You may see the NYPD killing of Eric Garner as “brutal and unjustified.” That’s why the New York Times doesn’t view you as an “expert.” (image: Ramsey Orta)
The message of a New York Times piece by Michael Wines and Frances Robles (8/22/14) was clear: Police officers who shoot unarmed civilians need to be be given the benefit of the doubt.
As Wines and Robles see it, everyone is in agreement on this point:
The police, the courts and experts say some leeway is necessary in situations where officers under crushing stress must make split-second decisions with life-or-death consequences.
Or as Timothy Maher, one of four police officers turned academics cited in the article, puts it: “It’s a difficult job for coppers out there.”
The only ones who don’t seem to get it, in the article’s perspective, are occasional members of the public:
Some citizens who read witnesses’ accounts of police shootings or view cellphone videos of them see the shootings as brutal and unjustified, which underscores a frequent gap between public perceptions and official views.
New York Times illustration for a story about the need to give “leeway” to cops who kill. (photo: Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto)
The piece goes on to explain why these perceptions that police killings are “brutal and unjustified” are mistaken:
If an officer believes he or someone else is in imminent danger of grievous injury or death, he is allowed to shoot first, and ask questions later.
Of course, not all “experts” agree that seeing some police killings as “brutal and unjustified” is a misperception, or that cops need to be given “leeway” to kill whenever they feel like they’re under “crushing stress.” In a Wisconsin Law Review article from 2000, Seton Hill law professor John Jacobi pointed out the clear downside to general reluctance of prosecutors to hold police accountable for killing unarmed civilians:
Although the majority of officers perform their difficult duties without brutalizing the people they serve, police too frequently attack, beat and kill civilians. The phenomenon of police misconduct and civilian distrust can be traced in large part to a cycle of impunity, by which the reluctance of local government to prosecute bad cops empowers future misconduct and drives communities to regard the police as adversaries rather than as protectors.
What Jacobi sees as a “cycle of impunity,” the New York Times presents as the break you need to give people with a tough job.
It appears the Times is fine with cops shooting first
But not so keen on anyone else, especially the media
Asking questions later.
I appreciate the NYT article for making conspicuous the culture of cheerleading enthusiasm for NYPD in NYC. That thinking – “give them the benefit of the doubt” – also is part of the theme song for the plethora of TV cops show. Together, those two regions of media, the theatrical and the journalistic, help generate enthusiastic cheerleading for police systems that need to be radically revised.
My opinion that the NYT story is incredibly scary with its brutal honesty for cheerleading support of NYPD is based on my experiences covering police in Rochester, New York, for the (Gannett) Democrat & Chronicle, and as a former reporter at the defunct Washington Star (Washington D.C.) and the New York Post. Those newsroom positions allowed me to witness first hand the rah-rah cheerleading of urban municipal police departments and how the news media sucks up to the police departments irresponsibly.
Scary.
Wow! No they shouldn’t be given a break. Question authority, question everything. They should be held accountable. They are here to PROTECT and SERVE. They are no more special than any other life on this planet.
As Wines and Robles see it, everyone is in agreement on this point:
“The police, the courts and experts say some leeway is necessary in situations where officers under crushing stress must make split-second decisions with life-or-death consequences.”
*****
Far too often, the split-second decision is only life-or-death for innocent civilians, and not for the police. Someone who kills innocent people because they can’t handle the stress of the job clearly should not have been given the job in the first place–
NYTimes article–very scarey! Aside from the total propaganda around police immunity. there was no mention of the very major issue of racism. This morning on the news an African American woman with 4 children in her car was pulled over and put in handcuffs. She was visibly upset and worried about her kids. The six yr old left the car and came out with his hands up. At that point the cops loosened up. They were looking for a single driver in a tan car the make of which I forget. However, this woman was driving a red toyota. Total mismatch of description–but oh yes, she was Black. What else is important in police work.
The brutal murder of Michael Brown really has police departments back peddling to try and cover their abusive tails. Shortly have his murder another young Black male was murdered not far from Ferguson. We don’t hear about him. But the statistics of police killing of Black males is staggering in this country. It is not matched with similar crimes against white people.
Now police departments are pissed they may lose their military toys Didn’t the NYTimes ever hear that one shouldn’t give guns to children!
The police code of silence about fellow officers’ misdeeds is called “omerta” (a Mafia term).
What’s the word for media apologia and cover-ups for the cops?
(Ontario goes further, with a Special Impunity Unit (SIU) to legally exonerate police abuses.)
I think it’s time we stopped giving cops the benefit of the doubt. How many cops have been shot and killed compared to the number of people the cops have shot? Or seriously injured? Or harmed in some way, such as breaking into the wrong house to make a drug bust, terrifying families and children.
This sort of story from the Times is why I have quit taking it. It used to be a much fairer and more credible and honorable news source.
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I think cops have been given the “benefit of the doubt” for too long. How many cops have been killed in the line of duty and how many civilians? Or seriously injured? Or terrified, including children, when cops bust into the wrong house to make a drug bust. I have seen too many pictures & videos of cops killing or otherwise harming someone they decided was guilty of something. I vividly remember a photo in the Mpls. Trib of a cop chasing a young man wearing only bathing trunks who clearly had no weapon but the cop thought he did. How many cops are ever indicted and convicted for homicide? It’s time we putting pressure on our attorneys general to do so.
This NYTimes story is another indication of the wrong road it’s going down. I used to take the Times, but stopped it and refuse to re-subscribe exactly because of stories like this.
Sadly, ever since major dailies made the shift from bloodless and “boring” political and economic coverage (partisan or otherwise) on issues critical to citizens in a democracy *to* distracting Police Gazette-type, “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” sensationalist journalism, the decay in American newsgathering has accelerated.
Police department one-sided reports and favorable-to-the-government leaks have become the bread and butter of many lazy steno-journalists who paraphrase and pass along these items to readers in order “to compete” with television. Ergo, to remain in good standing with law enforcement “sources,” pampered “journalists” and paper after paper publish the department’s view.
After all, the accused has a right to silence and in most cases intelligently invokes it. Not so the department and its “extension,” the District Attorney’s office, all too eager to sway the public to its view via stenos all too eager to accommodate.
The law long ago became one more political weapon in the arsenal of “our betters.” The more people become intimidated by, and/or accepting of, these “necessary” homicidal police tactics and “justifications,” the easier it is to keep the citizens of an otherwise vigorous Constitutional democracy docile.
Be well.
The article quotes the NYT piece as saying “If an officer believes he or someone else is in imminent danger of grievous injury or death, he is allowed to shoot first, and ask questions later.” That suggests such a killing will be automatically excused based solely on the officer’s subjective belief. Not so. While the law of self-defense is potentially different in every state, a general principle of the criminal law in the U.S. is that anyone who kills in self-defense must hold both a good faith subjective belief of imminent danger of great bodily harm or death, and have acted objectively reasonably. In other words, the defense of self-defense has both a subjective element and an objective element to it. The NYT piece, at least as quoted here, refers only to the subjective element, i.e., the killer’s belief. Some jurisdictions have established an “imperfect self-defense defense.” In that case, the killer subjectively believes he is in imminent danger of great bodily harm or death. However, when that fear is unreasonable, (i.e., the objective element of self-defense is missing) the defense of self-defense is “imperfect,” and a charge of manslaughter is appropriate. Manslaughter, a serious felony, is a far cry from excusing the homicide altogether as the quoted portion from the NYT piece would have us believe is the case.
As to whether the analysis I offered is “informative,” here’s my thought: This website is called FAIR, which stands for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. The NYT piece is inaccurate in a number of respects, one of which is its assertion about the law of self-defense. My only goal was to inform readers about that inaccuracy.