Police Officer Andrew P. Dunton will never be the same.  In an instant, a black man with a gun turned after Dunton yelled “police, drop the gun.”  Did he yell that?  Did Omar Edwards turn? Could Dunton have done something differently so that Police Officer Edwards wouldn’t be dead by his six shots? 

The story is everywhere, Whether the true story will ever be known is another matter.  The fact is that in a flash, two decisions were made on dark street in Harlem, one by each officer.  One of the decisions was wrong, but which one will depend on who you talk to.  Under the circumstances, the stories could all be true, as far as the witnesses to the event are concerned.  It’s almost impossible when shots ring out unexpectedly in the night to get the details straight.  The mind plays games to make sense out of situations that make no sense.

One television news report noted that the New York Police Department patrol guide has a policy to deal with this situation.  The police provides that the burden is on the off-duty officer to stand motionless and not turn when he hears the on-duty cop yell “police”.  It’s a policy that makes perfect sense, since the on-duty cop has no idea that the guy with the gun is a cop as well.  The problem is that it defies human nature. 

The off-duty cop, in this case Edwards, is pumped with adrenaline chasing the perp.  His focus is on getting the guy in front of him.  Suddenly, from behind him, he hears something that his brain tells him he ought to pay attention to.  But his mind wasn’t on the unanticipated shout from behind, but the guy in front.  It doesn’t quite register.  He hears it, but doesn’t really hear it.  It takes a moment to process.  So he turns . . .

Officer Dunton sees an unidentified man with gun running down a dark street.  He yells “police, drop your gun.”  What else can he yell (ignoring minor variations on the theme)?  The man with the gun turns toward him.  Maybe a full turn.  Maybe just a partial turn.  But any turn puts the aim of that gun closer to his heart.  He need not wait for the muzzle flash to decide what to do.  He fires six rounds at the gun pointed toward him.

It’s a conundrum.  We won’t know what Dunton actually yelled.  We won’t know what Edwards actually heard.  We won’t know what role, if any, the fact that Edwards was black played in Dunton’s decision.  At this point, everyone is playing catch-up, trying to piece things together in a way that causes the least exacerbation of the damage.  But none of it resolves the basic conundrum.  The policy sounds right, but doesn’t work.  Policy doesn’t supplant human experience.  Policy doesn’t trump human nature.

None of the post-hoc efforts to sort out this disaster strike me as credible.  The fix is always in when a disaster happens and it turns out that the dead body is a cop.  When it’s not a cop, they check his rap sheet so they can demean the dead man because of his priors.  That way, the public is informed that his death at the hand of a cop is no big deal.  He was a worthless criminal anyway.  That doesn’t work when the dead man is a cop.

But the needless death of a cop is no more, nor less, tragic than the death of any other human being.  And so we share in the grief of Officer Omar Edwards death as we do with any other person who was killed by mistake.  It’s unfortunate that the need to make it appear that no fault can be levied will cause us to gloss over the problems that gave rise to this tragic mistake.  It’s happened before and it will happen again, until someone figures out a better way to address a black man with a gun on the streets of Harlem.