Police officers’ split second decisions reviewed by others at leisure

The toughest jobs in professional football may belong not to the players or coaches, but to the referees.

Each week they make split second decisions based on complicated and often arcane rules. Yet they’re almost always right. I’m thinking about calls such as the recent one-handed touchdown grab by Giants receiver Odell Beckham.

In slow motion replay you can tell it was legal, but in real time I would have been tempted to rule it incomplete, based on the obvious fact that Beckham’s catch was clearly impossible.

Police officers find themselves in similar situations. They may not make as many split second decisions per hour on the job, but the results are of far greater consequence. Literally, they can mean life or death.

Like the much-maligned refs, police officers have their split second decisions questioned by those who review their actions at leisure. Unlike the refs, police face not only immediate decisions, but immediate danger. A mistake could cost them their lives. They have every right to protect themselves, even if the suspect has “only” a knife.

Suggestions about shooting an attacking suspect in the arm or leg are the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. That’s not how it works in real life. To protect themselves, police are trained to shoot to stop a suspect who is attacking them. That, unfortunately, can result in a suspect’s death.

But another suggestion that has become common locally and nationally does have merit: body cameras for police officers.

In the case of the Ferguson, Mo., shooting, I don’t know that Officer Darren Wilson definitely committed a crime when he shot Michael Brown. I know only that his story doesn’t make sense. It’s been skillfully crafted to show that he did nothing to instigate or escalate the confrontation, and that he had no choice but to shoot and to keep shooting.

If you think Wilson’s story holds up, check the twitter feed of attorney Lisa Bloom and the questions she would have asked if given the opportunity to cross examine. They leave little doubt she would have blown his story out of the water.

But with the conflicting accounts - which aren’t unusual - it’s hard to sort out exactly what happened. A body camera isn’t going to answer all questions. Neither do the instant replays. But we would have been closer to the truth.

In 2013, we had two police shootings in Sussex County that attracted wide attention. Thankfully, neither was fatal and neither involved race

Both, however, provoked questions that might have been answered more satisfactorily if the police officer had been wearing a body camera.

In one case a police officer shot a fugitive who allegedly attacked him with a shovel. The man was shot in the back. According to police, he exposed his back to the officer while swinging his shovel around.

This account may be perfectly accurate, but it’s odd enough to arouse suspicion. That suspicion would have been more intense if the case had racial overtones. A body camera might have ended that suspicion.

In the other case, a police officer was following up on a hit and run accident. According to police, the officer went to a house near Georgetown to question the suspect, a 53-year-old man.

During the questioning, police say, the man became angry and the two got into a fight. The officer first tried to use a Taser, which didn’t subdue the man. He then pulled his gun and shot the man multiple times.

This incident also sparked a lot of comment.

A body camera would have provided valuable evidence and not just about the shooting itself. At the time, police reported the man was highly intoxicated. Does it make sense to confront an obviously intoxicated man in his own home? Would it be better to wait until he sleeps it off?

This brings up an issue that could be as critical as body cameras: training.

David Klinger, a former police officer and a current professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, said on a recent Diane Rehm radio show that in both the Ferguson and Cleveland shootings, the officers made tactical errors.

In Ferguson, he said, Wilson pulled up too close to Michael Brown and his friend. He said the officer should have put some distance between him and the two men before trying to exit his car.

According to Klinger, the two policemen made a similar mistake in the Cleveland case, where a 12-year-old boy, armed only with an air gun, was shot and killed by one of the officers.

In that case a video - not from a body camera - shows the police car pulling right up next to the boy. When the policeman got out, Klinger said, he found himself in a situation where he had no choice but to shoot the boy.

Klinger didn’t criticize the officer for the actual shooting. He said the two officers should have stopped the car farther away and assessed the situation.

But whatever your views on the recent shootings - and they have roiled the nation in controversy - one thing is clear: We have a problem.

If you don’t think so, consider this: According to the Economist magazine, “Last year, in total, British police officers fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero.”

Zero.

“Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population,” said the Economist, “British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by police officers than Americans.”

In this country, we literally don’t know how many Americans are killed by the police each year. Estimates range from 400 to over a thousand a year. It’s absolutely ridiculous. The first step: find what that number is.

Don Flood is a former newspaper editor living near Lewes. He can be reached at floodpolitics@gmail.com.