While there was some frustration expressed in the media about the effectiveness of body worn cameras, it is important to understand that videoing police incidents is just one tool and not the answer to officer-involved shootings. The two recent police incidents, one in Charlotte and one in Tulsa, bear that out.
In the Tulsa, Oklahoma, case, the video is pretty clear. Terence Crutcher was shot with his hands up, police did not find a weapon on Mr. Crutcher or in his care. As a result, Officer Betty Shelby has been charged with first-degree manslaughter.
“In the matter of the death of Terence Crutcher, I determined that the filing of the felony crime of manslaughter in the first degree against Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby is warranted,” Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler announced Thursday.
The video is critical here, because the police department’s initial public claim was that Mr. Crutcher had failed to comply with officers’ demands, but the video showed Mr. Crutcher was holding his hands above his head as he was instructed to do so. He was walking toward his car, which had stalled in the middle of the road.
There are two key points to make here. First, this case shows a clear value of cameras when discerning what happened in a critical incident. Second, if you want to know why we are skeptical about police claims about incidents without video, this is it. This is another case where the police account is at variance with what the camera shows.
Unfortunately, the Keith Scott killing in Charlotte, North Carolina, is far less clear cut. There is video of the incident but, on Thursday, Chief Kerr Putney said that the video was not definitive. “The video does not give me absolute, definitive, visual evidence that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun,” Chief Putney said at a news conference. However, he did say that witness accounts and evidence suggest that this is what happened.
The public will not be shown this video, but family members saw it Thursday and have a very different take than the police – and they believe that the videos should be made public.
Police claim that Mr. Scott, 43, was shot after he got out of his car brandishing a gun.
The family’s attorney, speaking on their behalf, had a different take.
“When told by police to exit his vehicle, Mr. Scott did so in a very calm, non-aggressive manner,” Attorney Justin Bamberg said. “While police did give him several commands, he did not aggressively approach them or raise his hands at members of law enforcement at any time.” When an officer opened fire, he added, “Mr. Scott’s hands were by his side, and he was slowly walking backwards.”
Until they viewed the video, the family was not certain that the video was going to be released. The family did agree with Chief Putney that the video was inconclusive. “It is impossible to discern from the videos what, if anything, Mr. Scott is holding in his hands,” they said in a statement.
Some have been critical of protests and riots in Charlotte, but as always there is a back story. As William Barber writes for NBC News, “There is much we do not know. But there is unrest in Charlotte because of what we do know.”
He continues:
We know, whatever the facts, that the law protects the officer, not the victim, in cases like this. Three years ago, a Charlotte officer shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed black man who was asking for help after his car broke down.
The Movement for Black Lives led peaceful protests, and the state conference of the NAACP insisted on due process. The case ended in a hung jury. The attorney general’s office denied our request for a re-trial.
There is unrest in Charlotte because of what we know. We know that the law, as written and enforced, cannot protect us from police violence. We know Darryl Hunt and Henry McCollum, two in a long list of African-American men wrongfully convicted in this state. We know our criminal justice system does not function to protect black life, but to control it.
He also pointed out the tremendous poverty and income inequality in Charlotte.
He continues:
True, there are things about the Scott case that we do not know. But it’s the injustices we do know—the facts on the ground that are choking the life out of black and brown communities—that created what we see in Charlotte this week.
Some say we must condemn the unrest in Charlotte. As a pastor and as an organizer, I do not condone violence. I suspect that much of it has been instigated by provocateurs with their own agenda. But to condemn the uprising in Charlotte would be to condemn a man for thrashing when someone is trying to drown him.
Whatever righteous indignation the public can muster ought to be directed toward the systems that created a situation where a man can drive to the bus stop to pick up his son and end up dead before he gets there.
I am a pastor. I will not condemn grief. But I was trained as a lifeguard, and I learned a long time ago that when people are drowning, their instincts can kill them and anyone who tries to help them. If a lifeguard can get to a drowning person, the first thing the lifeguard says is, “Stop struggling. Let me hold you up in this water, and we can get to the shore together.”
The riots in Charlotte are the predictable response of human beings who are drowning in systemic injustice. We must all pray that no one else gets hurt. But we must understand why this is happening.
Unfortunately, police cameras do not always give us answers. That appears to be the case here. What is clear is that Charlotte has become the next city to face these kinds of questions and challenges in the wake of the death of a black man at the hands of police.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Just read what William Barber writes and you will note the convolution of issues here. The Keith Scott incident appears to me to be suicide by cop. He was parked in the middle of the street and by the accounts from witnesses it is clear that even though he put his hands up, his movements were provocative and appear purposeful to cause his own shooting. His family says he had a book. The police and witnesses says he had a gun. The police say a gun was recovered.
I suspect this was a man on a mission to get a big court settlement for his family. Why would anyone park in the middle of the street if not looking for attention from cops?
But regardless, the topic is messed up.
The media and left political narrative is all about the cops. Just read what Mr. Barber writes… he does some mental gymnastics trying to connect poverty and the shooting without conceding all the finer points. The finer points are that the black urban neighborhood is a mess due to the failures of government. Specifically is it the loss and destruction of industrial and manufacturing jobs, the flood of cheap immigrant labor, the abject failure of the education system and the expansion of entitlements that incentivize a broken work ethic. It is the destruction of social capital in these neighborhoods.
This is part of a national problem of a growing class divide… the under-class verses the new upper-class.
In poor white neighborhoods the people are not violent and riotous, they are just killing themselves with heroin and prescription pain killers.
The timing was just terrible for blacks. The civil rights movement began to open up opportunity and break down barriers for blacks to begin to achieve equitable prosperity. And just as things were looking up, our government decided to ignore the flood of poor immigrants from south of the border while also enacting global trade agreements along with business-punishing tax and regulatory increases. They did this while allowing the schools to decline… choosing to protect the teachers union jobs and pay over the welfare of the students.
And so crime explodes. Drug use explodes. Violence is adopted in the black neighborhood and promulgated in black urban pop culture. (There are much poorer neighborhoods in Appalachia but with little of these same problems… so no, poverty does not cause crime and violence).
And the cops are the only thin blue line left to deal with the problems.
And those very same politicians having failed the urban black neighborhood see their scapegoat opportunity to blame the cops. Out of the thousands of encounters between law enforcement and black suspects, they take those infrequent (when compared to the vast number of encounters) tragic situations that can milk their scapegoating machine… and they inflame tensions.
Although it is clear that law enforcement reforms are needed, it does not address the root causes of the problems. The root causes of the problems are the collapse of social capital in these neighborhoods.
And now the left politicians have their global warming religion to kill even more industry. They have their new world order… their globalism… their open borders… their big bleeding hearts to ever expand entitlements. They suck up to the unions that pay their campaign expenses and enact steep minimum wage hikes that kill more jobs. And they defend their teacher union benefactors at all costs to the welfare of the kids in these neighborhoods.
Unfortunately there are few truly moral black leaders that can overcome this power of the left and left-media industry and instill this understanding in their people and overcome the cop scapegoating.
“Unfortunately there are few truly moral black leaders that can overcome this power of the left and left-media industry and instill this understanding in their people”
Who’s scapegoating?
How do you define,” truly moral black leaders.”(I can scarcely endure the wait for your answer to this one.)
Where is this “left-media industry?” I am having a hell of a time getting anyone to cover the Republican’s “quash the black vote” movement in many southern states and counties.
Moral black leaders? There are few and they get no mainstream media time which is reserved for the likes of tax-cheatin’ Al Sharpton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lee_Peterson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._W._Jackson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Burns_(televangelist)
Just read this this morning about Al Sharpton’s daughter. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
http://nypost.com/2016/09/26/al-sharptons-daughter-sues-city-over-foot-injury-she-hiked-with/
[moderator] Off topic.
Which has nothing to do with this topic
And this does?
Yet I didn’t see where you objected.
Google is good, so obviously you were just shooting in the dark and don’t really have any idea about who “black leaders” might be, other than ones you can readily denigrate with a cheap remark. How typical of you.
[moderator] We would really like to end all of the back-and-forth of direct conflict between Vanguard commenters. Please focus on issues and avoid personal characterizations.
“The Keith Scott incident appears to me to be suicide by cop.”
is that what you saw looking at the video?
“The media and the left is all about the cops”
there is a reason for that. the police for decades have been engaging in bias policing, excessive force, violation of rights. watch an episode of cops and try to find one that doesn’t violate someone’s rights.
“the police”?
Teachers for decades have been engaged in biased teaching, excessive abuse of students and violations of the student’s rights to a high-quality education. Watch “Waiting for Superman” and you can see clearly that teachers are violating students rights.
Frankly: Teachers for decades have been engaged in biased teaching, excessive abuse of students and violations of the student’s rights to a high-quality education. Watch “Waiting for Superman” and you can see clearly that teachers are violating students rights.
Thanks to the ongoing prevalence of standardized testing, which you embrace. Standardized tests typically focus on variants math and English Language Arts. If that’s what you test for, then that’s what you’ll get. It is a very much in the Chinese model of the civil service test, which goes back centuries and continues in contemporary form to the present day. And it’s not a good thing. Again, I invite you to read Yong Zhao’s book, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World. See also comment threads here.
Due to federal and state ed policy, public schools aren’t incentivized to look at much else apart from English and math. And maybe science in 5th & 8th grade, when they get tested for it. College-educated parents are likelier able to make sure that their kids’ educational experience is supplemented with most of the rest of the experiences that will lead to better future outcomes.
You need to add “lacking adequate choice, differentiation and quality outcomes.”
I would not support top-down standards if I saw any proof that schools would strive bottom-up to improve enough on their own. They don’t. They just demand more money for the employees of the system, while also demanding an easier job. Basically they are on the “do less with more” diet plan. The incentives for substantive and ongoing improvement are broken and non-existent. So just like for the education system that sets standards and tests and measures students to put them in a limited inventory of leaning-style boxes, might as well do the same for the employees of the education system into a limited inventory of performance boxes.
Frankly: So just like for the education system that sets standards and tests and measures students to put them in a limited inventory of leaning-style boxes, might as well do the same for the employees of the education system into a limited inventory of performance boxes.
If that’s how you think schools should run successfully, that will not inspire anyone to work for you. This is a big country, with plenty of potential examples to point to for success. If you see one that is running to your liking with signs of longterm stability, please share. When I’ve asked you this before, it’s crickets.
Frankly: Basically they are on the “do less with more” diet plan.
That plan will not work. Again one of your one-size-fits-all solutions. A semi-affluent community, such as Davis, can be more successful with bottom up, if given enough resources. And that’s due to an engaged community. A lower income community will more often struggle to get the community engaged. Unfortunately it is usually more elite, college-educated policy-makers who don’t live in the community, and have either forgotten how a lower income community operates (or doesn’t operate), or never knew at all, but will tell lower-income communities how their schools should be run.
I point out that Rahm Emanuel, as mayor of Chicago, has followed a recipe of closing “failing schools” (as he defines them) and bringing in privately-run charter schools to lower income neighborhoods. This is a continuation to what Arne Duncan was doing before him from the early 2000’s, before Obama appointed him Secretary of Education. It hasn’t worked. In fact, I think it has only degraded the lower-income communities even more, because privately run operations are typically coming from outside and don’t have a connection or understanding of the community.
“The Keith Scott incident appears to me to be suicide by cop. “
“I suspect this was a man on a mission to get a big court settlement for his family. Why would anyone park in the middle of the street if not looking for attention from cops?”
Whoa…..way too much speculation for my taste. First, the answer to your question.
One might “park in the middle of the street” if their car abruptly stopped and they could not get it restarted. I have had my car stall in the middle of the street on several occasions. One might have become confused or disoriented. One might have gotten out of the car for an unspecified problem for which one was seeking help as in the case of a recent shooting in which the man had been in an accident and was seeking help. Since we do not have an autopsy, we have no idea if anything else could have been going on, either physically or mentally with Mr. Scott.
How you got to “suicide by cop” from this from the very brief clip available ( if I am not missing something more extensive that you have seen) is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Yes, the Crutcher shooting does seem to be pretty egregious, from the brief video clip I saw, and a manslaughter (or worse) charge seems to be well warranted. I guess this is a case where the video evidence could be very important or key piece of evidence in determining a verdict when this case goes to trial.
So yes, it is apparent that the number of weakly justified or unjustified police shootings is greater than zero. However, in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, 62.9 million U.S. residents age 16 or older, or about one quarter of American adults, had at least one encounter, face-to-face or remote, with police (source http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394249/), and between 2005 and 2008 there were an average of 14,172,000 arrests per year (source http://www.numberof.net/number-of-arrests-per-year/). Assuming that of the 62.9 million people encountering police, and given that some of these people encountered police more than once; it is likely that there were over 70,000,000 contacts with police in 2011 (about 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 resulting in arrests). I seem to remember that there have been an average of about 1200 police shootings per year; dividing 1200 into 70,000,000 means about 1 police shooting for every 60,000 encounters with police; i.e. it is not a frequent event. If you undertook to watch televised police stops and arrests for 10 hours per day, with an average of 1 minute of TV time per stop/arrest (and no ads); you would need to watch 10 hours of TV per day for 100 days (all summer!) in order to catch a single police shooting–I think most anyone would get very bored waiting for a shooting to occur.
So yes I agree we should do our best to reduce unjustified excessive use of force as much as possible; however rates are very low at the current time; and it may be difficult to go much lower; perfection will be impossible–not to say we shouldn’t try to do better; but this may be very difficult to achieve.
This reminds me when I managed a data center that housed the the mainframe computer that powered the company. One day it crashed with a hardware failure. It took me two days and special technicians to locate and fix the problem. There began a wave of outrage about the failure… Directed at me and my staff. It was around this time that a standard metric of “mean time between failures” and “percent up-time” became standard for measuring performance of data centers.
It worked because without it people would only focus on the last problem. But if the computer was only down 48 out of 8760 hours, then the .99745% uptime was fantastic performance. And several months between failures was another helpful measurement to help establish perspective.
Now certainly computer failures do not equal a tragic and unfounded loss of life, but your point is valid in establishing some perspective. The media inflames and amplifies to the point that people forget that these things are rare exceptions.
Tribe: I have a problem with that calculation. First, deadly shooting is the most egregious use of force but then you have non-deadly shootings, excessive force, violations of rights and other misconduct. I agree that a deadly shooting is not common. Second, what does it really mean that a deadly shooting is not common? After all, I could live 50 years of life with no law breakages, shoot and kill someone and I’m still going to go to prison for the rest of my life. The fact that I committed a rare event in my life, does not excuse my conduct.
Finally and from my standpoint the most important point – none of this is new. What has changed is the availability of video and the means to disseminate it easily through social media and get it to the mainstream media and onto the public consciousness. But these abuses have happened for years (again most of them not rising to deadly shooting). And you have communities of people who honestly believe that the last thing they should do is call the police because they believe getting the police involved will make things worse, not better. I really believe that is what has happened in Chicago for instance.
You are not objective here. You don’t count all the encounters and all the good deeds. You find the few sensational encounters and then report as a sensationalist to validate your worldview. You have explicit anti-authority-figure bias unless it is an authority that helps you fee more powerful and validated. You are not thinking and reporting deeply enough on this topic. You have just become a tabloid on this topic.
That’s not how it works and I think you know it. You don’t get time off for good behavior and it’s not a general indictment anyway. One bad shooting like Tulsa is negated by 1000 good deeds by police officers. There are people that honestly believe they will make things worse if they call the cops, that fear is legitimate and not negated by good deeds or good encounters. Every bad encounter simply wipes out the good ones. It is unfortunately you that is not thinking.
No David – you are not doing a good enough job here. You are not reporting on the cops-side of the growing divide. You are not reporting to increase understanding, you are reporting to validate your anti-cop bias. I think some of that is a chip on your shoulder from the old Davis Human Relations Commission conflict.
See the link I put below. 13% of the population asked for police service and 93% were satisfied. Given the type of service that the cops are called to deal with, I think that is fascinating success. Compare that to the other “services” you would defend like the education system which reports 48% satisfaction.
I don’t have an anti-cop bias, I have an anti-bad cop bias. I get along very well with a lot of good police officers. (Sorry interrupted, finish later)
You demonstrate really zero empathy for the job they have to do. You know my background here. I have direct understanding of the stress that job causes.
In addition I have a friend that served in the Army and did combat in Afghanistan and is now a police officer in a crime-ridden urban area. He tells me that he encounters more crap and crappy people… has much more stress… in the job of law enforcement than he did battling enemies in a foreign land.
Watching a TV show called Atlanta. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_(TV_series)
Summary of opening scene of the first episode…
I need subtitles to understand the dialog. The environment is just pure violence. Guns drawn constantly. Thugs everywhere. Property theft is just a way of life. It is a war-zone. Might as well be a foreign country. Apparently the TV show is getting rave reviews because it both accurately depicts life in these neighborhoods, but also it does well personalizing… developing some likable characters caught up in the mess caused by the destruction of social capital and loss of legal economic opportunity.
This is what cops are dealing with on a daily basis. You never seem to acknowledge this as even being relevant. Of course there is human tragedy from these bad cop-suspect encounters. But there is volumes more human tragedy occurring every day in these neighborhoods. You seem to just expect that variable to be accepted and then the cops have to somehow deal with it in a way that there is never a mistake made.
But I see cops as just another human deserving of consideration. Yes, their work culture needs reform. But the black urban community needs the most reform. It is a freakin’ mess. You should bring more balance to this discussion. It way too one-sided.
Update from the New York Times:
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/us/charlotte-keith-scott-shooting-video.html?emc=edit_th_20160924&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=70648780&_r=0
847 killed by USA cops in 2016, so far and the latest victim is right here in Fair Oaks.
Here’s how the cops see things:
http://www.policemag.com/blog/patrol-tactics/story/2016/09/los-angeles-police-commission-tells-officers-to-run-away-or-else.aspx
Gil Scott-Heron was mistaken. The revolution is being televised.
This isn’t how cops see things. This is how they respond to a liberal cop-hating media fest like you like to join in. Let the thugs go at! Let them rob, rape, kill. edited
I support the cops standing down to “save lives”. And you should too based on your constant streams of anti-cop posting.
Otherwise I would have to say that your positions are hypocritical and quite ugly.
[moderator] edited.
I talk to a lot of cops – here and elsewhere. A lot of cops understand that the way they have been policing has to change.
I’m a light sleeper so I listen to a lot of radio at night. Last night one radio show had cops and their wives phoning in and talking about their jobs and experiences. The theme was almost unanimous that cops now feel scorned and hated. One wife said that she feels her husband is so much more danger now due to the press and the over coverage of the few bad cases where cops were at fault. They all said they’re going to get out of the profession as soon they can either find a new job or retire early and don’t see how law inforcement is ever going to recruit good people with the environment the way it is today.
Pat yourself on the back David for the small part you have played in this.
Where’s the responsibility they feel? For years, the profession has been plagued with violations of rights, biased policing, etc. The biggest problem is the blue wall of silence – refusal of rank and file cops to whistleblow on their colleagues who are doing bad things. Everyone from the police chiefs to PERF understand that serious reform is needed. But it’s my fault for reporting on what’s happening.
“The charges Johnson filed with the Chicago Police Board seek the dismissal of Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot McDonald and is also charged criminally with first-degree murder, as well as four others who gave or approved accounts that were contradicted by footage of the shooting, suggesting an attempted cover-up.”
This is a perfect example, it’s not just the bad apple shooter, it’s the culture of departments that needs to change.
You want Chicago to be an isolated incident, here’s from Tulsa, “A Tulsa police spokeswoman initially told reporters that Crutcher refused requests to put his hands in the air. After the footage suggesting otherwise was released, spokeswoman Jeanne MacKenzie said she was relying on reports from officers.”. In other words, the officers lied to their superiors.
BP, it would be interesting to dialogue with those callers. I suspect that in addition to their concerns about the press coverage, they also have concerns about some of their colleagues being exactly the kind of problem cop that the press is exposing, which creates a moral dilemma for them, As long as the public profile was low, they could keep their questionable co-worker out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but with the press on the prowl, the public profile is no longer low.
849 people executed by the cops in America since January 1, are not “rare exceptions.” and it is disingenuous apologists like you who are equally responsible for the savagery they inflict upon our society. I have never seen a cop help anyone, in my 63 years on this earth. I have seen them lie in court, beat up homeless and sick men, in 1969, I saw an Oakland cop lay into a pregnant girl with a baton, when she couldn’t move fast enough to please him. I have never seen one “prevent” a crime. I have had to defend myself not only from thugs, but from the lazy cops who wouldn’t come to take a vandalism report until I offered to bring the culprits to them myself. The cops are unarguably the most under educated, under-worked , overpaid and over-hyped civil service group at the public trough. In South Sacramento, we have given up on them for any protection. My position is consistent: The cops are a dangerous gang and you should fear them.
edited The problem that you and David have is that you fail to measure the tragic encounters with the number of encounters relative to the state of society. edited
Here is something for you to read and reject.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpa11.pdf
Now, compare that with the state of K-12 education which you and your political ilk defend like it is a religion.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/175517/americans-satisfaction-education-system-increases.aspx
What really steams me about this is that liberals are blaming cops for problems that liberals cause defending the education status quo that destroys the lives of so many black urban children that then turn to crime that the cops have to deal with.
“I have never seen a cop help anyone” That could speak more to the placement of your head than the actions of police. Like all professions they are comprised of people who vary greatly in their actions. Your head though, could be consistently placed without much of a view.
[moderator] Please stick to the topic and avoid personal attacks.
The beginning of the egg on the face of the liberal anti-cop crusade and BLM. They are both just trading one set of problems for a much worse set of problems if you actually care about human life and not just symbolism and hurt feelings.
What egg on the face? You’re stating the obvious, that the militaristic model doesn’t work in effectively policing civilian cities.
I think he means all those that have warned that the anti-cop crusade and BLM would lead to an increase in crime… especially violent crime. That would seem to be the egg on face.
What do you mean by the “militaristic model”? You mean when the police dress in riot gear to help prevent entire cities from being burned down by rioting thugs?
Other than this and the federal DEA and the money they send to local police to help them jack-boot kick down doors and kill dogs and people to make a pot arrest, I don’t know what you are talking about. And if you want to talk about the first part of this I suspect you and I would be in agreement that severe reforms are needed.
If fact, reforms to our policing of drugs is a bipartisan agreement these days, but it does not change. Why not? Easy… the money going to all the government employees and those union members that the unions then pay back the politicians for… mostly Dems.
Scroll down to see how representatives voted.
http://www.drugpolicyaction.org/sites/default/files/Drug_Policy_Action_Voter_Guide_2014.pdf