Police officer didn’t shoot attacker, carelessly careful or justifiably afraid? (op-ed)

Recently in Chicago a 43-year-old woman police officer was dispatched to a car accident. She was attacked by one of the persons involved in the crash, a 28-year old man reportedly on PCP. The man struck her down, then repeatedly smashed her head on the pavement until she lost consciousness.

Two other officers were injured trying to subdue the attacker.

The assault lasted several minutes because the woman officer, a 17-year veteran, did not shoot in self-defense like she was trained.

Chicago’s Police Superintended visited the woman officer in the hospital.

She stated she knew she should have shot the attacker because she feared for her life, but she didn’t draw her gun because she didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on the national news.

Reporters asked if this was an example of the “Ferguson Effect”.

The “Ferguson Effect” is named after the suburb where a 28-year old white officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in 2014. The shooting led to protests, rioting, and a national debate about policing, but law enforcement agencies insist placing police tactics under intense scrutiny has caused police to “second-guess” themselves and this “war on cops” hinders their work, which leads to an increase in crime.

Criminologists are skeptical of the “Ferguson Effect”. They argue there isn’t enough evidence to prove spikes in crime are due to police “acting with increased restraint.” And Chicago’s Police Superintendent stopped short of saying the attack on the woman officer was an example of the Ferguson effect in action.

What the Police Superintendent said was, “We have to change the narrative of law enforcement across this country.”

Now, criminologist can argue about the actuality of the “Ferguson Effect” but they can’t deny the concept was caused by the “Ferguson Narrative.”

That narrative insisted the unarmed black teen had his hands up and was murdered, but, as it turned out, the teen was shot during a struggle with the officer. It was this false narrative that led to the protest, the national “Hands up, don’t shoot” campaign, and rioting in Ferguson. (US Department of Justice reported the physical evidence showed the teen did not have his hands up, and the witnesses that originally testified against the officer admitted to lying under oath.)

As soon as the officer’s account was released along with the statement “he feared for his life” it was immediately condemned as a cover up. (This was the Ferguson Police Department’s fault for taking too long to release any information.) And a new narrative was introduced to the public refuting the officer’s defense.

The new narrative said a trained police officer had no reason to fear an unarmed person, white police officers claimed “fear” for too long, and it's nothing but a legal excuse for a racially motivated killing. This narrative ignores the fact that training can’t remove fear and unarmed does not mean harmless but it still circulates. Recently a columnist wrote, “The loss of (he listed names of unarmed blacks killed by police) came not because their assassins feared them, but because they believed their lives didn’t matter.”

In Chicago it seems the woman officer feared a false narrative more than death. Mind you, I never mentioned race, but the woman officer had to be aware of it and figured her racial identity would overpower the difference in gender, to her detriment.

Now that was a veteran move that a rookie wouldn’t have had the experience to make. So here’s the question was the woman officer carelessly careful or was she justifiably afraid, to fear for her life, because “fearing for her life” is an excuse made by an assassin.

First published in New Pittsburgh Courier 10/19/16