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Use-of-force cases not always crystal-clear

4 min read
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Sometimes, it’s easy to recognize when a police officer has committed an act of unacceptable brutality, or worse, taken the life of a suspect without proper cause.

A couple of years ago, there was the startling video of a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., who shot a man in the back as the man was running away from him. The officer, Michael Slager, claimed he fired eight shots, killing Walter Scott, because he feared for his life. But anyone who took an honest look at the video of the encounter taken by a bystander knew that wasn’t the case. Slager faced both state and federal charges, and just last week the case finally came to a conclusion when he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of “willfully using excessive force to deprive Scott of his civil rights,” according to an Associated Press report.

More recently, there was the case of a white Texas police officer who gunned down a black teenager who was in a car driving away from a party police were breaking up. Fifteen-year-old Jordan Edwards was in a vehicle with his two brothers and two other teens that was leaving the scene when Officer Roy Oliver opened fire with a rifle. The shot went through the front passenger-side window and hit Edwards, killing him. The initial story was that the car was driving toward police officers, but again, a video showed clearly that wasn’t the case. Early last week, Oliver was fired. Then, on Friday, he was charged with murder.

But not every case is so clear-cut.

On Pittsburgh’s South Side last weekend, police were called to a disturbance at a bar in which Nathan Stanley III allegedly was armed with a gun and threatening to shoot up the establishment. It wasn’t long before Pittsburgh television stations were repeatedly running a video of Stanley’s arrest that showed a city police officer hitting Stanley with his knee and kicking him in the face in an attempt to subdue him.

Stanley’s attorney, of course, is denying he ever said he had a gun, but at the time, police had to operate with the knowledge that was available to them.

Beth Pittinger of the city’s citizens police review board told WPXI-TV the panel wants to find out more about the confrontation.

“What we do see is very concerning because it shows some blows to the man’s head, and you can see his hands are out in front of him,” said Pittinger. “So we want to understand better why the continued use of force was necessary.”

The criminal complaint filed by one of the officers involved in the arrest said it was very simple.

“Given the previous threats by (Stanley), his aggressive demeanor towards myself and bar security, and the manner in which he reached for his waistband area with his right hand, I greatly feared that an attack was imminent at the time and I did not know what (Stanley’s) capabilities were,” the complaint said.

Police did not indicate in their report whether any weapon was found, but the case illustrates the kind of situations police officers find themselves facing every day, here and across the country.

A business owner on the South Side told WPXI, “I mean, the guy was resisting and fighting and punching. What are you supposed to do to him?”

That’s the fine line police officers have to walk. If they use insufficient force, they could be putting their lives and the lives of those in the area of a confrontation at risk. If they use what some perceive to be excessive force, they find themselves brought up on charges of police brutality.

This much is certain. On every shift, police officers put their lives on the line in order to protect others. It’s a job not many of us have the courage to do.

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