On Tuesday I saw a fellow
Salinan shot to death by police.
The hard, no-compromises impact
of the four or five bullets that slammed into his body dropped him onto the concrete
like a sack of potatoes.
Now, in my 24th year as a
journalist in California, it's not the first time I've seen a person killed by
gunfire – not even close. It's not even the first time I've seen cops kill a
person.
But make no mistake, the viral
video that I and so many others have seen is hard to watch because every time
you play it, you feel like a little bit of your soul is getting shaved away.
I don't want to watch it
anymore.
The problem with
officer-involved shootings – besides being tragic and awful – is that we never
know all the facts.
We don't know what the officers
were being confronted with. We don't know their decision-making in the
escalation of use of force and we certainly aren't in a position to know what
kind of threat, in this incident, the man with the garden shears posed to them
or to the public.
These are just some of the
factors that went into their decision to pull their triggers Tuesday at noon in
front of that Sanborn Road bakery.
What the public does know is
this: They've seen one of several shaky, slightly out-of-focus iPhone videos on
the Internet showing a man carrying garden shears staggering down the street.
At one point the video I saw shows him turning and advancing on the trailing
officers. Then, almost just as quickly, he turns and continues to walk down the
street.
Apparently he disregarded the
officers' verbal commands, and they tried to Tase him. It didn't work and the
guy keeps walking with the two cops following him.
But as the man approaches
Sanborn, the officers clearly make a decision that he must be stopped and they
fire on him. The man falls to the sidewalk and dies at the scene.
Now again, minus all the facts,
I'm not going to pass judgment on these cops.
I'd hate to be a cop – in this
or any other town. It has to be one of the world's most challenging and
thankless (but most critically needed) jobs that we have in our society.
Cops get second-guessed
relentlessly (maybe even now in this column). We hate their tickets, their
sometimes arrogance with the public and their pay and retirement benefits.
But when someone is breaking
into your house at 2:30 a.m., there's nothing better than the sound of an
approaching siren and those flashing lights on a radio car.
It means someone's coming to
save your bacon.
And despite what some might
think, we don't pay cops to get stabbed or shot. Ever. There's no extra pay or
incentive to "take one for the (public) team."
Moreover, we train police
carefully to deploy the use of force along a well-established, well-practiced
escalating arc of force that starts with verbal commands and ends with the use
of lethal force, i.e. gunfire.
And when conditions have
escalated to the use of lethal force, police are trained to fire their weapons
into the subject's center mass and to continue firing until the threat to them
or the public is "neutralized."
There's no "winging"
the guy in the arm or the leg in the real world. That stuff's just pure
Hollywood fantasy.
In real life this stuff ain't
pretty. In fact, as I said, it's tragic and it will impact lives for years to
come.
But here's the problem in
Salinas.
This city's police department
has a major trust problem going on with the bulk of its citizens – especially
with Spanish-only speakers on the east side.
Now after three
officer-involved shootings in the first six months of 2014, Chief Kelly
McMillin, his police department and Salinas City Council have a real problem on
their hands.
Simply put, there is no trust
out there now and that can end up being crippling and polarizing to this chief,
this department, to the council and to the city as a whole.
And, frankly, at this point, it
just doesn't matter if all three of these officer-involved shoots this year
come up "clean" – meaning that the cops involved did their jobs by
the book and that the DA rules they were all legal, justifiable homicides.
That doesn't matter a whit to a
populace that is starting to see the police as just another rival gang – albeit
a gang with better uniforms and resources – but, in their eyes, a gang
nevertheless.
So, how do we, as a community,
fix this situation?
A couple of ideas:
• Have Salinas City Council
direct that Salinas Police Department no longer investigate any of its own
officer-involved shootings. Instead, those shootings must be investigated by an
independent authority – whether it be the Monterey County District Attorney's
Office or the Monterey County Sheriff's Department or maybe some rotating
mutual aid network of Monterey County law enforcement agencies. The point here
is that if a big chunk of the populace doesn't trust SPD on the street, what
are the chances that the people will trust the department to properly
investigate its own officer-involved shooting cases?
• Have Salinas City Council
create a seven-member independent Civilian Police Oversight Commission to
review officer-involved shootings and other, less-than-lethal incidents and
complaints involving the department. This new body needs to go way beyond the
current police advisory body that's in place now. It cannot be just another pet
paper tiger.
And by the way, the new body
needs to be fully staffed and fully brought under the Brown Act. It should meet
publicly monthly in the Rotunda.
I think such an oversight board
– one with real teeth to make hard, written recommendations directly to City
Council – would be an important first step to restoring citizen confidence in
this law enforcement agency.
So, dear Dome reader, that's
where I'd start. What about you? What do you think we should do?
Here are some questions I'd
like you all to ponder:
• Do you agree that it's now
time to establish an independent civilian police review board in Salinas? Yes
or No?
• If no, why not?
• If yes, how would you
structure such a body?
• If yes, would you consider
applying to serve on the board?
Send your responses and related
thoughts to my usual email address: jemitchell@thecalifornian.com.
Let's get a conversation going
on this, folks.
Jeff Mitchell covers Salinas
Valley politics and government. Under the Dome, an opinion column, appears
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in print and online. Email him at
jemitchell@thecalifornian.com. For quick political hits, check out Under the
Dome – The Blog, available most every day at: www.theCalifornian.com
