Watch that waistband.
by digby
After Los Angeles police shot and killed an unarmed homeless man on Sunday, Chief Charlie Beck said the man grabbed an officer’s holstered gun. Beck said a still image from a video of the incident showed the victim going for the officer’s waistband.
“It appears that the suspect’s hand is reaching for the officer’s waistband in the area where his pistol would be located,” Beck said during a press conference on Monday.
Police frequently cite reaching for waistbands in the aftermath of shootings by officers, though it’s usually people allegedly reaching for their own waistbands, where armed suspects often do conceal guns. The most famous recent unarmed waistband incident may have been the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting of Michael Brown last year.
That’s why the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture is so powerful.
But it isn’t just the reaching for the waistband, it’s also the “he was grabbing for my gun” excuse.
This one, which I wrote about last week gives the full flavor of that particular line of reasoning:
Defiant, sometimes choking back tears, a Charlotte police officer testified on Friday that he had had no choice but to shoot an unarmed 24-year-old car crash victim on a darkened road, despite never seeing anything in the man’s hands.
“He had a good chance to get my gun from me and take it from me,” the police officer, Randall Kerrick, who was suspended without pay after the fatal shooting, told his defense lawyer. “There was absolutely nothing else I could have done.”
Officer Kerrick is on trial for voluntary manslaughter for the killing of Jonathan Ferrell in the early hours of Sept. 14, 2013. Mr. Ferrell, who was black, had sought help at a house in the Bradfield Farms subdivision near Charlotte’s eastern edge after climbing out of the wreckage of his fiancée’s car. But the woman who owned the house, fearing that Mr. Ferrell was a burglar, called the police.
Three officers responded to the scene, expecting to find a burglary in progress. But only Officer Kerrick, who is white, pulled out his gun. He fired 12 shots at Mr. Ferrell, hitting him 10 times and continuing to shoot after both men had fallen to the ground.
The defense called Officer Kerrick to the stand on Thursday, in the second week of the trial. Over two days, he explained repeatedly that he had felt he had to shoot Mr. Ferrell almost immediately after arriving on the scene because he believed he posed a potential threat. In an indirect video taken by another officer’s dashboard camera, Mr. Ferrell, barefoot and in a light green shirt, can be seen walking, then running, shortly after the police arrive.
Officer Kerrick testified that he did not fire any warning shots or order Mr. Ferrell to show his hands.
“I gave him loud verbal commands to stop and get on the ground, and if he could see I was a police officer, I would think he would obey those commands,” he said.
He thought this fellow who was running away had a good chance to take his gun from him. And therefore, he had to kill him. This is how the reasoning goes. Even the Michael Brown case hinges on Officer Wilson’s belief that Brown had tried to take his weapon and therefore had reason to fear Brown would get it when he allegedly turned and ran toward him after first running away — so he had to kill him.
This is the stand your ground mentality of police and it needs to be addressed. Sure, cops are in the crossfire in our gun riddled nation so you can understand that they need to be careful. But too many of these stories don’t hold up when you see videotape of the incident — think Walter Scott and the planted taser — suggesting that some police are either too paranoid to be on the job or see this as an excuse to shoot first and ask questions later. Either way, it’s a problem.
There are many excellent cops out there who know when to retreat, when to communicate, when to use a taser, when not to use a taser and when they need to use lethal force. Police forces need to start looking to those officers for leadership and create incentives for them to stand up.
Huffington Post provides a list of waistband incidents in the story.