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The Randomness: On David French’s Quest to De-Risk Crime
As a fellow Iraq war vet, I deeply respect the service and perspective of National Review columnist David French. He volunteered out of a sense of obligation to serve in a war he had endorsed. The man put his rear end where his mouth had put others. That he was “inside the wire” as a legal advisor should be beside the point. He risked much more than any pundit. Oh, but that he would do the same with his punditry on policing. On this Mr. French is consistently, dangerously wrong.
I have spent much of three decades observing, reporting on, and training in police work. That study is further informed by my tours as an infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the lessons I’ve learned are clear: Mr. French’s ideas will get good people killed by shifting the risk of criminality off of the lawless. Sadly, his effort to de-risk criminality hit a nadir with his column on the death of Stephon Clark.
The facts, per bodycam and helicopter video, are roughly thus: A 911 caller reported to the Sacramento Police Department “a guy going down the street breaking windows of cars” who went in the backyard of a house. A circling helicopter crew reported a man, later identified as Clark, breaking into a second house, climbing a backyard fence to a third home then walking down the driveway. Officers confronted him, ordering him to “show your hands” and “stop,” as he bolted to the backyard. Clark turned toward the pursuing officers who took cover behind the house before shooting as one cried “gun, gun, gun” and Clark continued to advance.
From the first shout to the last shot, the confrontation lasted 19 seconds. Only later did they discover that Clark merely had a cell phone and was in the yard of his grandmother’s home, where he stayed.
Mr. French believes the officers should have assumed they weren’t really at risk. His back-of-the-envelope probabilities analysis features the ultimate in armchair quarterbacking.
French ponders: “If it’s dark, police are sprinting, and flashlights are shaking, what are the chances that the cops’ first assessment that the suspect had a gun are wrong?” Not much. According to the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database (among the most reliable compilations of such information), only 7 percent of people killed by police in 2017 were unarmed (which doesn’t mean they were not a threat). And does he really mean that the more ambiguously dangerous the situation (suspect fleeing to an unlit area) the more benefit of the doubt the suspect should get?
What was the reasonable risk of backing off and continuing to give strong, verbal commands? If an armed suspect (as French concedes the officers genuinely believed him to be) ignores commands then turns and advances on two armed officers, what additional command will be effective? Moreover, would Mr. French bet his own life on those commands? And how many would he give before shooting? The officers gave at least four.
What are the possibilities he hadn’t heard the commands? Inasmuch as Clark reacted to the commands, just distinctly the opposite of what he was told, it seems obvious that the chance is zero.
In perhaps the most ghoulish thing I’ve seen written about officer safety in a quarter century covering this topic, Mr. French asserts that because no Sacramento PD officer has been murdered in 19 years, they should have assumed there was less risk. He doesn’t ponder the probability that SPD officers who have been shot saved themselves by using the same lethal force he seeks to restrict. And, as Jack Dunphy points out, Mr. French ignores the murders of other Sacramento-area officers in recent years. Might the officers’ perceptions have been shaded by the conviction the week before of a double-cop-killer? Mr. French is silent on these, the hard details that are the reality out on the street.
Cop-hating libertarians and leftists are fond of statistics that show more commercial fisherman, loggers or cab driver are killed than cops per capita. That’s true as far as it goes. We’ve gone from over 100 officers murdered by gunfire in the 1970s to 64 in 2016 and 46 last year. This year is running 50 percent over last.
But police work stands alone with critics (like Mr. French) seeking to make it more dangerous. And purely for the benefit of people who almost always hold their own fates in their own hands. Yes, there are tragic exceptions of people who did nothing wrong, such as John Crawford, Justine Damond, Tyler Finch, and (most likely) Philando Castile. But, those are complex, literally one-in-a-thousand, awful events. And, notably, the Damond case appears criminal, which is definitively unreasonable.
But Mr. French’s worst transgression is to imply there’s predictability in the truly random nature of the risk of policing. Take, for instance, the 21-officer police department of Clinton, MO. The only two officers killed in its 150-year history were slain in the last nine months in separate incidents. Rookie Gary Michael was shot during an August traffic stop. Bizarrely, his replacement, Ofc. Chris Morton was recently slain after being sent to the wrong house on a 911 call, where he was ambushed by a drug dealer.
I have studied this issue for years. I call it “The Randomness,” and there is little predictable or probable about it. I learned this as a kid. In my hometown of West Covina, CA, the only two officers murdered on the job in the city’s history both died within five years. Ken Wrede was shot dead by a naked man. How’s that for unarmed?
Cops are murdered on the first day on the job and in the last weeks of a four-decade career. They are murdered stopping for coffee. They are murdered while handling the most minor of car accidents, by kids stealing beer before Christmas, and by people who call the cops on themselves. And they are killed in foot pursuit of suspects of minor crimes.
For those who don’t click, the latter incident, the murder of rookie Pomona Police Department Officer Gregg Casillas at the hands of a reckless driver, happened just days before the Clark shooting. Given that Mr. French wrote nothing of Casillas’ murder, we must conclude the probability is that his outrage at senseless killings has a finicky predictability.
Bizarrely, Mr. French argues it is problematic that police officers are shown videos of other cops’ deaths. It seems he prefers cops who are unaware that they can be shot dead by a man they’ve been talking to for 10 minutes, or shot in the face by a man who, like Clark, ignored commands to stop. Or even shot by handcuffed suspects.
Imagine declaring it’s dangerous to show videos of industrial accidents to fishermen and loggers.
The fact of the matter is, American police officers rarely use force of any kind, especially deadly force. There were 1.2 million violent crimes in the US in 2016, about 17,000 of them murders. Police officers made 50 million contacts with citizens, resulting in about 57,000 assaults on officers in this country with hundreds of millions of guns. That just 967 fatal shootings resulted is remarkable.
To be sure, policing in a democracy (and common decency) requires that police use lethal force only under the direst of conditions. Cops cannot and should not treat every person they meet as immediate threats. But some certainly are, and being prepared for those threats is why 597 people with guns were killed by cops in 2017, and only 51 cops were killed by criminals. It is fair though to ask: exactly how many of those 597 would Mr. French shift to the dead-cops column in order to ensure Stephon Clark can resist arrest without fear of harm? 5? 50? 500?
Of course, Mr. French will claim he simply wants to save the Stephon Clarks of the world and wishes no harm on cops. But that is not the reality. The more police procedure is shaped to give suspects the benefit of the doubt, the more that doubt will be leveraged by would-be cop-killers to lethal ends.
Of course, there are methods by which Mr. Clark may have been arrested under less dangerous circumstances. That would have involved sending numerous additional units to lock down the neighborhood and employ a variety of force options.
But if you want to do that for the Clark call, then you have to do the same for literally every domestic dispute, beer run, reckless driving, and vandalism call. Practically all 911 calls would generate a massive, costly deployment of resources that will severely impact response times.
That is the nature of The Randomness. A small but omnipresent possibility that the worst moments of one’s life have already begun without you knowing. The only remedies are the instinct and tools to quickly identify and neutralize fast-evolving threats, or flood every situation with extensive, redundant resources.
All to ensure suspects can refuse to comply without worry.
It is very sad that someday someone will have to explain to Stephon Clark’s young children why their daddy died. The fact that he made a series of bad decisions that created danger for all involved under particularly volatile circumstances will provide them little comfort. But, the responsibility for the consequences of his numerous reckless and criminal actions lies with no one but himself.
I wonder if Mr. French would rather explain to Gregg Casillas’ kids why he is more worried about Stephon Clark’s right to resist arrest than the life of their father and every other cop who lives with The Randomness.
Published in Policing
In fairness, the one you wish to save with this policy change isn’t a victim yet either. We’re talking about prospective policy affects. As it turns out there are a small amount of these types of victims.
If they’re all prospective then the question remains: why is one future innocent more valuable than ten future victims?
Clark wasn’t innocent. That’s the entire point. He had every opportunity to reduce the risk to himself but chose to escalate it. You would prefer that officers take on that risk so people like Clark can disregard law and common sense without fear.
Less deadly for whom? The officers? The next victim? Or people who refuse to cooperate?
This is incorrect. He specifically says the officers “genuinely believed” Clark was armed.
Missing the point again. French’s argument is not that Clark acted in the right. But we are not even talking about guilt and innocence here. He may have disobeyed and frightened the police, but he did not deserve to die. No suspect deserves to die at the hands of police unless he is actually threatening them. His judgment and judicial punishment do not come at the hands of the police.
I hope you aren’t arguing that killing Clark was necessary. Hopefully we can agree it was regrettable. It may even have been reasonable given the situation the police ultimately found themselves in. French’s argument is that it was also within the officers’ power, not only Clark’s, to influence the situation: to act in a more conservative manner, to avoid getting into a confrontation where they were exposed and screaming orders at a man they couldn’t see in the dark. That they could have protected themselves behind cover and been slower to the trigger to reduce the likelihood of the misjudgment that ultimately led them to fire their weapons. What he is proposing is not what you are claiming, that they should put themselves at risk by confronting without defending themselves from seemingly armed suspects.
Can you please be specific about which statement you believe is incorrect? I don’t see one.
Yes, less deadly for innocent people who are perceived (rightly or wrongly) by the police to be uncooperative. In ways that don’t significantly endanger the police. I’m not thinking only of Clark here, but also of people like Philando Castille and Daniel Shaver.
I can’t tell if you’re arguing that this is an unworthy goal or that it is impossible.
You don’t get to split hairs like that. First off, Shaver and Castille are bad examples. No one knows if Castille grabbed the gun or not, except. Yanez and the girlfriend, and they disagree. Shaver was a tactical mess that almost no cop I know finds acceptable.
But if you want to make it less dangerous for Clark, you make it less dangerous for people who want to kill cops. That’s what French doesn’t seem to get. If you treat people who only “might” be dangerous in a less safe manner then you treat people who actually are lethal threats that way.
It would be much safer for everyone if people like Clark were expected to comply. Some how that’s unreasonable.
It was regrettable but perfectly reasonable. And it is exactly what he (and you) are arguing. You expect the officers to mitigate the risk Clark escalated. And you expect them to do that regardless of if the next Clark is armed or not.
Yes! Because when as a free society we allocate risk between innocent civilians and voluntary agents of the state, it properly should favor innocent civilians. Clark’s suspicious actions do not make him guilty; they do not make him deserving of death. One of French’s specific criticisms was that the police should not have “moved from cover to an exposed position”. Had they not done so they would not have perceived themselves to be under immediate threat by whatever object may have been in his hand. By doing so they increased the risk to themselves and to Clark, and unfortunately in doing so they realized one of the two worst possible outcomes.
This was a great comment.
I think the more fundamental question in these situations is why is the safety/life of a law enforcement officer more valuable than that of a citizen, especially one only suspected of having committed a criminal act or posing a threat only to the officer on the other side of the equation. It really comes down to which way we default when we don’t know the whole of the truth. We’ve reached a point where a free people should legitimately fear exercising their freedom to be armed on the small chance they may have an encounter with law enforcement and that things could go horribly sideways merely because they peaceably exercise their rights.
Neither is more valuable than the other, and law enforcement officers are citizens too. So now what? We as a community through our legitimate and participatory political process do authorize police to wield authority any one individual does not have. This is already a more risky task for those officers. Yes they receive compensation for it, but they also deserve clear training, clear guidelines, and community support (as long as they aren’t being negligent or corrupt). Otherwise their effectiveness will decrease as they shy away from doing actual police work. Part of this community support is first to recognize that there is some authority to which we are all subject (even as that authority is subject to individuals too). Second, except in matters of imminent self defense, comply with the duly authorized commands and work the rest out at the station or in court – being your own advocate on the street in the middle of a volatile situation is a choice a citizen is making which escalates the risk for all and that’s on them not on the police.
Do we care how this authority is wielded? Of course we do. Do we have policies and procedures in place to prevent/reduce unnecessary or mistaken incidents? Yes. Is it already pretty conservative? Yes. Is it already effective? Judging by the proportion of citizen contacts ending in mistaken fatalities I would say the answer is so overwhelmingly yes. Can we squeeze more effectiveness out of it? Probably; officers not challenging any suspect would be an effective means to greatly reducing the risk of fatalities from mistaken incidents. Should we squeeze more effectiveness out of it? Depends on the tradeoffs involved – I don’t think police retreat would be a good trade off for the broader community.
I find this deeply troubling–that he brought it on himself by not obeying the police right away. People are not professional citizens. There’s no law we are given, at least not one that I am aware of, that says, “When the police tell you to do something, you must comply or they can and will shoot you.”
It seems to me that if this is the way we’re going to live now, we should start teaching this lesson in kindergarten.
It has only been in the last few years on Ricochet in reading many posts of police procedures and expectations that I have ever known that I would be bringing justified death upon myself if I didn’t do exactly and immediately what the police officer was telling me to do.
Except that police officers are innocent civilians too so neither should be favored. Also, you’re cutting out the part where the innocent civilian is choosing to escalate by ignoring the duly authorized officers – IMO that tips the scales a bit away from their favor.
It’s true that sometimes it’s not a choice but circumstances just snowball – I think we already effectively mitigate the risk of this pure tragedy type situation. How many of these pure tragedies occur out of the 50 million citizen contacts? How many of the 967 fatalities are in this category? Can that ever be zero? (I don’t think it can be).
As I say, the street is no place to play lawyer or revolutionary. “Yessir”, and work it out at the station or in court – not in the middle of a volatile situation.
The psychology underlying the modern police and civilians’ relationship is not healthy for either one.
As a mother, one of the first things I learned was when I saw the kid dangling dangerously from the tree, to approach quietly and calmly so as not to startle the kid into letting go of the branch.
When police are chasing or apprehending a person, that person is operating completely on fight-or-flight emotion. That emotion is being heightened today by the confrontations people are seeing described in the news and acted out on television. When emotion takes over, irrational behavior can be expected.
I hate to use the term “cycle of violence” because it has become a subject of derision, but there is something to it.
Police officers and civilians are going to be killing each other with increasing frequency if we do not calm down these interactions.
Strawman. No one is arguing for this.
This. In the end this is what French is really arguing for. He’s arguing for evaluating the training and guidelines to ensure they are what both the police and the people deserve. As a nation and a society we owe it to both to never believe that we’ve achieved as much as we can in this regard. We should always be evaluating the training and guidelines for using deadly force.
French’s answer to Dunphy is quite good.
I keep choking on this number. What qualifies as a contact? Is this number as large as it seems to me?
I’m only laying a baseline to illustrate that obviously there are trade offs involved, including to the broader community.
It comes off as misstating what some of us are asking for. We want the cops to do what they do better, not to stop doing it.
I don’t know. I was taking it to mean all contacts from traffic stops to murder investigations. I don’t know how accurate, but teh number doesn’t shock me if we take it to mean all contacts whether confrontational or not. I also wouldn’t be shocked if the number were smaller, nor would it much change the fraction math I’m pointing to.
I’ve had very few contacts with law enforcement. When a state trooper pulled me over to give me the ear muffs one of the kids hung on my hitch ball it was a contact, but probably should not be in the category of contacts that could go sideways. If the police engage that sort of thing with the same mindset with which they engaged reports of someone breaking car windows we have an enormous problem.
Well now you know it isn’t a misstatement of what you’re asking for. So what is being asked for? Backing off in some but not in all situations. My point is that the consequence of doing it in all situations versus only some situations is only a difference of degree.
So how does it work out? Which results in an optimized situation balancing the risk of letting people go against mistakes? one final question I have for you: does that question govern your approach or do you rely more on the philosophic principle overriding the utilitarian approach?
We can’t treat it equally. If the police misinterpret a civilian’s intentions (mistaken identity, armed/unarmed, acting threatening, failure to hear/understand orders, willful defiance, etc.) and shoot him, they almost always suffer minimal or no consequences. However, if a civilian mistakes the police’s intentions (doesn’t recognize them as police, doesn’t hear/understand their orders, fails to comply with impossible contradictory orders, makes a mistake under stress, doesn’t understand the stakes, or God forbid fires in self-defense, etc.), they either die on the scene or are likely to be convicted of murder.
It probably will never be zero, but there is a strong odor of complacency and reflexive rationalization coming from one side of this debate.
As I was reading this story last night, what struck me was that what was missing most of all was a bright light so that the officers could see what was going on in that backyard.
Perhaps what is needed is night vision goggles for police officers so they can assess situations accurately.
I disagree. All contacts can go sideways. People (both citizens and cops) are unpredictable. Cops have no idea whether you will respond my running them over when all they wanted to do was to save your son’s ear muffs. My point is that the conservative approach and the checklist of responses goes pretty far back – it doesn’t just start once guns are drawn and the commands are being shouted. They do engage your ear muffs with the same mindset as they engage someone breaking car windows – it’s just that in your example they were able to find a nice branch on the decision tree long before they got to belligerent confrontation.