Good morning,
American Policing Crisis
I watched the news conference on the shooting of Daunte Wright, the latest black man shot by police in the U.S., and like you could only grimace at the horrible event for Wrights family, and for American police.
Wright was being stopped for a traffic offense it seems, and police checking the computer found an outstanding warrant. The grim scene played out in Brooklyn Center Minneapolis, 10 miles from the murder trial of Derek Chauvin on trial for the murder of George Floyd.
In this case, when police went to arrest Wright, he struggled and tried to flee. The body cam including recorded audio shows female officer Kim Potter yelling “taser taser taser” and firing one shot from her side arm.
Wright was killed by a 26 year officer who apparently confused her gun with the taser and a 20 year old man was dead, and the streets erupted in violent demonstrations against police and continued overnight.
There are parallels with George Floyd because it’s another white police officer ending the life of a black man in America, instead of delivering them to the courts.
Should these road side arrests for minor offenses be taking place at all? In the case of George Floyd the arrest was for a counterfeit 20 dollar bill. In Wrights case the grounds for arrest seem more significant.
Court records indicate that a judge issued a warrant for Mr. Wright earlier this month after he missed a court appearance. He was facing two misdemeanor charges after the Minneapolis police said he had carried a pistol without a permit and had run from officers last June.
The uncomfortable facts are Wright made a fatal error in fighting with police and trying to run and had a history of doing so according to the warrant. And according to police training, the officers had no choice but to act on the arrest warrant and try to detain him.
George Floyd’s murder was a case of wanton disregard for his life by a police officer who should be convicted of murder. Over 9 minutes of kneeling on his neck and even after he was unconscious equal intent to kill by most legal standards. The case of Wright appears to be an unfortunate mistake by an officer doing what she was training to do, but making a mistake with regard to her taser vs her handgun and the adrenaline of a roadside struggle.
Here’s how it would have played out in many other countries. The officer wouldn’t have drawn her handgun at all because she wouldn’t be facing the possible threat of an armed man in the car. In London where I live, most police don’t carry weapons because most citizens don’t own guns. In America every road side stop is super charged because of the abundance of guns.
The training of American police is uneven and spread differently across some 18,000 police departments. But many police appear overly aggressive and even scared or what they may face on the side of the road.
Earlier this week we saw another incident on the front pages when Second lieutenant Caron Nazario, who is black and Latino, says his rights were violated when two police officers pulled him over at the side of the road in Windsor, Virginia, and used ‘excessive force’ during an interrogation.
In this case police thought there was a license plate issue, drew weapons, and pepper sprayed Nazario violently pushing him to the ground.
The incident showed how a black man in the U.S. wouldn’t pull over until he was in a well lit area, scared of what the police might do, despite the fact he was in an army uniform and had done nothing wrong. And the approach by police lacked any kind of civility or deescalation technique.
It’s time for a new approach to policing to regain public confidence which is rock bottom. Even the best intentioned police officer finds themselves in a constant hostile environment with the public doubting their aims and their motives. They are increasingly not seen to be serving and protecting, but carrying out roadside executions driven by in some instances racist approaches to people suspected of minor law breaking.
I think there are great police out there, but these incidents and more, have created a terrible crisis in policing that deserve national reflection on how to overhaul law enforcement from recruitment, to training, to changes in deployment.
Local American police departments won’t do this on their own. It’s a national crisis that needs a Federal approach to renewing policing in the U.S. to restore faith in the men and women in blue, and to save lives. We see it in horrendous body cam videos how out of date and dangerous policing has become, and how those subject to police contact are overreacting from fear, with police overreacting to resistance, and in another case, the latest case of Daunte Wright, it’s increasingly and tragically fatal.
I think that there is a danger in in simply characterizing this as a “policing issue” when it is more of an American policing issue. I’m not suggesting there aren’t bad apples in every police service around the world - there are and they need to be identified and weeded out. Contracts with police associations should allow for this to happen more easily. What is happening in the US is as a result of heightened anger among the population in general that is reflecting itself through more street violence and a willingness to defy the police. It is approaching a breakdown of social order which only strong leadership, and, in the case of policing, more training, can solve. Police officers are on those front lines and are low hanging fruit making them very easy targets for criticism. Simply demonizing all police officers is a dangerous and slippery slope which masks the real problem. Having said that, police officers like Chauvin need to be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Thankfully the Derek Chauvins are few and far between in the ranks of police services around the world. As a society we need to remember that.