WALKING IN THE PARK

According to the Web site Statista, American police shot and killed 370 white people in 2019. The number for blacks was 235. You could overlay the total numbers of whites and blacks in the country and compare the overall rate of police killings by race, but that would not be accurate or useful.

The population that needs to be studied is not the total number of people, but the number of people who fight the police in hopes of avoiding arrest. Fighting the police is the event that leads to shootings in virtually all known cases.

(One glaring exception: the white cop in Chicago who shot the black guy with the knife. But we have no way of knowing if this shooting was racially motivated.)

I don't know what those numbers are, or if they have ever been compiled. But those are the only numbers that count, especially if you're trying to make the case that cops kill more black folks than whites, proportionately. And then speculate about why that is.

When asked by a reporter why blacks are still being shot and killed by police in this country, Donald Trump said, "They shoot white people, too. They shoot white people, too."

But even if we had the relevant numbers, I'm not sure it would mean that much. Individual circumstances have to be taken into consideration.

Here is one of the latest cases: Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

We have scant video of this event, but we can see that Blake was on the ground, wrestling with police, before breaking away and walking quickly around the front of his SUV and attempting to get into the driver's seat.

It is likely he had in mind driving away.

One of the cops was walking right behind the man. (Probably should have been running.) The cop had his service weapon in his right hand. He took hold of Blake's T-shirt with his left and pulled back, in an apparent attempt to prevent Blake from leaving the scene. The shirt was stretchy, and not likely to prove a reliable grip point.

One hand on the shirt, one hand on his pistol, one second to make a decision. Let's consider his options.

The long shot: The officer holsters his weapon and grabs Blake around the neck, beginning what might turn out to be a choke hold, and pulls him backwards away from the vehicle. By then, perhaps another officer could be in a position to assist.

Would that have worked? Hard to say. The cops had already fought with the man, rolled around on the ground with him. They lost that fight, even though Tasers were deployed. They might well have lost another physical struggle with the man. People trying to avoid arrest are highly motivated, especially when they sense victory.

Also, there might not have been enough time for the officer to try this move. Things were progressing rapidly. Blake might have taken that second or so to move out of range, to climb all the way into the car, to begin driving off in what cops often describe as a deadly weapon.

It's likely the officer concluded, in his half second of decision-making time, that using the weapon he already had in his hand was the only reasonable option going forward.

Of course, might still have avoided the action he's in trouble for today. He could theoretically have used the gun like a baton to knock the man out. But we generally don't see that technique employed in modern times.

(Remember TV's Wyatt Earp, clubbing ne'er-do-wells and drunks with the super-long barrel of his Buntline Special sixshooter?)

Still, if you're going to end up shooting the guy, why shoot him seven times in the back?

"In the back" is the easiest to answer. The guy's back was the only target available. The geometry of the situation prevented the cop from spinning the guy around, especially if he had to do it one handed with a grip on the guy's stretchy T-shirt. Also, there was a knife involved (found on the scene). Turning the man around might have brought that thing into play.

OK, but why shoot him seven times?

Perhaps the officer was pumped up by the recent physical action and simply overreacted. Or maybe his trigger finger operated in a kind of spasm, firing multiple times before it was possible to assess the results. (TV news organizations tend to omit this part of the video, so I don't know how quickly or slowly those seven shots were made.)

Or maybe the shooting was controlled. Maybe the firing of each additional round was based on the efficacy of the previous round(s). Maybe it took seven bullets before Blake stopped moving forward. It would hardly make sense to shoot the man fewer times than was needed to keep him from driving off in his car. Maybe seven was the necessary number of shots to get the job done.

(TV news folks often make the point that Blake's children were in the car. So what? Are cops supposed to let a suspect go if the guy's got his children handy? If so, expect to see a lot more crime committed by guys in carpools, their vehicle loaded up with young'uns.)

Donald Trump says the cop "choked," like missing a three-foot putt in a championship golf game. He says the cop should have done something else. He doesn't say what.

We come now to potential changes in police procedure. Could policy tweaks prevent future shootings of this nature? Maybe.

When a car chase becomes too dangerous to bystanders, cops are often expected to abandon the chase. Especially if they know who the guy is and can pick him up at home in a day or two.

Currently, though, police on foot are expected to follow through with their arrests. Once initiated, the arrest must come to its proper conclusion: the subject in custody.

I've written earlier about the possibly of forgoing arrest in favor of issuing a citation, to eliminate the most stressful portion of any encounter with the authorities. Obviously, folks have to know in advance there will be no attempt to arrest them, lest they preempt what they fear is coming by beginning an unnecessary fight.

And clearly, an escalation to physical confrontation takes the giving of a citation off the table.

But perhaps police reformers will consider another, more radical, deescalation policy: Just like in dangerous car chases, if an attempted arrest proceeds to the point where deadly force is becoming likely, police officers might be authorized (or required) to back off and let the subject walk away.

Maybe individual criminals could be apprehended later at home or at work. Or maybe the police could hope to encounter the fellow again sometime, on the occasion of his next crime, perhaps, and have better luck arresting him.

Not exactly textbook "law and order," but it might be necessary.

So, have we come to this place in history? Maybe. When the killing of every single black man becomes an incitement to riot, society might literally be safer if more bad guys are let go without harm.

(Providing the police with better containment tools would be another way of preventing deaths, but such solutions may be years away, and something needs to be done sooner than that if we're going to hold this country together.)

Naturally, a policy change that allows bad guys to get away would cause a furor in the ranks of the police. Loss of morale, and so forth. They would likely see it as an abdication of their duties.

No doubt many cops would quit in protest. Replacements would have to be hired and trained for this new, more forgiving police force.

The next question: Would it even work?

Some folks, especially those in the black community, might object to letting predators go, since black criminals mostly victimize other black folks in their area. Of course, even more white guys would presumably catch a break, free to resume their chosen profession. Unless the new policy only applied to minorities. (And that wouldn't cause any problems, right?)

But in 2019, reducing to zero the number of black men killed by police (they're almost always men) would only have resulted in letting 235 criminals loose in communities all across the US. Not much of a crime wave possible there. Plus, the majority of those guys would probably be grabbed up shortly, when they committed more crimes. (Unless this near-arrest [or near-death] experience scared them straight.)

All of this policy wrangling is designed to assuage the demonstrators in the street. Fewer peaceful demonstrations reduces the number of opportunities for more radical elements (or outside agitators) to escalate events into destructive riots.

However, it would arguably be better (and more honest) to convince folks that not every incident where the police shoot a black citizen is a racially motivated murder in the tradition of lynching.

(The Black Lives Matter movement has a perception problem: Those folks can neither see nor hear anything that takes place before the trigger is pulled. They are forced to conclude that nothing happened before the trigger was pulled. Which leads to the conclusion there was no reason for the trigger to be pulled. Hence their stated position: White cops kill black guys for no reason.)

But changing the minds of human beings is a messy business, and likely to fail. Humans are the people who think they know things (though they are often wrong). Everything we see is proof that the ridiculous crap in our heads is literally true. It doesn't matter that this is delusional thinking. Humans know what they know and they can't be wrong (as far as they can tell).

People who study conspiracy theories will tell you any attempt to replace misinformation with real information is prone to failure. Giving them the "facts" tends to make believers argumentative; they often end up more entrenched than ever in their aberrant world view.

So, are we doomed? Why, yes. Yes, we are.

But maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe our problems will just disappear, like magic. Unfortunately, luck always runs out. Usually when you can least afford to deal with that failure.

On the other hand, nobody told you life would be a walk in the park.