Ask Questions Later

A District Attorney in North Carolina has declined to pursue charges against Sheriff's Deputies in the recent shooting of Andrew Brown Jr., in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The rationale is fairly simple; when the deputies attempted to arrest Mr. Brown, he attempted to escape them in his car, putting the officers' lives at risk, so they were entitled to shoot. Tragic, but justifiable.

Fair enough. But for me, it raises a simple point. A matter of perverse incentives, of a sort. If police officers can shoot someone to death to extricate themselves from a dangerous position, should they be expected to exercise more care about getting into them?

Brown puts his car in reverse and backs up, and deputies move on foot to surround it. Boxed in, Brown turns the wheel and puts the car in drive.
Laurel Wamsley "Prosecutor Says Deputies Were Justified In The Fatal Shooting Of Andrew Brown Jr."

It's understandable that a deputy might feel that their life was in danger with a moving motor vehicle coming their way. But the deputies made a choice to surround the car. Had they allowed Mr. Brown an avenue of escape, or simply used their vehicles to block him in, would they have needed to feel so at risk?

There is a lot of focus on the moment at which a suspect or other person of interest does something that a law enforcement officer needs to respond to. It is more or less expected that an officer is going to consider someone who is non-compliant to be dangerous. But should officers be in a position where a person's non-compliance places them in immediate jeopardy? It's more or less understood by pretty much everyone that cars move in two directions, forwards and backwards. One would expect that the Sheriff's Deputies were also aware of this fact. So why would officers move to the front or back of the motor vehicle of someone who they understand wants to flee from them? Especially when it's also more or less understood that a human body won't stop a car?

I don't know that public piety does law enforcement officers any favors by making them out to be heroes for placing themselves at risk, but then allowing them to claim fear for their lives as a reason to end the risk by shooting someone. An expectation that law enforcement would be more careful about placing themselves in jeopardy could make a lot of lives longer and better.