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  • D.A. Rickman on Jonathan Ayers

    I received the following email today from D.A. Brian Rickman in regards to this poston the 2009 killing of Rev. Jonathan Ayers (you can read all I’ve written about the horrible killing of Ayers).

    Professor Moskos,

    Someone sent me a link to the February article you posted regarding the Ayers case. There were a couple of things I wanted to mention. I don’t make a huge habit of responding to many articles or blogs, but I feel like I should as some of what you wrote is important to the integrity of the system.

    In our criminal review of the GBI file, and subsequent Grand Jury presentation, two outside prosecutors were brought in to also review the investigation, and appear at the Grand Jury proceedings to offer their opinions of the law and evidence. These two outside prosecutors were District Attorney Danny Porter of Gwinnett County, GA, and District Attorney Emeritus Mike Crawford, who was my predecessor in office. In addition, an outside use of force expert was brought in from another State. Both prosecutors appeared before the Grand Jury, and did so outside of the presence of myself or members of my office staff.

    There are many aspects of the tragedy that was the Ayers case that lend themselves to a healthy discuss ion in a democracy about the use of force and about law enforcement without question. My particular job, pursuant to my oath, was to ensure a fair review was had for violations of the criminal law in Georgia, which is of course different from the standard in a civil action for damages.

    I take my job, and my responsibilities very seriously. While it is not possible for there to be universal agreement about what we do or how we do it, I did want to mention these facts, which were not in the article, because they go to the heart of whether the process was fair insofar as the criminal review. As it appears from your writing, I was the only prosecutor involved in the proceedings. As mentioned above, two outside prosecutors conducted legal analysis and appeared aside from myself or anyone from my office. I do think that was important for the very reason that those steps were taken, that is to ensure a multiple level and independent review as far as the criminal process.

    I appreciate your time. I am not asking for, nor urging you to write any sort of correction or make any sort of posting. It is simply important to me that when a writing goes to my integrity, I respond to it.

    Thanks.

    Brian M. Rickman

    District Attorney

    Mountain Judicial Circuit

    P.O. Box 2138

    Clarkesville, Georgia 30523

  • Civil trial in shooting of Jonathan Ayers begins

    Remember Jonathan Ayers? Probably not. But you should. In 2009 he was an shot dead by police in what was one of the worst police-involved shooting in American history. Seriously.

    It didn’t become a national scandal.

    It wasn’t even big news.

    But there was so much wrong. So much police did wrong — tactically and morally — it’s hard to get one’s head around how messed up this shooting was. It should be a case study of what not to as a police officers.

    To refresh your memory, Reverend Ayers was driving along and picked up Kayla Barrett. Barrett was a drug addict Ayers had known for years through his priestly duties. This time Barrett was being watched by undercover police. Ayers said some nice words and gave her “all the money he had on him“: $23. 

    Ayers then went to buy gas (probably with a credit card), and after paying inside, got back in his car. At this point he was bum-rushed by mean looking men with guns. Ayers had no idea they were cops. Nor did bystanders also said they thought they were witnessing a robbery. Ayers tried to drive away from his attackers and in doing so backed his car up into deputy, Chance Oxner, who, like a fool, put himself into a position where a car could back up into him. After Ayers starting going forward and driving away, shots were fired at Ayers car. Ayers was shot and killed by a police officer. The officer who killed Ayers was not certified to carry a gun. According to the paramedic who treated Ayers, Ayers asked, “Who shot me?”

    Brian Rickman, the district attorney, failed to convince a grand jury to bring charges against any of the officers involved. Rickman may have not been trying to hard as he was close friends (like pallbearer close) with the unit’s commanding officer, Kyle Bryan.

    [Distraction: Police first tried to justify the shooting by discrediting Ayers. Police threatened to arrest Barrett if she didn’t admit she was having an affair with Ayers. Barrett first told police what they wanted to hear, but then quite convincingly recanted:

    “I’m an addict,” 26-year-old Kayla Barrett admitted Tuesday, saying that Ayers was ministering to her on the day of his death. “I’ve known him awhile – about six or seven years,” she said, calling him “a pastor and a friend.” She said that, over time, Ayers had been lecturing her and trying to get her to straighten out her life and to get off drugs. “I’ve been doing drugs for nine years,” Barrett said, noting that she is addicted to cocaine – “crack, basically.”

    …

    Barrett said she asked Ayers if he could help her out with the back rent, and that he gave “all the money he had on him” – $23. “His last words to me were I didn’t owe him anything,” Barrett said. “Probably 15-20 minutes after that I could hear the shots.” Responding to allegations she has heard, she said, “No, we did not have sex – I’m not capable,” referring to her Aug. 22 miscarriage.

    “He [Ayers] doesn’t have any part in any kind of drug activity,” Barrett insisted. “He’s never solicited me for prostitution. I don’t do that.” “I’ve never been charged with prostitution,” she said. Barrett said Ayers knew her fiancé and stopped to talk to him or her whenever and wherever he saw them and that he had stopped by the motel in the past. “He had been by there before,” she said. “He knew my fiancé also. I didn’t see him very much – about every two months.”

    The issue of their relationship is irrelevant to the shooting, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that Ayers was actually a priest doing priestly good. Police eventually admitted that Ayers was not doing anything illegal and was never part of their investigation. Absurdly, Harrison later testified that Ayers was free to leave if he did not wish to respond to questions when police approached his car. Anyway…]

    As I previously wrote:

    It’s the totality of the situation that bothers me. It’s not just that they were shooting at a car driving away (though that bothers me too). It’s everything. It’s choosing this location to stop and question the man. It’s using plainclothes officers to do so. It’s coming with gun drawn. It’s putting yourself behind a car that just might want to get away. These are all bad choices. Had the police just make one good choice, none of this would have happened.

    I blame the officers for the bad choices they made: 1) approaching Ayers armed, 2) approaching in plain clothes, 3) not making in clear they were police, 4) approaching Ayers when he was in his car and yet 5) not doing a normal car stop, 6) placing themselves in harm’s way behind the car, and 7) shooting at a car driving away (in a gas station, no less).

    Hey, we all make mistakes. And I’ll always give police the benefit of the doubt. But when you make that many mistakes and you end up killing an innocent man, I think you should be punished.

    and:

    Turns out that Billy Shane Harrison, the officer who killed Ayers, didn’t (and doesn’t) actually have police powers. He let his firearm training lapse. Oops (and from TV news).

    Maybe if this drug officer had had proper training, oh, I don’t know, he could have figured a better tactical way of stopping an innocent man for questioning without causing a situation where a good man gets killed while trying to get away from armed men he didn’t know were police!

    Now we don’t need to get into another debate about the shooting. But all you fools (I mean folks) who think this killing was somehow justified, ask yourself this: Can you imagine any police-involved shooting that isn’t justified? (short of cold-blood premeditated murder–which this was not.)

    It’s one thing to say, “Cops sometimes make mistakes. And sometimes a whole bunch of dumb-ass mistakes. And sometimes they comes together and, well, sorry. But mistakes aren’t crimes and we always need to give police the benefit of the doubt.” OK, fair enough. But if you go beyond that and think that all police-involved shootings are justified, then why even have this discussion?

    Well now, a civil trial has begun, four-and-a-half years later.

    There are a lot of names here and it’s confusing because they’re all tied together, but that’s part of the tragedy. Here’s the cast of characters (and do correct me if I’m wrong).

    Jonathan Ayers (killed) was shot by Billy Shane Harrison. Who may have not been certifiedunder Georgia law to carry a weapon at the time. Brian Rickman was the district attorney and friend of Kyle Bryant (who has since died of natural causes). Bryant was the commander of the drug task force that included Harrison and Oxner.

    Lt. Edwin Wilson was a training officer who said he had trained Harrison, but didn’t. Wilson was appointed by Sheriff Randy Shirley. Shirley, who has been reelected, later fired Wilson after Wilson was arrested and charged with a felony for lying about Harrison’s firearm training.

    I’m going to quote hotrod’s (slightly edited) comment from a previous post. And many thanks to hotrod for this update, or else I would not have know the latest.

    This case is still, in my mind, the gold standard for a buffonery-driven police-involved shooting. The three cops did NOTHING right. When they were left with a body on the ground (actually a surgical ward), the whitewash began.

    As others have noted, everything was driven by the totality of circumstances. And to take a hard look (not necessarily a criminal charge) at the totality of circumstances, you have to take a very hard look at Kyle Bryant, the commander of the alphabet soup task force and THE DRIVER OF THE SUV that tried to box in Ayers.

    Kyle Bryant was hired in mid-2009. Brian Rickman, the local DA, said in referring to Bryant – “I put my reputation on this – (he’s) as good as you will ever find.” (That was in the Clayton (GA) Tribune o/a April 16 2009. The URL has gone dead, but I guess someone in the area could do the legwork if they really wanted.)

    (Sidenote – why is a DA this closely involved in LE hiring? Honest question.)

    Kyle Bryant died Nov 25th, 2012, apparently of natural causes.

    Note that Brian Rickman was one of the pallbearers.

    I sincerely hope that Kyle Bryant is at peace. I’m playing with rhetorical fire a little bit in mentioning his death, and I note it here only to point out how close he appears to have been with Brian Rickman.

    Consider that between the time he staked his reputation on Kyle Bryant being as good as they come and the time where he was honored as a pallbearer, Brian Rickman was able to summon up enough objectivity to be the only non-civil law voice Abbie Ayers and her baby had to speak for Johnathan Ayers.

    Awesome. Just awesome. Good job Mr. Rickman.

    Jonathan Ayers is dead. Abbie Ayers a widow, and her son never met his father. Kyle Bryant is dead. I can’t imagine the aftermath of a police-involved shooting, particularly THIS police-involved shooting, did anything for his quality of life in his last couple of years. Billy Shane Harrison, who hadn’t done his training, is no longer a cop. Chance Oxner has gone in the space of a few years from being a task force commander (Bryant’s predecessor) to a burglary investigator (check the Habersham County Sheriff’s website). The training officer handpicked by Sherrif Randy Shirley, Edwin Wilson, was charged with a felony, fired, and apparently got a plea with no jail time.

    But the two sheriffs (Shirley of Stephens County and Terrell of Habersham) and the DA on watch (Rickman) during this absolute grade-A freak show have all been reelected, and it took more than four years to get this case to trial.

    Update (Feb 23, 2014): Jury awards widow $2.3 million. And I guess that is that…. The end.

  • Terence Crutcher shooting

    Terence Crutcher shooting

    I’ll cut right to the chase, I think this is a bad shooting; but not as bad as many people seem to think. (In my very first sentence, I probably just pissed everybody off.)

    Terence Crutcher wasn’t armed. And I don’t think he was an imminent threat when he was shot. Therefore it wasn’t reasonable. And that’s the legal standard for a justifiable shooting.

    One very troubling thing here is why nobody renders aid. It probably wouldn’t have helped (with a bullet going through a body from one side to the other). But you can’t just shoot somebody and not render aid. You can’t. And they did. What they hell were they doing backing up in formation? What weird part of training was that?

    Nor do I like the helicopter guy saying, “he looks like a bad dude.” Would the guy have said that about a white guy? I don’t know. I first thought it was a contributing factor, but from what I’ve read their broadcast was not being transmitted to the officers.

    But what was Crutcher doing? False narratives are unfair. And dangerous, as we just saw in Charlotte. (Keith Lamont Scott seems to have approached officers with a gun, not a book.)

    Despite what I keep reading, Crutcher was not complying. Crutcher was going to his SUV against the orders of cops. This is odd, worrisome even. But it doesn’t elevate somebody to a lethal threat. And Crutcher’s hands were not in the air when he was shot.

    But I still don’t understand why the cop shot at that moment. I like to think, had I been there, I would have taken Crutcher out with my straight baton and a blow to a leg. Tasing would be justified. I don’t want him getting in that car when my partner is telling him not to. Perhaps, if you have the muscle, you just tackle the guy.

    It seems to me Crutcher wanted to get back in his car. And cops are not going to let that happen, because we don’t to be killed like Officer Dinkheller died. What I’m saying is this isn’t Walter Scottbad. It wasn’t Charles Kinseybad. It wasn’t Levan Jonesbad. It wasn’t James Boydbad. It wasn’t Bobby Canipebad. It wasn’t Jonathan Ayersbad.

    Bad is bad, and there’s no reason that every police-involved shooting has to be as bad as the worst shootings to warrant criticism. But I mention those names in part because many of these names are not African American. If people don’t know that cops shoot white people, too, they should. And sometimes these shootings aren’t justified. Too many police are too quick to pull the trigger. And this problem is not evenly spread throughout policing (more on that in my next post).

    Back to Crutcher: As a cop you’re also aware that gunfire deaths of cops are up 50 percentthis year. But you can’t just shoot people because they’re non-compliant and drop their hands. You can’t be a police officer and be that afraid. Damn that Dinkheller video from 18 years ago. Before you shot, you need to wait till you see an imminent threat, like a gun or movement towards what you know is a gun. Look, people should be compliant, but as a cop you know people aren’t going to be compliant. It’s why we have police. People do not act rationally and police officers have to deal with them.

    That said, this wasn’t just a motorist with a stalled car. From the 911 call:

    Caller: There was a guy running from it. He, like ‘somebody was going to blow up.’ I think he’s smoking something.

    Dispatch: Ohh (laughing).

    Caller: I was rude to him too because I got out and was like, ‘do you need help’? And he was like, ‘come here, come here.’ I said ‘well, what’s going on’ and he’s like, ‘come here come here. I think it’s going to blow up.’ I’m like, ‘nah I’m out.’

    Dispatch: OK.

    Caller: He started freaking out and he took off running.

    Crutcher was not acting reasonably. He’s talking about something blowing up. He’s roaming the street in what was probably a drug-induced high (we don’t know for sure, but PCP was found in the car). None of this justifies the shooting. But it does all matter.

    Let’s imagine that Crutcher was going to blow up his SUV or had guns in there. It’s possible (though it wasn’t the case). Then would the shooting be justified? Still, no. (But it sure would be a better narrative.) Even then the shooting would not have been reasonable because at the moment the shot was fired, I don’t think a reasonable police officer would see an imminent threat. At least I don’t. As a cop, you don’t have to wait till a gun is pointed at you before you shoot. You shouldn’t wait till a gun is pointed at you before you shoot. But there’s got to be a gun! I mean, people should be compliant, but as a cop you know people aren’t going to be compliant. It’s why we have cops.

    So now we’ll see how justice plays out. I suspect the officer will be criminally charged, as does happen in many bad shootings.

    So here we have another “incident.” One of many, certainly. And don’t ignore the historical context. But there will be another bad policing shooting. I guarantee it. We can’t base reform on anecdote. Cops kill roughly three people a day. They’re not all good shootings, but most of them are.

    What is the goal? The goal could be fewer bad shootings. The goal could be more accountability for tax-payer funded agents of state. Fine. But we’re never going to have zero bad shootings. Not only is that impossible, it’s not even a good goal. When cops save a life by killing a criminal, it is not an example of “global and national hatred.” Policing is not a pacifist occupation. We give cops guns because sometimes, at certain moments, we want them to shoot somebody. That is the reality. The way forward cannot be continued outrage, incident by incident.

    That said, we can reduce bad and unnecessary police-involve shootings. I’ll get to that in my next post.

  • Reducing police-involved shooting & “The List”

    This past week John McWhorter and I were both (separately) on Bloggingheads.tv with Glenn Loury to talk about race and all the recent shootings. McWhorter emphasized race as a factor of those shot by police and:

    challenged those who disagree to present a list of white people killed within the past few years under circumstances similar to those that so enrage us in cases such as what happened to Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Walter Scott, Sam Debose and others.

    Well I keep track of these things and through Glenn passed some names on to Professor McWhorter. I give sincere respect to Professor McWhorter for his intellectual honesty today in Time:

    The simple fact is that this list exists.

    …

    When a black man is killed by a cop, do we grieve more because there are 46 million of us as opposed to 198 million whites? I doubt it: most Americans never hear about the white men’s deaths at all.

    Rather, we operate according to a meme under which cops casually kill black men under circumstances in which white men are apparently let off with a hand slap — and occasional cases of just that are what often get around social media, suggesting that they are the norm.

    …

    However, at the end of the day any intelligent engagement with these issues must keep front and center that there was a Daniel Shaver for John Crawford, a Michael Parker for Walter Scott, a James Scott for Laquan McDonald. Economist Roland Fryer’s conclusions, stunning even to him, that cops use more force against black people but do not kill them more than they kill whites is perhaps less perplexing than it seems.

    Unlike McWhorter, I was not surprised by Fryer’s conclusions. Like McWhorter, “I am neither a neither Republican nor conservative.” But unlike McWhorter, I am white. (Though I have written about some of the more egregious cases, it sounds a bit funny to say, Romney like, “I have a binder full of white people!”) I don’t want to be liked and linked to by racists and the “alt-right”.

    But I’ve researched and written about race before. I said, “The idea that police don’t use lethal force in a racist way might be a tough pill for many to swallow.” But if one wishes to reduce police-involved shootings — and all of us do; cops don’t go to work hoping to shoot somebody — there are good liberal reasons to de-emphasize the significance of race in policing.

    Jonathan Ayers, Andrew Thomas, Diaz Zerifino, James Boyd, Bobby Canipe, Dylan Noble, Dillon Taylor, Michael Parker, Loren Simpson, Dion Damen, James Scott, Brandon Stanley, Daniel Shaver, and Gil Collarwere all killed by police in questionable to bad circumstances. McWhorteradded Alfred Redwineand Mary Hawkes. You can probably find others from Washington Post data. What they have in common is none were black and very few people seemed to know or care when they were killed.

    According to the Washington Post, 990 people were shot dead by police in 2015. 258 were black. More significant than racial differences — much of which can be explained by racially disproportionate levels of violence — are stunning regional differences.

    Last year in California, police shot and killed 188 people. That’s a rate of 4.8 per million. New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania collectively have 3.4 million more people than California (and 3.85 million more African Americans). In these three states, police shot and killed (just?) 53 people. That’s a rate of 1.2 per million. That’s a big difference.

    Were police in California able to lower their rate of lethal force to the level of New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — and that doesn’t seem too much to ask for — 139 fewer people would be killed by police. And this is just in California! (And California isn’t even the worst state; I’m picking on California because it’s large and very much on the high end.)

    Now keep in mind most police-involved shootings are not only legally justifiable, they are necessary and good at the moment the cop pulls the trigger. But that doesn’t mean that the entire situation was inevitable. Cops don’t want to shoot people. They want to stay alive. You give cops a safe way to reduce the chance they have to pull the trigger, and they’ll certainly take it.

    I really don’t know what some departments and states are doing right and others wrong. But it’s hard for me to believe that the residents of California are so much more violent and threatening to cops than the good people of New York or Pennsylvania. I suspect lower rates of lethal force has a lot to do with recruitment, training, verbal skills, deescalation techniques, not policing alone, and more restrictive gun laws. (I do not include Tasers on this list.)

    If we could bring the national rate of people shot and killed by police (3 per million) down to the level found in, say, New York City (The big bad NYPD shoots and kills just 0.7 per million) we’d reduce the total number of people killed by police 77 percent, from 990 to 231!

    [Update: Here are more names worth considering, taken from comments to this post: David Kassick, Josh Grubb and Samantha Ramsey(examples of officer-created danger), John Winkler, Robert Saylor. Zachary Hammond. Sal Culosi. John Geer. Autumn Steele (This is rare case of an unarmed white person shot by a black officer.) Michael McCloskey.

    Also, it turns out Bobby Canipe lived. But I’m still including him because, my God.

    And it’s well worth watching Glenn Loury and John McWhorter talk about The List in a more recent Bloggingheads.tv]

  • Racial progress, nicer white people, and black-on-black crime (Or: Why don’t white people care about justice?)

    There is a great interview with Chris Rock in New York Magazine. What stuck with me was his insight that “black progress” is a misnomer. What America has seen over the years (in fits and starts) is “white progress”:

    So, to say Obama is [black] progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t.

    The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

    This got me thinking about the common refrain (at least among some people) that blacks don’t care about black-on-black crime. Just because you (and some in the media) keep saying so doesn’t make it true. In fact, the idea that black people don’t care about crime (and its corollary that blacks only care injustice at the hands of police) is so demonstrably false it’s almost absurd to even point out instances of blacks caring about black-on-black crime.

    But I will.

    As this link points out, “You may not have noticed black protests against crime, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t happened.” And even better this and this, which shows specific incidents of protest in Chicago, Harlem, Newark, Saginaw, Gary, and Brooklyn. I’ll also add Baltimore. Coates concludes:

    There is a kind of sincere black person who really would like to see even more outrage about violence in black communities. I don’t think outrage will do it at this point, but I respect the sincere feeling.

    And then there are pundits who write more than they read, and talk more than they listen, and prefer an easy creationism to a Google search.

    Now there is a caveat. People care less, as is reasonable, when one criminal kills another criminal than when an innocent person is killed. But there are plenty of killings to cover all the bases.

    And this is worth watching, this, if you haven’t already:

    (And no, that woman does not have flowers growing out of her head. She’s just standing in front of it.)

    In dealing with black-on-black crime, society has a system to deal with criminals. You kill somebody and (at least in theory) you get found, arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed. That is our justice system at work. It may not be the system, but it’s the system we have.

    But things are different when killings are sanctioned by the state. That’s why so many opponents of the death penalty focus on the fact that we sometimes execute innocent people. Do you think it’s never happened… or does it just not bother you?

    So people are upset about crime. But they’re also upset about justice. The Rodney King riots didn’t happen just because Rodney King got his ass beat. The riots started when the police officers got away with it (at least at first). The protests are about the whole damn system being rigged. Of course people were upset when Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. But the real outrage was that Zimmerman got away with it. Justice shouldn’t be something only Al Sharpton shouts about. It’s a basic American value. Especially, I should add, to a group to which it has been historically denied. (And how did conservatives get away with co-opting “freedom” and liberals with co-opting “justice”? It makes no sense.)

    When police officers get away with murder, it’s not only about crime. It’s about justice. Police officers are backed by the state. Police are the law. So yes, it is worse when a police officer kills an innocent person. (And notice I said “innocent” and not “unarmed.”)

    You could ask — especially if you think black people don’t care about crime — why don’t white people care about justice? Where was the uproar over the police-involved killing (and judicial exoneration) of the Reverend Jonathan Ayers? And there are countless other questionable police-involved shootings. And I don’t mean “countless” figuratively as in “a lot”. I mean “countless” literally as in we don’t count them! What’s up with that?!

    All this said, I do think it’s a shame that the whole Ferguson uproar seems to involve an incident in which a police officer probably acted correctly. Especially since there are any number of cases to pick from in which police have killed an innocent person. I also think people are misguided when they see bad police-involved shootings only in terms of race. I also know people are simply ignorant if they actually believe that police don’t shoot unarmed white people (or give them tickets for seatbelt violations)!

    But everybody is upset about crime. Why don’t white people care about justice?

  • When police-involved shootings aren’t about race

    There’s still the strange belief among some people that police only do bad things to black folk. When I was on Chris Hayes the other night, some commentators thought the initial stop was racially biased. Chris himself questioned whether a white person would have been stopped for a seat-belt violation. I find that crazy talk. There was so much bad going on in that shooting that to be distracted by the initial stop seems to miss the greater point. I know the vast majority of cops don’t give a damn about your race. And the idea that white people don’t get stopped for seat-belt violations is also demonstrably false. (If you want to download and read a large and rather academic pdf report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the matter, knock yourself out.)

    Bad things do not only happen to black people. Most bad shootings don’t become issues till there’s unrest and/or Al Sharpton raises a fuss. And sometimes, a fuss should be raised. (And the last time the Rev tried to help some poor white guy who claimed he was brutalized by police, well, Sharpton sure picked the wrong white guy.)

    I’ve written a few times times about police killing white people, first on this blog in 2008. And then in 2009 there was the horrible police f*ck-up that resulted in police shooting and killing Rev. Jonathan Ayers. This was never big news. (In fact, to my dismay, my limited account of Ayer’s death seems to be the most extensive on record.)

    I’m not saying race never matters, but cops are not shooting black people because they’re black. Cops are not stopping black drivers for seat-belt violations because they’re black (though police may be searching your car for drugsafter that stop because you’re black). To believe that race is the issue in policing ignores and won’t solve the problem of people of all races who are wrongfully shot (or tased, or maced) by police. The issues have less to with race than with bad training and police officers making bad split-second decisions.

    So here’s a black cop shooting Bobby Dean Canipe, an unarmed white person (and a 70-year-old disabled vet at that).

    Clearly in hindsight this is not a good shooting. It’s a traffic stop and an old guy with a cane. And yet when Canipe gets out of his pick-up truck, on the highway, and I see a long hard object turn toward my face — and keep in mind I’m watching a youtube video and I *know* it’s not going to be a gun — I felt my ass pucker.

    Would a reasonable officer have feared for his or life in that situation? Yeah, potentially, probably, I think so.

    Sure it would have been great if the cop had known it was a cane. It also would have been great if the guy hadn’t gotten out of his truck and reached for his cane.

    A mistake. But I think a reasonable one. I’d let the cop off.

    [Hat tip to a commenter for bring this shooting to my attention.)

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