Assignment Desk – Excessive Force

Dan comments, “Be interested to see your take on the guy who was shot in the back by police in San Francisco.”

For those of you not aware of the incident, in short, police shot a man in the back after successfully restraining him.  According to the LA Times, “video taken by spectators with cellphones shows a chaotic scene, with uniformed officers pulling riders out of a train and then shoving one man onto the ground. With the man face down, an officer stands over him, draws his gun and shoots.”

Besides noting that it’s pretty f*cked up, there really isn’t much to say.  Or at least, anything I could say has already been said by other, more capable writers.  We know that the War on Drugs has given us a more militarized police apparatus, and we know that as a result, law enforcement agencies have approached many (predominantly minority) communities as areas to be pacified rather than communities to be protected.  We know that too many police officers have received too little training, and that incidents like this one – whether accidental or not – are far too common.  In short, we know that too many police have forgotten that their job is to protect and to serve.

But besides more training (which isn’t a panacea), I don’t know what else there is to do.  Really, the only thing which immediately comes to mind is more accountability.  If police officers were fired for excessive force or accidental killings, then perhaps we’d see much less willingness to bring out the “big guns” (literally and figuratively) when dealing with unruly suspect.  Indeed, since what our law enforcement agencies need is a massive culture shift, perhaps something as “simple” (it really isn’t terribly simple) as real accountability is enough to at least stop some police failures.