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Should the Mob Be Appeased, Even Without Evidence?
Monday’s Los Angeles Times features a story on the recent police shootings in Tulsa and Charlotte. Running under the headline “How two police shootings of black men sent Tulsa and Charlotte in different directions,” the article appears to endorse the notion that police officers involved in controversial shootings should be criminally charged as quickly as possible in order to avoid rioting.
“In Tulsa, Okla., on Thursday,” the story says, “a group of 50 demonstrators was preparing to march when people suddenly started cheering. ‘Have some ice cream!’ activist Shay White told demonstrators from a microphone. The officer who shot Terence Crutcher had just been charged with manslaughter. White told everyone to go home to rest, and the crowd quickly obliged.”
In the next paragraph, the article describes how protesters in Charlotte were preparing to take over a highway when “police in riot gear hit them with tear gas.” The reader is led to believe that the district attorney in Tulsa had acted wisely in charging Officer Betty Jo Shelby in the shooting death of Terence Crutcher because in doing so a riot had been averted. But in Charlotte, the story implies, all of that rioting and tear gas might not have occurred had prosecutors appeased the mob by serving up the officer who shot Crutcher.
This is troubling for a number of reasons, not least of which is the implication that the criminal justice system should be a vehicle to assuage the heated passions of protesters. Prosecutors are ethically bound to bring charges only when they believe that a jury can be convinced of a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Perhaps Tulsa County DA Steve Kunzweiler came to such a conclusion, but I will be surprised if Officer Shelby is ever convicted of manslaughter, or of anything else. Which is not to say her shooting of Crutcher is clearly justifiable, but neither is it, at least based on what we’ve been told so far, clearly unjustifiable.
But in Charlotte, there were no such ambiguities. Police saw Keith Scott with a gun as he got into his car and ordered him several times to drop it. In defiance of those commands, he got out of the car holding the gun and, as anyone could have predicted, was shot when he again refused to drop it. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – in this incident to suggest any wrongdoing on the part of the officer who shot him. Still, as the Times story implies, there are those who would have that officer thrust into the maelstrom of the criminal justice system for the sake of appeasing those who refuse to believe that it was Scott’s decisions and conduct that led to his death.
I have a new piece up over at PJ Media on this subject, and as always I welcome feedback from the Ricochetti and the relief it provides from the toxic commentary that inevitably follows my posts on the other site.
Published in General
Stipulating that I’m being overly skeptical, I don’t think we know this for a fact. Though I completely agree that Scott’s actions were extremely foolhardy and may well have justified his killing, none of the videos I’ve seen show him with the weapon (which the Charlotte chief concedes), and his widow told police that he was not armed.
Now, under the circumstances, I think it extremely improbable that the police planted the .380 and ankle holster they subsequently photographed (and think it likely that Mrs. Scott was either mistaken or lying about the gun), but I don’t think we know for a fact that he was holding the weapon at the time of his death.
If I have missed something, I would be happy to be corrected.
You answer yourself in the title. It’s a mob. You stand in front of a lynch mob and promise to shoot it’s leader. Democrats have become mob rule. They incite, the mob does the rest. We play their game. Shoot the leaders. Metaphorically speaking of course.
Update:
Based on still frames from NYT, it seems Scott’s weapon was holstered at the time of his death (at the very least, something that looks like his holster is visible). To be clear, that does not necessarily mean that police were unjustified to shoot him under the circumstances.
Sadly I think it depends on if you believe the Justice system should be a blind arbiter of the truth or, if you see it as a vehicle for addressing historical grievances. I sometimes believe our Progressive friends are more interested in seeing the passions of the community assuaged than in reaching a just outcome.
Tom,
The videos prove only that video cameras, whether mounted in cars or worn on an officer’s body, are not the panacea some would have hoped for. The fact that no gun can be seen in Scott’s hand in the videos is not proof there was no gun. A gun was recovered, and now we are told that Scott’s DNA, fingerprints, and blood were on it. Unless one is prepared to believe the phantasmagorical claim that the gun was planted and the biological evidence fabricated, I take it as conclusive evidence that Scott was holding the gun when he was shot.
My best (uniformed) guess would be for the DA or chief of police to come out and say, look, it’s going to take us at least three weeks (or whatever) to go through all the evidence to see what further actions might be necessary. To do so any sooner, would be the textbook definition of acting on prejudice. Thank you; have a nice day; and we’ll keep you posted.
…
When the mob starts acting up (looting, etc.), come back and make another statement — labeling them as behaving in a prejudiced and unlawful manner.
Keep hammering those two keywords: prejudiced and unlawful. One might think it’s unfair to impugn their motives. When the narrative’s at stake, all’s fair.
Okay, but the reason the videos I’ve seen don’t show him with the weapon is not because there wasn’t one, but because, in the crucial moments, you can’t see Scott at all. Basically, the cameras were either aimed in the wrong direction (the dash cam) or blocked by the head of the next officer (the body cam).
The body cam picks up what they are saying—“drop the weapon, drop the weapon” before the gunshots and afterward “are you good? are you good?” to each other and, in particular, to the officer who shot Scott. “Are you good?” meaning “did you get shot?” Strange though it sounds, someone who has had a gun pointed at him may not know whether that gun went off or whether he has been shot. One of my wardens who was involved in an incident not dissimilar to this one actually looked down at himself to check for “holes,” and to this day, he and I both make a joke of checking his torso to make sure its still intact.
Freddie Gray.
I have lived in Tulsa for the last 8 years. Regardless of what the DA does this is a city that has good relations between law enforcement, community churches and civil rights groups. The channels of communication manage to keep a tight lid on the violence and rioting that happens elsewhere.
We had a relatively peaceful protest this weekend.
Absolutely agreed.
As I said, I believe that it is extremely unlikely that the police planted the weapon and something that very much looks like the ankle holster they recovered is viewable in one of the still frames.
However, given that the weapon is unseen in the videos, that Scott’s widow states to the police that he’s unarmed, and that none of the videos show the weapon being recovered or mentioned after Scott is shot, I think it’s wrong to conclusively say that he possessed, let alone was holding, the weapon at the time of his death.
That said, I think it’s likely that Mrs. Scott was either lying or misinformed and at least possible that he had holstered the weapon when he was shot. To be clear, I think the shooting may yet be justified under those circumstances.
?
This is completely false. The rhetoric and mood in Tulsa was never that volatile. What protests there have been, have been subdued and sparse.
The reaction follows the same pattern of a LEO shooting of a black suspect a couple of years ago.
Tulsa Sheriff Dept. was conducting a sting operation. The suspect got suspicious and bolted. The deputies tried to subdue him and one officer went to his taser.
Except it wasn’t his taser it was his firearm.
Ooops.
The details get worse, but there was no rioting, no uproar. The process was allowed to play out.
I am convinced that the rioting in Charlotte is occurring but not in Tulsa is because NC is a potential swing state and OK is not.
Inciting mayhem as a tactic to boost voter turnout.
The 21st century Democrat Party.
Looking again at the times video, something appears on the ground by Officer Vinson around the 1:50 mark that either wasn’t there earlier before or was obscured by shadow. I could be viewing it wrong, but it looks like one of the officers reaches under Scott shortly before, which would make it likely that it was the gun and that he was holding it.
Again, very hard to tell.
Jack,
This is truly that “Thanks, Obama!” moment. Once Obama and AG had all of the evidence that Michael Brown didn’t have his hands up and that he charged Wilson they should have said so and calmed the situation. Instead with three separate forensic investigations and 4 Black eyewitnesses, the AG and the President kept inciting violence.
Let’s say theoretically you wanted to make the rules of engagement for the police more strict. Now that the phony politics are this muddled up there isn’t any way that anybody can make a clear statement. This is pure political propaganda that isn’t concerned about Black lives, isn’t concerned about the police, isn’t concerned about anything but riding a cheap narrative to power.
Thanks, Obama!
Regards,
Jim
Bob Owens has weighed in with a second look at the video and screen captures:
Owens also points out that the gun recovered at the scene is a small “pocket pistol” that doesn’t protrude much from a large hand, and then reenacts the posture seen in the screen grab with a similar small pistol.
He then points out that if Scott was holding a gun when he was shot, it wasn’t “open carry” even if he weren’t a felon in possession; it was the specific crime of “brandishing.”
How is it just to shoot a man with a holstered pistol?
Whether the pistol was holstered seems to be the question. If it was, as Owens tries to demonstrate, in Scott’s hand, “How is it just” is not relevant to his death. If the officers on the scene had no reason to believe the gun was in his hand or in the car, it may be.
It may not have been clear that the weapon was holstered, if in fact it was.
I don’t mean to imply that the police are blameless, but I grant them leeway considering that 1) Scott had not been following their directions, 2) That he did not place his hands over his head upon exiting the vehicle, and 3) That seeing the ankle holster after Mrs. Scott had insisted that he wasn’t armed could easily have led them to believe they were in danger.
The more I think on it, the more I wonder if the combination of Mrs. Scott’s insistence that he wasn’t armed and the police seeing either the handgun or the holster played a major role in this.
Scott. DuBose. Castile.
None of these guys had committed any meaningful crime, they were shot without provocation, and the Right does handstands to make a case that the officers were justified.
I’m sorry, but a policeman should not have the right to be judge, jury and hangman. If the policeman is not in danger, there is no reason to shoot a civilian sitting in his car. And we on the Right, with our purported love of Liberty, should be the ones protesting.
I totally agree regarding Philando Castille, who seems to genuinely have been the victim of a ambiguous order from the policeman who shot him. I wrote a whole piece on why I thought it was a disservice to his memory to have his death equated with Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin’s at the DNC.
Scott, however, seems — at best — an ambiguous case.
(It’s been awhile since I thought of the DuBose case and I’d have to reacquaint myself with it before commenting.)
I would posit that whether or not these suspects had committed a meaningful crime or not is irrelevant. They could have been caught with an axe in their hand standing over a butchered corpse. But as long as they were complying with the officers instructions, and posed no immediate threat, there is no lawful reason to shoot them.
A judge and jury determine guilt or innocence. A police officer must determine whether or not the individual is an imminent threat to the officer or the public. While a trial will drag on for months or years, an officer has to make a snap decision. Hence, a conservative understands that any judgement on law enforcement’s actions should come only after careful consideration of all the evidence.
Which would be most unhelpful if the goal were to boost minority voter turnout, rather than justice.
What’s she going to say? “He’s armed! Shoot him!” ??
You’re making quite the judgment about the Scott case. I live in Charlotte, and have been swamped with it. Scott repeatedly failed to comply with police commands. Repeatedly. He had already shown the gun once in the car, that’s why they were telling him to “drop the gun”. This is a guy with a record (no, they didn’t know that), so Scott knows the drill. He had on an ankle holster, and he’s a convicted criminal, which means he’s already in violation, and he’s going back to jail now.
The police have not only the right to defend themselves and the public, but must do so with very little information, a few seconds to make a decision, and the knowledge that if they screw up they’re either a) dead, b) out of a job, forever, c) publicly villified, or d) all of the above.
You’re making quite the claim to assume the police are in no danger, when a guy the cops have seen in a car smoking a joint (not a big deal) shows a gun (big deal), then won’t comply with commands, well, it seems like there’s almost only one outcome to someone who is armed and will not comply.
No, obviously. :)
My point is that if the police heard Mrs. Scott’s claim and then subsequently saw the weapon, it wouldn’t be totally unreasonable for them to believe they were being lied to about this, which may have influenced the officer’s decision to pull the trigger.
Yes!
Figured you got the “obviously” part.
But still. It’s another one of those small pieces of the story, like the book, that tells part of the story – and doesn’t tell it in a way that accurately, by itself, tells anyone anything substantive.
But it is just enough to use to put on a cardboard sign and use it as justification to punch out random white people on the streets of Charlotte, though.
Relatedly, I don’t think the dashcam footage from the Castille case has been released. @jackdunphy, is there any good reason why it shouldn’t be?
Oh, and more fun from the “unjustified” shooting in Charlotte, apparently Keith Lamont Scott was known to carry a gun, which his wife obviously knew of since she put it on a restraining order a year ago:
I have given up on trying to not be cynical this year and agree with @billy:
Everyone talks about Mrs. Scott shouting that he wasn’t armed, but they don’t mention that she was also shouting “Don’t do it Keith!”. What exactly was it?