“The most self-confident man or woman knows that it doesn’t take much skill to walk up behind them, point a gun to the back of their head, and pull the trigger.”
This week, a Minneapolis mayoral candidate is running on major police reform that involves disarming the city’s police force. Raymond Dehn revealed the radical approach to public safety he’ll be taking should he be elected mayor in an interview with Fox 9 Minneapolis less than two weeks following the death of an Australian national by the name of Justine Damond. Damond, of course, was the woman shot and killed by Officer Mohamed Noor on July 15 while attempting to report the sound of a woman screaming behind her house.
No one will ever know for sure whether it was the fireworks taking place in the area that night or if it was the alleged “slapping” of the patrol car by the victim just before the shooting that caused it. The only absolute in this tragic situation is that Justine Damond—a woman who called the police for help—is dead from a bullet shot from an officer’s gun.
As is the case with every high-profile (Officer Involved Shooting) OIS, the equation cannot be balanced by departmental explanations that offer no objective truth in the minds of the masses. People are angry. They don’t want explanations. They want action. Dehn, of course, knows this and is attempting to capitalize on it at the polls by painting police with a broad brush as incompetent and unnecessarily armed.
Don’t miss the fact that the District 59B representative only wants MPD officers to be restricted from carrying firearms on their hips. If he had it his way, he’d still allow them to keep guns in their vehicles. Therefore, his “solution” doesn’t even attempt to prevent the Justine Damond death from occurring. It’s an empty proposal made at an opportune time.
There’s a reason the Justine Damond story has become an international story. It is a statistical anomaly. According to the Washington Post OIS Database, of the 574 civilians killed in officer-involved shootings so far this year, Damond is one of five unarmed women. The other four casualties on this list are Sariah Marie Lane, Ambroshia Fagre, Elena Mondragon, and Alteria Woods.
Lane, Fagre, and Mondragon were all killed while riding as passengers of fleeing vehicles that had been suspected by police to be stolen, involved in burglaries, and/or armed robberies. All four vehicles were used as deadly weapons by their drivers as they rammed police in attempts to get away. Woods, on the other hand, was used as a human shield by her boyfriend during a SWAT raid targeting him and his father for multiple shootings. While these four women were killed during deadly force encounters in which they were accessories to crimes committed by boyfriends, Damond’s case is entirely unique.
The trend continues if we go back a few years. In 2016, three unarmed women were killed by police. Jessica Williams was shot in San Francisco after nearly trapping one officer between a fence and the stolen vehicle she was attempting to flee in. Kelsey Hauser was killed riding as a passenger in a stolen vehicle when her boyfriend attempted to run over officers after leading them on a high-speed pursuit in California.
The third was 12-year-old Ciara Meyer, who was struck and killed after a constable’s bullet passed through her father’s arm. Meyer’s father reportedly pointed a rifle at the chest of one constable as he served an eviction order at the apartment. Meyer was set to lose his apartment. Instead, he got his daughter killed.
In 2015, three unarmed women were shot and killed by police. India Kager was killed in Virginia while driving a vehicle with a homicide suspect in the passenger seat. When police approached the vehicle in a convenience store parking lot, Kager’s passenger opened fire on police. Both were killed in the shootout.
The second was a 55-year old woman named Bettie Jones during a domestic violence call in Chicago. As an officer opened fire on a bat-wielding man in the apartment, Jones was caught in the cross-fire.
The third, Autumn Steele, was shot by an officer responding to a domestic violence call in Iowa. Steele and her husband were actively fighting upon the officer’s arrival. After being bitten by the family dog, the officer fell backward while opening fire on the animal. Two rounds hit Steele instead.
Each of the eleven officer-involved shootings involving “unarmed” females in the past three years is tragic—but the trend shows that seven of them were killed while engaging in criminal activity with boyfriends with a penchant for violence. Bettie Jones, Ciara Meyer, and Autumn Steel were killed as bystanders in legitimate deadly force encounters where officers feared for their lives. That leaves Justine Damond in a class of her own. Like I said, her death is the anomaly of all anomalies.
Politicians like Raymond Dehn are free to use their own history of criminality to bolster their political profile in a society that loves a comeback story. Being a recovering cocaine addict and felon doesn’t preclude anyone from running for mayor, but when a politician takes advantage of tragedies such as Justine Damond’s death to suggest that police officers should place themselves in imminent danger…well, that’s where the line needs to be drawn.
Despite advances in proficiency for firearms training over the course of several decades, 27 police officers have already been murdered by gunfire in the line of duty this year. In 2015, the total was 47. In 2016, it was 63. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, we are currently on track to lose around the same number to gunfire this year. Hopefully, we’ll buck the trend.
Every officer will tell you that there is a wide spectrum of skill levels as it relates to weapons tactics, handling, and marksmanship. What we’ll also all tell you is that the level of skill a cop possesses matters little if someone is hellbent on killing them. An easy response for anyone telling you Dehn is onto something is to tell them that many of the gunfire-related deaths American police get hit with each year are ambushes.
The most self-confident man or woman knows that it doesn’t take much skill to walk up behind them, point a gun to the back of their head, and pull the trigger. Our guns—readily accessible at our hips—are of little use in defending an attack from a gunman who’s got the jump on us.
Just last week, Lieutenant Aaron Allan was shot 14 times by the occupant of a rolled-over vehicle on an Indiana roadway. One minute the LT is trying to help people involved in a car accident, and the next he’s getting shot dead by one of them.
Earlier this month, New York State Trooper Joel Davis was shot while exiting his vehicle upon arrival at a domestic disturbance. Like Lt. Allen, he hadn’t even gotten the chance to get out of his holster.
Four days prior to that, there was Detective Miosotis Familia, who was shot one time in the back of the head in the Bronx while writing in her note pad.
Policing in America has become less and less desirable over the years, and the decline in numbers of police patrolling the streets shows it. The city with a major staff shortage will tell you the reason is “a stronger economy” creating more competition for prospective employees. The cop-hating fringe of the public will tell you, “Good. We don’t need them.” The local police union will tell you that it’s because of low pay, dissolving of pensions, lawsuits, etc. The police officer will tell you it’s because the risk is no longer worth it.
Many officers feel like this job is punishing whether we do our jobs or we don’t. We’re trained to carry guns to save the lives of others and our own. If we don’t use deadly force when we should, we’re screwed. If we do use it when we should, we’re still screwed. Every now and then, we use it when we’re not supposed to—and that gets twisted to look like it’s the national norm.
To pretend that police officers anywhere in America can do the job we do without access to a firearm by our side is to be willfully ignorant of the dangers we face daily in a society armed to the teeth with guns.
We are not Great Britain, Ireland, or France. People don’t use machetes to hack at us, or vehicles to run us over. They come at us with guns—and we require our own to stand a chance. Whether it be Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, or Berkeley, mark my words, the progressive metropolis that turns officers into guinea pigs for this social experiment will find itself without a test subject—and without a police force.
