Trenisha Jackson (left), the widow of fallen Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson, holds their son, Mason, as she stands with Montrell's mother, Veronica Pitts, following funeral services for Montrell Jackson in Baton Rouge on July 25. (Photo: AP)
Trenisha Jackson (left), the widow of fallen Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson, holds their son, Mason, as she stands with Montrell's mother, Veronica Pitts, following funeral services for Montrell Jackson in Baton Rouge on July 25. (Photo: AP)
The ember of the civil war of 1860s in the US does not seem to have died out fully. The abolition of the slave trade in 1863 literally broke up the country when 11 southern states of the US broke away to form the Confederate States of America. Finally, they had to come back but the whites of the south formed Klu Klux Klan. The hatred between whites and blacks still continues and the stories of blacks being targeted by the white policemen do the rounds off and on.
The racial hatred in the US manifested in two macabre incidents. In the first, a black nationalist militant, a former Army veteran, shot dead five white cops and wounded seven others during a #BlackLivesMatter demonstration in Dallas. Identified as Mica Johnson, 25, who was subsequently killed, told police negotiators before his death that he was upset about the recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana that took the lives of two African-Americans.
Just hours earlier, President Barack Obama had spoken with anguish reacting to video recordings of the shootings in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, about the disparate treatment of the races by the criminal justice system.
The Dallas and Baton Rouge incidents speak volumes about the frustration of blacks who find themselves at the receiving end. Blacks are being targeted by white policemen. There have been several instances of blacks being killed by the police. The assault on Sureshbhai Patel by the police in Madison, Alabama, in February 2015 led to widespread outrage and raised questions about the safety of blacks.
In the US, the guideline of “objective reasonableness” before using deadly force laid down by the Supreme Court in Tennesse v. Garner has failed to chasten the trigger-happy policemen. The acquittal of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in March 2015 kicked off a storm in the whole world. Brown’s death in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson became a national flashpoint on race, justice and policing.
Brown’s not the first horrific case of police killings. That the federal government is apathetical to the problem is evident from the fact that it does not maintain any national tally of police homicides, and the FBI’s stats are fuzzy. What is deeply disturbing, however, is that even courts pronounce these killings, many of them of unarmed victims, as perfectly legal.
Chapter 563 of the Missouri Revised Statutes authorises deadly force “in effecting an arrest or in preventing an escape from custody” if the officer “reasonably believes” it is necessary in order to “effect the arrest and also reasonably believes that the person to be arrested has committed or attempted to commit a felony... or may otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay”.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Tennesse v. Garner about “objective reasonableness” enthused human rights lovers as it kindled hope that it would rein in barbaric policemen. But subsequent experiences belied this hope. In this case, a Memphis cop, Elton Hymen, shot dead one Edward Garner, a 15- year-old black and unarmed boy who had burgled into a house and grabbed a ring and $10.
A Tennesse statute provides that if after a police officer has given notice of intent to arrest a criminal suspect, the suspect flees or forcibly resists, “the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest”. Hymen shot and killed him after he asked him to halt but he fled over the fence at night in the backyard of a house he was suspected of burglarising. The officer used deadly force despite being “reasonably sure” the suspect was unarmed and thinking that he was 17 or 18 years old, and of slight build.
The deceased’s father brought an action in federal district court seeking damage for asserted violations of his son’s constitutional rights.
The court held that the statute and the officer’s actions were constitutional. However, reversing it, the Court of Appeals held that the statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorises the use of deadly force against, in this case, an apparently unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing suspect, such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.
The Supreme Court ruled that deadly force could be used in case of real threat to the officer or others but required that it should be “objectively reasonable”. But how was it to be determined
It was established by the US Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor that an objective reasonableness should apply to a free citizen’s claim that law enforcement’s officials used excessive force in the case of making an arrest, investigatory stop, or other “seizure” of his person. Notwithstanding these directions, policemen behave qua barbarians as if always on square-bashing and innocent citizens hardly get square deal even from courts which often chime in with the police.
The criterion of objective reasonableness is not objective at all and courts tend to defer to the law enforcement officer’s account of the situation, even if scientific evidence speaks otherwise. It is evident that guidelines given by the court are observed more in breach but there is hardly any action..
The writer is a senior TV journalist and author
