Thanks to Missouri’s “Kill Em on Sight” Use of Force Statute — Grossly Incompetent Officer Darren Wilson Escapes Moral Justice — Even with Michael Brown’s Alleged Contributing Violence, African-Americans Have Reason to Be Enraged

© 2014 Peter Free

 

26 November 2014

 

 

As an ex-police supervisor and a former state assistant attorney general, my take on Ferguson and our corrupt criminal justice system is unforgiving

 

With the release of Officer Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony in his murder of Michael Brown, it is clear that the officer was both a “pussy” (as Mr. Brown labeled him to his face) and professionally incompetent.

 

Although Wilson skated away from grand jury indictment — due to Missouri’s murderously lax “use of force” statute — I am on the side of those who see egregious moral injustice in this result.

 

 

Michael Brown essentially died because he was walking in the middle of the street with a bad attitude

 

That is a situation that cops around the country deal with successfully every day, without shooting or threatening to shoot anyone.

 

African-Americans are correct to be outraged after centuries of tolerating this subjugating nonsense.

 

 

The officer’s own testimony nailed down both his cowardice and his officer safety mistakes

 

Ethically speaking, one cannot simultaneously use:

 

 

(a) fear for one’s life

 

and

 

(b) stupidly provoking a tactically bad situation into more of the same —

 

to

 

(c) subsequently escape responsibility for precipitating a tragic result.

 

 

We police owe the public professional competence — which avoids unnecessarily escalating citizen responses to our usually unwelcome interventions

 

Sometimes this means deescalating just enough to give the person contacted room to regain partial control of his emotions.

 

Darren Wilson’s apparently badge-heavy professional orientation would not let him do that. His emotionally rattled cowardice then escalated a difficult situation into a morally unjustifiable shooting death.

 

I am not one who grants yellow-bellied officers the use of loose deadly force legal standards to excuse their murders.

 

 

Officer Wilson’s own testimony is enough to hold him professionally culpable

 

Officer Wilson’s lack of physical competence, his "should be indictable" cowardice, and his inept professional judgment flammably combined with Mr. Brown’s alleged stupidly indulged physical assault on the officer, so as to lead to this sad outcome.

 

 

Wilson’s testimony inadvertently lists one officer safety and professional judgment mistake after another

 

See reporters’ synopses of his words, here and here.

 

The pertinent transcript is here.

 

 

The gist of the encounter, in Wilson’s words

 

Officer Wilson saw Michael Brown and friend in the street, allegedly impeding traffic, while walking along the double yellow center line.

 

Wilson stopped his patrol car to tell them to use the sidewalk.

 

Brown told him, “Fuck what you have to say.”

 

[State of Missouri v. Darren Wilson, Grand Jury Volume V (September 16, 2014) (at page 208, lines 23-24)]

 

That, of course, is a bad start to a law enforcement encounter. It should have signaled Wilson that he needed to start using his brain. But he didn’t.

 

Wilson sees Cigarrilos in Brown’s hand.

 

These may be the ones that were reportedly stolen from a store a short while earlier. Wilson now has reasonable (criminal) suspicion, in addition to the ongoing non-criminal traffic violation, to detain Mr. Brown.

 

Brown and friend continue walking.

 

Wilson blocks their route with his car. Instead of exiting the vehicle, the officer partially opens the door, and calls Brown to come to him.

 

This error in officer safety (and simple common sense) on Wilson’s part eventually costs the unarmed Mr. Brown his life. Wilson’s mistake is a sterling example of why proper officer positioning is crucial to keeping both police and citizens safe from subsequent harm.

 

Brown foreseeably escalates with, “What the fuck are you going to do about it?” [page 209, lines 21-22]

 

Brown slams the officer’s car door shut.

 

Wilson now compounds his initial error in trying to make a police stop from the inside of his vehicle. Confronted again by the obviously hostile Mr. Brown, Wilson foolishly does not drive far enough away to:

 

(a) call for help

 

or

 

(b) get out of the car, so as to have freedom of defensive movement.

 

Instead, Wilson reflexively pushes Brown backward, using the car door and tells him “to get the fuck back”. [page 210, line 7]

 

Wilson has now provoked a mano-a-mano testosterone confrontation in which he, being still seated in the car, is in the weaker tactical position.

 

The officer’s profane language also cedes the moral high ground to the already enraged Michael Brown. This was a subtle, but substantive psychological mistake.

 

Before Wilson’s “fuck”, the officer had the authority subliminally granted by his uniform. After the curse, he became just another bull on the farm. Two men acting badly.

 

 

Wilson’s physical positioning error is key to everything bad that happened afterward

 

Brown approaches the car window. Wilson looks away. Another mistake and one that clearly indicates that Wilson suspects that Brown is not armed.

 

Brown hits Wilson through the open car window.

 

Wilson subsequently sees that the Cigarillos are still in Brown’s presumedly left hand. Brown gives those to his associate.

 

Wilson holds onto Brown’s right arm. The officer is still seated in the patrol car.

 

He testifies afterward to the grand jury that, “I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” [page 212, lines 18-19]

 

Brown hits Wilson again.

 

Wilson is reluctant to drop his defensively held left hand to go for his Mace, collapsible baton [ASP] or flashlight. And he fears that one of Brown’s blows will dislodge one or both contact lenses.

 

He draws his pistol.

 

“Get back or I’m going to shoot you.” [page 214, lines 19-20]

 

Brown grabs the gun and says, “You are too much of a pussy to shoot me.” [page 214, line 22]

 

Brown’s statement is obviously not well calculated to deescalate what has now clearly become a deadly force situation, due to Wilson’s introduction of a gun into an otherwise reasonably routine street encounter.

 

Wilson now has to assume that Brown will shoot him with his own weapon. He cannot leave it to Mr. Brown’s apparently missing good graces to confess, “Ya got me, I am a pussy, can I have my gun back?”

 

Brown manages to twist the gun toward Wilson’s hip.

 

Wilson testifies that he can feel Brown trying to get a finger inside the trigger guard.

 

 

The trigger guard testimony seems doubtful to me

 

Officer Wilson seems imprecise in describing where his own hands were. I also do not think that he would have had enough leverage to fend Brown off, by using a hand position near the trigger guard.

 

And if Wilson had inserted one of his fingers behind the trigger, to prevent discharge, Brown would probably have broken it during the struggle for the weapon.

 

I tentatively conclude that Wilson made up or misremembered this aspect of the inside the car grappling, so as to make Mr. Brown seem more deadly than he was.

 

 

The officer manages to get the pistol away his hip

 

But he is initially unable to discharge the weapon. On the third try, a round goes through the driver’s door, shattering the glass inside it.

 

 

He kind of stepped back . . . he looked at me and had the most intense aggressive face  . . . it looks like a demon . . . he comes back toward me again with his hands up. [page 225, lines 2-3]

 

 

Anyone concentrating on an adversary’s face in a situation like this is not at all martial arts savvy

 

Brown’s assessment of Wilson’s wimpishness appears to be on target.

 

 

I just saw his hands up . . . I saw this and that face coming at me again, and I just went like this and I shielded my face again. [page 225, lines 12-15]

 

Brown hits him. Wilson pulls the trigger again, but nothing happens.

 

He racks the slide and successfully fires two rounds.

 

In order for Wilson to rack the slide, Mr. Brown cannot possibly still have had his hands on the gun. If that is true, why did Wilson still think he had to shoot him?

 

 

I see him start to run . . . . I then get out of my car.

 

Wilson simultaneously tells police Dispatch, “Shots fired, send me more cars.” [page 226, line 13]

 

Wilson runs after Brown.

 

 

From a professional perspective, there was no good reason to chase Mr. Brown

 

It predictably kept a bad situation on boil.

 

Wilson had fired shots inside the car to escape the mess that his positioning stupidity had gotten himself into. Why was he now creating another potentially deadly confrontation by chasing the unarmed and probably wounded “Hulk Hogan” suspect?

 

Capable police investigators would probably have had no trouble tracking Brown down, if Wilson had more wisely let him run off. Wilson should have known that.

 

In sum, Wilson’s escalating action in chasing Mr. Brown make no professional or officer safety sense. He will probably never admit it, but I am reasonably certain that:

 

 

(a) he felt his authority had been violated

 

and

 

(b) he was going to make Mr. Brown pay for that humiliation by personally arresting him.

 

This is an instance of ego getting the best of professional sense.

 

 

Keep in mind that — the only person who had already used deadly force up to the start of the chase was Officer Wilson

 

Brown stops running under a street light pole. Wilson orders him to the ground.

 

 

He turns . . . and he’s coming back towards me . . . he kind of does like a stutter step to start running. When he does that, his left hand goes in a fist and goes to his side, his right one goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me. [page 227, lines 9-13]

 

Brown’s shirt is longer than his trouser waistband. [page 227, lines 16-18]

 

 

As he is coming towards me, I . . . keep telling him to get on the ground, he doesn’t. I shoot a series of shots. I don’t know how many I shot . .

. .

I know I hit him at least once because I saw his body kind of jerk or flenched [sic]. I remember having tunnel vision his right hand . . . After the last shot my tunnel vision kind of opened up. . . . he’s still coming at me , he hadn’t slowed down.

 

At this point, I start backpedaling and again, I tell him get on the ground, get on the ground, he doesn’t. I shoot another round of shots. Again, I don’t recall how many it was or if I hit him every time. I know at least once because he flinched again.

 

At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad I’m shooting at him. And the face he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way.

 

Well, he keeps coming at me after that again, during  the pause I tell him to get on the ground, get on the ground, he still keeps coming at me, gets about 8 to 10 feet away. At this point, I’m backing up pretty rapidly . . . I know if he reaches me, he’ll kill me.

 

And he started to lean forward as he got that close, like he was going to just tackle me, just go right through me.

 

His hand was in a fist at his side, this one is in his waistband under his shirt . . . . Just coming straight at me like he was going to run right through me. And when he gets about that 8 to 10 feet away, I look down, I remember looking at my sites [sic] and firing, all I see is his head and that’s what I shot.

 

I don’t know how many, I know at least once because I saw the last one go into him. And then it went out of him, the demeanor on his face went blank, the aggression was gone . . . the threat was stopped. [pages 227-228]

 

 

Officer Wilson had just killed someone — essentially for walking in the middle of the street, while carrying an assaultive attitude and some probably stolen Cigarillos

 

It is not necessary to take Wilson’s words at face value to see what went professionally wrong.

 

A competent patrol officer never talks to violators from inside a patrol car. You never let anyone trap you inside it.

 

You do not unnecessarily introduce your gun into a situation in which it will be the only deadly weapon present. You certainly don’t do it, where an alleged “Hulk Hogan” bad guy can grab it.

 

You do not run after someone — whom you have just shot because you stupidly put yourself into a very bad situation — unless you reasonably think that this suspect poses a deadly threat to someone else.

 

Obviously, the unarmed and fleeing Mr. Brown was not a continuing threat to anyone, including Wilson.

 

There is no law against looking demonic. Even the allegedly intensely hostile-looking Mr. Brown only punched Officer Wilson. That hardly constitutes the use of deadly force. Given the barely perceptible redness in photographs of Wilson’s face after the incident, one can see that Brown did not inflict much damage.

 

Wilson’s “pussy boy” fear had exaggerated the threat that Mr. Brown actually posed him.

 

 

Another misdirection — about Brown’s hand being under his shirt during the fatal charge

 

Wilson repeated references to Brown’s hidden hand is almost certainly a lie intended to introduce the possibility of a deadly weapon into the grand jury’s minds.

 

If Brown had had a weapon, he would have used it when Wilson began shooting at him in earnest. Wilson implicitly admits that when his testimony focuses on Brown’s stare through him.

 

 

Why didn’t Wilson use physical space to protect himself from Mr. Brown’s football-like run toward him?

 

Mr. Brown — almost certainly already shot at least once from inside the car — would probably have run out of physical steam, if Wilson had removed himself from the immediate area.

 

Wilson’s willingness to kill Brown (as he ran at the officer) lends credence to the widely shared African-American perspective that Wilson killed him because of his color.

 

Officer cowardice and bigotry are a deadly combination.

 

One can also imagine how differently the Missouri government’s reaction would have been, if Mr. Brown had been white and middle class.

 

One might even surmise that, after the light pole portion of the encounter, Brown was determined to take Wilson down, so as to prevent the pursuing officer from shooting him again.

 

He may, it seems to me, have decided that he could not outrun the man who had already shot him, so he would turn and fight. American law enforcement’s miserable record in unjustifiably shooting black people may have been on the enraged Mr. Brown’s mind.

 

 

The hostility engendered among “people of minority colors” — by the criminal justice system’s institutionalized bigotry — is something that competent police recognize and are prepared to assuage

 

Officer Wilson did not and was not. That, in a moral universe, is professionally on him.

 

 

Wilson’s demonic face nonsense

 

Officer Wilson’s wimpishness comes out most clearly in his repeated descriptions of Mr. Brown’s visibly angry face. If you have not seen demonic looking expressions and heard hate-filled vitriol directed toward you as a cop, you have not been doing your job.

 

Another segment of Wilson’s testimony backs this criticism up. He implicitly whines about how quickly his stop of Mr. Brown escalated out of control:

 

 

His whole reaction to the whole thing is something I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen that much aggression so quickly from a simple request just to walk on the sidewalk. [page 234, lines 1-2])

 

The odds are that someone walking down the middle of a street — with vehicular traffic around him — is mentally unbalanced, intoxicated, or looking for a confrontation. The contacting officer needs to be psychologically and physically prepared to deal with all three. That’s just Basic Patrol 101.

 

 

The moral? — Overall, an accurate example of criminal justice system’s racist “got’cha” mentality

 

Darren Wilson’s own testimony, taken at unwarranted face value, marks him as professionally incompetent, probably badge heavy, and certainly a wimp who does not belong in police uniform.

 

Though marred by Michael Brown’s allegedly violent contribution to the tragic result, the encounter between Officer Wilson and Mr. Brown is representative of what happens when inept and bigoted police subjugate young men from minority populations.

 

Our twisted criminal justice system, and its racist policing arm, occasionally fuel mildly violent counter-responses. Those relatively rare expressions of prideful resistance sadly encourage “white good ole boys” and their ilk (as we regularly see on Fox News) to further barricade themselves behind self-entitled self-righteousness.

 

A better prescription for tragic societal blindness and inhumanity is hard to come by.