Lets Us Examine Some Basic Facts About America’s Police Dilemma…

Having served as a police offi­cer in one of the most dan­ger­ous places in the world and hav­ing been shot at point-blank range while on duty, I try to be restrained in my crit­i­cisms where offi­cers may pre­sum­ably make mis­takes in tense situations.
During my ser­vice, I was nev­er issued with a stun-gun (oth­er­wise knowns as a taser). The fact is that we did not have them, but some of us were equipped with pep­per spray, which came in the form of a can­is­ter attached to our util­i­ty belt.
A can­is­ter of pep­per spray is not the same thing as a taser; it is dif­fer­ent in all aspects and would not feel the same way that a loaded gun could ever be mis­tak­en for a taser, to the extent that could be a possibility.
To the extent that a loaded Glock pis­tol, the stan­dard use weapon of American police, could be mis­tak­en­ly drawn, aimed, and fired in a flu­id sit­u­a­tion with the offi­cer real­iz­ing that he or she is hold­ing a loaded hand gun instead of a taser may go to the offi­cer’s com­pe­tence to have been in that sit­u­a­tion in the first place.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that police offi­cers’ com­pe­tence is not and can­not be quan­ti­fied by the offi­cer’s length of service.
Using an offi­cer’s length of ser­vice as a mea­sure of com­pe­tence and grit under pres­sure would mean less senior offi­cers are nec­es­sar­i­ly less com­pe­tent in the field and vice-ver­sa. No evi­dence or data would reli­ably sup­port that theory.
Experience is not the same as competence.

I under­stand that offi­cers are trained to have their ser­vice weapon on their right side (assum­ing that the right hand is the dom­i­nant hand, while the stun-gun(taser) is worn on the left side using the same variables.
The reverse would be true if the offi­cer’s dom­i­nant hand is his or her left hand.
Whether it is rea­son­able to assume that a trained, expe­ri­enced offi­cer who was report­ed­ly in the process of train­ing junior offi­cers when she drew her ser­vice weapon instead of her taser and killed Daunte Wright is an accept­able defense is for the courts to decide.
It does not rest with her chief to float an acci­den­tal dis­charge the­o­ry to see how it will play in the court of pub­lic opinion.
Within the lay­ers of pro­tec­tion that results in police use-of-force-impuni­ty also exist the lay­er that allows police offi­cers days to con­coct sto­ries in their defense before speak­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors or even their boss­es, even in instances in which they take life.
None of those def­er­en­tial & pref­er­en­tial excep­tions exists for ordi­nary Americans; worse yet, they do not exist for African-Americans, nei­ther do they exist for oth­er professionals.
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Now that we have con­sid­ered a few of the ele­ments that may be con­sid­ered rea­son­able or not, we have come full cir­cle to the ques­tion of “why”?
Was there a need to pull a weapon in the sit­u­a­tion in which offi­cer Kim Potter pulled what she thought was a taser but end­ed up shoot­ing Daunte right to death?
It is almost a cer­tain­ty that because of the flu­id­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion in which mis­ter Danute Wright lost his Kim Potter will be allowed to wig­gle out of a crim­i­nal charge, much less a pros­e­cu­tion & conviction.
The larg­er issue here is the immense pow­ers giv­en to police, not just to inter­rupt the lives of cit­i­zens on the most friv­o­lous of pre­tex­es, i.e., air fresh­en­ers sup­pos­ed­ly impair­ing a dri­ver’s view, bro­ken tail­light, police can infringe on the rights of cit­i­zens, and in many cas­es kill, often­times out of their own fears and biases.
This will not end any­time soon; pro­po­nents of these tac­tics will point to police abil­i­ty to nab seri­ous offend­ers using the legal­i­ties with­in sim­ple traf­fic stops.
The sad real­i­ty is that in these United States, Police depart­ments have been allowed to devel­oped and morph into dan­ger­ous enti­ties that oper­ate out­side civil­ian con­trol. Preferential treat­ments and pro­tec­tions not avail­able to any oth­er work­ers are sum­mar­i­ly giv­en to police.
Police offi­cers are arguably the least edu­cat­ed of any group of work­ers. Yet they are giv­en unprece­dent­ed pow­ers, includ­ing life and death, and a cloak of pro­tec­tion called ‘qual­i­fied immunity.
An oper­at­ing sur­geon who uses a scalpel instead of a nee­dle and ends up killing that patient does not get to walk away and say whoops.
An aver­age mem­ber of the pub­lic who takes the life of anoth­er even under the most rea­son­able cir­cum­stances that are not imme­di­ate­ly deemed self-defense does not get to say whoops.
Neither do they get to walk away (resign) with­out answer­ing to author­i­ties, leav­ing the expla­na­tion to their boss.
American police will not stop killing inno­cent unarmed cit­i­zens; it is too easy to do and too dif­fi­cult to hold them account­able under the present construct.
The trag­ic irony is that the United States con­tin­ues to inter­fere in oth­er nations’ affairs relat­ed to how they enforce their laws, while American police rou­tine­ly kill African-Americans with­out accountability.
There also needs to be an air­ing out at least by the media, of the ‘war­rior train­ing’ pro­vid­ed to American police in some cas­es despite poli­cies against it.
Police train­ing in Israel where the Israeli mil­i­tary and police train American police in the kill-tac­tics they use against Palestinians also con­tin­ue to play out on American streets.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.