To express an informed opinion on whether drawing the gun was appropriate one would have to know what the specifics of the officer’s training manual said on drawing a weapon. Or what is common practice among these officers when confronting a robbery suspect? If his actions were clearly contrary to his training or contrary to what is common practice, then issue an apology, re-train the guy and move on. He was doing his job. Was he over zealous? None of us really know.
@Much2learn, I agree that this incident prompts questions about when police should draw their weapons, and which weapons - guns, tasers, whatever. I don’t agree that this concern should be unique to Ivy parents, or even parents of college students, It is a much more general question. Should a cop in rural Missouri have different rules from a cop on an urban campus? What rules are common. IANALEO, and there are no LEOs in my family, so would welcome inputs from anyone who is.
There was an arrest made in this incident. Does anyone know if a gun was drawn in the course of that arrest? It seems like information has dried up about this, maybe Yale does an excellent job of keeping the media out of its affairs, except when the son of a columnist is questioned.
@ahl “I grew up around guns and was taught never to draw a weapon unless you intended to kill someone.”
Lol. Me too. We had lots of guns. My Dad used to say, “Never point a gun at anyone, unless you intend to use it.”
Well that ^ is obviously not how police officers are trained, as exemplified by the case at hand.
https://la.utexas.edu/users/jmciver/357L/2481_houstonpd.PDF
I can’t find anything for New Haven or CT.
“I don’t agree that this concern should be unique to Ivy parents, or even parents of college students, It is a much more general question. Should a cop in rural Missouri have different rules from a cop on an urban campus?”
I still think your are misunderstanding what I am saying, because I completely agree with your statement.
What I said before was, “I think every single Ivy parent, and a lot of non-Ivy parents, wants to know what the rules of engagement are for campus police pointing a gun at a student leaving the library.”
I am not suggesting that the rules at one school or in one conference should be different than any other. I am also not suggesting that the concern is unique to Ivy parents. All I am just suggesting in that Ivy parents for whom this hits closer to home because it happened at Yale. Therefore, those parents are more likely to actually reach out to their institutions and ask about questions about how these situations and whether it is common to point guns at students.
For example, DD attends Penn. I also happen to have a nephew who works for the Penn campus police department, and I sent him a note this morning asking for his perspective on Yale situation and how these issues are typically handled at Penn. That does not mean that any parent shouldn’t be asking the same question at their school.
As you said, I would hope that parents will be doing the same thing at other schools, and that any rules or procedural improvement would be discussed and implemented broadly.
Even if you can find the New Haven/CT police procedure manual, it probably won’t provide a definitive answer to whether the office acted improperly, because we weren’t there and don’t know what this officer knew or was told about the suspect and officers are going to be given leeway to make snap decisions in situations like these.
He wasn’t a New Haven or CT police officer, he was campus police. We don’t need the specific manual to know that it is unreasonable and dangerous to pull a gun in the situation he was in. Alh’s link says it quite clearly. I’m willing to bet that campus police are told to exercise even more restraint since they are mostly dealing with students.
I didn’t read alhs link to say that at all. You are playing armchair quarterback after the fact with limited facts.
When I sent my biracial son off to Yale in 2013, never in a million years did I dream that I would be reading a story about a fellow student face down on the ground with a gunned pulled on him by an officer from the YPD who was looking for someone who was stealing laptops. As the mother of a young biracial man, I would like to say that I am disheartened by what I have read. We are the sum total of our experiences and now Tahj Blow gets to add being held at gunpoint by the police to his list of things that happened while he was away at university. How sad that this young man has to add that to his list when he was just walking out of the library. I can’t imagine any parent feeling like this isn’t a big deal. It is very easy to be blasé about what happened when neither you nor I will probably ever experience being held at gunpoint by the police.
When my son started to drive, I had “the talk” with him. When he came home over Winter Break, I reiterated the importance of complete compliance when confronted by a police officer. With the recent cases in Ferguson and NYC, I am sure that Tahj Blow knew to comply immediately. If these cases had taken place several months ago, I wonder if his compliance would have been immediate. I am very glad that he complied immediately, but he never should have been put in that position in the first place.
From marie1234:
marie1234, how many of Charles Blow’s columns have you read? I am a NY Times subscriber and a New Yorker and I read his columns twice every week. In my opinion, they have no relationship to how you describe them.
He is a single father raising 3 children in Brooklyn, NY where I live, although I don’t know him personally. (2.6 million people in Brooklyn.)
He is also the author of a memoir:
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Shut-Up-In-Bones/dp/1491530219
A very interesting guy, in my opinion. Certainly not an alarmist. Extremely articulate.
I’m very familiar. Thanks. And, I’m not saying he doesn’t occasionally write about anything else but this has been his primary issue for years and it didn’t begin with this incident, by far. Eh, I find him repetitive. Also, New Haven has a stunning amount of crime of which I was unaware until a little quick Googling turned up a slew of rapes, robberies, and purse and laptop snatchings both on and off campus. Whether the weapon should have been drawn or not I do not have an opinion on although I do think his outrage tweets and the corresponding column were more predictable than surprising and would exist either way. But, that’s just me. Reaction seems to be mixed.
That memoir is wonderful, indeed. Was passed on to me by a colleague who’d read it, who’d received it as a present from someone who’d read it, etc. When a book is so good people can’t help but offer it to everyone they know, and those in turn want to pass it on to as many people as possible, it’s a good sign the book is a must-read.
I went to Yale when New Haven was much more dangerous and I can’t think of a gun being drawn ever. It’s weird that as the country has become safer, guns are drawn much more often.
Well, the cops would tell you aggressive policing is the primary reason why it’s safer. I’m not arguing that, btw just stating that law enforcement would definitely make that case.
To which, I ask you, have you ever been pulled over, and then have a weapon drawn on you? Again, without assigning a label of legitimacy or not to the incident at hand, most any parent, but especially a parent of a young black man, would have much consternation and visceral anxiety over such an incident.
As mentioned, my daughter attends this attention–so I obviously have the same concerns, as any parent. As to your comment that we should maybe feel a bit more comfortable with a raised gun, that is at once non-sensical and insulting.
So, my strategy is to do everything possible to diffuse the situation.
Your strategy does not seem to lead to an end state that would benefit you the most.
edit: of course, you are free to pursue whatever strategy you like
if you change “intend” to “are prepared”, then that is exactly what happened.
While crime is way down compared to a generation ago, people generally seem to be much more fearful of crime. For example, consider the thread about whether elementary school age kids are allowed to walk to school or a park in their neighborhood on their own without a helicopter parent. A generation ago, that was the normal thing. Now, people think that kidnappers will get them, so they call child protective services on parents who let their kids do that.
Since police officers are a subset of the general population, perhaps they too are more “on edge” about crime than they were a generation ago. Hence they may be quicker to draw their guns, whether or not that may be desirable when analyzed later (i.e. not in the heat of the moment, when a quick decision may be made on instinct).