When Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott initially reacted to school resource officer Ben Fields overturning the occupied desks of two students, he created an expectation that he was going to shield Fields from any form of punishment. He said that the student who refused to give up her cellphone to the teacher in the classroom. He said the student was disruptive, was very disrespectful, refused to follow the teacher's instructions, and was disrespectful to the arriving school administrator. And, oh yes, she started the whole affair. Something undoubtedly happened in the interim to cause Lott to fire Fields and even have harsh words to say about his behavior. Fields overturned the offending student's chair and attached desk and then dragged her across the floor. Then, for good measure, he overturned the chair and desk of a student who verbally protested the overbearing use of force by Fields.
Carlos, the comedian who appears regularly on Stephanie Miller Show, triggered a storm of negative response from callers to the show by blaming the student for escalating the situation. So strong was the criticism for his focusing much of the blame on the student, that people were calling in for several days to register their anger at what Carlos had said. He tried to wiggle out of his predicament by saying the officer was wrong for using excessive force; however, by putting so much blame on the student with the cellphone, he minimized the blame that should have landed on Ben Fields.
Those students in the classroom who had never experienced police use of excessive force had a vivid introduction to it; those students who had experienced or witnessed it likely had a negative view of the police reinforced; and those in the nation or in the rest of the world who saw the video, had a disturbing view of police behavior.
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Recently, video from a police intervention of a campus party that had triggered complaints of excessive noise was shown on national television. Police are shown rampaging through a campus dormitory and one police officer responds to a student's request for a warrant with a reply that can't be aired on the media. There are scenes of police Tasering students and using their batons on them.
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During the past week, I caught much of the story of a 37-year-old female officer who had just been found not guilty for Tasering a man to death. She had Tasered him at least twice and a video from either her lapel camera or the vehicle dashcam showed the man lying in the snow with his hands under his body. He may have tried to break his fall with his hands when hit by the Taser. What I gathered from the story was that the officer was afraid that he might have a concealed gun and that is why she Tasered him again.
Building on this rare instance of a female officer using excessive force. there has been extensive coverage of the death of Daniel Webster, an Albuquerque, NM police officer killed in a gunfight with a thief. During the funeral covered by a local TV station, there were frequent mentions of officers putting their lives on the line for the citizenry and spouses unsure if their marriage partner will come home every day. Although there is widespread agreement that policing is a dangerous job, it does not the list of the ten most dangerous jobs in the United States -- the family of a commercial fisherman, for example, is far less likely to have their loved one return home alive at the end of a day.
As for officers putting their lives on the line, it may be time that we adopted a different paradigm. It is very common for police officers to claim that they had to kill a person because they believed their own lives were on the line. These claims occur even when the officer has no basis to believe that the person he encounters is armed. Darren Wilson told the Ferguson Grand Jury that: "I had to kill him," meaning Michael Brown. Many, if not most, prosecutors would consider that to be a first degree murder charge based on intent to kill. Under this new paradigm, we should be much more skeptical of a police officer's claim that his/her only option was to kill.
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