The story of how Police Officer John Turner killed Roger Anthony is almost sufficiently underwhelming as to make the most curious part why anyone in North Carolina chose to name a town “Scotland Neck.” 

At 61, Anthony was no kid. There are no twists or turns in his conduct, aside from the sole allegation that he took “something out his pocket and put it into his mouth.”  Isn’t it amazing how somethings as utterly innocuous as that, coupled with a death at the hands of police, makes one’s mind begin to calculate the potential nefarious things it could be?

But it’s all imagination.  The story itself is brutally banal.

[O]fficers had responded to a 911 call Monday night about a man who had fallen off his bicycle in the parking lot of a bank. The caller told dispatchers that the man appeared drunk and may have hurt himself.

When Police Officer John Turner arrived, he saw Roger Anthony pedaling along 10th Street and followed in his patrol car. Turner put on his sirens and lights and yelled for him to stop, but Anthony continued to ride away, police said.

Scotland Neck Police Chief Joe Williams said Turner saw Anthony take something out his pocket and put it into his mouth. Turner got out of the car and yelled for Anthony to stop. When Anthony didn’t, the officer used a stun gun on him, causing him to fall off of his bike.

He was brain dead on the ground.  Anthony’s sister, Gladys, said that he suffered from seizures and was hard of hearing.  And now, a man whom police sought to stop, assuming he was the same man referred to in the 911 call, presumably to see if he was hurt, is dead.

While there are elements to this story that leave questions open, there is one that would seem to offer no question whatsoever. There was no reason whatsoever to tase Anthony.  Naturally, the first comment to this story questions this assertion:

How was the officer to know he was hard of hearing?
Besides what was he doing riding around on a bike it he can’t hear traffic, car horns and sirens. He already had fallen off of his bike and appeared to be under the influence of something. That also is considered a DUI.
These idiots just bring on their problems and then get the police involved and society.

He’s right, at least in one respect.  We idiots “just bring on [our] problems.”  We assume that the only reasonable course is immediate compliance.  Forget our right to be left alone, that Anthony did nothing to suggest any criminal conduct giving rise to the officer’s right to stop him.  Most people wouldn’t fault the officer for trying to inquire, in light of the 911 call. 

Forget that Anthony had hearing problems. Sure, it’s hardly unheard of that people who walk, or ride, down the street have disabilities of one type or another. They aren’t branded and can look just like “normal” people.  But the default assumption is regularity, normalcy.  Officer Turner wasn’t crazy to assume that Anthony, riding a bike on the street, could hear his command to stop.

But these aren’t the reasons why we are idiots.  The reason we are idiots is that we have allowed our government to put a Taser in the hands of police officers without either the policies, training or fear of misuse that is critical to trusting cops with their use.  The most idiotic thing we can do is provide police with a easy trick to make their job so easy that they feel entitled to use it at will.  The most dangerous thing we idiots to is give a weapon to an idiot.

The death of a person isn’t absolved by asking a stupid question.  What else could Turner have done? How about nothing.  Since he lacked probable cause to believe Anthony had committed a crime, and assuming that Turner heard the siren and the command and chose to keep pedaling, Turner could have shrugged his shoulder, assumed Anthony was not in need of assistance, and gone on his way.

And if Turner just couldn’t bear the thought of ending the encounter without somehow asserting his dominance, how about driving his cruiser in front of Anthony, sirens roaring, lights ablaze, so that Anthony couldn’t possible be unaware of his presence and purpose.  The story suggests that Turner was always out of Anthony’s line of sight, apparently behind his bicycle rather than in front of it.  Was Anthony that speedy a biker or was Turner’s cruiser especially slow?

Regardless of what Turner could have done, there was one thing that can’t be done, at least if someone has half a brain and no justifiable need to cause obvious collateral harm.  You don’t tase someone on a moving bicycle.  Or, for that matter on a moving motorcycle.  The cops’ credo notwithstanding, the “less than lethal force” of the Taser will assuredly lead to the less than kind force of the pavement.  Not even the order of a cop alters the laws of physics.

As the response to the commenter queried, if the cop didn’t have a Taser, would he have pulled out his handgun and shot him?  Of course not, as that would have reflected poorly on Turner during the brief subsequent inquiry that will naturally exonerate him.  Anthony, despite the innuendo of putting something in his mouth, had done nothing bullet-worthy.  We seem to be able to discern things that demand a bullet from things that don’t.  Still, we have such trouble with Tasers.

There’s a tendency to focus on the most outrageous, most venal, abuses by police that end up in a spectacular death.  Sometimes, death comes at the hand of an idiot.  And the person who dies, Roger Anthony this time, is just as dead.  And his death is just as needless. 

H/T Steve Magas