yes, thank you, Hunt.
If it is all in fact so obviously absurd then I expect we shall shortly hear that his officer has been terminated.
Well said.
I hope the officer is at least reprimanded–or, if this was according to policy, that the policy is changed. I don’t want officers drawing down on people on Cross Campus unless somebody is posing a clear danger.
It reminds me of a case from years ago when one of Disney’s “security hostesses” got involved in a high speed chase that went out of the park and someone died. A bit of an extreme reaction for the job they have.
For some reason, after I saw “To Kill a Mockingbird” at our local community theater, I talked about this case and how things haven’t improved as much in racism as I and most of us had hoped since that book was written in 1960!
As you so often do Hunt, you summed it up very clearly. Thanks
I often criticize others for being too definitive without knowing all the facts, so I don’t want to be guilty of the same sin myself. So, on further consideration, there may be some unknown facts that might have justified the officer’s decisions to draw his weapon. For example:
- He might have been told that the suspect was armed and dangerous. This could happen as a result of a mistake or a miscommunication. If that is what happened, somebody else may be at fault, or perhaps nobody is. Don’t be surprised if this turns out to be the face-saving explanation–it would be hard to refute.
- The kid may have done something that the officer thought (rightly or wrongly) signaled the attempt to reach for a weapon. The story as we’ve heard it doesn’t seem to support that interpretation, but we may not have heard the story in the right sequence thus far.
Now, I think that these are unlikely. I think the more likely explanation is that the YPD officers got excited because they were in hot pursuit of a real criminal, as opposed to their normally humdrum duties. I still think it highly unlikely that the officer would have behaved the same way if the description had been of a white student, no matter what the underlying reason for pulling the gun was.
This is not complicated to investigate, What’s the hold up I wonder.
When police are investigating their own misconduct there always seems to be a holdup.
Harper Lee (author of “To Kill a Mockingbird”) is publishing a second novel, its proposed title is called “Quick draw at Cross Campus”, see–http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/books/harper-lee-author-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird-is-to-publish-a-new-novel.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0
If anyone is curious as to what the YPD deals with on a daily basis, you can see the daily crime logs for the month of January here: http://publicsafety.yale.edu/calendar/month/2015-01 There were two robbery incidents involving a weapon and a firearm on January 19th and January 20th.
As a black male, I honestly think you guys are not thinking about this logically. If you see someone who matches the description of a suspect, why would you risk your life not having your gun drawn and getting shot? Shouldn’t you want to be the one in control? I think the officer acted right in the situation. Maybe, he could have asked for ID sooner, or whatever, but I don’t think he did anything that atrociously bad. If I misinterpreted the article feel free to correct me; I would like to know where I went wrong.
http://www.justice.gov/archive/crs/pubs/pdexcess.pdf (page 17) has a discussion on the use of force by police.
Uhm, deadly force means the cop kills the suspect. No-one was hurt in this incident.
“Uhm, deadly force means the cop kills the suspect.”
No, it doesn’t. If you fire a shot at someone, that’s using deadly force, even if you miss.
No shot was fired and the case cited is about a kid who was shot in the back of the head which limited police authority to use lethal force slightly. I suppose we could law school-like quibble about whether you are using deadly force if you aim, fire, and miss but it is so irrelevant as to what happened here, why bother?
" I suppose we could law school-like quibble about whether you are using deadly force if you aim, fire, and miss "
When you say that 2+2=5, people who know that 2+2=4 will correct you. Call that a quibble if you like. You’re the one who offered a definition of deadly force, which led me to believe that you thought that definition was germane to the discussion. Apparently you’ve changed your mind as to its relevance.
I’m sticking with force is deadly when someone dies. If a cop uses “deadly force” he at least intends it be deadly. I’ll give you he could be a bad shot. But, it’s still the wrong case for this discussion. By a lot.
Whatever anybody digs up on the internet, it is my considered opinion that a police officer should not pull a gun on a crowded college campus unless there is clear danger to the officer or to others. The identification of a suspect in crimes that were not violent, and for whom there is no evidence that he is armed, is not such a situation. It’s really that simple.