Wyoming
When I was sixteen, not yet a licensed driver in the state of Ohio, I lived in a suburb of Cincinnati called Wyoming. It was a small, middle to middle upper class community, with a police force all its own. I don’t quite remember, but maybe there were twelve or thirteen officers on the whole force. Today it’s grown to nineteen, but forty-seven years ago I doubt it was that big. We teenagers knew must of the patrol officers by name.
Late one night at the corner of Burns and Springfield Pike (the center of town) a friend of mine was pulled over. It probably was for “Kid driving at Night”, but I’m sure there was a lane or turn signal violation involved. The Officer approached the driver side, and the anxious boy handed his license, registration and insurance papers to him.
Kids at Night
This wasn’t a “racial incident”, this was a “kid” incident. The Officer went back to call the license in. This was before the days of in-car computers, and every license and registration had to be checked by the local dispatcher for “wants and warrants”. It must have been a busy night in Wyoming, because the time seemed to go on forever for the young man behind the wheel.
He couldn’t take it. Anxiety overcame him, and he jammed the car into drive and took off, turning right on the Pike, then left up Reily Road.
This could have been a chase through the dark suburban streets of Wyoming. The officer could have gone full lights and sirens, and who knows what might occurred when full panic struck the sixteen year-old behind the wheel. There’s plenty of big oak trees lining the roads of Wyoming, and it doesn’t take much to lose control and hit one. But that didn’t happen.
The Officer had the license and registration. No house in Wyoming was more than three miles away from the center of town. So he calmly drove over to the kid’s house, and waited in the driveway. When the boy finally came home, he was greeted with the Officer, the ticket, and his parents. My friend didn’t do much driving for the next year.
Make the Call
I suspect this wasn’t a difficult call for a Wyoming policeman. While I don’t remember if he already knew the kid involved, Wyoming police knew most of us, at least by vehicle. Back in those days, the worst offenses seemed to be reckless or drunk driving. You could get in big trouble for reckless driving, but driving home from the party after too much to drink might land you in the backseat of a cruiser for a “ride” home, not a citation.
As my police officer friends tell me, that kind of “leeway” is impossible today. The cameras on the officer’s chest are a good thing when it comes to making sure “proper procedure” is followed. The term “street justice”, when an officer made a call on what’s appropriate, doesn’t work when it’s on camera. That may be a good thing, but like all good things there is a bad side as well. That sixteen year-old with a few too many isn’t getting a ride home anymore. It’s all on public record, so it’s down to the station, to court and into the system.
Air Freshener
Twenty-two year veteran Brooklyn Heights Officer Kim Potter was convicted of first degree manslaughter yesterday in a Minneapolis courtroom. She was the training officer when her trainee made a traffic stop. The “proximate cause” of the stop: expired license tags and an air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.
They stopped twenty year-old Daunte Wright, a black man. When they got his “wants and warrants”, it was discovered that he had an outstanding arrest warrant out. The trainee and a backup Sergeant proceeded to ask Wright to exit the vehicle, and tried to place him under arrest.
Panic
This was the same week as the Derek Chauvin trial, held in the same Minneapolis courtroom where Ms. Potter was later convicted. Chauvin, a Minneapolis Officer, kneeled on a handcuffed George Floyd for almost ten minutes, during which Floyd died. So there was heightened tensions, not just among police officers, but also among young black men. Daunte Wright panicked, and struggled to get back into his car and escape.
He made it back into the driver’s seat, and Potter came up to assist in controlling him. In the midst of the struggle, she reached for her Taser to shock Wright into submission. She instead, grabbed her service weapon, and shot him. Wright died.
They had his license and address. They could have done what that Wyoming officer did long ago, and waited for him at his home. The officers were certainly justified in making an arrest, but no one, Potter, Wright, the Trainee, or the state of Minnesota, wanted this arrest to end up in death, especially a death when the cause of the stop was an air freshener.
Officer’s Dilemma
“Proper procedure”, documented on the chest-mounted camera, calls for the arrest to be made. And what if they let him go?
Six were killed and another sixty-two injured when Darrell Brooks drove his SUV into the Waukesha Thanksgiving parade. Brooks was out on bond for attempting to run over a woman with his car, and had just been involved in a domestic disturbance. No one was chasing him when he plowed through the barriers and into the marchers.
There is a danger in taking someone into custody, both to the suspect, and to the officers. And there is a danger to allowing a suspect to go, to catch him later. And that’s the call we ask police officers to make, every day. I have no doubt that Officer Potter should be held responsible for her mistake. Her grabbing the wrong weapon took a young man’s life. But it’s too easy to say, “they should have just let him go”. They would be just as responsible. Ask the judge who released Darrell Brooks on only a $1000 bond.
Our Responsibility
Is race a part of all of this? Of course it is. Is training? Certainly that was the case that Officer Potter’s defense made, that she was not adequately trained on the new tasers recently issued. And, as Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison said, there needs to accountability for the taking of Wright’s life. But it’s not a simple problem, nor is there one simple solution. We ask police officers to make decisions, on the record, that can almost instantly become life and death determinations, both for the suspect, and themselves.
They need clear guidance, and training to handle complex situations. They need to be prepared and wise, and they need to be accountable for their decisions. That’s a lot to ask. But that’s an officer’s dilemma. And it’s also our responsibility.
