Another week has commenced, and it is tempting
to elevate for review and discourse the next African American male killed by a
police officer, Mr. Freddy Gray, of Baltimore, Maryland. B’more, as Baltimore is affectionately known,
has often been cited as a place where relations between police and poor
sections of the black community go awry.
That appears to have happened in the case of Mr. Gray.
In an encounter that is being investigated by
local, state, and federal authorities, many questions remain. In what local law enforcement officials
insist was a police stop that involved no force by police officers, Mr. Gray
was found to have a nearly severed spine, and died one week after being taken
into custody.
Temptation notwithstanding, I’m not going to sift
through the details of that case, as we know them, for this week’s post. Instead, I will highlight an instance in
which an intrepid police officer, despite being confronted by a suspect whom
the officer ordered to stand down on a number of occasions, chose not to use
deadly force. In fact, the suspect was
not tased, not beaten, or shot to death.
Those circumstances alone make this situation
stand out among the almost weekly procession of instances in which it seems
another police officer (in fear of his life) shoots another black man, more
often than not of late, unarmed. But for
perspective, add to the amazing confluence of unlikely circumstances, the
suspect had been accused of killing his best friend and his fiancée. In addition, the officer, Jesse Kidder, was a
rookie with the New Richmond, Ohio Police Department.
There is little reason to doubt this man posed
a danger to people in general, and at the time of this encounter, to the
Officer Kidder. Yet, instead of
recapping the details of yet another tragedy, the Ohio cop is being praised as a hero for not shooting Michael Wilcox, a 27-year-old man who
was apparently attempting to commit what is known in the vernacular as suicide
by cop.
The entire incident was caught on Officer
Kidder’s Body Camera, and shows that Mr. Wilcox repeatedly charged the officer
and threatened to shoot the officer, if he didn’t shoot him. He even reached into his pocket as if to
retrieve a weapon. As reported by MSNBC, the exchange below can be heard
on the audio accompanying the Body Camera video feed:
“Shoot me or I’ll shoot you!” (Wilcox)
“No man, I’m not going to do it!” (Kidder)
Officer
Kidder tripped while back-pedaling, but used evasive measures to avoid
Wilcox. Given the information available
to the officer, including the details previously referenced above, and the fact
that the dispatcher advised him Wilcox had a weapon, either on him, or in his car, and was fleeing another law enforcement agency, he
could have shot and killed Mr. Wilcox and in all likelihood, been deemed
justified by every authority who would have been called upon to review the details
of the encounter. Randy Harvey, New
Richmond Police Chief, essentially said as much:
"For him to make the judgment call
that he did shows great restraint and maturity. This video footage, it
eliminated all doubt that this officer would have been justified if in fact it
came to a shooting."
Despite
those facts on the ground, according to ABC
News, Officer Kidder persuaded Wilcox to lie down on the ground and
surrender. Prior to joining the police
force on April 16, 2014, Officer Kidder was a Marine who served two tours of
duty in Iraq, and won a Purple Heart. The
video of the officer’s actions, understandably, has gone viral. In response to the many laudatory comments
about his actions, Officer Kidder had this to say:
“Law enforcement officers all across
the nation have to deal with split-second decisions that mean life or death. I
wanted to be absolutely sure before I used deadly force.”
Mr. Wilcox has been
charged with fatally shooting his 25-year-old girlfriend, Courtney Fowler. He is also a person of interest in a Kentucky
slaying. He is being held in the Brown
County Jail on $2 million bond.
Officer Kidder said a
relative gave him the body camera following the deadly officer-involved
shooting of Michael Brown last year in Ferguson, Missouri. Chief Harvey is seeking funding to purchase
more cameras.
It may have occurred to
you, this incident ended in stark contrast to so many others in the past year, even
in the past weeks. Unlike in Ferguson
Missouri, New York City, Cleveland, Ohio, North Charleston, South Carolina, and
Baltimore, Maryland, the suspect survived.
And the suspect survived, even though:
1.
He was known to
have killed (twice)
2.
He was deemed to
be armed
3.
He charged the
police officer
4.
He disobeyed
commands to stop
5.
He threatened
the officer
6.
He never
retreated
7.
The officer was
in continuous retreat
Despite a litany of
aggravating circumstances, Officer Kidder has been deemed a hero, and much more
importantly, Mr. Wilcox is alive. I
wrote this post, not to critique the actions of the officers involved in the
recent incidents in the aforementioned localities, but rather to underscore the
one central point I always try to make in discussions about matters such as
this. “Officers almost always has
options other than ending a suspect’s life!”
No encounter is apt to make that point more compellingly than this one
(fortuitously on video).
Finally, I would be remiss
not to mention the elephant in the room.
While I do not know Officer Kidder, and would never deign to question
the personal character of a Purple Heart recipient, I do know the one thing in
this discussion that is not like all the other things. Michael Wilcox, the suspect in this incident,
is a white man…who is alive today after a recorded encounter with a police
officer that few if any black men would have survived. There, I said it…or at least, I wrote it.
I reiterate this is not a
statement about what Officer Kidder would have done, had Mr. Wilcox been black,
though that may be a fair point for consideration. Rather, it is a point blank statement of the
inescapable: White men are afforded greater latitude than black men when they
are involved in encounters with police officers.
That is a problem on many
levels. It is a reflection of flawed
public policy, an indication of a tacit distinction in the valuation of human
capital, and an undeniable example of inequitable treatment of individuals due
to race. All three of these points are
incongruent with the “Exceptional” society we deem ourselves to be. Please join me in taking the requisite
actions to create A More Perfect Union, as hearkened in the Preamble to the
Constitution of the United States, and in President Obama’s 2008 Speech using
the same title. As we move forward to
that end, let this encounter remind us that for all the events such as those
for which Ferguson and North Charleston have been recently highlighted, they do
not have to end the way they did, because due to the events in New Richmond, we
are aware of…”Dangerous Encounters With Police: The Flip Side!”
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