For Bryant, I don't think the cop had enough time to even attempt to de-escalate. Perhaps the most we can criticize is that he didn't tase her - it ought to take the same amount of time to tase vs. shoot.
RE Toledo, I think the video proves that cop made the decision before he even had the chance to turn around. ~838 ms passed between when Toledo turned and the shot was fired. That's not enough time for the cop to have made the decision within that window, which necessarily means that he made the decision beforehand. This is just unacceptable and unprofessional as procedure. It speaks to how fucked up our trigger-happy training regimes are.
I think the best way to deal with the outrage over imperfect cases like these is to take the activists' complains "seriously but not literally". We should always be looking holistically at the totality of circumstances, not just the events themselves.
The right makes the error of insisting on only judging the momentary events, since that's what criminal law does. The left makes the error of insisting that since the whole system is corrupted by injustice, every action by that system is not only questionable, but almost certainly unjust.
Sometimes, there just are no happy answers. Both deaths are tragedies. But if I were dictator, my first action on this would be to abolish the toxic siege-mentality culture of policing, and then ban the use of no-knock warrants at the state/local level (they're just too abusable to be trusted outside of the better-trained federal agencies). It may not seem like the latter is actually connected to anything, but if you ever read Balko's "Rise of the Warrior Cop", it becomes clear that even separately from the traditional narrative about policing's racial origins in slave patrols, the "shoot first, ask questions later" and siege mentalities really started with the expansion of no-knock warrants during the drug war.
In the Bryant case, generally the sidearm is carried on the dominant side and the Taser is carried on the non-dominant side, cross-draw style. This makes sense, because cross-draw is less secure, and if you wind up grappling with someone they are likely to be able to gain control of your cross-draw weapon, and you really don't want that happening with a sidearm. This might play into how that one cop drew her sidearm instead of her taser; it was just easier, and the brain tends to do screwy things under a lot of stress.
In the Toledo case, average human reaction time runs in the 150-300ms range. ~838ms is probably about right for someone to recognize that someone else is turning around, center a drawn gun, and pull the trigger. That reaction time definitely means that the cop had the gun drawn, and probably at low ready. Based on everything he knew at the time, that was eminently reasonable; the report was live rounds fired at passing cars, and the whole action is faster than reaction thing means that if Toledo had actually had a loaded gun and been planning to shoot the officer, the window for counterfire is very narrow. Again based on what the officer knew at the time, Toledo was a serious danger to the general public, and while there's generally no specific obligation to protect the public, the general desire to do so is fairly common among cops in my experience.
Pretty much agree on that assessment of the general errors. The war on drugs has cause a whole lot of harm, and the police things is definitely part of that. Not sure that the federal agencies are a whole lot better with regards to not epically screwing up after Ruby Ridge and Waco, might be best to get rid of no-knock warrants altogether, and scrap the whole drug war framework. The one thing I'm very much opposed to is scapegoating the individual cops because something sucky that wasn't their fault happened.
Cases like Ma'Kiah Bryant and Adam Toledo are tricky because they're failures, but not law enforcement failures.
There are two wrong responses that seem to be very common. "They died, must be the cop's fault," and "it was a justified shoot, so no problems here."
For Bryant, I don't think the cop had enough time to even attempt to de-escalate. Perhaps the most we can criticize is that he didn't tase her - it ought to take the same amount of time to tase vs. shoot.
RE Toledo, I think the video proves that cop made the decision before he even had the chance to turn around. ~838 ms passed between when Toledo turned and the shot was fired. That's not enough time for the cop to have made the decision within that window, which necessarily means that he made the decision beforehand. This is just unacceptable and unprofessional as procedure. It speaks to how fucked up our trigger-happy training regimes are.
I think the best way to deal with the outrage over imperfect cases like these is to take the activists' complains "seriously but not literally". We should always be looking holistically at the totality of circumstances, not just the events themselves.
The right makes the error of insisting on only judging the momentary events, since that's what criminal law does. The left makes the error of insisting that since the whole system is corrupted by injustice, every action by that system is not only questionable, but almost certainly unjust.
Sometimes, there just are no happy answers. Both deaths are tragedies. But if I were dictator, my first action on this would be to abolish the toxic siege-mentality culture of policing, and then ban the use of no-knock warrants at the state/local level (they're just too abusable to be trusted outside of the better-trained federal agencies). It may not seem like the latter is actually connected to anything, but if you ever read Balko's "Rise of the Warrior Cop", it becomes clear that even separately from the traditional narrative about policing's racial origins in slave patrols, the "shoot first, ask questions later" and siege mentalities really started with the expansion of no-knock warrants during the drug war.
In the Bryant case, generally the sidearm is carried on the dominant side and the Taser is carried on the non-dominant side, cross-draw style. This makes sense, because cross-draw is less secure, and if you wind up grappling with someone they are likely to be able to gain control of your cross-draw weapon, and you really don't want that happening with a sidearm. This might play into how that one cop drew her sidearm instead of her taser; it was just easier, and the brain tends to do screwy things under a lot of stress.
In the Toledo case, average human reaction time runs in the 150-300ms range. ~838ms is probably about right for someone to recognize that someone else is turning around, center a drawn gun, and pull the trigger. That reaction time definitely means that the cop had the gun drawn, and probably at low ready. Based on everything he knew at the time, that was eminently reasonable; the report was live rounds fired at passing cars, and the whole action is faster than reaction thing means that if Toledo had actually had a loaded gun and been planning to shoot the officer, the window for counterfire is very narrow. Again based on what the officer knew at the time, Toledo was a serious danger to the general public, and while there's generally no specific obligation to protect the public, the general desire to do so is fairly common among cops in my experience.
Pretty much agree on that assessment of the general errors. The war on drugs has cause a whole lot of harm, and the police things is definitely part of that. Not sure that the federal agencies are a whole lot better with regards to not epically screwing up after Ruby Ridge and Waco, might be best to get rid of no-knock warrants altogether, and scrap the whole drug war framework. The one thing I'm very much opposed to is scapegoating the individual cops because something sucky that wasn't their fault happened.
#4 Messages to the Front: the Left is not supposed to be a square peg or a round peg. Stop trying to pound everyone into a triangular hole.