In two separate incidents, four days apart, police in C0lorado and Texas fatally shot 16- and 17-year-old girls this last week. Neither of the girls was innocent. One drove a stolen car into an officer, fracturing his leg; the other brandished a knife at a police station. The issue I want to discuss in this posting is whether they had to be killed.
In the first incident, Denver police responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle, which turned out to be stolen, shot the driver, Jessica Hernandez, 16, when she allegedly drove into an officer. She died at the scene. Several other teens in the car weren’t hurt or arrested. One of those witnesses claimed the car didn’t start moving toward the officer until after Hernandez was shot, but the incident remains under investigation. That’s the fourth time in seven months that Denver police have shot people in vehicles. The Denver Post discusses Denver PD policy, and police policies in general, on shooting at vehicles in the article linked here:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27412773/denver-police-id-officers-fatal-shooting-unarmed-teen
In the second incident, police in Longview, Texas, killed Christiana Coignard, 17, after she threatened officers with a knife in the lobby of a police station. She reportedly was bipolar and depressed, and had previously attempted suicide, so this looks like a “suicide by cop.”
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/26/kristiana-coignard-shot-in-longview-texa
Now let’s talk.
Taking human life is extremely serious, and police should kill citizens only for dire necessity, to prevent death or grievous harm to another, when there’s no other viable alternative. We spend a lot of money training and equipping police to deal with situations like these two incidents. Their jobs is to protect the public from criminals, mentally ill people, dogs and wild animals, and other dangerous and threatening situations. It’s for prosecutors and courts, not cops exercising “street justice,” to punish citizens’ bad behavior.
Teens under 18, in the eyes of the law, are children. Society doesn’t hold them to adult standards of behavior, because they’re still in the process of growing up. Parents want their children to survive adolescence. We don’t want police killing them.
When mentally ill people become a danger to someone else or themselves, police are supposed to get them into a safe setting, not kill them. From there, they should go to appropriate treatment and, God willing, get well and return to productive lives. We don’t want police to kill them, either.
In this day and age of universal police use of body armor, it’s difficult to imagine why it’s necessary for police to kill a knife-wielding person. This video of Seattle police subduing a mentally ill homeless man brandishing a samurai sword demonstrates the feasibility of using non-lethal force in such situations:
It’s often said that any traffic stop can turn deadly, and there’s some truth to that, but only a tiny percentage of motorists stopped by police present a genuine threat. The problem, of course, is police don’t know which ones. But police agencies have developed effective techniques for stopping fleeing vehicles, approaching stopped vehicles, and minimizing danger to officers. A stolen vehicle poses a heightened risk of additional criminal behavior by the driver. But police frequently car thieves and even carjackers without having to resort to lethal force.
Too many people are being killed by police, including elderly people and kids. Arguably, police attitudes toward use of lethal force has become too flippant. In my opinion, more restraints on police use of deadly force are needed. I’m not convinced either of these kids had to die.