One night last year, two Sacramento cops were chasing Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old black man, through his grandmother’s back yard when he stopped, turned around and took what appeared to be a shooting stance. Clark refused to obey several shouts by the cops to show them his hands. Suddenly the officers observed a flash of light coming from Clark’s hand which they thought was a gun being fired. The two officers opened fire, striking him seven times, including three times in the back. The object in his hand turned out to be a cellphone.
Clark’s death led to protests and some rioting throughout the country. Blacks and white liberals were outraged over another killing of an unarmed black man at the hands of the police.
What the protesters didn’t know was that several days before the shooting Clark had a fight with the mother of his two children and that he researched ways of committing suicide. Furthermore, a toxicology report revealed that at the time of his death he was loaded with alcohol, Xanax, codeine, hydrocodone, marijuana and cocaine in his system. When he took that shooting stance with a cellphone in his hand, was Clark committing ‘suicide by cop’?
On Saturday, Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announced that the two officers did not act unlawfully when they shot Clark and that no charges would be filed against them. “We must recognize that they are often forced to make split-second decisions,” she said, “and we must recognize that they are under tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances.”
The Clark shooting is not the first time police have mistaken a cellphone for a gun. Several other unarmed people have been shot by cops under circumstances similar to those in this case. And in those cases the police did not observe a flash of light.
Even a bible has been mistaken for a gun. Quite a few years ago, two Houston cops on patrol at night observed a black man acting irrationally in the middle of the street. They got out of their police car and started to approach the man. Suddenly he reached into his back pocket and whipped out an object while shouting, “Here, I’ve got something for you!” The cops believing it was a gun, opened fire and killed the man. The man had whipped a bible out of his back pocket. No charges were filed against the officers.
Now you might ask, do cellphones or bibles for that matter, justify the use of deadly force? The answer to that question is: Yes, if the officer believes the cellphone or bible pointed at him is a gun. In an officer’s mind that is a shoot or get killed situation.
Cops are on edge because there’s hardly a day goes by without a police officer being shot somewhere in this country. If a cop wants to return to his family after his shift, he cannot afford to wait and ask a suspect if the object he is holding is a gun. This is not the movies or a TV show in which the hero stands in front of a man pointing a pistol at him and tries to sweet-talk him into giving up the gun.
When I was a cop, I would not have hesitated to shoot someone I believed was pointing a gun at me. I would have felt terrible had I found out it was a cellphone or worse, a bible. But if it had been a gun, better him dead than me.
Tom says
Howie: When I was an officer in the Army, I expected my troops to risk their lives. I didn’t expect them to take unnecessary risks and get killed.
Luckily, I was never in combat so I never had to put my expectations to the test.
But why should I expect less from police officers who usually are much older and always better paid than my soldiers?
When a man confined to a wheelchair gets shot up because a police officer sees a shiny object — a ball point pen — in his hand, that’s a bit much. Too often police officers shoot first and figure out what’s going later. Years ago, one of my fraternity brothers was a Houston police officer still on probation. He went into a dry cleaners at night to investigate a burglary. A man came at him with a gun and my fraternity brother shot him several times. It was only later he learned the dead guy was the owner who was waiting for the people who kept breaking into his store.
My frat brother, who was still on probation, resigned the next day. He couldn’t live with it.
Police officer training seems to be to shoot at the first suspicion of danger. When former Congressman Ted Poe was a prosecutor, he used to say that the police academy consisted of learning two phrases: “Sir, I don’t recall,” and “I was in fear of my life.”
I don’t expect my police officers to go out and get killed any more than I expected it from my troops. But I did expect my troops and I think I an entitled to expect my police officers to assess the situation before they open fire. A delay of a second or two could result in a lot fewer dead innocent civilians.
In combat, soldiers have rules of engagement telling them when they can shoot and when they can’t. At times, we do not use heavier weapons such as mortars and artillery in urban areas for fear of causing civilian casualties. And, sometimes we may take more casualties relying on fire and maneuver rather than simply flattening an area with artillery.
And, if my soldiers violated the ROE, they were held accountable.
Again, I expect that same kind of discipline from my police officers. They aren’t in enemy territory although some areas of major cities are more occupied zones than neighborhoods. Every potential threat like a shiny object in a hand isn’t a reason to kill someone. But no one holds police officers accountable for misjudging a threat and killing someone with a pen or cell phone in his hand.
To end this, every time I put on my uniform I remembered that a fringe benefit of my service might be a real estate deal, a little plot of land in Arlington Cemetery.
Trey says
Tom, Your comment, “A delay of a second or two could result in a lot fewer dead innocent civilians.” is not only ignorant, but if followed would get police officers killed. I wish you could use a police academy shooting simulator. I’ll bet you wouldn’t last half a session or you would shoot a person holding a shiny object. The fact of the matter is the person didn’t follow the commands of the police officers. Being from a military background, you must know how important it is to obey commands. If you don’t think one or two seconds matter in a critical incident, you must be living in Fairy Land or Austin.
I wish to remain anonymous says
“when he stopped, turned around and took what appeared to be a shooting stance. Clark refused to obey several shouts by the cops to show them his hands.”
The dead man cant tell his side of this story…
Perhaps I am jaded having lived in Austin during the Acevedo years where citizens ended up dead frequently and dash cams/body cams incredibly didnt work at that moment.
Three shots in the back?
howie katz says
Tom, in a perfect world a delay of a second or two could result in a lot fewer dead innocent civilians. But this is not a perfect world and a delay of a second or two could result in the death of an officer. And I would suggest that most of the unarmed people shot by the police for pointing an object at them were not innocent civilians, they were being confronted at the time for committing crimes. Furthermore, a guy in a wheelchair is just as capable of killing a cop as someone who is not disabled.
Anon, your concern about Clark getting shot in the back is easily explained. A person hit by gunfire in the front of his body often spins around so that additional shots will strike him in the back. The two officers fired 20 rounds, but that too can be explained in that Officer Survival Training instructs cops that when it becomes absolutely necessary to use deadly force, they don’t stop shooting until their adversary is down. Cops are not like Dirty Harry who with his first shot, could hit a flying fly from 100-feet away.
Adella says
Perhaps we should concentrate on the running from the cops, he was being chased, and the refusal to show his hands.
Bob Walsh says
Fortunately there is good body cam footage and helicopter footage of this incident. We KNOW what happened. Clark was loaded on several different drugs. He vandalized a bunch of cars, which is why the cops were called. He then threw a brick thru a glass slider at an occupied home, which is moving into felony territory. He did not HAVE to do any of these things. He chose to do them. When the cops approached him he fled, ending up in his grandmother’s back yard. He then moved towards the cops in a shooting stance. It was dark. There was a flash of light which does show up on the body cams which might reasonably be interpreted as a muzzle flash. The cops fired, about 20 shots all together. It appears that he was spun by one or more of the shots and some entered his back. It is unfortunate and tragic, but Stephon Clark was the initiator of his own demise. Now “The mob” wants to lynch the cops involved and the cowardly and hard-core liberal legislature is seriously considering changing the use of force law in CA which would demand the cops let the bad guys shoot first. I am glad to be retired.
I wish to remain anonymous says
At least the kid wasn’t naked..
https://www.statesman.com/NEWS/20160922/Austin-police-fire-officer-who-fatally-shot-naked-teen-David-Joseph
Trey says
Anonymous, Do think a high naked man can’t try to take an officer’s gun? If you do then you are living in Fairy Tale Land too or Austin.
howie katz says
Not only has the Sacramento DA exonerated the two officers, but California’s uber-left Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced Tuesday that his office would take no action against the cops because Clark was committing a crime, failed to obey the officers’ commands and turned on them before he was shot.