Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police
theundefeated.com
theundefeated.com
She offered corroborating evidence from the get go, and even the 911 dispatcher confirms her story, yet the officer is too busy waving his piece around to get off his power trip.
I'd be mad too. Some element of this volatile combo of deadly weapons and unprofessional police behavior has to change. Preferably both.
Most cops go their whole lives without firing their gun--adding an extra gun rarely makes a situation better. While TV and movies like to portray heroic feats of gunplay, in reality, 90+% of the bullets go errant in situations where a gun was actually useful and required.
Police in the US are generally seen as adversarial, while police in the UK are generally seen as mostly helpful. In my estimation, the problem in the US is one of culture. Police here are looking for a reason to charge you with a crime, not trying to keep you out of trouble. It's "us versus them" on both sides.
And yet you wrote in another comment that had you been the son-in-law, you would've brought your rifle to go talk to the person at the car. Why? In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a car?
It's not unreasonable to expect that someone willing to steal a car might also be willing to harm you to do so.
Also, if someone feels like the expected penalties for stealing a car and wounding/killing someone are close enough that they should be prepared to kill someone while stealing the car if needed, that speaks to a failure of the justice system: either the penalty for causing physical harm should be much higher, or the penalty for stealing a car should be much lower.
She wasn't doing anything illegal, sure, but it was a bit reckless to arrange the transfer so that the buyer was expected to go alone, onto someone's driveway, to replace the license plates and drive off with the car without talking to the resident or owner.
Imagine if you sold your Magic cards to someone and told them, "oh, they're in my bedroom at 123 Elm Street -- just jimmy open the window and fish 'em out. If anyone asks, just give them this handwritten note."
Or, "Cool, just pick up the keys from under my office desk. Walk past security, just ignore them if they stop you, and fish them out of the cabinet. Pick the lock if you have to."
No. Bad idea. You look like a thief doing that.
Could they have handled the situation better? Definitely. But it's a bit much to act outraged that anyone would misinterpret her actions.
Only in a world where random folks from the neighbourhood might come out and point a gun at you instead of simply asking a few logical questions and looking at proffered supporting documentation.
But it's a bit much to act outraged that anyone would misinterpret her actions.
Who's outraged at her actions being misinterpreted?
The outrage is at the fact that a panicky cop saw something they thought was suspicious and reacted by immediately pointing their gun at someone (something any good gun owner knows you never do unless you plan to shoot), creating a potentially life threatening situation, and the person on the other end of it was forced to defuse it.
Not random folks - a family member.
For what it's worth, I likely would have also come out and challenged someone who behaved the same way she did. I would likely have done so with a rifle in my hands and having already called the police. What I would absolutely not have done was point said weapon at her - that's called "assault".
The issue isn't that she was challenged, or even that the guy was armed. The issue is that the guy though that it was appropriate to point a firearm at her, which both constitutes a threat of deadly force and greatly increases the chance of an accidental shooting. Then, after it was all over with, the person that assaulted her was not charged with a crime.
The bottom line here is that police officers are allowed to use threats of deadly force in situations where it is wholly inappropriate, are trained to do so, and are protected by their departments (at their victims' expense no less) in the exceptional case where they are actually charged with a crime.
Anyone characterizing her behavior as doing "absolutely nothing wrong".
You can both believe that the son-in-law and officer overreacted without believing the buyer somehow did everything exactly right. It's not either/or.
>The outrage is at the fact that a panicky cop saw something they thought was suspicious ...
Yes, people are outraged at that too, but they also blur that with the more dubious claim that "she did nothing wrong". I think that's pushing it. Again, not "either/or".
Let's just admit it: if she were white, it wouldn't have turned out this way
She arranged the sale.
She had the seller's info.
She had the keys.
She had the paperwork.
Only problem is, she 1) is black, and 2) looked like a guy.
Could this situation have been handled differently? Sure. But I struggle to lay more than a small piece of the blame on her. I'd just as soon blame the mother-in-law for not telling her cowboy son that she'd sold the car.
If the assailant were spending several months in jail for assault and kidnapping, you might have a point. But failing that, let's concentrate on the more egregious breach of peace first.
That's crazy.
C-R-A-Z-Y.
I often read HN through the HackerNews Robot on Telegram and more than once I see interesting stories that seems to have been flagged off the site even if they were upvoted a lot.
In particular, I was expecting a lot more drama from a story of a black woman "surviving" an encounter with police. Here's a similar story about a white man in San Fran: https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/good-samaritan-backfire-9.... This sort of stuff makes me think that race is perhaps a red herring, and that the quality of police (or police training) simply vary a lot in our country.
> My behavior is how everyone should act in those situations: comply, survive and complain later.
> I don’t have de-escalation training. I’m the one being held at gunpoint. I’m the one thinking my life could end if he panics. Yet, I’m the one who must remain calm. The legal system is asking untrained civilians to de-escalate panicky cops.
> The story and its interest doesn't hinge on this (in)accuracy ...
From the Washington Post[0]:
> White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.
If you look at fatal police shootings so far this year[1], the numbers are the same.
You should provide a link to the Harvard study you mentioned.
Here[2] is one from Yale which someone once touted to me, which supports your claims. But they only used data from a limited number of police departments in Houston, TX. I'm not sure why anyone would look at that and not the national numbers. In the paper, of their own methods they say, "In essence, this is equivalent to analyzing labor market discrimination on a set of firms willing to supply a researcher with their Human Resources data!".
There are many places to find this information online. It is a fact: black people are shot and killed more often by police than white people.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/1...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
[2] https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/workshop/leo/leo16_fr...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/...
Not that this changes the rough idea here which is that someone changing a license plate on a car shouldn't have a gun pointed at her and have to depend more on her de-escalation skills than the officer's.
Actually, that very quote was what inspired my research. I wanted to know if the quote was misleading in favor of one narrative, so I filtered out cases where the suspect was armed and otherwise viably threatening.
Here's the link to the harvard study: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399
> It is a fact: black people are shot and killed more often by police than white people.
I don't dispute that. I'm skeptical that black people are unjustifiably shot more frequently than white people, or at least with the frequency the media would have me believe.
Is that a general statement? Because the 20th century would like a word.
If we really managed to eliminate institutional racism in the justice system, we should probably try and work out the date that occurred, and make it a national holiday.
Which is meaningless, since black people commit more serious crimes than white people.
If you break it down by people suspected of having committed a felony, you're actually more likely to be shot as a white guy.
Convicted? Yes. Arrested? Sure. Commit? I don't know, maybe, but I bet if you factored in economic status there'd be a lot of evening out; i.e. poor people commit more serious crimes, black people are disproportionately poor, therefore more black people commit more serious crimes.
The causes are irrelevant from the standpoint of police officers. Cops have to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.
Does it? Not that I can see, particularly in response to the assertion black people are shot disproportionately by police.
Consider a hypothetical: two separate scenarios of kids shoplifting, one white the other black: the white kid gets called out by an officer, is pursued and apprehended without arms drawn, the police officer writes-up a citation and the kid spends the night in jail as a warning before being released. A black kid does the same thing, but the officer decides to draw their sidearm and orders them to freeze - the kid turns around to look and is immediately shot by the officer (search online for "shot for turning around police"). The officer can (at present, justifiably) say they feared for their life because they thought they were about to be charged or expected their target to draw their own firearm. Or take the same scenario but both kids do actually fight back somehow - I believe the average white police officer would still be more hesitant to use lethal force against a white assailant than a black one.
I won't deny the usual statistics ("blacks commit more crimes per-capita", etc) but don't think that's where I believe the problem is. I'm not content with the sentiment that "black lives matter" - I'd much rather it be "criminals' lives matter" (I'm aware of the straightforward racist implication - that's why I dare not say it too loudly).
> I believe the average white police officer would still be more hesitant to use lethal force against a white assailant than a black one.
I thought I heard about studies into this, but I can't seem to dig them up. I'll edit or reply again if/when I find them.
> I won't deny the usual statistics ("blacks commit more crimes per-capita", etc) but don't think that's where I believe the problem is. I'm not content with the sentiment that "black lives matter" - I'd much rather it be "criminals' lives matter"
If the discriminant is criminal behavior and not race, then (by definition), the issue isn't one of race (at least not in any meaningful way). It would be good to identify if this is the case or not, so we can focus our national debate on how to appropriately deal with crime and not on racism.
The study is clear in its conclusions: in the hypothetical situation you just presented it is the white kid that has the higher probability of getting shot/killed by the police.
In a nutshell what the study based on the data says is: After you get stop by the police, you are more likely to get shot/killed if you are white than if you are black.
In case this wasn't a simple typo, just FYI: It's "trawled".
It doesn't matter if the victim's narrative was that she was likely to get shot because she is black, but yet the reality is that cops are equal opportunity murderers. Either way, the victim is ultimately panicked because they're being assaulted with a deadly weapon.
If OP has fallen into the narrative that she is especially at risk being black [0], then there is a fine line between trying to extract her from that possibly nonconstructive narrative and shouting down her entire story. This is the general problem with the identity politics tarpit - if one objects too hard at a certain collectivist narrative (in this case, racism), then they are easily pigeonholed into being the "other" in that narrative, fueling the unproductive fire.
[0] Which given the location, is likely true regardless of the overriding distribution.
All of that said, there is a core of truth here that I believe should not be overlooked, and that's that dark-skinned people are treated differently than light-skinned people. There is a great deal of scientific literature that supports this belief - generally speaking, people of all races view others with darker skin to be stronger, more aggressive, less innocent, and often older than they really are.
And yet, when they make a mistake, they aren't held to a higher standard, despite we, as citizens, granting that authority to them.
That's illogical.
There are myriad professions where trust is delegated to the person in that profession, and consequences to go with it. A doctor doesn't get a free pass if they kill someone due to incompetence when performing a surgery just because they do it more often. Heck, engineers are held liable if their work results in injury or death.
Yet, with law enforcement, the opposite is often true, even when the facts clearly demonstrate fault on the part of the police. You couple that with the "thin blue line" culture that results in police circling the wagons whenever one of their own screws up, and it's no wonder that trust in the police has eroded. The perception is that there's simply no consequences to police misconduct. And in many cases, that perception unfortunately matches reality.
> A doctor doesn't get a free pass if they kill someone due to incompetence when performing a surgery just because they do it more often.
So you have data that police are being acquitted of shootings (when a jury finds that the shooting occurred due to incompetence) at a higher rate than surgeons? Or are you using different standards for "incompetence" (for surgeons, presumably the result of an investigation, but for police it's the opinion of the first pundit you heard?). Mind you, none of this has any bearing on comparing police shootings with civilian shootings, which was the topic of your original point...
And therefore the consequences should be significantly lessened for them relative to an untrained civilian?
The approach you advocate will result in the perverse incentive that a cop is better off always pulling a gun in any situation, as the lack of consequences means the incentive is to always minimize personal risk in an encounter in the short term, as there's no risk as a result of a mistake in the long term.
It's perverse.
In effect you place the power of life in death in the hands of a trusted individual, and then create a situation where they're incentivized to use it, especially in situations where even a whiff of short-term personal risk is perceived (like, say, in an encounter with a person in a minority where racial biases may come into play).
I very much doubt this is true. There is a risk factor built into going into surgery and an understanding that "complications happen" and people are are negatively affected. If we put surgeons in jail for making mistakes due to incompetence, we would have zero surgeons.
I'm very curious what your definition of competence is in both these scenarios...
However, the real problem was pulling a gun FIRST instead of hollering across the road or from a porch. A street punk would normally run--somebody legitimate will respond.
This idiot cop is actually lucky she wasn't a true violent criminal who had a hidden lookout. Getting that close with a drawn gun if there was a hidden lookout would have gotten him shot.
This article is about a man who misinterprets a car purchase and pulls a gun to "protect" property, which was not his and was not being stolen.
If someone pulls a gun to "defend their property", they better be really damned sure it is their property and the property was being stolen (not a {leinholder, repoman, undercover police officer, deaf person, autistic person, etc}). The risk of making the wrong decision may not be high, but the impact of the wrong decision is.
Edit for the downvotes: it's not just a car to me, and it's not just about the monetary value. It has sentimental value and I wouldn't be able to replace it easily. I don't see what's so controversial about attempting to protect one's property. That said I did find this story disturbing and I'm not trying to imply that the woman did anything wrong. I was simply replying to the point above.
deter? The very first thing I was taught with a gun, was not to point it at anything you didn't intend to shoot. Any time you introduce a lethal instrument to a dispute you've put a lethal conclusion on the table.
Downvoting you for it isn't my style, but I can understand why others would.
Worth it or not, it's legal in some states and in some circumstances. I'm not sure about TN, where this occurred.
> It's a car. Cars can be replaced.
That car was purchased with money, which presumably was obtained through labor. Your labor, once expended, cannot be reclaimed. The moral argument can be made that theft of property is equivalent to theft of a portion of one's life.
That's bullshit but even by that logic, killing the thief would not be a proportional response.
Plus most cars are insured to cover theft and since it was in the driveway, it possibly could have been covered by homeowner's insurance.
Both the individual's story and her message here
I am glad it is here to bring further attention to these issues and even how this specific event happened to this woman
Both the encounter and how the police later handled the 'investigation' are both disgusting and why serious reform is anything but a top priority for officers and politicians is completely revolting to me
But I wish the author was more clear on what she meant in saying 'prevent the next philando castile'
Was she going to prevent it by filing the complaint and removing that officer from the street or was she insisting she would help prevent more philandos by educating others in saying:
> My behavior is how everyone should act in those situations: comply, survive and complain later.
Because Castile did comply and was still murdered
This clip discusses how the definition of 'comply' changes with each high profile murder
Trevor Noah and the writers of the daily show have been discussing the issues in a way that I think has been highlighting some of the problems very clearly, and with great respect and composure
This clip calls out the silence from a leading voice defending law abiding citizens' rights to carry firearms, especially in regard to doing so without fear of being murdered by the police for carrying a firearm
https://youtu.be/0IJSSBMLz6g?t=250s
And this video showcases the newly released dashcam footage of the philando murder
We need to talk about these issues but insinuating blame on the victim is the wrong way to do it
I hope the article was actually focused on the prevention method of filing complaints but I wish that was more clear
So please, until this is solved, comply like Castile did and if you live to tell your side of the encounter then please report these offenders
On the tangent of arbitrary and unneeded flagging, there seems to be quite a great deal of it lately... it's not improving the site.
After I got off work, I tried to find a story that I'd noticed earlier and wanted to comment on, but it was completely gone from not just the front page but everywhere. A completely benign, tech-related story. Makes no sense:
Isn't there a "merge" feature or something similar you can do to prevent squelching of a topic entirely? Let the site readers be the collective mechanism that votes or ignores something.
If you're flagging this story, perhaps you could leave a comment here about why?
Edit: And while posting this comment it got reflagged/revouched again...
Weirdly it's completely gone from the front page (and all subsequent pages). I assume that's not normal for flags? It was at #4 only a moment ago, and it was flagged then...
edit: and now it's back, on page 2 this time. The invisible hand of moderation?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
I'd argue it's a new phenomenon in that this is the first time (I've seen anyways) people resigning themselves to simply giving advice on how to de-escelate the situation as a non-cop. But I can see how that seems like a stretch.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14748443 and marked it off-topic.