Huffington Post reports:
St. Louis officials have identified the 25-year-old man shot dead yesterday in an officer-involved shooting that happened only a few miles from where Michael Brown was killed by police earlier this month.
Authorities said Kajieme Powell stole donuts and energy drinks from a store yesterday afternoon, which prompted the owner to call police, according to KSDK. When two officers arrived shortly before 1 p.m., they said they observed Powell acting erratically. He refused to put down a knife when commanded to do so, police said. […]
In a statement delivered yesterday before a crowd near the scene of the shooting, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said that both officers opened fire on Powell after the suspect came within three or four feet of police while holding the knife in an “overhand grip.”
TRIGGER WARNING: This is a cell phone video of the police officers shooting Kajieme Powell. It shows some context both before and after the shooting. The shooting itself is filmed at a significant distance from the camera and cannot be seen in graphic detail. Nonetheless, the video shows a young man being shot to death, and is disturbing to watch.
A few comments:
1) The video shows that some of what Chief Dotson claimed was not true; Powell was not within four feet of the police when shooting began, nor did he appear to be using an “overhand grip” (which to me indicates a knife raised as if to stab downward, like an overhand throwing motion).
2) Nonetheless, I think the shooting was legal. Powell had a weapon (a steak knife), he didn’t drop it when ordered to, and he moving towards the police officers. As I understand it, police have a legal right to defend themselves, with deadly force, under that circumstance.
3) Nonetheless (again), I think the way the police acted here, while legal, was horribly wrong. Powell wasn’t an immediate threat to anyone until the police arrived; this was not a violent life-or-death situation until the police arrived. If the police make everything worse by showing up, then something is wrong with their policing.
4) For example, why did the police get out of their car so quickly, or at all? They obviously perceived getting out of their car as dangerous, since they drew their guns as they got out, and police aren’t supposed to draw and point their guns if there’s no danger. But when they pulled up, no one was in immediate danger. There was no need to force an immediate confrontation. A slower, calmer assessment of the situation from within the car, or from a greater distance, might have been better.
5) If the police are justified in using deadly force in response to any level of physical threat to police, then police have a huge moral responsibility never to knowingly put themselves in that situation, unless it’s already a life-or-death matter.
6) I’m sure someone will say “what if it had been you there, with only seconds to make a decision?” I have a lot of sympathy for officers forced to make split-second decisions; it’s a terrible burden. But sympathy shouldn’t exempt police decision-making from criticism or skeptical examination.
7) If, instead of a couple of American cops, Powell had been facing a couple of British Bobbies, who do not typically use guns when carrying out their duties, odds are overwhelming that both the police and Powell would have survived the encounter.
8) Impossible not to suspect that a white suspect might have been given more of a chance.
It is impossible not to wonder what would have happened if the police didn’t have deadly force on their hips, if all they had were tasers or batons. It is impossible not to wonder what would have happened if the police had simply never shown up at all.
It is easy to criticize. It is easy to watch a cell phone video and think of all the ways it could have gone differently. It is easy to forget that the police saw a mentally unbalanced man with a knife advancing on them. It is easy to forget that 20 seconds only takes 20 seconds. It is easy to forget that police get scared. It is easy not to ask yourself what you might have done if you had a gun and a man came at you with a knife.
But there is still something wrong with that video. There is something wrong that the video seems obviously exculpatory to the police and obviously damning to so many who watch it. The dispute over the facts in the Michael Brown case offers the hope that there is a right answer — that Wilson either did clearly the right thing or clearly the wrong thing. The video of the Powell case delivers a harder reality: what the police believe to be the right thing and what the people they serve believe to be the right thing may be very different.
This man needed help. He had a knife, but he also, clearly, had an illness. After watching the video, Vox’s Amanda Taub said, “I keep thinking about the times when I have called 911 because I have encountered a mentally ill person in public who seems unsafe. I don’t know how I would live with it if this had been the result.” There has to have been a way for the police to have protected Kajieme Powell rather than killed him.
Maybe you are right, and this video legally exonerates the officers on the scene. But it completely condemns Chief Dotson.
We should be able to expect that our police officers are capable of assessing a situation and exercising judgment at a level far beyond what was shown here.
It all comes down to what we want our police to do. We’ve reached a point where this is pretty standard for the police, though. From what I read and see, it seems that the police in this video acted in accord with their training. If this incident is not something we want to see repeated, it’s up to us to advocate and agitate for change.
I do not want to see this repeated over and over again. I want a police force with different priorities and methods and accountability. Are there enough people who agree with my opinion and care enough and have the skills to do anything about it? I’m not sure.
1) I’d say that Powell was 6 – 8 feet away from the closest policeman when the shooting started. Still close enough to be an immediate threat. I can’t see how you can tell from that video how Powell was holding the knife. To me an overhand grip would be with the hand on top of the handle (hold a baseball bat extended away from you and with your arm fully extended – to me that’s an overhand grip, as opposed to having your hand under the handle like you were about to throw it underhand).
2) In any case, no matter how he was holding it, as I understand it ANYONE has the right to defend themselves with deadly force under those circumstances. And he was shouting “Go ahead, kill me!” as he advanced towards the police. Looks like “suicide by cop” to me.
3) “Powell wasn’t an immediate threat to anyone until the police arrived; ” When the police pulled up they saw someone who had just committed a strong-arm robbery standing there waiting for them with his hand in his pocket. When the police pulled up they repeatedly called out to Powell “Get your hand out of your pocket!” When you confront a cop and you have your hand in your pocket, they have to worry that you have a weapon there. In Powell’s case, he did. Then then told him to drop the weapon repeatedly. Instead, he advanced towards them.
“If the police make everything worse by showing up, then something is wrong with their policing.” The police did NOT make everything worse by showing up. Mr. Powell made everything worse once they showed up by getting a weapon out and threatening the police. The responsibility for making “everything worse” belongs to Mr. Powell, not the police. If Mr. Powell had not done both those things he’d probably still be alive.
4) They were responding to a call about a thief. They pulled up and saw a thief who was possibly concealing a weapon. It seems to me quite logical to presume that he was dangerous and a threat to the bystanders. What should they have done? Stayed in their car and waited for him to threaten or assault someone?
5) “If the police are justified in using deadly force in response to any level of physical threat to police, then police have a huge moral responsibility never to knowingly put themselves in that situation, unless it’s already a life-or-death matter.” What? It’s their JOB to put themselves in that situation. It’s not possible for them to do as you ask.
6) True. The police should always be accountable for their actions, and no situation should be exempt from analysis.
7) If the police had been British police, Mr. Powell would not have walked up to them saying “Shoot me now!” So your point is rather moot, it seems.
8) It was winter, many years ago. I was speeding and got pulled over. I got out of my car and walked towards the police car. I didn’t have gloves and it was bitter cold and windy, so I had my hands in my pockets. The officer told me to take my hands out of my pockets, twice. Frankly, my mind was … a bit fuzzy. A split-second later my attention was fully engaged, focused on the muzzle of the officer’s gun. The difference between me and Mr. Powell was that I stopped short, took my hands out of my pockets and profusely apologized. And it was my fault. And if the cop had shot me, it still would have been my fault.
To be clear – this is a damn shame. But it seems to me that the police responded appropriately.
Different jurisdictions have different rules for use of force, and have had different training on how to deal with people who present as mentally ill or on drugs. There’s also “excited delerium,” a well-known type of presentation that is usually somebody with extremely high body temp (which often results in nudity) and irrational behavior-scientists haven’t studied it enough to know whether it’s always a drug reaction or just something that happens. And cops are facing people who might have any number of communicable diseases, e.g., hepatitis or HIV; it’s hardly surprising they want to avoid hand-to-hand engagement. There’s also plenty of evidence that a person laying on the ground with a knife some distance away can jump up, grab the knife, and successfully assault an officer before that officer can draw a gun and fire on the person (can’t find the reference but I’ve seen it at conference panels).
So thinking about police training and use of force rules is complicated, and deciding how to distribute the risk of injury/death between police and accused criminals is extremely value-dependent. (None of my response is intended to excuse behavior against non-violent protestors or the many mistakes police make when executing warrants.)
No.
If you’re talking about police shootings, there are a ton of people who will agree with you that police shootings are bad.
But if you’re talking about elementary school shootings or movie theater shootings or “gang violence” or “drug violence” or “high crime areas” or anything involving a general sense of fighting crime, or god-help-us anything involving “terrorism,” then those same people will also say that an increased police presence is needed. Warranted. Encouraged, even.
Because, of course, Think About The Kids, or We Need To Preserve Society, or, most commonly, We Are Tough On Crime.
Everyone’s a fair weather friend. And that’s because every one of the competing outcomes is Entirely Unacceptable politically, whether it’s “killed by police intervention,” or “failing to prevent ___ through the lack of police intervention,” or whatever. If you have a set of one-issue discussions then nothing gets done.
Here on this blog, people are usually willing to accept that choices always have tradeoffs. But for the general public that’s rare, and for politicians it’s almost nonexistent.
He may have been generally a dangerous person, but there really wasn’t any indication that he was an immediate threat to bystanders. Which is why people were hanging out, standing by, when it would have required no more than an amble to “get away.”
The imminent threat was only to the police, and became imminent only when they arrived and got of the car.
Fibi wrote:
How can you tell? People do unpredictable things all the time, especially an armed person in a crowd. How do you know that person wouldn’t have turned on the crowd and started knifing people to get them out of the way so he could run away? It’s the job of the police to make that call. What if they’d refused to engage because they decided he wasn’t a threat but he turned into the crowd and killed one and wounded others with that knife because the police didn’t stop him? Then some people would blame the cops for failing to prevent that tragedy.
Sometimes there is no good outcome. Sometimes no matter how good your information and your judgment is, there are no possible options that result in a calm situation with no injuries or deaths. And it’s really hard to figure out use of force policies, and training, that will do the best we can: minimize the chances of injury and death for everybody, including the cops.
This sort of thing is so hard.
I mean, I’ve seen plenty of folks who were problematic. And most of the time things don’t go south.
When things go wrong and there is no help, folks wish they had called for help earlier.
When they call for help and the help works, they think it was the right call.
When they call for help and things go south, then folks wish they had never called.
Problem is you don’t know what category you’re in until after you make the decision.
Kai Jones wrote:
There wasn’t any crowd. There were a few bystanders who were 1) well out of range of knife attack, 2) not drawing any hostility from Mr. Powell, 3) fully free to walk away at any time, and 4) obviously not concerned that Mr. Powell was an immediate risk to their safety. That he would need to clear a path at knifepoint so that he could flee is not plausible.
I agree that it’s the police officer’s job to make that call. And figuring out use of force policies and training is difficult. We also agree on that. And I agree with G&W that no matter what you do someone will cast blame if something goes wrong.
None of that obviates the point that Amp made in the original post:
Shakesville links to this story (I’m swiping Melissa’s edit of the story):
Melissa adds, “One shot. After an hour of negotiating. Versus twelve shots from two officers after seventeen seconds.”
Is it just coincidence that the gunman wounded Wednesday is white?
It’s not realistic to believe that in this situation, the only choice police have is to leap out of their car and shoot the suspect to death within 20 seconds. Waiting can be good police work – even if the suspect has a gun, let alone a knife.
Good post, quoting folks from several perspectives: The Killing of Kajieme Powell and How It Divides Americans – The Atlantic
5) If the police are justified in using deadly force in response to any level of physical threat to police, then police have a huge moral responsibility never to knowingly put themselves in that situation, unless it’s already a life-or-death matter.
This sounds good at first, but I can think of two problems with this. The smaller one is, it can be hard to tell in advance if a situation is life-or-death. Let’s say the police get a call about what appears to the caller to be domestic violence. They may not know for sure if it’s even escalated into physical violence, vs. throwing things at the wall and breaking things, screaming, etc. The other problem is, if you meant your statement exactly the way you wrote it, it could make most laws other than murder laws essentially unenforceable. In the domestic violence situation, if you have reason to believe that the perpetrator will “only” beat up their partner, but might escalate things to life-or-death in response to police arriving because it threatens their control of their partner, police have a moral duty to not intervene? What if someone robs someone else at gunpoint, and is now fleeing? The police know that the person has a gun, but it is no longer a life-and-death situation–are they still justified because it was a life-and-death situation, or must they refrain from pursuing because it is not currently a life-and-death situation? What if someone robs an empty house, so the crime was never a life-or-death situation, but is believed to have a gun?
Kai Jones: It sounds like the reference you’re thinking of may be a different one, but there’s a fairly well-established rule that a potential attacker with a knife must be 21 feet away in order for an officer to perceive a threat, draw their gun, and shoot the knife-wielder. The officers already had their guns drawn, but Powell was a lot closer than 6 feet.
How much weight should be given to protecting themselves/bystanders vs. suspects is something reasonable people can disagree on, but examples like this one compared with examples like the Shakesville one do make it look like there’s a thumb on the scale for some types of suspects.
One thing I noticed about the video the first time I watched it was that the officers had their guns drawn and ready to fire with bystanders in their line of fire. I remember thinking, “Oh, this could be bad.”
What I didn’t notice until I saw a comment on one of the articles is that Powell looks back over his shoulder at the bystanders and then moves to his left, removing the threat to the bystanders.
It makes me think that he was trying to get shot and that he didn’t want anybody else to be injured or killed. Am I seeing what I think I see? If so, what does that mean wrt him being a threat to the police?
Jake Squid – that’s what it looked like to me too.
From The New York Times: Are Police Bigoted? An interesting piece about what we do and do not know, statistically speaking, about racial bias and police shootings.
Very interesting, Richard. I especially like this quote from it:
The evidence is clear that a given conclusion is true. All we need is evidence to prove it? Really?
You’re misreading it, Ron. It’s saying that the evidence is clear that traffic stops, for example, disproportionately target African-Americans. It goes on to say that the arguments suggesting that the use of deadly force by police officers unfairly targets blacks need the numbers to prove it.