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Opinion: The Tamir Rice Case – Echo of the Pasadena Police’s Tunnel Vision

Published on Sunday, January 3, 2016 | 5:00 pm
 

The handling of Cleveland’s police killing of the 12-year old Tamir Rice is a haunting echo of the tunnel vision that compromised the Pasadena police’s handling of its killing of Kendrec McDade. In both cases, police officers killing unarmed Black youths made reckless tactical mistakes that put them in positions where they may have reasonably feared for their safety. In both cases, the officers’ recklessness was ignored because of tunnel vision which focused only on the officers’ mental state at the time of the shooting and did not acknowledge the bad police practices that unnecessarily created the officers’ fears.

The bad tactical choice in Tamir Rice’s case

The Cleveland police killing of Tamir Rice was the fruit of, among other things, an officer’s tactical mistake in stopping the squad car too close to Tamir Rice. By stopping so close, the officer’s tactic would have endangered his own safety if Tamir Rice in fact had a gun; his close and direct proximity to the youth as he got out of his car would have given him limited room to maneuver, would have made it harder for him to obtain cover, and would have eliminated the inaccuracy disadvantage of a more distant shooter. The tactical choices within a 10-20 foot distance from an armed suspect are significantly more limited than from a 50 foot or more distance and dictate a much faster response time for the officer to protect himself from an armed suspect. Since the Cleveland officer who killed Tamir Rice did not know that Tamir Rice had a toy gun and was unarmed, he had put himself into a position where he had to make a split-second decision and made the tragic decision to shoot the 12-year old carrying a toy gun. A more cautious approach where the officer kept his distance and thereby gave himself the opportunity and time to more accurately determine the objective reality would have been a tactic consistent with officer safety and likely to have avoided this tragic choice.

The bad tactical choice in Kendrec McDade’s case

Pasadena Police Officer Matthew Griffin made a similar tactical mistake that was inconsistent with his own safety and resulted in his making a tragic choice that killed the unarmed Kendrec McDade – i.e., he stopped his squad car too close to the unarmed Kendrec McDade in March, 2012. The Office of Independent Review (‘OIR”) Group Report on the McDade shooting incisively analyzed Officer Griffin’s mistakes:

Officer Griffin’s attempt to “cut off” Mr. McDade and “boxing him in” by driving past him and then angling towards him compromised the safety of the officer, increased his vulnerability, and raised the level of threat to him. …. Once Officer Griffin stopped his vehicle close to the suspect, he admittedly found himself in a tactically interior position, and as he described it, stuck in his patrol car with nowhere to go, with few options once McDade suddenly turned on him and advanced in his direction. As a result, when McDade turned and shortened the distance between the two of them, Officer Griffin felt he had to use deadly force on Mr. McDade.

In reviewing numerous deadly force scenarios, OIR Group has been taught by use of force experts that it is critical to maintain distance and cover when dealing with suspects believed to be armed and we have reviewed scores of shootings where officers’ decisions to close distance, not seek cover, and advance on suspects believed to be armed have led to those officers placing themselves in compromised positions where they felt constrained to use deadly force. In this case, both Officer Griffin and officer Newlin attempted in different ways to close distance on a suspect they perceived as armed without being in a position of cover, increasing the threat they believed McDade posed to them.

The tunnel vision that ignores bad tactical mistakes

In both the Tamir Rice case and the Kendrec McDade case, local district attorneys narrowly focused only on the moment of shooting – tunnel vision that exonerated officers from criminal prosecution by determining that the Officers had reasonable safety concerns at the time they fired their guns. Both DAs ignored the tactical mistakes and policy violations of the shooting Officers that put them in positions where they may have reasonably feared for their safety.

In Pasadena – as laid out in embarrassing detail by the OIR Group Report – the tunnel vision of the DAs was also employed by the Pasadena Police Department in its administrative review that found no fault of Officers Griffin and Newlin that would warrant any discipline. The OIR Group Report systematically criticizes Pasadena’s tunnel vision administrative review because of its failure to analyze the tactical mistakes that put the officers in positions where they may have feared for their safety. Chief Phillip’s Sanchez’s defense against the OIR Group Report’s devastating criticism of that tunnel vision administrative review relies upon the premise that officers’ split-second decisions cannot be second-guessed – essentially resorting to know-nothingness that avoids detailed rational analysis of tactical decisions.

Cleveland’s administrative review has not yet occurred; press reports suggest that perhaps the Cleveland police department will not follow the Pasadena police department’s approach to police tactics in its administrative review but rather may impose discipline for pre-shooting mistakes – e.g., the dispatcher who failed to broadcast that the caller had suggested that Tamir Rice might have a toy gun. Hopefully Cleveland’s administrative review will also focus on the officer’s tactical mistake in stopping too close to Tamir Rice.

The growing debate over tunnel-vision exoneration

The national debate over police shootings of unarmed African-Americans is not ignoring the role of tunnel vision in the injustice of these shootings. Our analysis of the tactical mistake in the Tamir Rice case is not original but rather has shown up on at least MSNBC and many print reports and analyses of that shooting. The following link is one example of a good media report on the bad tactics:

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/28/a-perfect-storm-of-human-error-grand-jury-declines-to-indict-cleveland-cops-in-fatal-shooting-of-tamir-rice/

Courts across the nation are also struggling with the issue of tunnel vision versus totality of the circumstances analyses; the following link points to some of those legal developments:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/28/tamir_rice_s_death_didn_t_lead_to_indictments_because_of_supreme_court_vagueness.html

Tunnel vision creates liability risks

Pasadena’s tunnel vision served the City’s immediate purpose of exonerating the shooting Officers’ from their mistakes in order to protect its narrative in McDade’s mothers wrongful death lawsuit that the shooting was a good shooting that did not warrant discipline, counseling or training. But by refusing to acknowledge and remediate the problems that the OIR Group was pressing, the City has been disserved in the long run by conduct that covers up the problems rather than honestly facing them. In California, police officers have a duty to act reasonably when using deadly force. The reasonableness of an officer’s conduct is determined in light of the “totality of circumstances” surrounding the use of deadly force. The 2013 California Supreme Court decision Hayes v. County of San Diego ruled that “preshooting conduct” is included in the totality of circumstances surrounding an officer’s use of deadly force, and therefore the officer’s duty to act reasonably when using deadly force extends to preshooting conduct and negligence liability can arise from tactical conduct and decisions employed by law enforcement preceding the use of deadly force. California law is thus at the cutting edge in rejecting tunnel vision.

The fruit of the City’s strategy to delay, deny, and deceive on the McDade shooting will be new exposure in the future unless real reforms take place and the Police Department stops its dishonest refusal to meaningfully include pre-shooting tactics in its administrative review. Pasadena’s police department sticking to tunnel vision will only create more liability in the long run rather than less.

Dale Gronemeier and Skip Hickambottom are local civil rights attorneys who represent Kendrec McDade’s mother and Pasadena police oversight organizations and activists in the Public Records lawsuit that obtained the maximum legally-permissible release of the full OIR Report.

 

 

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