The Rorschach Test
Each side of the political spectrum seem to throw out their own snark . What we know is that she was shot while threatening others with a kitchen knife. So, the right threw out memes about all of knife fights they had growing up. Their tongues were firmly planted in their cheeks. It’s a laugh a minute with them.
The left pointed out that she was a honor student. For instance, I usually love John Pavlovitz’s work, but his recent post on this missed out on a lot of nuance. I talked about the perception problem that came with showing pictures of Daunte Wright with a gun. The mention of her as a honor student presents the same problem. While it might be relevant to her overall character, it is not particularly helpful in sorting through the facts of this particular case.
When the officers approached they could have no idea who Bryant was. They couldn’t have known whether she was an “A” student or a potential dropout. They saw a potentially dangerous teenager that was threatening the lives of everyone on the scene. They saw the dangerous weapon. Contrary to what some would have us believe. This is not a normal scene for most of us. That would be the genesis of those jokes told in right wing memes.
However, what is equally misleading is the false dichotomy that the right forces us into in these situations. The reflexive reaction seems to be to force police to stand back and allow whatever bad is going to happen happen and then investigate after the fact. In other words, certainly don’t intervene because then you will be blamed for whatever you do.
The response demonstrates the binary thinking that usually comes from the right. You can do nothing or you can shoot to kill. They fail to see that while much of the criticism lacks nuance, it comes from a place where we want better outcomes. How do we get those better outcomes? That’s a fair question.
Community policing is just one answer. I mentioned that none of the responding officers knew Bryant. Why not? If those that patrolled the neighborhood frequently also responded to the call it’s more likely they would have known Bryant. Maybe they would have known she was an honor student and could have used that relationship and knowledge to talk her down before shots needed to be fired.
However, the more pressing question is why we always have to shoot to kill. Couldn’t they have disabled her instead? It’s a knife. All that needs to happen is to allow those in her path to get out of the way and away from danger. Maybe Bryant has a future after that. Maybe she could make good on the promise she was showing as a student. Maybe she could learn from her mistakes and become a productive member of society.
Racism is usually never overt. It is usually subtle and this is where both sides often get it wrong. Those officers didn’t necessarily shoot Bryant because she was black. They would have responded to a call of a white girl with a knife. They would have taken the situation just as seriously. Would they have done the same thing? That’s a much more complicated question.
All we need to do is consider the cases of Dylan Roof and the Santa Fe shooter. They survived their ordeals. This isn’t to say that they shouldn’t have. Maybe I wouldn’t have taken Roof to McDonald’s afterwards, but we don’t have to shoot to kill either. There is something going on here that has to be addressed. We need to ask ourselves why these situations often turn out this way.
The officers involved in the Bryant case didn’t do anything illegal necessarily. It was a dangerous situation. Lives potentially hung in the balance. They acted and that was that. What we can’t quite put our finger on is that there is a slice of humanity white officers seem to see when they see white suspects. Maybe they see themselves. Maybe they see the potential. Maybe they feel something they just don’t feel when they encounter suspects that are people of color.
Community policing would help. If police get to know the members in their community then it is easier to see them as people when bad things go down. Psychological testing of potential officers would certainly help. New training would also help. There are a number of options to try between doing nothing and shooting to kill. All of those are good things and things that would make the situation better. It won’t eliminate every situation. Perfect is the enemy of good. There will never be a perfect, but we need to do better and we can’t afford to wait any longer.
Instead of 4 shots into her upper body, why not one into a leg?
1There was a black police chief being interviewed. Lawrence O’Donnel asked that same question. The chance of hitting a bystander if the cop targets an arm or leg and misses is substantial.
2What happened to the taser option?
3Gosh! I remember the Lone Ranger NOT shooting to kill either on the radio or TV. Silver bullet, yes. Deadly intent, NO.
Well, it might help changing the charts in the police shooting range. They all show something from the umbilical upward. Thus, are they trained.
As for the deceased being an honor student, hey, OK. But that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t gone off the edge of depression, etc. Wonder if a psychologically trained office would have been a help. I’ve seen one at work and he was terrific! No violence at ll in what was sure to be a violent sitution.
4Isn’t it strange that we never hear of a cop pulling their TASER by mistake and not killing someone by accident?
5I saw the video and I am really torn. She was clearly trying to stab the girl in the pink track suit and the cop was too far away at that moment to do anything to stop her.
What precipitated all this? Who called the police? Why weren’t the other people giving her a wide berth? It would be interesting to know the answers; but, they won’t change the outcome. It’s situations like this that remind of all of just how difficult policing is at times. I hope the DOJ probe into the Minneapolis PD will examine all this stuff and come up with solutions that won’t leave people dead, especially those in crisis. “Suicide by Cop” is a real phenomenon and feel particularly bad for the police who get caught in it unsuspectingly. I’m not suggesting that this is what happened in this case, though.
6I think that’s why the term “racial bias” comes into play. I don’t know if I am smart enough to parse the difference between racism and racial bias. Maybe it is a distinction without a difference. I suppose what I try to do is insert a white suspect in place of the victim to determine if the same would have happened. Sometimes it might have. Sometimes not.
This might be one of those cases that could go either way. A lot goes into the training and procedures that are in place in general. It just seems that all or nothing thinking seems to dominate are policing. I’m certainly no expert, so maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about.
7If I’m not mistaken, Ma’Kaih Bryant was the one who called the police in the first place.
Assuming that’s true, community police might have had that information prior to their arrival, understood that Bryant felt threatened by the other girls and been able to talk the knife out of her hand. “Look, we’re here — you don’t need to defend yourself now. We got this. Give me the knife.”
The imported police only saw the situation in front of them. They didn’t have any acquaintance or history with the people involved. That can make all the difference.
8#5 TASERs are only used so they confuse them with their gun!
9#1 I wish the cops would practice shooting with targets that had the bulls eye at the arms and legs, but if they did no cop would pass the shooting requirement!
Spot on. Thank you.
10Looking at the video, seems to me a cop with any skill with a gun (and this one was a military trained marksman) could have approached her quickly from her rear and fired ONCE from point blank range in the leg or butt, or or tasered her in the neck. But I’m not a cop.
11It also sounds like the teen was possibly defending herself at the start. But nothing will happen to the cop in this tragedy, again. Maybe in the other recent cases something will happen now.
I would not want to be a cop in this situation. It looks like when he pulled up he had seconds to decide between a lot of bad decisions. Decisions with possibly better outcomes could have taken seconds longer to consider, which in this situation might have resulted in the stabbing death of the other person. Then we’d be having a discussion about whether the police could have done more to protect an unarmed person from a knife attack.
Could there have been an outcome where everyone is alive and uninjured? Probably. With so many people and variables involved though, it’s difficult to know how likely that might be.
12There is going to be plenty to sort out in the situation, and everyone involved is likely to up with a few psychic scars.
Where do you start and stop “the situation”? When the police pull up? With the incomplete information passed on from the 911 call? With making the call and a decision to go back and confront others? With a choice by a small group to act so a 15-year-old feels threatened? With the education and family life of all those involved, as they somehow allowed or encouraged conflict and taking situations into their own hands? and so on… until we get to me, and my tolerance for all the violence that I just read about and don’t personally experience?
13Stabbings are rare. So rare that after my son witnessed a stabbing, no one I know knew anyone that had witnessed/been involved in one. So rare that when I was called for jury duty, the lawyers for defense dropped me because my son had witnessed one. The case was about an in prison stabbing. The previous jury selections didn’t drop me because my grandfather was a judge, my brother a lawyer, and my stepsister’s husband was a chief of police.
I only have TV shows for information, and a feeling US police aren’t trained for knife fights, but knives and their wielders are quick and potentially deadly. It’s only because firearms are easy to use and learn that our society has lost that knowledge. Above all I wish that child had not been armed, but instead we have to mourn. That officer was trained to protect, and did so…
14