Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is a former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle, and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was a police officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers.
On April 4, 2022, an unidentified Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer fired a single shot into the back of the head of Patrick Lyoya, killing the 26-year-old, who was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The officer was white, Lyoya was black, and there was both body camera footage and cellphone video of the shooting.
I’ve watched the videos repeatedly, and believe that the officer was justified in killing Lyoya based on the following:
• The officer stopped Lyoya for driving a car which was displaying license plates for another vehicle.
• Lyoya attempted to flee and was tackled by the officer after a short chase.
• Lyoya then actively resisted the officer, refusing to put his hands behind his back.
• Telling an officer that you are not resisting when you are is not going to change the officer’s mind that you are resisting.
• When the officer drew his Taser to subdue Lyoya, Lyoya fought him for control of the weapon.
• Loyoya not letting go of the Taser indicates that he may intend to harm the officer.
• By the end of the struggle, Lyoya had control of the Taser, which although “less-lethal” is still a weapon.
• Commentary by Lyoya’s passenger for the officer to just “talk” while Lyoya is still clearly fighting is meaningless.
• Had Lyoya tased the officer, he would be able to take the officer’s firearm.
• Once Lyoya had the Taser, the officer’s only choice was to use deadly force to protect himself.
It’s both sad and tragic, and while I understand the grief of Lyoya’s family, it’s not criminal or a wrongful death. It’s not an execution, as Lyoya’s father has claimed through his interpreter (the father does not speak English). It also shouldn’t be turned into a political football by the gubernatorial candidates, who are staking out positions based on the video and their supporters.
It’s a tragedy, but it is what happens when a young person decides to fight the police and there are weapons involved. It’s what happens when a group of the populace has lost confidence in the police due to past incidents and a perceived lack of accountability.
The case is being investigated by the Michigan State Police and the Kent County prosecutor is waiting on the conclusion of that investigation. This will likely result in a no prosecution decision, as it should in this case.
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OK — but shot in the back of the head?
If you’re fighting for your life and you’re fighting fair, you’re not serious about staying alive.
OK, again — but to get analytical (I apologize): It sounds incongruous to me that one (such as a police officer, say) can claim he is fighting for, or fearing for his life, when if such a one (a police officer, say), has his/her knee on the back of someone, and that someone is more or less face down, the situation of fighting for/fearing for one’s life is over — one is in control, it sounds to me. I understand, there was a melee, and fighting for/fear for one’s life is not something that can be turned off immediately or which physiologically shuts down quickly But still…?
I recall something from the George Floyd trial of the officer Chauvin: In a struggle, there can be a point when the authority (police officer) gains control, and then how the officer behaves when he is seen to be in control becomes the issue.
Lyoyas pushed up off the ground three times in the previous few seconds in an attempt to dislodge the officer. The fight was very much still going. The fact that his back was the more directly facing target (thus best target) is irrelevant.
Since Lyoya had gained control of the Taser, all it would have taken is one application of the weapon to disable the officer. It’s not pretty, but a shot in the back of the head would be justified.
Lyoya made the choice to run, and to violently resist when caught. What befell him was brought on by his actions, no one else.
If Lyoya never actually gained control of the Taser (in the sense of being able to use it), but was still struggling to gain control, would that change your analysis at all?
In your fantasy world, the does the cop call a time out to see whether Lyoya has control of the Taser, and then another time out should he gain control of the Taser? And then, to Henry’s point, tell Lyoya to hold still so he can shoot him in a less fatal place?
How do you morons think any of this happens?
It happens because they have never been in a fight where their life was on the line.
Attributed to George Orwell.
“ We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us.”
“It happens because they have never been in a fight where their life was on the line.”
Amen.
Put yourself in that ‘great quotes/replys’ file of yours, HG.
Its one of those things you can’t really understand till it happens…
Actually a paraphrase from a 19th century Rudyard Kipling work “Tommy”, cited by Orwell in 1942.
“Take up the white man’s burden” is more in vogue with the current administration.
Hi Greg, thank you for taking the time to break this down. Your explanation makes sense, but I’m still prompted to ask if it was a good idea to try to make a forcible arrest in this situation? From my living room, Mr. Lyoya looks like he would be a challenge to restrain. I understand that being too passive has other problems, but are there better ways to approach the interaction from the start?
Curious. What would you have a cop do when he comes upon a likely stolen car, make a stop or ignore it?
That is my question. I’m not saying that you can let every suspect go and catch them later, but the car isn’t going anywhere and there is another passenger in the car who might be easier to take into custody.
To a lay person, wrestling the suspect one-on-one to take them into custody seems to have a pretty high risk of their being a struggle over the officers weapons. Also, what if the other passenger is armed and intervenes?
Society can’t easily prevent people from resisting arrest and not having police kill members of the public (justified or not) is sensible goal. Greg is an authority on police tactics, and I think it’s a reasonable to ask if less confrontational tactics in a situation like this might be better for the safety of the public, and the officer.
Well, let’s work this through as if you had a brain. If it’s a stolen car, how would that help to identify the suspect? What crime has the passenger committed that would allow the cop to arrest him? Would the cop know before asking him for his license that he would resist? What are the options once he resists? What are the options once he tries to flee? Do we just let criminals go? Does that benefit the public?
Tactics aren’t magic, whether you’re a layperson, lawyer or cop. What would better serve the public, finding and arresting a car thief or letting him go rather than risking the perp being harmed or killed because of his escalation of force by resisting?
There are plenty of situations where it makes more sense to let the suspect escape rather than continue to try to arrest the suspect.
This wasn’t one of them.
Thanks for the clarification.
So, just for argument’s sake, are you saying cops should let suspects who “look like they’d be a challenge to restrain” go? Because the choices are catch them or not catch them.
As to better ways to approach the interaction, everything an officer does on a stop is based on the suspect’s actions. If Lyoya had not ran, had his license and paperwork showing the tags belonged to the car but the change hadn’t made it into the computer, then he’d have probably gotten a warning. If the car wasn’t stolen but had an improper tag, and he wasn’t wanted and had a valid license, he’d have gotten a ticket.
Lyoya made the choice to run, and to violently resist when caught. What befell him was brought on by his actions, no one else.
By your logic, the more threatening and intimidating a criminal, the less likely police should be to stop them.
For a black man in the US running from the police is rational because if he/she fails to escape he/she may end up dead. Lyoya’s fate simply emphasises this.
You do understand that he would be very much alive if he hadn’t run? That resisting is the only thing that got him killed?
Maybe I should have used the word “understandable” instead of “rational”.
Prior incidents have raised the level of fear of the police in the minds of Black people to such a level that some decide to run. Considered rationally later while not if “Fight or Flight” mode (if that is they survive) they may come to agree that not running would have been safer. Mr Loyoya has no chance to do so.
One of the things I’ve tried to make clear here in quite a few posts is that the extreme outrage surrounding the handful of cases where police engaged in unjustified violence have given rise to a grossly exaggerated fear among black people, which causes them to react badly when stopped, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. There are millions of traffic stops per year in which nothing bad happens. There is nothing rational about resisting, and it’s almost certain to end very poorly.
I don’t want anyone to be harmed or killed, which is why it’s important to correct your ridiculously wrong sense of this. Pushing this lie kills black people. Don’t kill black people, Carlyle.
It’s about the same odds as winning the Powerball, but it happens like Philando Castile case. People still buy lottery tickets. Folks that shouldn’t still flee. Stupid and sad….
There’s no risk of death from buying a losing lottery ticket.
SHG I agree with everything you say, but it is not facts that matter but different peoples perception of the facts. Does anyone produce accurate statistics of police killings classified by race of the victim, I doubt it. What the media reports are what the media considers newsworthy and I would not be surprised that a white policeman shoots black story is considered more newsworthy than white policeman kills white man story. This would obviously distort perceptions by race of the reader but also black people are going to pay more attention to a police kills black story and white people not so much and the difference in intensity of interest also causes distorted perceptions by both races.
I have an extreme interest in matters of the darker traits of humanity. I read about crime corruption nasty politics and other atrocities of human behaviour. I used to collect newspaper clippings on these topics until my late wife threw them out but now I collect links to web documents and keep them in a hierarchy of folders in my browser. One first level folder is for police and there is a subfolder for killings and in that four subfolders for Blacks, Hispanics, Whites and Unknown Race. Under each racial category folder I have a subfolder for each named person, their city and state and in these lowest level folders I keep links to multiple articles about that particular killing and the subsequent court cases. This gives me an undoubted distorted picture of the relevant frequencies with the distortion coming from my own fascination and media judgements of newsworthiness. I an Australian living in SYDNEY Australia and reading the Australian edition of The Guardian find out when a Black man dies by cop in Alabama. Ideally news organizations should have a catchment area and select only stories relevant to it but the more horrid a story the more people are aware of it.
Under Blacks I have 59 names, under Hispanic 16, under white 6 , and under unknown race 2. Most relate to the US but there are a couple in the UK and one in Australia.
These are not statistics more a very rough guide and will be affected by my tendency to notice stories that I find relevant, media newsworthiness bias and by the concentration of police attention on areas deemed to be high crime where Blacks, Hispanics and poor people live. In my opinion many of these tragedies are caused by miscommunication caused by the stereotypes residing in the brains of Blacks, Whites and police. What I think is the most gross example is that of Philando Castille. In this case I believe the trains of thought of the two people involved were not running on parallel tracks but on different railroads. Philando Castille has in his brain the untrue stereotype of encounters with police being dangerous for Blacks so he thinks it is a good idea to inform the policeman that he has a gun and a license for it but he does so after the policeman has asked him for his ID and he is reaching for his wallet, the policeman with the brain stereotype of the dangerous armed black criminal jumps to the conclusion that Castille isn’t giving prior notice that he has the gun so the policeman doesn’t become alarmed when he searches but that he is notifying his intention to murder the cop, the cop then says “stop reaching”, he does not say “stop reaching for your gun”. The last thought Castille thinks before the cop’s gun says “BLAM BLAM BLAM” is “what’s this crazy cop on about, he has asked for my ID I am reaching for my wall…..”.
Yes Blacks overestimate the danger to them that police actually present, but Philando Castille was right to fear but his attempt to avoid danger killed him. It would be good if Blacks were persuaded not to have such irrational fears of police but sometimes they are justified. To correct their overestimation a reliable and accessible source of statistics on killings and the races of killer and victim is needed and needs to be very widely distributed.
It is not just Blacks whose minds contain nasty racial stereotypes, White minds have them also one being that of The Dangerous armed big Black male criminal. There are also stereotypes for other races and link stereotypes of various levels of intensity linking concept of race with concepts of desirable and undesirable attributes such as honesty and criminality. If I were trying to diagram them I would do so as a thought bubble above a drawing of a human with races and abstract concepts represented by interior bubbles and the intensity of links between them in different minds by lines of different thickness.
The fact is that some behaviours that humans reject as applying to good people like themselves are in fact in the mainstream of human behaviour, ethnic cleansing, femicide, hatred and killing of sexual deviants, hatred of those who worship illegitimate gods genocide. Every human has some particular outgroup that he or she hates. In my case it is players of the various games of FOOTBRAWL (note not a misspelling).
In every nation of the World including Australia there are brain infections of racist and sexist God Botherist etc stereotypes which result in hateful decisions. All prejudicial ~isms involve the same mechanisms of individual and group psychology.
Concurrently, all the anti-police hype and violence is also making police more paranoid. It’s just helping to drive this into a continuing cycle of tragedies.
In over 20 years as a police officer and supervisor, I have stopped hundreds, if not thousands of black people. None of them were shot by me, stabbed by me, or pistol-whipped by me. Or, for that matter, other police. I’ve chased several who had been shot, stabbed, or pistol-whipped, always by some other criminal.
I’ve also been outspoken that we need to hold police accountable for their misdeeds.
Lyoya’s fate was due to Lyoya’s actions, and nothing more.
But what prompted Loyoya to act the way he did. My guess is fear, sure irrational fear but fearful people do stupid things. Also Loyoya was a refugee from the failed state of the Democratic Republic of The Congo. Some of the reasons for his fear may have arrived in the US with him.
We don’t base decisions on what people thought, we base those decisions on what people do. Lyoya did not choose his course of action wisely.
I agree.
But does that mean problem solved, Lyoya acted stupidly so he deserved to die? Does it mean we don’t have to solve the prior cause of his terror that Blacks are so full of fear of the police that that they react to any encounter with flight motivated terror. What did Lyoya think would happen if he didn’t get away?
One point Lyoya may not been a good example of a Black fear of the police. He was a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo which is a failed state full of government and police corruption terrorism and death squads. His fear may not have had anything to do with his experiences in America.
Or, maybe he was a criminal with no respect for the law who fully intended to murder the officer as soon as he could turn to face him. This is neither less plausible, nor incompatible with the facts.
So why must we assume otherwise?
Like most White people and a considerable proportion of Blacks who have assimilated the respectable classes you have a stereotype of blacks men being essentially so criminal that they would attack police rather than submit to arrest and try to murder any officer who tries.
We can never know so any assumption that either you or I make is just that an assumption. We will have to agree to disagree.
This has been interesting, but I fear we’re now getting into an argument that could devolve quickly. So let’s end this here.
“Prior incidents have raised the level of fear of the police in the minds of Black people”
There is a power structure that mediates and manipulates the public understanding of these incidents, using logical fallacies and outright misrepresentations precisely to maximize that outcome. This fear of police benefits that power structure. It creates profits, facilitates political organizing, creates markets and justifies careers. One might call it systemic. It doesn’t preclude the existence of other systemic forces, but in fact will operate in a symbiotic relationship with them.
He had every chance, and your suggestion otherwise is a self-fulfillng prophesy.
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I left Kenosha area a few months before the Rittenhouse trial. I have lived in Grand Rapids less than a year and I have another trial/riot to look forward to.
I came to the same conclusion about the shooting. Many people around here have not. The family didn’t help by spreading the “execution” narrative after they saw the video a few days before it was released. The constant refrain is “a traffic violation is not a death sentence” as if that means anything. They want “justice” and when asked what that means I get jargon and slogans. One person actually said justice is “on education, it’s on awareness.”
When this is the level of intelligence around the conversation, how can you hope for an intelligent or rational conclusion?
I agree with Greg’s assessment. Physically resisting a police officer is playing Russian roulette. I’m a huge supporter of police reforms and one of those reforms is the practice of sending patrol officers alone during their shifts. In the macho world of LE, some officers have this expectation to engage suspects without backup. When this occurs, the weapon becomes the default crutch for the officer. The officer is more likely to place hands on or draw his weapon. This officer certainly could have called for backup and waited for backup prior to engaging a stolen car suspect. Unfortunately, he had to engage a resisting suspect alone and a suspect that had some control over his taser. Once that happened, lethal force became legal and justified. We need to stop putting officers in situations that exacerbate the potential for the use of force and/or lethal force. If two officers were present’ perhaps the suspect would have thought twice about resisting…perhaps. But perhaps, the officer would have felt safer knowing that someone else was watching his back.