Police officers often create life-threatening situations because they react out of a sense of urgency instead of calmly evaluating circumstances before reacting, one expert told USA TODAY.
Earlier this month in Salt Lake City, police officers walked a suburban street looking for a 13-year-old boy with autism. His mother had just told police that the teen might have a gun, hated cops and was experiencing a psychological break.
Other such incidents this year include the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin; the fatal restraint of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York; and the response by Aurora, Colorado, police to a mistaken case of a stolen vehicle during which police forced a woman and four girls out of their car at gunpoint to lay face-down on the ground.
Sometimes it’s unavoidable in the high-stakes context of policing. But experts said current training methods exacerbate the odds of violence by instilling in officers a fear that their lives are at constant risk. To protect themselves, they’re taught to make snap judgments. This “culture of urgency,” the experts said, leads officers to react with immediate violence whether the situation warrants it or not.
But she acknowledged the need for officers “to have discretion and to deviate from this process when different scenarios present themselves.”“There’s no excuse why you didn’t handle it a different type of way,” Gilliam told KUSA. “You could have even told them, ‘Step off to the side, let me ask your mom or your auntie a few questions, so we can get this cleared up.’ There was different ways to handle it.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo took more drastic measures earlier this month, when he decided to fire four officers who in April shot a suicidal man 21 times. Nicholas Chavez, 27, was on his knees, bleeding from previous wounds when he grabbed an officer’s stun gun that had been deployed and couldn’t be used again.
Just like union officials in Houston, Rochester Police Union President Michael Mazzeo said the officers involved in Prude’s death were following their training.shows Prude ranting incoherently and at one point telling officers he had coronavirus. Officers said they put a spit hood over his head to keep him from getting bodily fluids on them. After that, at least three officers pinned him to the ground until he stopped moving or breathing.
“Because the officers used objectively reasonable force to overcome Jonathan’s resistance to their lawful duty of detaining him for his own safety, they did not commit an assault under the color of authority,” the DA's Office concluded.
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