Let’s establish in advance that I’m not a mindless cop fanboy; I think it’s long past time for individual cops to carry liability insurance, rather than be covered by hamfisted qualified immunity. That would weed out bad cops and reward good ones, presto.
But if I read another ill-informed activist or reporter nodding askance at a cop killing an “unarmed” person, without any further context, there’s gonna be trouble.
Every year, the homicide and manslaughter toll in MInnesota includes a number of “one punch kills”; episodes where an “unarmed” person’s initial physical contact causes a direct injury (a cerebral hemorrhage) or indirect (knocking a head on a curb or sidewalk) injury that ends up killing the victim.
And that doesn’t even count the “unarmed” subjects who suddenly become armed.
It’s all very easy, in an abstract sense, for people who’ve never seen how fast an “unarmed” assailant can become a lethal threat, to ignore what they don’t know – as Josh Gelernter at National Review points out:
Last year, a self-described “radical political activist” and Black Lives Matter protester named Jarrett Maupin agreed to go through a FATS-style police exercise — not using a FATS machine, but using paintball guns in a parking lot. Maupin was told to question a man behaving suspiciously. The man’s hands disappeared momentarily behind a car, reappeared holding a gun, and Maupin was “killed.” In the next exercise, two unarmed men were having a loud argument. Maupin approached them, one of the men starting walking aggressively toward Maupin — and Maupin shot him dead. A local Fox affiliate in Phoenix filmed Maupin’s experience (you can watch it on YouTube).
You can indeed! And it’s fascinating.
Want to feel very humble, very fast? Go through the 180º simulator at Gander Mountain, which puts you in a number of quick-choice situations. Very, very quick choices. Anyone who is confident of their ability to make decisions under stress under civilian rules of engagement is going to get their world rocked – I guarantee it. =====8
Afterward, one of the local reporters tried the same exercise, and got exactly the same results. The reporter asked Maupin what conclusions he’d drawn from the experience. “I didn’t understand how important compliance was,” said Maupin. “But after going through this, yeah, my attitude has changed. This is all unfolding in 10 to 15 seconds.
And often less.
Which is why after the Jamar Clark, when people (and reporters) were nothing “it all took place in less than a minute”, I thought “A minute? If everyone involved was lucky!”
Gelernter:
Maybe the answer to racial tensions and anti-police protests is for police to offer every member of Black Lives Matter a chance to take the test that Maupin took. Or maybe the police should start doing FATS-machine demos in high-crime neighborhoods, to help people understand the decisions cops are faced with. Maybe they should open FATS arcades. I bet they’d be popular.
I think putting a 180º simulator into a truck and taking it out – to bars in Coates, schools in Richfield, and to the streets of Dayton’s Bluff – would be an eye-opener to a lot of people. We could start with Nekima Levy-Pounds, Keri Miller, and the Strib editorial board, and work our way outward.
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