“I don’t have time for this. Tase him and let’s get him out of here”
by digby
The killing of Keith Vidal, 18, of Boling Springs Lakes, NC, over the weekend has spurred a state investigation into the teen’s death and a family’s call for answers as they say police shot Vidal in cold blood.
Family of Vidal said they called police on Sunday afternoon to help subdue the 90-pound teen who was holding a small screwdriver and threatening to fight his mother during a schizophrenic episode. Two officers responded to the family’s home and restrained Vidal. Then, a third officer arrived and soon thereafter reportedly shot Vidal, Mark Wilsey, Vidal’s step-father, told reporters during a press-conference on Monday.
According to Wilsey, as the first two officers were restraining Vidal, the third officer walked into the family’s house and said “I don’t have time for this. Tase him. Let’s get him out of here,” Wilsey said. At that point, one of the officers used a stun gun on Vidal. The young man hit the ground and “this guy shot him,” Wilsey said.
Vidal was taken to a local hospital where he was declared dead.
When Wilsey asked why the officer had shot the teen, he said the officer replied, “Well, I’m protecting my officers.”
He weighed 90 pounds:
Vidal’s death comes just weeks after his 18th birthday, on a Sunday afternoon that by all accounts had gone off without much ado. But soon that would all change. The cops had come to the home before, family members told the Star News. Vidal was schizophrenic and depressive, they said. But he was never violent. The cops would usually come and talk with him until he calmed down.
On this day Vidal was sweeping the floor, holding a screw driver. At some point he threatened to fight his mother. At 12:31 p.m., according to records, Mark Wilsey called 911.
“We wanted him to put the screwdriver down because he does have schizophrenia and we didn’t know if he was gonna hurt himself,” Wilsey told the Star News.
The first officers arrived on the scene at 12:34. Less than 15 minutes later, Vidal had been shot, killed just seconds after the Vassey arrived on the scene. There remain more questions than answers in the teen’s death. And as investigators, prosecutors, and the teen’s family try to unpack just why a stun gun and eventually lethal force was needed to subdue a 90-pound teenager with no apparent history of violence, the business of mourning goes on.
He was a busy man and didn’t have time to deal with this nonsense. 15 minutes or you’re dead. That’s the rule.
I don’t even know what to say except to remind people that this mantra of “I had to do what I had to do to protect my officers” is not the way police used to think about their jobs. This is a paramilitary concept, not a policing concept. Former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara explained:
Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on “officer safety” and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.
Yes, police work is dangerous, and the police see a lot of violence. On the other hand, 51 officers were slain in the line of duty last year, out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York’s highest crime precincts, when the total number of cops in the country was half that of today. Each of these police deaths and numerous other police injuries is a tragedy and we owe support to those who protect us. On the other hand, this isn’t Iraq. The need to give our officers what they require to protect themselves and us has to be balanced against the fact that the fundamental duty of the police is to protect human life and that law officers are only justified in taking a life as a last resort.
Three officers with plenty of training should be able to subdue a 90 pound kid who’s only armed with a screw driver without killing him. Or shooting him with electricity either. They were in a hurry. They felt justified in using deadly force because they see themselves as fighting in the streets of a war zone: otherwise known as their own towns and cities. In other words some of these guys see themselves as being at war with the United States of America.
.