The Death of Deven Guilford

Deven Guilford: Dead

This morning, on the basement treadmill, I saw some CNN or MSNBC story on the shooting death of a Michigan teenager during a traffic stop, and like most of these stories, you know you don't have all the information you'd like if you were a juror but you can see the cop cam video, and you can hear the now dead kid and the cop and you are told the policeman used his Taser and then shot the boy 7 times, unto death.

What was really intriguing was the two pundits to whom the bimbo reporter posed her inadequate questions.  One was a shaved head retired NYPD detective who kept insisting the boy refused to produce his driver's license and his insurance information and his registration so he was refusing to cooperate with the officer. This constituted a threat to the officer's life--the all purpose excuse for any policeman who draws his weapon and shoots a citizen to death. The boy might have refused to get out of the car because he had a gun and the policeman could only be safe if the kid got out of the car. Anyone who has seen the movie "Fargo" has seen what the police fear--the gun in the car.  

But the policeman clearly had other options, to wit: Back away from the car, and call for help. Surround the car with police and defuse the situation with overwhelming force. Instead, this school yard bully policeman went all cowboy, drags the kid out of the car, wrestles him to the ground and now he's got a fight on his hand and gets his face bloodied.

There are many photos of the cop after the incident with  battle wounds to his face: I gotta say, I looked more bloodied after most of the roller hockey games I played with my kids, after any high school school wrestling match, or just after running into my bicycle hanging from its rack in my dark garage. 

But the shaved head cop is unyielding. The kid did not obey commands. He got what was coming to him, to anyone who does not obey a policeman on the scene, i.e., sudden death.

There is a black guy, who can hardly get a word in edgewise, the other pundit, who points out:
1/ It is not against the law in Michigan to flash your headlights.
2/ The kid told the cop he had flashed his headlights at the officer's car because the officer had his brights on and the kid was signaling to turn the lights down. The cop explains, during the video, he has new car and the headlights are bright and look like high beams when they are on normal and the kid replies, quite reasonably, "Then you need a new set of lights."  Minutes later, the kid is dead.

What nobody points out is that the cop could be reasonably accused of "entrapment," i.e. he has provoked an act which, had the kid been left alone, the kid would never have done, namely flashing his high beams.

But what is so manifest is the pundit TV  policeman (retired) is determined to defend the cop who fired the 7 shots, no matter what the facts of the case may be. "He felt his life was in danger. The driver did not respond to the policeman's commands."

In the world view of the policeman, he is the sovereign monarch of the road. Any command he issue is reasonable and any citizen must obey. Echos of Sandra Bland, the woman arrested in Texas for changing lanes without signaling, found dead three days later in  jail.

What government official in this so-called democracy of ours has that much power?  
Was the Constitution not written by a group of men who were so sick of local bullies called the King's Men, that they wrote the Bill of Rights to address the specific bullying tactics:  Citizens are protected from Unreasonable Search,  from Unreasonable Seizure (which we see manifest in this cop's actions).  

Stepping back from the details of this particular horror show, I think, at my advanced age, I have seen enough videos to conclude:

1/ The quality of the police on the road is woefully inadequate. You can dress these guys up on fancy uniforms, but they are still the kids from the playground who, if they hadn't gone to the police academy, would have been holding up drug stores and gas stations. In the old days, men became policemen because their fathers had; today it's just as often men with personality problems. 

2/ The restraints on their behavior are inadequate.

3/ We ought to be be re thinking allowing police out of the station house. We might be better off with surveillance cameras deployed than police deployed, and like those traffic cameras which capture you speeding and you get a ticket in the mail, you have lots of cameras and robots to deal with misbehaving citizens. Once you do decide to send out the cops, you send out a team, including a lawyer to apprehend and you video everything. 
The arresting officers are and should always be as much under suspicion as the arrested citizen. Every forceful interaction between authorities and citizens is a situation rife with possibilities for abuse of power. 


Decades ago, when I was a medical intern, another intern tried to put a nasogastric tube through the nose of an uncooperative patient. The intern had been ordered to do this by his resident for a good reason. The patient was thought to have swallowed something toxic and this was an effort to suck that stuff out of his stomach, for his own good. The patient refused, pushed away  the arms of the intern and shouted, "No!" The intern persisted, trying to bat the patient's arms aside, but then another resident intervened, saying, "What you are doing is assault. The patient has refused. You note that in the chart. That's all you can do."

We were all shocked. We had all done similar things against the will and wishes of patients, thinking we were acting for the patients' own good. But that resident got us all thinking and we stopped doing stuff like that. 

It only took an insider to speak up and say "No."

That's what our cops need now.