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Freddie Gray’s Fate

Whatever the cause of his death and the police going scot-free, it wasn't racism
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Freddie Gray did not sever his own spine in the back of that Baltimore police van. But no police officer who held him in custody will face legal penalty for what happened to Gray. From the NYT:

The state’s attorney here dropped all remaining charges Wednesday against three city police officers awaiting trial in the death of Freddie Gray, closing the book on one of the most closely watched police prosecutions in the nation without a single conviction — and few answers about precisely how the young man died.

More:

The exchanges showed that even in a majority-black city, with a black mayor and a black prosecutor, there are no easy answers to questions involving race and policing. The case featured a black victim and had a black judge. And three of the six officers are black, as is the defense lawyer who spoke on their behalf Wednesday.

No easy answers? Well, NYT columnist Charles Blow has found one:

No one need ask me anymore about how to heal the racial divide in America. No one need inquire about the path forward beyond racial strife. You will not be put at ease by my response.

… I deserve to be angry. I deserve to survey the system that thrusts so many officers and black and brown people into contact in the first place, and be disgusted. I deserve to examine the biases that are exposed in officer/citizen encounters, and be disgusted. I deserve to take account of an utterly racially biased criminal justice system, and be disgusted.

America’s streets are filled with cries of “black lives matter,” and America continues to insist through its actions in these cases that they don’t, that that is a lamentation of hopeful ideals rather than a recitation of a national reality.

As Steve Sailer points out:

Black district attorney, black mayor, black judge, black cops, black corpse, black rioters, black Attorney General, black President … white people to blame.

To be fair to Blow, he didn’t say explicitly that it’s white people’s fault, but that’s a fair reading of Blow’s lede. And you know, I am somewhat sympathetic to him. Was nobody to blame for Freddie Gray’s death? Nobody?

Maybe the prosecutor overcharged the cops. This matters a lot. The police officers might have been guilty of something, but the prosecutors were unable to prove their case. I don’t know, but it’s possible. Remember how certain people were that Michael Brown was an innocent victim of a trigger-happy white cop, but a careful Justice Department investigation proved that narrative false, and showed that the police officer had behaved reasonably, given that Brown had tried to grab his gun?

This week I was talking to a friend with a law enforcement background who has been a strong critic of the way police have been handling these situations. He surprised me, though, by saying that he would be surprised if either of the two Baton Rouge police officers in the Alton Sterling shooting face charges. He took me through the events we all saw on the video, step by step, and explained why everything the police did was defensible and reasonable. The only thing he would have seen them do differently, he said, is to have taken out their sticks to try to subdue Sterling instead of tackling him.

The important things to keep in mind, said my friend, is that those officers were summoned on a gun call — that is, they had been told that the suspect was armed. Sterling refused their lawful orders when they arrived on the scene. They tased him, but he still did not comply. That’s when they tackled him.
This explanation of why the officers likely won’t face charges is exactly what my friend told me. Excerpt:

Sterling appears to be offering passive non-compliance to the officers during what we’ve seen of the encounter up until this point. He’s clearly refusing to listen to either officer, but he did not try to run away or throw punches. He clearly starts offering resistance, however when the officers attempted to gain control over his arms. The “taser” officer is clearly working very hard and having to use both arms to try to bring Sterling’s left arm under control.

Of very real importance is the fact that we can’t see Sterling’s right arm, due to a combination of the low-quality camera, shaky camerawork, and the camera angle/position of Sterling in relation to the front bumper, which he’s right up against and perhaps slighting under. The “tackle” officer can barely be seen as he seeks control of Sterling’s body and right arm.

Please keep in mind that officers tend to key on two things: overall suspect demeanor and their hands. Sterling is clearly non-compliant, his passive non-compliance is now turning into active resistance.

“Tackle” officer is still mostly obscured as he seeks to control Sterling’s right arm. “Taser” officer has managed to pin Sterling’s left arm under his knees. Sterling continues trying to raise his head and upper body as he resists. One of the officers, presumably, “Tackle,” yells, “He’s got a gun!”

“Taser,” who has Sterling’s left arm pinned under his knees, immediately grabs his gun as shown in the screen capture above. He then points the gun at Sterling’s chest in an awkward but reasonable effective retention position where he can fire the gun, but where Sterling can’t easily jostle or control it, as shown below.

One of the officers—it’s impossible to tell which—yells a warning. “Hey bra! You f*cking move, I swear to God.” It’s clearly a warning that the officers, who have their guns on Sterling, who is now known to be armed and actively resisting arrest, and are preparing to use them if he doesn’t immediately comply with officer commands.

Sterling does not obviously move at this moment,but we then hear the first shot fired and our cameraperson once again yanks the camera away.

There are more shots, then yelling inside the car from people who are incredulous that the just saw the shooting before the video ends.

A firearm was then recovered from Sterling’s body, who was dead at the scene.

Read the whole thing, and notice especially the video in higher resolution showing that when the cops had him down, Sterling’s right arm was still free and at his side. Sterling’s pistol was in his right pocket.

The fact of the matter is that if Alton Sterling had done what the police ordered him to when they arrived, he would almost certainly be alive today.

Baton Rouge authorities wisely turned the investigation over to federal authorities, and will decide whether or not to file charges against the officers based on what the feds find. If there is no cause for charges, there will no doubt be loud and passionate voices saying justice has not been done. It appears — appears — that they will be wrong.

Still, Freddie Gray died violently while in police custody, and nobody will be made to answer for it. Why is that? It cannot be racism, because half the cops involved are black, and everybody involved in the prosecution and adjudication are black.

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