CLEVELAND

Things are heating up in Cleveland, following the acquittal of a white cope who helped end a massive police chase of a car containing a black couple who refused to comply to an order to stop.

The cop apparently jumped onto the hood of the car and fired fifteen times into the windshield. The car was also hit by other officers, some 137 times altogether. The judge seemed to say it was impossible to say whether the guy on trial killed the couple--or even hit them himself. (I have to assume the wounds were through and through, or ballistics would answer that question.)

A relative of the couple said she could see that the dead folks had made a mistake in fleeing the police, but that their action was not a capital offense. They didn't deserve the death penalty.

I believe she's missing the point.

If you jump in front of a cop and wave a knife in his face, you're likely to get shot dead. Despite the fact brandishing a knife is not a death-penalty offense.

You have to allow for the possibility the cop might fear for his own safety and act accordingly. He also has to consider it's his job to deal with you and your knife. If he lets you stab him to death, that leaves you free to go off and maybe stab somebody else.

If a cop has a moment to think, and room to move behind him, he might draw his weapon but back up, ordering you to drop the knife. Yeah, that sometimes works.

If you're driving along the road and a cop car lights you up, you need to stop. Failing to do so suggests to the cop you have something to hide. Maybe a weapon.

Run from the cops, they will chase you.

The longer you evade in a vehicle, the more cop cars you accumulate behind you. We see this on TV almost every day.

Trying to get a two-ton chunk of rolling metal to stop ain't easy. And that thing can kill people. If the black couple didn't have a gun, you can't say they didn't have a weapon. The car itself is a weapon.

As I understand it, there were something like a hundred cops surrounding that car at the end of the pursuit. Lot of adrenaline out there, guys pumped up, ready for action.

I think it would be an oversimplification to say they all fired at the car out of hatred for black folks.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not saying white cops can't be a bunch of racist assholes. Of course they can. I'm just saying we can't be absolutely sure that's what happened in this case.

Protesters, of course, know different.

And that attitude of certainty fuels the problem. It is not impossible the black couple failed to stop because they were worried what a bunch of white cops would do to them if they did.

This is an atmosphere ripe for escalation. Black folks confront white cops trying to get them to over-react. Cops are getting assassinated in their cars.

Everybody is acting on what they are convinced is rock-solid evidence of incontrovertible truth.

Being human, we're almost completely wrong about all of it. But we can't help it. We're wired to get things wrong and not to notice we're doing it.

The other Cleveland story stoking the heat: The kid shot dead with a "toy" gun in his hand. Folks want action taken against the murdering cops.

First, take a step back.

That gun was a "toy" in only one sense, that it was incapable of firing real bullets. It looked exactly like a semi-automatic pistol. No orange end piece on the muzzle, the way the law requires. It might just as well have been a real but unloaded gun.

On the news I've heard it referred to as a plastic pellet gun. It's not clear if reporters mean the gun was plastic or that it fired plastic pellets. The latter, I suspect. A plastic gun might not be able to handle the pressure necessary to fire a pellet.

On the CBS network news, Scott Pelley likes to call it a "toy pellet gun."  As opposed to a real pellet gun? I don't think there is such a thing as a "toy" pellet gun.

The item is always labeled a toy, but only occasionally is it shown on the screen. In the approximately two seconds that elapsed between the time the cop car arrived and the fatal shot was fired, it would be impossible to tell if the gun was real or not. Cops have to assume guns that look real are real. And full of bullets. It's the only safe and reasonable thing to think.

Will the mother get prosecuted for letting her kid roam the city with what looked exactly like a real gun?

Don't hold your breath.

She's lucky: Her kid was black and the cop was white. Now that's the only issue on the table. Her part in this tragedy will never come under scrutiny.

The cops also made a mistake that day. They pulled up too close to the kid, which meant their response had to be super fast. The kid was right there, walking toward the cruiser. There was no time for the cops to take cover, giving the boy a chance to drop the weapon.

Cops need new technology. They need sci-fi style "phasers"--set in the default position to stun. Knock a guy out and you can disarm and cuff him at your leisure. The phaser should be a cop's primary weapon. Any gun that fires lead slugs should be held in reserve. See a threat, draw the phaser and put the bad guy on the ground.

The technology of policing can always be improved. That's easy. The hard part will be to get humans to stop being so stupid. That'll probably take forever.

Or at least, until we stop being human.