Now there are demonstrations in Chicago, following the release of the video of a young black man (Laquan MacDonald) shot by police some thirteen months ago. The family has already been compensated millions of dollars, and the cop (Jason Van Dyke) was recently charged with first-degree murder. (The protests are at least partly about the delay in charging him.)
Van Dyke says (through his lawyer) he was in fear for his life, which was why he discharged his weapon sixteen times from just a dozen feet away. It's said he was reloading when his partner stepped up to kick a knife away from the guy dying on the ground, ending the incident.
Sixteen times. That's a lot of fear.
It's the level of fear you'd expect if the cop was facing a maniac coming at him with a bloody axe.
Or maybe a charging grizzly bear.
I don't know what really happened in this case. Maybe the cop just plain went nuts. On the other hand, I suspect a lot of people know for sure Van Dyke was simply a racist getting his rocks off. (There had been complaints of him using the n-word, but he'd never been disciplined.)
There were five other cops on the scene, none of which fired a round. Maybe that's why there were so many shots from Van Dyke. He was making up for the lack of action from his fellow officers. I don't know.
About the only remaining question—and the one I've heard nobody talk about—is what the cops should have done in this situation.
I assume walking the streets of Chicago with a knife in your hand is illegal, so the cops probably had to do something about the guy. But what?
Something "less-than-lethal" sounds promising.
They could have shot him with a Taser, but that doesn't always work. Recently a guy loaded up on cocaine was Tased an extravagant number of times with little result. (More controversy there—he later died, but probably from the cocaine.)
The cops had no Taser, but according to reports they were waiting on a unit that had one. In the meantime they were trying to corral the guy with the knife, to keep him from walking off.
Another option might have been a bean-bag gun, but the cops didn't have one of those, either. Bean-bag guns are like shotguns, but with special rounds and loads inside. They're usually carried in the trunk of a squad car (maybe a sergeant's car)—when they exist at all. They're pretty rare.
What else? Pepper spray? Something that squirts a tight stream from a safe distance? Maybe. Might just make their guy take off running, though.
Or what about batons? Go up to MacDonald and have at him, try to knock the knife out of his hand. Maybe whack him on the back of the head.
Thing is, I'm not sure all cops get ninja training for dealing with knife guys. Traditionally, cops are more about shooting.
And by shooting, I mean shoot to kill.
Cops are trained to aim at center of mass. They only go for head shots when they suspect the guy is wearing body armor. Shooting knives or guns out of people's hands is a stunt reserved for white-hat TV cowboys from the fifties.
(There was that famous video of a sniper shooting the gun out of the hand of a hostage-holding fellow who was sitting in a chair, dangling the handgun below his knees. Famous and extremely rare.)
Pretty much the only other option would be to just let the guy walk away with the knife in his hand, trust that he wouldn't cause any more trouble down the road.
No doubt the guy's mother would endorse that response. Mothers all know their kids are no threat to anyone for any reason. Their answer is always: Leave the poor guy alone, why don't you?
(Mothers, being human, are just naturally full of crap 24/7.)
The fact is, the cops had been following the young man for some time, after a report of his trying to break into parked cars. He'd refused many times to drop his weapon (a three- or four-inch folding knife), actually using it at one point to slash a tire on a police SUV. The autopsy showed PCP in his system. Realistically, there wasn't a chance in the world those cops were going to let him wander off into the night.
All that said, I hope you get I'm not suggesting Van Dyke acted properly in this case. Sixteen times is way overboard. Some very serious nonsense must have been going on in that guy's head.
Van Dyke's lawyer said—as they always do—when all the facts are known the cop would be exonerated.
(The other back-shooting cop's lawyer said the same thing.)
That's one attorney with his work cut out for him. I can't think of any scenario that would justify this shooting, short of convincing evidence the cop recognized the black kid as a dangerous space alien notorious for taking a lot of rounds without going down.
Not likely to fly, in court. Especially since the majority of bullet hits were delivered with the guy lying on the pavement.
Van Dyke says the young man lunged at him with the knife, but I saw nothing like that on the video. The cop fired just six seconds after getting out of his squad car, MacDonald in the process of walking away.
This incident is yet another example of why the cops need some special tools to handle suspects like MacDonald. Some sort of sticky-tape shooter that wraps the man up like a mummy. Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt.
Not foolproof, of course. Asshole cops will always find a way to abuse any technology. (And there will probably always be asshole cops.) But it has be a better way than what we've got now.
They could've used it on that cocaine-addled guy from a week or so ago. Or on any number of guys, really, from Michael Brown up to now, or going back to Rodney King.
Or going back to everybody. It's a long, long list.
There'd still be outraged public demonstrations, of course. But they'd all be about the use of mummy tape on unarmed (or armed) black guys. And the fellows the cops used it on could play a starring role in the protests.
I'd call that progress.
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