Police killings raise issue of deadly force
Ferguson is the latest in a long line of police shootings that show the latitude given to law enforcement
Police killings raise issue of deadly force Ferguson is the latest in a long line of police shootings that show the latitude given to law enforcement Check out this story on Freep.com: http://on.freep.com/1tgzTkv
McClatchy/Tribune - MCT Informat Published 10:09 a.m. ET Nov. 25, 2014 | Updated 10:18 a.m. ET Nov. 25, 2014
Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed in a confrontation with police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo, on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014. A grand jury decided not to indict the officer.(Photo: Brown Family via AP)
The Ferguson case is the latest in a long line of police shootings that show the latitude that the law and courts give law enforcement in using deadly force.
The questions of when is it OK to use lethal force and who decides what's reasonable are at the heart of these cases.
A law professor who researches FBI statistics says he found that an average of 400 civilians are killed by police in the U.S. each year and that excessive police violence is usually part of a larger pattern in a law enforcement agency.
Some see a problem with police agencies being able to investigate themselves
WASHINGTON – A Missouri grand jury's decision to spare police Officer Darren Wilson from criminal charges makes his case the latest in a long line of police shootings that show the latitude that the law and the courts give law enforcement in using deadly force.
The question for the panel that decided the case was never whether Wilson fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, but rather whether the Aug. 9 killing constituted a crime. In declining to indict Wilson, the grand jury reached a conclusion that is far more the norm than the exception.
"For a cop to be indicted and especially to be convicted later of a crime in these kinds of situations is very, very unusual," said Chuck Drago, a police practices consultant and former police chief in Oviedo, Fla.
In Hebron, Ky., a wooden cross on a narrow, tree-lined road marks the spot where 19-year-old Samantha Ramsey died a violent death. In April, she was killed when a sheriff's deputy fired four bullets through her car windshield as she left a party on the banks of the Ohio River.
Ramsey, who did not have a gun, was dead before her mother got to the hospital. A grand jury took one day to review evidence — including the deputy's testimony that he feared for his life — before declaring the shooting justified and leaving her family among those asking: When is it OK to use lethal force and who decides what's reasonable?
That question lies at the heart of Ramsey's case, Michael Brown's case, and a long list of similar clashes between civilians and police officers that ended with casualties and accusations. Some cases do result in criminal charges. A Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., police officer was indicted in January in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man who wrecked his vehicle and apparently knocked on the front door of a home seeking help. Thinking incorrectly that the man was trying to break into her home, the homeowner called police. Three officers responded and one shot the unarmed victim, authorities say.
But far more often, officers aren't prosecuted. Among those cases are:
■The 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police, caught on video, that led to charges against four officers. After a jury trial in 1992, all were acquitted, a decision that sparked violent riots across the city and led to Chief Daryl F. Gates resigning and the LAPD re-examining its use of force.
■The beating of Kelly Thomas, a homeless man with schizophrenia, in 2011 by Fullerton, Calif., police when he wouldn't follow their commands. Thomas died a few days later. That scene also was captured on video — with Thomas shouting, "Dad, help me!" — and led to charges against three officers. Two were acquitted; prosecutors dropped charges against the third.
■A grand jury in Ohio declining to indict a police officer who shot a man carrying an air rifle inside a Wal-Mart in August. And in May, an Alabama grand jury declined to indict an officer who shot and wounded an Air Force airman he pulled over on the highway. The police chief said the officer shot the man after he got out of his car based on a perceived threat.
"We all look at it from our own perspective," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "Ultimately, either one perceives it as a police officer in a split second using deadly force to protect himself, or a police officer committing murder."
Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist, said only a "small tip" of police shootings are considered so outrageous as to merit criminal charges. An absence of prosecution, he said, does not mean that an officer did a good job or should not face a wrongful-death lawsuit. But criminal charges are a different burden.
"He may not do (his job) well, and he may have made a mistake, but it's not like he woke up in the morning and said, 'I'm going to go out and kill someone,' " Alpert said.
What the law calls 'reasonable'
Law professor Franklin E. Zimring, who directs the criminal justice research program at the University of California, Berkeley's Earl Warren Legal Institute, said "enormous obstacles" hinder criminal cases involving law enforcement officers.
One is the burden of proof, which requires prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an officer acted improperly. That burden "has special force when you have police officers" on trial, Zimring said.
Another is the question of what police officers feared would have happened had they not acted, he said. And then there is the he-said-she-said nature of most cases, with publicly trusted authorities up against sometimes marginal victims.
"It has to be a really horrendous outlier before you can expect the criminal process to succeed," Zimring said.
Chemerinsky explained: "There's a great deal of deserved respect for the difficulties of being a police officer. ... "There's a desire to give great deference to police officers."
As with Ferguson, critics sometimes see law enforcement agencies as being reluctant to go after their own. In Brown's case, protesters vilified the Ferguson Police Department for withholding Wilson's name from the public for a week, giving the officer and his family time to relocate while the case was investigated. Moreover, prosecutors depend on police officers as witnesses, and jurors give officers in peril the benefit of the doubt.
Brown's mother screams, sobs over grand jury decision
Police use of force is guided by the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. Another legal standard is that police should use no more force than is reasonably necessary.
States and police departments have developed their own policies that generally permit officers to use force when they reasonably fear imminent physical harm. The Supreme Court shaped the national standard in a 1989 decision that said the use of force must be evaluated through the "perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene" rather than being judged after the fact.
But even though police are legally empowered to use deadly force when appropriate, an officer's perception of danger can be strongly influenced by the race of a suspect, said Lori Lightfoot, a Chicago lawyer who used to investigate police shootings for the police department there — particularly in a community like Ferguson, where an overwhelmingly white department patrols a majority-black city.
"Take any environment you live in — if there's not diversity ... that is a void in your experience," she said.
400 civilians killed each year
Zimring has analyzed nearly four decades of FBI statistics on police-involved killings — including cases in which officers also were victims. His research, which has yet to be published, shows that an average of 400 civilians, armed and unarmed, are killed by police in this country each year. It also shows that excessive police violence is usually part of a larger pattern in a law enforcement agency, he said.
Samantha Ramsey was shot and killed by a police officer in Hebron, Ky. A grand jury decided not to indict the officer, who said he shot Ramsey because he feared for his life. (Photo: Tina Susman/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Police critics in and around Ferguson argue that their region is evidence of such patterned behavior. Rufus J. Tate Jr., former president of the Mound City Bar Association, a group of black lawyers, can tick off a list of Missouri cases involving police charged with serious crimes but cleared of charges.
"A badge is an American halo," Tate said; it keeps jurors from believing that the men and women assigned to protect them can commit crimes.
In the Ferguson case, Wilson has not spoken publicly about what happened, and no direct video of the shooting has surfaced. The shooting followed a skirmish that began when Wilson told Brown and a friend to move from the street onto the sidewalk. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said Monday the two men fought inside Wilson's car before Wilson shot Brown multiple times.
In explaining the grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson, McCulloch cited what he said were inconsistent and erroneous witness accounts. No video is known to exist of the encounter. But helmet cameras, dashboard cameras and social media have put a spotlight on cases that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Cameras don't always help
The seconds before Samantha Ramsey's April 26 shooting were captured by a video camera on the car of Boone County Sheriff's Deputy Tyler Brockman, who was responding to another call around 2 a.m. when he came upon a rollicking outdoor party. He told a grand jury he decided to check on drivers because he suspected some were drunk.
Ramsey's sedan can be seen attempting to pull onto a road from a gravel patch. Brockman, who is outside of his car, walks toward her in an attempt to stop her. She keeps moving as the deputy moves alongside her car. Both disappear from view.
The shooting was not caught on video, but the aftermath was.
Smoke billowed from a ditch into which Ramsey's car came to rest. A female passenger staggered into view and dropped to the ground, burying her face in her hands. A young man who was also in the car walked across the road, then fell to his knees, clutched his head in his hands, and rocked back and forth.
A statement released that day by the Sheriff's Department said Brockman fired in self-defense after Ramsey accelerated, endangering the deputy.
Some witnesses, including the female passenger, disputed the official account. They questioned how Brockman, 29, ended up on the car hood and asked why he could not have found a nonlethal way to stop Ramsey.
When the grand jury reviewed the case on Nov. 6, Brockman testified that he had no choice but to jump onto the hood to avoid being run down.
"I go, 'I'm going to die, she is about to kill me,' " Brockman said, according to transcripts released after the grand jury decision. "And, and I went, 'No, I'm not going to die here. I'm not going to die like this. ...
"And I reached down and I grabbed my pistol and I put it up to the window and I fired," said Brockman, who suffered a broken foot.
A toxicology report showed Ramsey had marijuana in her system and a blood-alcohol level of 0.120 percent. In Kentucky, drivers younger than 21 are considered to be under the influence at .02 percent blood-alcohol level.
Families grieve, hope for change
After the grand jury's decision not to indict in the Ferguson case, Brown's family said, "We are profoundly disappointed that the killer of our child will not face the consequence of his actions. ... We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen."
Brandi Stewart is convinced her daughter was trying to pull to the side of the road, not to flee or to hit Brockman, and that the deputy overreacted in killing her child. She said nothing excuses the pumping of four bullets into her daughter at close range.
After the grand jury decided not to indict Brockman earlier this month, Stewart of of Covington, Ohio, showed little sign of anger at the deputy. Her anger is reserved for a system that allows law enforcement agencies to investigate their own, she said.
"Do I think there's a good ol' boy's club? Yes, I do," she said. "Do I think they cover up for their own? Yes, I do."
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