AS you’re presumably aware, a few days ago a 13 year old kid was killed by a police officer in Chicago in the little Village neighborhood. There’s a video making the rounds which most media reports are portraying as proof of a cold-blooded police killing but that’s a subject for another post. In an op-ed in the Washington Post law prof Sheila Bedi presents her diagnosis:
Change requires entirely new approaches to public safety, informed by the experiences and expertise of the Black and brown communities most likely to experience police violence.
Adam Toledo’s death demonstrates that the CPD — and, indeed, police departments across the nation — simply can’t be “fixed.†For more than 100 years, Chicago city officials have made public pronouncements of their intent to “reform†the CPD. None of those purported reforms has rooted out racist police violence and corruption, or created safe communities.
and her prescription:
Justice for Adam Toledo requires investments in our Black and brown communities and disinvestments in policing. One would be a proposal by the Chicago-based, Black youth-led GoodKids MadCity collective called the Peace Book, which would create neighborhood peace commissions with resources sufficient to meet community needs. The resources include funds for positive youth spaces, political and art education, mental health treatment, restorative justice, and conflict resolution services.
The Peace Book could operate with a diversion of just 2 percent, or $35 million, from the CPD’s budget. Other major cities have diverted far more from policing into communities.
Second, the Treatment Not Trauma ordinance, sponsored by Chicago Democratic Socialist Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez and backed by a diverse, citywide coalition, would prohibit CPD officers from responding to people in mental health crises and instead fund community-based mental health professionals. Similar programs in Oregon both reduce police violence and better serve community needs.
I have mixed feeling about her prescription and even more about her authority to make it. Maybe that would work in Hyde Park where Ms. Bedi lives. Hyde Park isn’t known for either gun violence or gang activity. It’s where Barack Obama’s Chicago residence is. It’s about as dangerous as where I live which is to say not particularly dangerous at all.
Why doesn’t Ms. Bedi live in Austin or Englewood or Garfield Park or North Lawndale? Or in Little Village? Because those neighborhoods are much more dangerous and have lots of gang activity. Little Village is split between the Latin Kings and the Two Six. My offhand guess as to what would happen if Ms. Bedi’s plan were adopted is that in the neighborhoods most at risk the money would be given to NGOs that were affiliated with the gangs, that were in fact fronts for the gangs. Why do I think that? Because it’s happened before. It’s not a lack of money that makes these neighborhoods dangerous. It’s gang activity.
Consequently, while I have no problem with increasing the funding for city-run crisis response units, I’m pretty suspicious of funding NGOs for that purpose.
And that would have done nothing for Adam Toledo. I agree that his death is a tragedy. But the question that no one seems to be asking is what the heck a 13 year old kid was doing wandering around at 3am in the morning with a gun? I don’t know what would happen if the officer who fired the gun that killed Adam Toledo and is on the video attempting to render assistance to the kid just shot and audibly sobbing when he realized that the kid was dead were brought to trial. I don’t know what I would have done in the fraction of a second the officer had to make a decision. I don’t know if the case could even come to trial.
But I believe wholeheartedly that whoever put the gun in that kid’s hand should be prosecuted and I hope convicted and sent to jail.
At 3:00 AM he could have been working.
Drugs cash and guns are high status for city teens.
Kids that young are used as lookouts and runners.
It’s a terrible thing but it took a gun off the street, now send it to forensics and match it to slugs dug out of some of those hundreds of Black corpses.
Racist cops my ass.
Probably not black corpses. Possibly brown ones but not all that many of those. 80% of victims in Chicago are black and 14% Hispanic. Nearly all perpetrators of homicides with black victims are believed to be black and nearly all perpetrators of homicides with Hispanic victims are believed to be Hispanic.
My hypothesis is that he was the bagman accomplice for an older perpetrator who’d just handed him the gun after using it for some less than legal purpose.
Read Gang Leader For a Day by Venkatesh. (This was about Chicago gangs.) The gangs usually work in groups when they sell drugs. The gun is usually held by an underage member so if caught they don’t go to jail or go for a minimum amount of time.
Steve
I don’t know what I would have done in the fraction of a second the officer had to make a decision.
In many of these cases, I am not very sympathetic towards the officer(s), but this was clearly justified. For those who do not know, I was a Deputy Sheriff in New Orleans during the crack wars in the 1980’s, and these f*ckers are ruthless. (NOPD solved the problem by running the gangs.)
He was not going to make it to retirement age. He knew it. His mama knew it, and everybody familiar with “the streets” knows it. When you play the game, that’s just how it goes.
My reading of what the lawyer is saying here is that the legal system does not have an answer for this situation. She points to Graham v. Connor (1989) as the landmark case providing the framework. I think this is the analysis she means (she quotes some of this):
“The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. . . . With respect to a claim of excessive force, the same standard of reasonableness at the moment applies: ‘Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s chambers,’ violates the Fourth Amendment. The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving — about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”
The Court appears to have been unanimous, though Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall and Brennan appear to have disagreed as to non-Fourth Amendment discussions.
So basically, the lawyer seems to be advocating policies which remove the police from ever being in this situation because the law is inherently insufficient. She wants foot pursuits to be forbidden, mental health professionals to replace police, and community centers to enrich neighborhoods with arts, political propaganda and mental health services. And by political propaganda, I mean “organizers created a safe space for community members to gather and learn about alleged torture and incognito detention.”
I understand that if the police don’t chase a 13 year old with a gun, they won’t shoot the 13 year old. I don’t know if she thinks the 13 year old is mentally ill or is cared for by those mentally ill, or if she knows that the Oregon mental health workers are 9 to 5 support for police officers. I don’t know if telling kids that the CPD secretly tortures people is supposed to make them too scared to get involved with gangs and guns, or encourage them to take up arms against unjust, arbitrary power.
I think that what would work in Hyde Park will not work in Austin and she’s gauging things based on Hyde Park.
“I don’t know if telling kids that the CPD secretly tortures people is supposed to make them too scared to get involved with gangs and guns, or encourage them to take up arms against unjust, arbitrary power.”
Some of both I suppose but I am sure it makes for less trust of the police.
Steve
Hyde Park is more dangerous than generally acknowledged. It’s covered up. Although its certainly not in the same league as the N Lawndales of the world. But that’s for another day.
The undoctored film (read: non-CBS) frame by frame suggests .8 seconds from throwing the gun behind the fence to the shot. Perhaps half or a third of that from when the officer sees the kid turnaround. This allows no tolerance for error or time for judgment. It’s pure reaction time and survival instincts. This point is missed in most all commentary on such events, along with the resistive behavior of the victims.
As Tasty correctly points out, this is what you can expect, and what you get, when you enter the game.
As for Bedi, I wonder if she could find something productive to do with her time rather than pen stylized prescriptions based upon false premises. Caring and intellectual noodling don’t count. Efficacy does.
@Drew
Nice analysis. That is why you got your engineering degree, and I dropped out and joined the Sheriff’s Office.
Training can help for many situations, and in those, I am far less sympathetic to the officer. Here, I have no sympathy for the little gangbanger, his mother, or any of the bleeding hearts.
It was a lot different 35 years ago. The Sheriff was elected by mostly poor black voters, and non-criminals were strictly off-limits. Criminals were another story, but you still could not just beatdown anybody. Besides the civil lawsuits, it creates a bad dynamic.
Everybody in the game knows the rules. This includes police and criminals. (NOTE: The rules are different from the law.)
To Drew’s analysis I would add that to my eye the sequence of events was:
He stood next to the fence with what appeared to be a gun behind his back
He started to turn
He dropped the gun
He was shot
That sequence is important. No, I don’t think that police officers should go around gunning down unarmed kids. But that doesn’t seem to be what happened in this case.
@Dave Schuler
That sequence is important.
It leaves out a lot of the real-time information. The call was for perpetrators who were using a pistol. It was a known criminal infested neighborhood. They were almost certainly gangbangers. The neighborhood gangs were known to be violent. There was a foot chase.
NOTE: The rules are different from the law.)
Ain’t that the truth……