The question isn’t whether it was unreasonable, outrageous, for Janish to see a black person changing the license plates on the car, and mistakenly assume it was theft. The problem was that the assumption, baseless and contraindicated, was a twitch away from death. Jameson’s death. And that would have been fine according to Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch.

Chief Rausch said that when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. A mindset is not a fact.

And indeed, that is what the law provides. When a cop kills, the only question is whether he satisfied the Reasonably Scared Cop Rule. That Jameson was right where she belonged on the Good Guy Curve isn’t part of the equation.

Had I not reacted calmly, Officer Janish likely would have been within his legal rights to shoot me although I wasn’t doing anything illegal. My mere presence with a duffel bag was deemed a threat.

And that’s what makes this scenario ripe for discussion. It’s not clouded by the emotion of death. No harm, no foul. It’s not that this doesn’t happen, but rarely does an encounter like this come to light. As the saying goes, “if it bleeds, it leads,” and the cases we hear about are the tragedies, the ones that end in a dead body on the ground. The sides then back into their respective corners to justify why it happened.

But not in the case of Tanya Jameson.

The moment I arrived at Officer Janish’s mother-in-law’s house I became a suspect, and under the law, it seems that Officer Janish became a victim. He could have stayed at his house, called 911 and waited for the sheriff’s department to arrive. Instead he grabbed his weapon and came outside to confront me.

What’s a cop to do? He sees something that, based upon his training and experience, holds the potential to be a crime. Worse yet, a crime perpetrated on his mother-in-law. Had he done nothing, he never would have heard the end of it. Of course he grabbed his gun. To have confronted a potential car thief without his gun would have been nuts. After all, he didn’t know that the thief wasn’t armed, wasn’t violent. And even if not, his power as a police officer comes from his ability to inflict pain, to kill. Without a gun, why would anybody pay him any mind at all?

But the build-up of flawed assumptions,* none of which were necessarily accurate, came to fruition when Janish confronted Jameson. There was no reason why a person buying a car in Knoxville would think it necessary to contact the local police department to let them know she wasn’t a thief. There is nothing wrong with having a duffel bag, into which the registration and title are placed. There is certainly nothing wrong with putting her new plates on her new car. The law requires her to do so before she drives home.

Tanya Jameson did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. For which she could be dead, had she made a furtive gesture, like reach into her duffel bag to show Janish her new title.

In her statement, Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero talked about the extensive training officers receive in appropriate use of force and de-escalation. Asking common-sense questions, before unholstering a weapon, should also be included in police training.

I’m sure the situation looked questionable from Officer Janish’s house, but it warranted the question “what are you doing?” That’s exercising common sense. That’s de-escalation.

Interestingly, Jameson falls into the same trap as Janish when she suggests that “common sense” offers a solution. There being no sense that’s “common,” she contends that Janish should have approached the encounter from her frame of reference rather than his. Janish’s problem wasn’t lack of “common sense,” but prudence for him, as a cop, as opposed to prudence for her, as a person who just bought a car. But then, one can’t really blame Jameson’s fuzzy thinking, as she’s no more attuned to this problem than any other ordinary good guy who doesn’t spend their days pondering questions such as police use of force.

It seems that the legal system is really asking civilians to de-escalate adrenaline-fueled cops. We must remain calm while facing a loaded gun while the trained officers can panic and overreact.

This is a choice made by the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor. On the one hand, you have putatively trained police officers (yes, they’re civilians too, but cut Jameson a break, please) who have voluntarily chosen an occupation that involves an element of risk, and in compensation, carry guns and shields for which qualified immunity is conferred on them so they don’t shy from their duty. On the other hand, you have a lovely black woman who bought a car.

The question isn’t who deserves to suffer the risk of death, but why both can’t be confident they will survive the encounter. Tanya Jameson survived, because she was the wiser of the two, which is why we can talk about this rather than mourn her needless killing. While Chief Rausch called the encounter “lawful and proper,” it was the product of vigilance and ignorance. The first is a virtue. The second is an excuse. It might be lawful, but it’s hardly proper, even when no one dies.

Update: Some additional, and very well-taken, information that adds another dimension to this encounter: