But For Video: Docile Edition

David Washington’s Hyundai first hit a Jeep, then a street sign.  It came to a stop in an intersection, when Police Officer Shaun Jurgens arrived.  He found Washington sitting in his car, strapped in by his seat belt, staring blankly straight ahead.

The call, that a car hit another car, isn’t of the sort that should strike fear into the hearts of cops. Accidents happen. Cars hit cars. Sure, the driver of a car could be a mass murderer, or a pastor. It’s not the sort of problem raising an immediate fear of violence and potential harm.

So the first thing Jurgens did was tase the driver, and then an extra healthy dose of pepper spray, followed by those carefully taught, deeply professional words, “get out of the car or I’m gonna fucking smoke you.”  Cops often forget they say such rehearsed lines when they later testify about what happened. Judges prefer not to hear such harsh language, as it disrupts the dignity of the courtroom.

But Jurgens wasn’t done with the 34-year-old Washington.

There are many “little” things happening, such that the video bears watching twice.  While your eyes are locked on Jurgens pulling Washington out of the car, because seat belts naturally defer to the force applied by police, then using his knee to wrench Washington’s arm behind his back, did you happen to notice his foot at 1:06 being crushed under the tire of the car?

Washington wasn’t merely some negligent driver. David Washington had a stroke.

At PINAC, Carlos Miller provides two additional body cam views of Fredericksburg, Virginia, police officers Cpl. Matt Deschenes and Sgt. Crystal Hill, neither of whom found the utterly docile, silent, motionless, Washington sufficiently scary to use force, but similarly lacking any recognition that this was a man having a medical emergency.  Neither stopped Jurgens from tasing, then pepper spraying him, then wrenching his arms while a man who just had a stroke lay face down on the pavement.

To her credit, Hill cared enough to move the car off of Washington’s foot.  And with Washington fully subdued, finally realized that he was not well before they arrived to protect and serve.  It’s better than kicking him a few times for good measure as he lay cuffed on the ground, but it’s unlikely to win her the empathy medal.

Jurgens has since been forced to resign from the job, though he insisted that his actions did not violate department policies.  To the uninitiated, all of this may seem outrageous and inexcusable, but upon reading how events unfolded, it comes into focus:

The three officers responded to calls for a hit-and-run and driver traveling in the wrong direction in the northbound lanes of Jefferson Davis Highway near the University of Mary Washington pedestrian bridge.

A Hyundai driven by 34-year-old David Washington hit a Jeep, crossed the median and hit a street sign. The Hyundai eventually stopped in the middle of an intersection.

In the newly released videos, Hill and Deschenes are the first two officers to arrive to the stopped Hyundai. They have their guns drawn and are heard screaming at the driver to put his hands up, sometimes using profanities.

As the two officers yell at Washington, his right arm appears to raise to the steering wheel, but his left arm appears motionless.

Hill yells to Deschenes that she cannot see the driver’s left hand.

When Jurgens arrives, he initially approaches with his gun drawn, then circles behind a police cruiser where he draws his Taser.

The driver’s left hand was the problem.  It’s not that Washington did anything to give rise to fear of a threat to the officers, but that Hill couldn’t see his hand. Had Hill been positioned differently, perhaps she could have seen the hand, but she wasn’t.  An unseen hand could mean a great many things, ranging from a gun in its grip to a hand immobilized by a stroke.  Hill was ignorant.  Hill had no clue what was in his hand.

The police defaulted to the assumption that Washington posed a threat, because nothing broadens their authority more than ignorance.  And the potential of a threat, even in the absence of any threat itself, violates the First Rule of Policing.  Perhaps the chances of Washington having a gun in his hand were miniscule, but even miniscule risk is more than any cop feels compelled to take.

After all, the choices are limited.  Inflict pain, harm on a person who poses no threat, or suffer the outside possibility of some harm coming to a cop.  The pain felt by Washington was pain a cop wouldn’t have to feel.  Cop wins. Washington loses. They can always say sorry later. Well, they actually don’t say sorry, because being a cop means never having to say sorry.  But you get the idea.

When doing anything necessary to avoid the potential of a threat, no less an actual threat itself, becomes an article of faith, a guy who suffers a stroke becomes a legitimate target of force. This is the collateral damage of protecting cops, and this is where police officers and their sycophants will demand the inclusion of the usual caveat about how dangerous their job is, even if it didn’t make the top ten again.

The job is dangerous. Well, compared to lying in bed motionless, it is. So too is an interaction with a cop, who isn’t aware that a person is suffering from a stroke, or a diabetic seizure, or is deaf, or otherwise challenged, all of which give rise to the failure to do as commanded. Including putting their left hand in a place where a cop can see it.

It might seem bad enough that David Washington suffered a stroke at 34 years of age, but such things happen.  Getting tased, pepper sprayed, run over and generally harmed for it, on the other hand, is not the sort of injury that a stroke should cause.

And yet, between ignorance and the First Rule, the facility with which cops discount the pain they cause others to save themselves from any hint of threat, they added their own special brand of misery to David Washington’s suffering.

 

8 thoughts on “But For Video: Docile Edition

    1. Wrongway

      Re: Tedx..
      one thing that makes it interesting to me is umm.. how ‘unpolished’ the guy is.. He’s not a very good speaker.. the audience seemed to listen, but … it was kind of awkward..

      which is good, these things need to be discussed..

      I only wish there had been a Q&A session..

      1. SHG Post author

        That’s an interesting observation. Sometimes, being too slick a speaker makes a person come off like more of a snake-oil salesman than sincere. Sometimes, awkward works better than smooth.

    2. Fubar

      From an ancient economics treatise sometimes erroneously attributed to Adam Smith, titled “You get more of what you reward and less of what you punish”:

      One guaranteed way to reduce
      The police tide of deadly abuse
      Is courts that won’t fail
      To send psychos to jail
      In spite of their “safety” excuse.

  1. DHMCarver

    I was amused by the fact that the cop yells, “Get outta the car! Don’t move around!” A win/win proposal from the perspective of this kind of cop, no? Whatever Mr. Washington did, either in not getting out of the car or the necessary moving around that getting out of a car entails, he was in violation of an order from an officer. How could that go wrong?

  2. bacchys

    An isolated incident. Just one rogue cop who was completely justified. The department will make changes to a policy that’s working perfectly, of course, and punish said justified rogue with two days backpay.

    1. SHG Post author

      He was forced to resign from the force, but that’s the significance of the other two officers who did nothing to stop him. They are under investigation, but still on duty.

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