As the news broke out about the verdict regarding the shooting of Philando Castile, I am surprised by how many are surprised that officer Jeronimo Yanez went free. A lot of people, for example here, seem to think Yanez would have been found guilty if Castile was white. While you could certainly argue that racial bias led to Yanez shooting Castile, even if Castile was white, the verdict would remain the same. In our country, it is very hard to convict a law enforcement officer of brutality or homicide. The Supreme Court gives officers broad freedom in determining when and to what extent they may use force. It does not matter if the victim is actually a threat. As long as the officer merely perceives him or her as a threat, the officer may use as much force as they deem necessary. Over the past year as we have talked more about police brutality and racial bias, much of the discussion of solutions has centered on body scanners, citizen review boards, and more training for law enforcement officers. All of these things are great. In practice they should reduce the number of deaths at the hands of the police, which is ultimately the goal. However, in the event of a police officer using questionable force, he or she will still most likely walk away innocent in the eyes of the law.
I was looking at old Facebook posts from a year ago trying to find an article for this post, and I said then that Castile's killer would probably go free. In order to convict an officer of homicide, the prosecution would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he or she knew the victim was not a threat. Because Castile informed Yanez he had a license to carry, and Yanez did originally instruct to pull out his license words like "murder" and "cold blood" have been thrown around. However, Yanez told Castile to stop moving once he became aware of the weapon. It's easy to see that Yanez overreacted and escalated a situation that should have ended much differently. However, in the court of law, all Yanez had to say was that someone who was armed, and pulled over for the investigation of a bank robbery, disobeyed a direct order, so he therefore perceived Castile as a threat. This argument would have been the same if Castile was white.
While Castile's race did not play a role in the verdict, Yanez may have acted differently if Castile were white. Racial bias in our country and law enforcement specifically is well documented. Researchers have shown that black men are seen as larger and more threatening than equally sized white men. Another study has shown that black boys are viewed as older and less innocent than white boys. In simulations, police officers are more likely and quicker to shoot black targets. If an officer must simply feel threatened to legally justify the use of force, and he views black people as more threatening, it follows that officers would shoot black people more often. Our law enforcement officers shoot and kill far more civilians than in other industrialized countries, and racial bias causes them to disproportionately shoot black people.
The Fifth Amendment states that nobody should be deprived of life, liberty or their property by the state without due process. After the killing of Tamir Rice, which looked more like a Grand Theft Auto mission than how police should interact with a child, I read an article with a very interesting take on due process. I can't remember where I read it to provide a link. But, the author argued that due process is not just a list of laws and procedures that must be followed in the courtroom, that it means that the government may not follow just any arbitrary process. In his Second Treatise, John Locke writes that people join together to form a civil society in part because they want "an established, settled, known law." If someone were to rob my apartment, I cannot say with any acceptable degree of certainty that the police would respond in the same way if they arrived on the scene to see me or my white roommate. This level of uncertainty, and the extent to which black people are disproportionately shot and killed by the police, should be seen as a violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Whenever one of these high profile shootings take place, apologists argue that police officers have to make snap decisions in stressful situations, as if anyone disagrees. That law enforcement officers make difficult choices does not absolve them from the consequences of those choices. Quarterbacks also make quick decisions under stress, yet Monday morning we still criticize them for throwing a pick six instead of taking a sack. Obviously, the decisions of law enforcement officer are much more consequential, and because their decisions are quite literally sometimes between life and death, they should be held to the highest of standards, not the lowest.
As I stated earlier, much of the discussion of police reform centers on reducing the number of police shootings. However, convicting police officers for their use of force is a separate matter. If you scroll through the comments section of an article about one of these police shootings of an unarmed or innocent person - past the apologists, racists, Nazi accusations, etc. - you will find someone from the military say something to the effect of "I would have been court martialed if I fired my weapon in that situation." I have asked friends who have served, if this guy or that guy was an insurgent in Iraq, could you have shot him? Their answer is always unequivocally, "No." I think black people in the United States ought to be treated by our law enforcement officers with at least as much respect as our military gives terrorists.
Our military has very strict rules of engagement in order to minimize civilian and illegitimate casualties. Every soldier carries an "escalation of force" card that determines when and to what extent they may use force. If they violate these rules can be punished in military court. While law enforcement agencies across the country do have their own procedures for when their officers may use force, these procedures are not law. For example, the NYPD prohibits its officers from choking suspects, however their officers continue to put suspects in choke holds, and the officer who choked Eric Garner to death walked out of court free.
In order to ensure all people are given due process when dealing with the police, and are not arbitrarily killed, we should have legally mandated rules of engagement for law enforcement officers. While police reform is largely a state and local matter, I do believe the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments grant the federal government the power to set these standards at the national level. I'm not an expert in law enforcement so I don't know what exactly these rules would be, but de-escalating situations and preserving life should be the chief goal of these rules. This would mean officers would not approach drivers with their guns drawn like with Philando Castile. This would mean officers would not choke suspects like with Eric Garner. This would mean officers would not drag women out of their cars for not putting out their cigarette like with Sandra Bland. This would mean officers would not shoot a man pinned to the ground like with Alton Sterling. This would mean law enforcement officers would treat all civilians with the dignity and respect they deserve.
I said in a post before that I judge people by their ability to use logic. I cringe whenever someone responds to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter." It's not that I disagree with the sentiment; but rather, the phrase has quickly turned into a thought-terminating cliche. The statement "black lives matter" says nothing about whether or not all lives matter, but there is nothing about affirming black dignity that suggests denying it to others, as if it were some zero-sum game. In their Guiding Principles, the #BlackLivesMatter posits. "To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others."
The phrase "blue lives matter" also irks me, again not because I devalue the lives of the men and women who serve in law enforcement. The Supreme Court gives law enforcement officers such freedom to determine their use of force because their lives are valued. Whenever a police officer is shot a manhunt ensues and the perpetrator will likely never see a courtroom because we recognize blue lives matter. Sheriff Grady Judd of my neighboring Polk County is famous for saying his officers fired 110 bullets at a cop killer because they ran out of bullets. Currently in Florida, a District Attorney is facing criticism because she refuses to seek out the death penalty for a cop killer. It is so clearly obvious that our country values blue lives that the phrase is unnecessary to say.
It is the thin blue line that "separates us from anarchy." The men and women who risk their lives to protect and serve deserve the utmost respect. However, when they can arbitrarily kill civilians with impunity, the blue line has thickened into tyranny and suffocating black people as they yearn for justice.
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