riding with him, things might have turned out very different. I wonder if even the "gentle giant" would have thought twice about taking on TWO cops.
Police officers should be trained in martial arts
Hands down, Brown is in the ground.
” But rather than wait for that backup to arrive, he reversed his car and pulled within a few feet of Brown and Johnson, thus giving Brown the opportunity to attack him. The more prudent course would have been to keep the two men under observation from the relative safety of the police car until other officers arrived, then initiate a stop. Had Brown and Johnson attempted to run away, the officers could have set up a containment perimeter and found them through a systematic search. And even if Brown and Johnson eluded the search, how many people living on Canfield Drive are 6-3 and 300 lbs.?”
Sorry Skippy, Wilson’s job was to do exactly what he did, not cower in his car waiting for help. Cops have to question suspects, which is what Wilson did.
Pardon me for butting in. “Dunphy” in the piece isn’t so much second guessing, as offering a debrief, something that is done, or should be done, after every encounter like this by those involved. The purpose is to ask “what did we do right, and what could we do better next time.”
That said, Dunphy touched on something I’ve wondered about. After pouring through the record, it’s clear that Wilson heard the initial call about a “stealing”, or petty theft, a misdemeanor at the liquor store. And like any good cop, knowing he was in the area, we went to look for the suspects when he had finished his call with the sick baby. What’s not clear is that the units at the liquor store ever put out information that it was a robbery, a felony.
Wilson’s initial contact, after he realized that Brown matched the description of the “stealing” suspect was consistent with trying to delay a misdemeanor suspect pending arrival of a backup unit. “what’s wrong with the sidewalk” etc., trying to distract and de-escalate until the second unit got there that he had called for. The problem with that was that Brown knew he had just committed a felony strong-arm robbery, even if Wilson did not. You can’t divert your partners for every single misdemeanor stop, but you sure as heck want to try to wait for backup before trying make a felony stop. It isn’t always possible, but it’s what you hope to be able to do.
And after the fact: the media believed uncritically the story Dorian Johnson told “Hands up”, even after it emerged that Johnson was an accomplice in the Robbery. Next time, police commanders and media relations officers need to be cognizant of that tendency, and be ready to counter with facts and information that challenge the media narrative.
Asking the question isn’t the same as making excuses for Brown’s criminal behavior, either at the store, or on Canfield. He, and he alone bears responsibility for his own death. But we can learn: the Mike Browns of the world are still among us, and we must try to take what lessons we can from this episode to “do better” next time.
“Black cops in black neighborhoods, and then it wouldn’t matter, so far as the rabble rousers go. Even though it would be black vs establishment, it would still be black on black, and that’s not an important issue”
I’m pretty sure it’s been done before. L.A. Rampart division.
Ever seen the movie “Training Day”? Maybe a little exaggerated. But not much.
Unless you happen to be 4 New York cops for example last month, attacked with an axe. (Just the first example that comes to mind)
Here’s another: The 6 foot 6 270lb naked guy who came out to the street, threw down the sword he’d chopped up his girlfriend with and charged a girl cop who was present with several other cops, which other cops she proceeded to hit with rounds from her terrified spray and pray.
Cops USED to be cops even if there didn’t happen to be more than one of them present.
I’m assuming tasers are the his answer.
The question is, do you really want to trust your life to something that depends on batteries?
What a worm is this Jeffrey Toobin! Any prosecutor who does what Toobin advocates should be disbarred and sent to the can.
Must be a grandma thing, my grandma said it too.
CC
She wasn’t from Syracuse, per chance? :)
No, Kentucky. Grandmama wisdom is universal. =^)
CC
This is the money quote. Brown was responsible for his own death period. Here is an insightful comment attached to the article:
There is a cultural difference here, and I don't mean Black vs White. Jack, you are an LAPD officer. Each division in your department fields many 2-man units each shift, backed up by dozens of other officers from the division, helicopters overhead, SWAT, etc. Ferguson is a 52-man department, which means that it probably fields 4 one-man units per shift. And that is it. Most contacts (as the one in question) involves a single officer with a second officer enroute to back him up.
I worked for some 30 years in a small department (about twice the size of Ferguson) on LAPD's eastern border. We always had single-man units, and each officer had to fend for himself until his back-up arrived. I grant you this was not optimal, but it was what my city could afford and we lived with it.
Had some humongous perp attacked me while in my unit, I hope that I would have had the presence of mind to shoot him before he wrested control of my service pistol from me. This was a case of pure weapon retention/officer survival, and any attempt to finesse Wilson's tactics is pure Monday morning quarterbacking.
Jack, your previous comments regarding the police bureaucracy have been very insightful and thought provoking. However, I'm not sure you fully appreciate the psychology of a small department officer encountering an existential threat such as the one Officer Wilson did.
“I think so, too. If Wilson had had a partner riding with him, things might have turned out very different. I wonder if even the “gentle giant” would have thought twice about taking on TWO cops.”
And you’re willing to pay the extra $90,000.00 a year in taxes to cover that cost?
True that !
AKA blue-sky bullshit.
here - here’s a ‘clue’ from someone who knows what he’s talking about - from a comment on the article:
“Had some humongous perp attacked me while in my unit, I hope that I would have had the presence of mind to shoot him before he wrested control of my service pistol from me. This was a case of pure weapon retention/officer survival, and any attempt to finesse Wilson’s tactics is pure Monday morning quarterbacking.”
Maybe there’s a reason you experienced “FReeper after FReeper attack me for saying so.” (that Wilson didn’t need to shoot ‘the kid’ (the 6’4” 300 lb bull charging down on him
Maybe you need to Get a ‘clue’ =
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