Fear of Towels

Despite the dearth of facts, there are enough to reach an immutable conclusion. Los Angeles police shot a man in the head without justification, no less avoidability.  From the LA Times:

The man flagged down officers about 6:35 p.m. at Los Feliz Boulevard and Tica Drive south of Griffith Park, according to a police account.

“This person extended an arm wrapped in a towel. The officer exited the vehicle and said, ‘Drop the gun, drop the gun,'” LAPD Lt. John Jenal said.

Then at least one officer shot the man, officials say. 

After the shooting, a video was taken of the cops rolling the man over, revealing the gaping wound in his head, in order to cuff him.  This aspect, caught on video, has given rise to more, and harsher, criticism than the shooting.  The question of why they would risk manhandling someone who took a bullet to the head, and thus needed aid while posing no threat, to cuff him was paramount.

The response was callous but accurate:

LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith, a department spokesman, said the officers followed standard procedure in handcuffing the man when they did. At that point, Smith said, the man had not been searched and was considered a suspect.

“We always do that,” Smith said. “That’s the policy … to handcuff someone in a situation like that.”

This is reverse logic.  No doubt it’s true that policy requires that anyone shot and still alive must be cuffed, but the rationale is that if they were a sufficient threat as to justify the initial shooting, they remain a sufficient threat to require being cuffed. The problem with the logic is it begs the question: Because the guy was shot, he must be cuffed. But that assumes the initial shooting was justified, which is where the logic falls apart.

The unnamed victim sought police help.  He flagged down the police. There was no call, no threat, no reason for the police to respond to a problem. There was just a guy in need of assistance. From Robby Soave at Reason:

It’s unclear whether the officers had any reason whatsoever to suspect that the man was dangerous. The incident occurred in broad daylight in the relatively safe neighborhood of Los Feliz. The officers were driving by when the man flagged them down, calling “police, police.” 

To call it “unclear” is to fall into the same frame of reference as the police. A reasonable belief that a person presents a threat doesn’t derive from the absence of information, but from affirmative information upon which suspicion is based.  In other words, it’s very clear.

The officers, having been flagged down by the man, saw a towel around his extended hand.  If the frame of reference is that the man could be concealing a weapon under the towel, then it presents as an inchoate threat. A weapon wasn’t seen, but its existence wasn’t impossible, so it’s presumed to be there.

The officer exited the vehicle and said, ‘Drop the gun, drop the gun,'” LAPD Lt. John Jenal said.

How does one “drop the gun” one doesn’t possess? It’s not a possibility. By presuming a weapon when none exists, an untenable scenario arises.  The man cannot comply because compliance requires that the imagined scenario that exists only in the mind of the cop be real.  It’s not. Neither the cop nor the man can change reality to meet the cop’s fear fantasy.  There is nothing he can do at that moment but take a bullet.

The question, then, is whether the officer’s presumption, that seeing the potential for a threat, though not a threat itself, justifies the use of deadly force because of the First Rule of Policing.  The answer, essentially, depends on whether one elevates the safety of the officer in the face of the theoretical potential for harm over the life of the person who has done nothing to justify such fear.  In the face of ignorance of the existence of an actual threat, does the cop still get to shoot to protect himself from potential harm?

Now that it’s happened, of course, the police are busily trying to reinvent the shooting to find a basis upon which to explain it away.  They are floating a relatively new flavor of excuse, suicide by cop.

Smith said investigators would explore all possibilities, including whether the man needed some type of help from police. He said investigators would also look into the man’s background to see if there were any indications the shooting was an attempted “suicide by cop.”

“We don’t have any idea about this guy’s background. We just don’t know yet.”

While this raises a slightly palatable excuse for those inclined to excuse police error, it’s unfounded regardless of what they dredge up. The man did nothing to cause the officer to shoot, and an attempt to taint him by raising suicide by cop, because “we just don’t know yet,” is a red herring.  Had this been suicide by cop, it would have involved the man engaging in behavior intended to draw fire against him. That didn’t happen here. As Soave explains:

Smith seems to think “suicide-by-cop”—where a person intent on ending his own life deliberately provokes the police into firing a kill shot—is a possibility here. But maybe the man simply needed some kind of assistance, and didn’t realize holding a towel would be interpreted as a threat.

Towel must now be added to the list of things a person can hold that could get him killed, along with a Wii controller.  But the risk doesn’t reside in the nature of what’s in hand, but the interplay of ignorance and fear on the part of police.  It wasn’t that the cop here was threatened, but that he wasn’t certain that he was safe.  It’s a subtle shift, but a deadly one, and it does not justify shooting people just in case.

 

20 thoughts on “Fear of Towels

  1. Chris Camp

    2 small typos: “A weapon wasn’t scene..”? and “There is nothing he can do at that moment by take a bullet.”

    Thanks for your excellent blog.

    CC

  2. Anthony DeGuerre

    I’m surprised that LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith didn’t go to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in defense of his officer’s actions:
    “… a towel has immense psychological value… [A]ny man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.” Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 3.

    1. SHG Post author

      I thought about a Hitchhiker’s reference, but the subject of the post seemed too serious to besmirch. But it would have been perfect for Smith.

      1. David

        I was thinking of a comparison with the scene from the first Robocop film with a demonstration of the ED-209 – Google “you have 20 seconds to comply” and “Robocop”. But in that film, unlike here, there actually was a gun…

  3. Mark Draughn

    So, what are we supposed to do when excited police officers start yelling “Drop the gun!” when we don’t have a gun? Or worse, “Drop the gun!” “Hands up!” “Get down on the ground!” from three different officers? Maybe LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith could answer that next time he talks to the press. When your cops are yelling nonsense at us that is impossible to comply with (or even understand), how should a citizen behave to avoid getting shot? We just want to know.

  4. Ross

    I am going to assume that those officers, hearing hoofbeats, think zebras are running loose, because their thought processes seem to be twisted.

    It’s also about time for a journalist to ask a question on the order of “Cmdr Smith, are you saying that your officers are such cowards that they can’t wait to actually determine whether a person is armed or not before gunning them down? Aren’t your officers paid to take some risks before killing the people who employ them?”

    1. SHG Post author

      I’m not sure the zebra analogy applies well here. It’s not that they are assuming the outlier, but that they are hearing some amorphous rumbling and assuming them to be hoofbeats. A point of tried, perhaps inartfully, to make is that cops no longer react before the muzzle flash, but before there is a muzzle at all. It’s the difference between threat and potential of a threat.

      As for the cops being “cowards,” is it that they’re cowards or just not inclined to take any chance whatsoever when the only downside to a pre-emptive strike is the other guy’s life?

      1. delurking

        “As for the cops being “cowards,” is it that they’re cowards or just not inclined to take any chance whatsoever when the only downside to a pre-emptive strike is the other guy’s life?”

        Well, from the outside it appears that in police culture, the latter is true. I would say, however, that that could be characterized as cowardice or depravity, or both.

  5. morgan sheridan

    A gaping head wound with brain tissue showing is a pretty damn good indicator those cops weren’t under threat from the downed victim. Cuffing him – what they do – was just callous and serves to ensure further injury to his brain (should he be unlucky enough to live after this.)

    1. SHG Post author

      Without a doubt. But the lines of pointlessly “callous” and “police policy” never intersect.

  6. Ken Hagler

    The “suicide by cop” excuse mostly serves to tell us that the guy had an absolutely spotless record, so they couldn’t come up with anything better for their “smear the victim” police protocol.

    1. SHG Post author

      Good point. If there were any priors to smear him, they would certainly be screaming about them.

  7. Alan

    According to the LA Times story, the towel was wrapped around the arm, not the hand. There’s a big difference there. The Reason article states he was holding the towel, but that also isn’t supported by the original article.

    Hand concealed by a towel, possibly a threat, proceed with caution.

    Arm concealed by a towel, possibly an injured victim in need of assistance.

    Those are what I consider sane and normal conclusions.

    The video links don’t work any longer, but the picture on the Reason site appears to show the towel around the wrist. The empty hand should have been obvious to the officers.

    I’m also struck by the fact that there hasn’t been any reporting I’ve found yet about why he had the towel around his arm. My suspicion is this is because it was dressing a wound, and revealing that fact might “undermine public confidence in the LAPD”. If there were drugs or a weapon, or no reasonable explanation for it, I think it would have come out already.

    1. SHG Post author

      Don’t put too much stock in third hand details. I, too, got the impression that the towel might have been used as a bandage, but without better info, it’s impossible to determine how accurate small and critical details like the towel are in the media accounts.

      1. Carlyle Moulton

        There is an article at Raw story on this and a comment following the article by Guytano Parks says that the victim had been attacked by a knife wielder and that a good Samaritan rang 911 and bandaged his arm with a T-shirt, not a towel.

        [Ed. Note: Added in link. It’s cool this time.]

        1. SHG Post author

          This is exactly the backstory that one would expect. Glad to see someone says so, though it would be helpful to have sufficient data to know that it’s truthful. Still, this is what makes sense.

  8. Jerryskids

    It wasn’t that the cop here was threatened, but that he wasn’t certain that he was safe. It’s a subtle shift, but a deadly one, and it does not justify shooting people just in case.

    And yet it seems there have been an awful lot of cases in the last few years where the police justify their use of force by arguing that they didn’t know the “suspect” was not a threat. They couldn’t see his hands or couldn’t tell what he had in his hands, they couldn’t possibly know that the guy was acting funny because he just had a stroke or a heart attack, so it’s “shoot first and ask questions later”. And as long as this flimsy and perverse excuse lets them get away with it, it’s a perfectly fine justification.

  9. Voice_of_Reason

    Out of control. I like law and order, a lot. But first it has to apply to the police.

    1. SHG Post author

      So here’s the deal. I have no problem with commenters who “like law and order, a lot,” though you’re likely to find that others don’t agree. However, change your handle, as “Voice_of_Reason” is the ‘nym for a nutjob. Second, nobody gives a shit what you like. Third, this is a law blog, for lawyers and judges. We have cops and prosecutors here as well. If you have nothing to offer that would be illuminating, then your comment will be trashed.

      And if you don’t like it, don’t comment. Volenti non fit injuria. Nobody forces you to come here.

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