In His Own Words

The new Superintendent wrote this about two years ago as a stringer for ABC News. It doesn't exactly fill us with confidence:

• As I mentioned, I retired in 2016 as a much-heralded police chief of Dallas Police Department for not only calming an incendiary moment in the nation after five white cops were ambushed and killed by a mentally ill African American man who wanted revenge for the shooting of unarmed African American men by police officers.
  
  I was able to find the right words to say, threading the needle in a deeply divided country, so talking to an 11-year-old about crossing the street should be easy, right? Oh, I forgot: Michael Brown was stopped by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri for ... wait for it ... jaywalking.
  
  It escalated into a struggle and subsequent shooting that left Brown dead, lying on the street for hours. That shooting ignited a riot, and helped give the Black Lives Matter movement a national stage.
  
  That's right: the low-level misdemeanor crime strikes again to divide us and pick at the scab of racial inequality and fairness and justice. Like Eric Garner's "I Can't Breathe" for the low-level crime of selling loose cigarettes or whatever the hell else he was doing that wasn't worthy of a death sentence.
  
  What about Philando Castile ... Walter Scott ... or Alton Sterling, all receiving death sentences for minor misdemeanor violations? Or the countless traffic stops that escalate to police shootings? Even the encounter at the Walmart parking lot in California last week that left another unarmed young man dead?

Leaving aside the overarching arrogance of describing himself as a "much-heralded police chief," it seems he puts far too much emphasis on the elements of the initial stops that police undertook at the direction of the elected legislature - who passed laws against jaywalking, selling loosies, selling pirated CD's - and instead blames police for how each instance ended.

Since it seems no actual Police Officer was permitted to respond to Brown's ABC article, let's just state:

• Brown was stopped for jaywalking (misdemeanor) and resisted being detained (felony). He had also just committed a strong-armed robbery though the officer did not know this. Pieces of Brown's flesh were located inside the squad car where he was fighting the officer for his gun. Officer was cleared by Sparklefart's DOJ;
• Garner was stopped for selling loose cigarettes (misdemeanor in New York) and decided he would fight the officers attempt to cite him (felony). He died neck compression aggravated by positional asphyxia due to his weighing 300 pounds - it wasn't "...whatever the hell else he was doing..." He was actively fighting because of a citation of all things;
• Castile was shot during a traffic stop in which he informed officers that he had a handgun. The officer was charged after the officer contended he ordered Castile not to reach for the gun, but he did anyway;
• Sterling was stopped for selling pirated CD's in a parking lot (misdemeanor). While fighting arrest (felony) he repeatedly reached for a loaded gun he kept in his pocket (felony) and had previously threatened passers-by with (multiple felonies). Officers were cleared by DOJ;
• Scott was killed after fleeing a traffic stop (misdemeanor). Officer was charged, pled guilty and got twenty years of federal time.

Brown's writing as an "authority" on police procedures in other jurisdictions based solely on outcomes and not by the totality of circumstances is worrying in the extreme. In the five cases he cited, every single one of them could have been avoided by the suspects/offenders complying with lawful police orders regarding laws passed by legislatures. And in two of the cases, prosecutors brought charges for what was judged to be egregiously illegal behavior, the worst of which didn't even go to trial because it was so bad.