What a Sad Way To End 2021 For Police

The start of each New Year brings promise, hope and a renewed sense about the future. For that I am grateful. There are several instances involving policing to close out calendar year 2021, however, that leave me wondering. As you know, just because a calendar date page turns does not mean that the timeline of life stops and starts anew.

The people who benefit the most and thus are looking forward to this calendar year ending are the mayors of all the cities who have been saddled with skyrocketing violent crime rates. They get to set the meter back to zero as if all the murders, the people shot in nonfatal shootings, the robberies, drive-by shootings and the women raped didn’t happen and they won’t have to hear about these anymore. If January shows a slight decline in these Part 1 crimes, which it usually does because of cold weather, these elected officials and police commanders will shout that crime is down in those cities.  You know the game, but that is not what this column will focus on.

 Two incidents occurred in December involving law enforcement that leave me sad and shaking my head.

 The first is that a Baltimore police officer was shot in the head and killed while sitting in her cruiser on a city street. Keona Holley is a 39-year-old mother who leaves four children behind. The two black suspects then shot and killed another man after murdering Officer Holley. I will point out that the officer is black for the Black Lives Matter crowd. Over 60 officers have been killed in the line of duty in ambush attacks in 2021. That is a 28% increase in ambush-style shootings over 2020, and that year saw an increase. I don’t hear any elected officials talk about this nor offer a solution like they did in pushing for police reform that included defunding police, ending qualified immunity for cops and banning no-knock search warrants along with other things that weaken officer safety. These creeps find more political value in locking arms with cop haters in hating on law enforcement officers.

The second incident is one that I find tragic to begin with and then compounded by a prosecutorial decision. You probably know of this incident as it garnered nationwide media attention. Brooklyn Center, Minnesota police officer Kim Potter was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Daunte Wright. She now faces a maximum 15 years in prison. Potter who is 49 years old, is a 26-year veteran of the police force. She since resigned. She was a field training officer and while on patrol with a recruit officer saw a vehicle with expired registration tags and an air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror which is a traffic violation in Minnesota. Suffice it to say that the air freshener violation is pretty petty, but that is up to the legislature to fix. So, we can say that the expired tags is a legal justification to stop the motorist for an investigation. What followed is what too often happens in these situations with a young black motorist. I have never sugarcoated anything in my columns and will not start now.

After another backup cruiser arrived, it was learned that Daunte Wright was wanted on a warrant. He was told he was being taken into custody, and instead of complying with an officer’s lawful command to arrest him, he bolted back toward his vehicle. Any officer can tell you that the inside of a suspect vehicle is a serious danger to the officer’s safety. Weapons can be secreted inside a vehicle and the suspect can escape, leading officers on a high-speed pursuit that places officers in serious danger. Officer Potter made a decision to use her Taser as Wright struggled with officers. She grabbed for what she thought was her Taser and instead inadvertently grabbed her firearm. She yelled “Taser, Taser” which officers are trained to do to alert an officer engaged in a struggle with a suspect so that the officer doesn’t get struck with the Taser round. She pulled the trigger on what she thought was her Taser and a gunshot sounded. Realizing what she had done by mistake, she immediately blurted out words to the effect, “I think I shot him.” That excited utterance alone demonstrated her frame of mind as to her intent to deploy her Taser and not her firearm. She simply made a mistake. There are three legal standards involved here that a prosecutor not motivated by politics or animus toward police should have considered.

The first is that the US Supreme Court has said in use of force by police that ensuing reviews should not be viewed through the lens of 20/20 hindsight, because these things happen under circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving. The second is that her immediate excited utterance, which is a legal standard, shows her lack of intent to use her firearm on Wright. The third is that it is reasonable to conclude that although tragic, this was a mistake, an honest error by the officer. In most states, mistake is a legal defense for prosecutors not to criminally charge a person with a crime. The other defenses to prosecution are coercion, privilege and adequate provocation. Keep in mind that the decision to prosecute Officer Potter was made by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, an avowed cop hater. That matters here.

 In my estimation based on my nearly 40 years of law enforcement and having investigated these officer use of force incidents, this officer should not have been charged with intentional manslaughter. This is a situation where the civil court system is the appropriate place to litigate this. Tort law was created for situations where somebody was damaged, in this case a death occurred but no intent of a crime exists. But not cop hater and domestic abuser Keith Ellison. He couldn’t resist.

That thing I mentioned earlier that seems to happen in the overwhelming number of incidents where a suspect ends up dead from an officer’s use of force is that the suspect resisted arrest. It is a suspect’s actions that causes an officer to fear for their own safety or for other officers and thus, in this case, the need to defend other officers.

The moral of this story is for officers not to make traffic stops. Traffic stops are a high-risk activity. They also yield a treasure trove of uncovering more serious criminal activity like people wanted on serious felony warrants. Guns illegally possessed and illegal narcotics can be found. I get it. I believe traffic stops to be an effective crime-control tactic. Officers have to ask themselves, however, if it is worth it when the original premise for making the stop is a traffic violation that will result for the most part in issuing the violator a citation and letting them go. Government officials like these as a revenue-generating stream. It is inappropriate to use law enforcement officers as revenue generators.  Officers risk their lives and careers, as Kim Potter did, and people resisting arrest end up dead over an expired registration tag violation. This is the balancing act officers are asked to make on a daily basis.

This results in officers not being as aggressive as they need to be for effective policing. It has a direct result in escalating crime rates all across the country as criminals do not fear aggressive police action.

Don’t blame the police for this, though. Blame the war on police. Blame Black Lives Matter. Blame the political class.

Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of Americas Sheriff LLC, President of Rise Up Wisconsin INC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com