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<\/a>A young \u2014 yes, a young African American \u2014 man lay dead on the street. A policeman \u2014 yes, a white \u2014 policeman was alive with gun in hand, adrenalin flowing, heart pounding, mind racing. That hot gun was one of the tools of his trade.<\/p>\nI raise two questions: Why was the policeman white? Why not black? To be sure, we do not want a world where white policeman police white folk and black policeman police black folk. But the number of white police is way out of proportion to demographics in Ferguson (50\/53 are white), and it leads me to another question: What would have happened in Ferguson if greater representation of African Americans were found among Ferguson\u2019s police force? I suspect what happened would not have happened. That\u2019s a policy mistake. If more African Americans were present it would indicate greater integration already and less tension.<\/p>\n
[Image from the cover of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>.]<\/p>\n The young man, Michael Brown, robbed a store just prior to his fatal encounter with the policeman. The policeman was almost certainly alerted to Michael Brown because of the robbery.<\/p>\n Then they encountered one another.<\/p>\n The young man, Michael Brown, was unarmed and no one has ever said the policeman thought Michael Brown had a gun. Michael Brown was a big man, and if the story is true (and we only know what has been reported), he physically tussled with the policeman prior to the shooting. The policeman reported Michael Brown\u2019s size and strength were intimidating and he used far stronger terms than that too. The report is that Michael Brown, after the tussle, walked away and then began to return.<\/p>\n Then the policeman,\u00a0because of his judgment as a trained police officer,\u00a0<\/em>determined his life was in enough threat to shoot Michael Brown to end the threat.<\/p>\n A second mistake in Ferguson is a policy mistake boiling over the hot cauldron of racial injustices, the deep context at work in everything that happened in Ferguson. The second policy mistake is\u00a0shoot to kill or at least until the person goes down (which is close enough to \u201ckill\u201d)<\/em>. Darren Wilson, according to the grand jury, acted within the prescriptions of police officers. That gun is in its holster to be used, not to strike fear into people, not to slow people down, not to wound, but to end threat and bring down and kill. [See here<\/strong><\/a>.]<\/p>\n Michael Brown did not need to die. That\u2019s the injustice of Ferguson but shooting and killing is permissible action for a policeman. But far more: A young black man dying at the hands of a white officer is an image that haunts America\u2019s system of justice and injustice. What he did deserved to be stopped but \u201cstopped\u201d is not the same as \u201cdead.\u201d<\/p>\n Police can use deadly force when they have probable cause that a given person (Michael Brown) could cause serious bodily injury or is a threat of death to the police or to others. Wilson believed Michael Brown was that kind of threat and needed to be stopped \u2014 with a gun. Police are taught to aim at the torso, not the midsection or legs. Here is Illinois\u2019s Peter Jirasek<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n Peter Jirasek, a retired police sergeant and criminal justice educator from Illinois, explained that the concept of shooting to wound would not hold up under Tennessee v. Garner. Jirasek said it\u2019s unfair to simply state that officers are trained to kill when lethal force is justified in some cases and discouraged in others by law.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you only seek to wound someone by shooting, you do not have justification to shoot at all,\u201d Jirasek said. \u201cAn attempt to shoot to wound all too often can end up in death. It does no good if a police officer says, \u2018I was just trying to wound and ended up killing somebody,\u2019 because that officer now faces criminal prosecution, not to mention a civil lawsuit. And the law will say the officer better be justified in using deadly force.\u201d<\/p>\n Jirasek added that tasers and bean bag rounds have been instituted as lesser forms of force if an officer needs to bring a suspect into compliance but has no reason to use deadly force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It no small source of bewilderment to me that police, like Darren Wilson, don\u2019t discern whether deadly force or wounding (taser, bean bag) force are what is most needed. Can\u2019t a policeman, operating under current regulations, choose to wound instead of kill? This is what I mean: Can\u2019t the officer shoot and watch enough to know when the job is done \u2014 before bullets are peppered into a person going out of threat? Of course, fear and adrenalin and the amygdala are all fired into high gear, but officers are trained to constrain their violence. Shooting an unarmed man that many times, while going down, goes well beyond constraint. If they are going to carry and use guns, can\u2019t they learn not to kill unless they have to?<\/p>\n Yes, I understand any law that would restrict shooting to wounding would expect more of an officer than is genuinely realistic and create a nightmare for our justice system. But that doesn\u2019t stop an officer from discerning in the charged situation that he or she has ended the threat. [And Yes, I\u2019m for no guns, but I\u2019m not contending for that here.]<\/p>\n Had wounding force been Wilson\u2019s personal determination, Michael Brown would be alive, his parents would have a living son, and Ferguson\u2019s businesses would not lie in burnt ruins.<\/p>\n Behind everything at Ferguson is the tale of two scripts, one turning the event into a symbol and the other ignoring the symbol.<\/strong><\/p>\n All of this happened in an America charged with racial injustices that have formed themselves into structures. (Here\u2019s a good post about missing the big picture and the need to see systemic issues by Thabiti Anyabwile<\/strong><\/a>. A more robust rebuttal of Voddie Baucham can be seen here<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n