Pardon me for butting in. “Dunphy” in the piece isn’t so much second guessing, as offering a debrief, something that is done, or should be done, after every encounter like this by those involved. The purpose is to ask “what did we do right, and what could we do better next time.”
That said, Dunphy touched on something I’ve wondered about. After pouring through the record, it’s clear that Wilson heard the initial call about a “stealing”, or petty theft, a misdemeanor at the liquor store. And like any good cop, knowing he was in the area, we went to look for the suspects when he had finished his call with the sick baby. What’s not clear is that the units at the liquor store ever put out information that it was a robbery, a felony.
Wilson’s initial contact, after he realized that Brown matched the description of the “stealing” suspect was consistent with trying to delay a misdemeanor suspect pending arrival of a backup unit. “what’s wrong with the sidewalk” etc., trying to distract and de-escalate until the second unit got there that he had called for. The problem with that was that Brown knew he had just committed a felony strong-arm robbery, even if Wilson did not. You can’t divert your partners for every single misdemeanor stop, but you sure as heck want to try to wait for backup before trying make a felony stop. It isn’t always possible, but it’s what you hope to be able to do.
And after the fact: the media believed uncritically the story Dorian Johnson told “Hands up”, even after it emerged that Johnson was an accomplice in the Robbery. Next time, police commanders and media relations officers need to be cognizant of that tendency, and be ready to counter with facts and information that challenge the media narrative.
Asking the question isn’t the same as making excuses for Brown’s criminal behavior, either at the store, or on Canfield. He, and he alone bears responsibility for his own death. But we can learn: the Mike Browns of the world are still among us, and we must try to take what lessons we can from this episode to “do better” next time.
This is the money quote. Brown was responsible for his own death period. Here is an insightful comment attached to the article:
There is a cultural difference here, and I don't mean Black vs White. Jack, you are an LAPD officer. Each division in your department fields many 2-man units each shift, backed up by dozens of other officers from the division, helicopters overhead, SWAT, etc. Ferguson is a 52-man department, which means that it probably fields 4 one-man units per shift. And that is it. Most contacts (as the one in question) involves a single officer with a second officer enroute to back him up.
I worked for some 30 years in a small department (about twice the size of Ferguson) on LAPD's eastern border. We always had single-man units, and each officer had to fend for himself until his back-up arrived. I grant you this was not optimal, but it was what my city could afford and we lived with it.
Had some humongous perp attacked me while in my unit, I hope that I would have had the presence of mind to shoot him before he wrested control of my service pistol from me. This was a case of pure weapon retention/officer survival, and any attempt to finesse Wilson's tactics is pure Monday morning quarterbacking.
Jack, your previous comments regarding the police bureaucracy have been very insightful and thought provoking. However, I'm not sure you fully appreciate the psychology of a small department officer encountering an existential threat such as the one Officer Wilson did.