Large Fierce Mammal

It certainly can’t be denied that enforcement of rules, regulations, and the laws of the land represent the single least popular aspect of government, at any level. Likewise, the application and collection of regulatory fees and taxation revenue run an exceedingly close second. While there will always be an outlaw component in society that will naturally veer onto the wrong path even when it makes more sense to stay on the right one, law enforcement becomes easier when coupled with well administered public education and support. This is why police agencies, fire services, building inspection authorities, and municipal emergency measures organizations budget resources to perform these functions, ensuring that the people living and working inside their jurisdictions understand not only the why and how of the rules that affect their lives, but who to talk to for clear, no nonsense information.~ Dog Days – All Stick and No Carrot

When I wrote those words back in March of 2012, I was talking about municipal Dog control by-laws; but what I said then applies equally and globally to any situation where the everyday life of individuals meets the governing operational guidelines of official public safety agencies.

I speak from more than 30 years as a professional consultant in the fields of security; risk assessment; municipal, provincial, and federal level emergency planning and agency training; self defense, self reliance, blade and firearm training; detection Dog training and handling; emergency communications; incident command; and not least of all, emergency services call handling and dispatch. In that last one, I literally wrote the book on police/fire/medical dispatch for two Nova Scotian police jurisdictions and five fire service districts. For 17 years, I personally trained every dispatch staff member, and oversaw daily operations, of that kind of facility we all know well – the kind wherein every time the telephone rings, somebody is in trouble.

My background has given me insights into persistent misconceptions that have afflicted society since long before the Facebook Law School began bestowing its accreditations. I have a million of then, but here are a few light duty examples:

• It’s legal to park in a no parking zone as long as the engine of your vehicle is running and the four way flashers are on.
• A ticket issued during a traffic stop is not valid if the cop who issued it wasn’t wearing his or her hat at the time, and was therefore “out of uniform”.
• If you are being chased by municipal police, all you have to do is get over the town line into the next municipality where those chasing you have no authority of jurisdiction.

Speak to the man in the first case who returns to his car to find he’s been ticketed not only for parking in a no parking zone but also for leaving a vehicle running while unattended, and you will hear no end of righteous indignation, but his certainty in  that righteousness will fall short of fighting the ticket, replaced instead by paying the fine and going forward in the certainty that all cops are assholes who prefer to molest fine upstanding citizens rather than chasing “real” law breakers. The same result will be mirrored in the other two – in fact, all you need do to gauge how much understanding of law enforcement exists among the Great Unwashed is show up at a four way stop at around the same time as two or three other vehicles when one of them is a police car. The rules state that the right of way cascades down based on the timing of each vehicle’s arrival at the stop bar, but the majority of drivers will behave as though the police car is somehow imbued with special privileges and simply sit there, waiting for it to move first. These are the same people who speak with such certainty on the subject of police powers while sitting in comfort, surrounded by their equally well informed cronies, at the local Tim Hortons.

These examples may sound silly to you, presented as they are here in our mutual state of relaxed contemplation, and particularly so when I tell you I was inspired to mention them by the late unpleasantness in Missouri where the life of one young man was ended in the course of his interaction with another young man whose life is now in tatters. They are intentionally mundane to illustrate just how little the average person understands the job of enforcing the laws affecting daily life, on any level. Don’t worry though. I’m moving on to meatier matters.

I’ve taken the time, as is my custom, to watch the playing out of events as portrayed in news releases, and in the course of that I’ve seen one glaring omission; that being the effect on events represented by the mere presence of Officer Darren Wilson’s sidearm; and by extension, the presence anywhere, at any time of any firearm that has been entrusted to the care of any agent of law enforcement. Please hold that thought while I explain why I’m taking you down that road.

In my professional and personal life, which in my case is for the most part the same thing, I have developed a healthy distrust for “eye witness” testimony. Partially that’s because people with axes to grind can be relied upon to lie their asses off if it might harm someone they don’t like, but mostly because few people can reliably report “just the facts” absent benign personal prejudices and/or contamination introduced by immediate news reports and overhearing the statements of others. They mean well, but we all know what paves the road to Hell. On the other side of the coin are those who simply don’t want to get involved, and who therefore deny the investigation  the benefit of anything they may be able to contribute. After all is said and done, straining the testimony of enough witnesses through the sieve of rigour may permit identification of something everybody agrees on, and that fits – or at least is not contradicted by – physical evidence found at the scene.

In the case of the events preceding the death of Michael Brown, even though the disparity and fluidity of “eye witness” testimony played a major role in it taking so long for the Grand Jury to offer up its decision, there is one thing that was consistent: that some sort of interaction occurred between Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson while the latter was still seated inside his patrol vehicle, and that the first time Officer Wilson’s sidearm was discharged was while he was still there. Mr. Brown approached into contact distance, not the other way around.

Much has been made in the press of defining Michael Brown as an “unarmed teenager”, notwithstanding video evidence recorded shortly before his death that shows him to be a large and powerful young man who was perfectly willing to use his physicality to intimidate and lay claim to items that were not his own – he walked into a store in the company of an associate, picked up a package of cigars and started to walk out, assaulting the store owner when an attempt was made to stop the theft. So while I can’t lay claim to knowing anything about Michael Brown before the day he died, I feel comfortable in saying that in that one singular incident he was a bully and a thief. That certainly doesn’t qualify him as a target for assassination, but it does speak to his character and conduct as a citizen in his community, and I would find it hard to believe the recorded behaviour can be taken as an anomaly. That he was simply having the kind of bad day that only stolen cigars and assaulting a store owner could relieve.

All this brings us back to Darren Wilson’s sidearm. When an agent of law enforcement is issued any firearm, the public accepts this as necessary to the defense of that person’s life, should push come to shove, and that there will be times when the public safety its bearer is sworn to defend may come to be weighed against the possibility of taking someone’s life. What gets missed however, to most other than the one toting that shooting iron, is another sacred trust – that until death, the one who bears it must do everything possible to maintain custody over it. It must not be permitted to fall into the hands of miscreants. Any other course is among the ultimate betrayals of trust, and I ask you to keep it in mind as I sum up.

If you are stopped by, or being given instructions by, an officer of the law, do not approach them while they are seated in their vehicle. In  that scenario, they are in a poor tactical situation, and I know of no agency for which the SOG’s would permit its members to summon suspects into contact distance under such circumstances. Even if Darren Wilson had committed such an error in judgement, a simple step back and immediate compliance with commands on the part of Michael Brown would have resulted in no further justified application of force than required to arrest him. If Darren Wilson had then shot him dead, we would be having an entirely different conversation.

Touching a law enforcement officer’s sidearm, or giving its bearer reasonable grounds to believe you are attempting to do so, crosses a significant line authorizing ratcheting the application of force up to lethal levels. This does not mean they are authorized to kill you; only that your conduct from that point on will determine whether or not use of the most potent weapon available can be justified in eliminating you as a threat, and in the gravest extreme, this may result in your death from its aftereffects. In short, behaving in a way that invites someone else to perforate your body with pieces of metal is not normally conducive to your best interests or future happiness. To go down this path is to declare fight on, and it’s a conflict that sacred trust I mentioned earlier declares the law enforcement officer must win.

Lastly, once your behaviour has moved into that red zone, any movement toward a law enforcement officer who is ordering you to stop can, and will, maintain your status as a threat that must be stopped, and if you persist in going there, you can expect to be. Notwithstanding eye witness reports, all of Michael Brown’s bullet entrance wounds were sustained on the front of his body.

In conclusion, I recognize that much resulting from the Missouri incident is clouded and exacerbated by racial conflicts endemic to the environment in which they occurred, and its outcome has further fanned the flames of criticism in areas of police “militarization” on the one hand, and justification of looting and arson on the other based on grounds of protest against systemic injustice. These are certainly matters worthy of analysis and discussion, but they have no bearing on the sequence of events that played out between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown. Given a comparable situation tonight anywhere in North America, between people of any colour mixture, the end result can be predicted to be the same.

On that level, none of the clamour will have any effect of change on the policies affecting street level law enforcement anywhere, nor to my mind should it.