On August 9 of last year, a young man named Michael Brown was stopped by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer as he walked down the street with a friend, blocking traffic. You probably know the story. A confrontation ensued with the result being a dead Michael Brown and an injured Darren Wilson. It didn't take long for violent protests to erupt in the otherwise quiet St. Louis suburb.
The Michael Brown story got a lot of press due to the many nights of protests that followed. More importantly, there were no shortage of civil rights leaders who were on the ground in Ferguson, calling for the indictment, prosecution, and imprisonment of Darren Wilson. The police department defended officer Wilson by saying he acted appropriately to the situation, an assertion a grand jury agreed with. The question is, did he? A group of civil rights leaders may have an answer to that question after agreeing to undergo an intense police-training program that simulated what officer Wilson may have experienced last August.
Civil rights leaders Quanell X and Rev. Jarret Maupin were invited, and agreed, to be part of a use of force training exercise conducted by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department in Phoenix, Arizona. Quanell X is a former Nation of Islam member and a leader of the Black Panthers in Houston. Maupin is a church leader and well-known black activist in the Phoenix area. Both seem to have had a slight change of heart as a result of the exercise.
Good and Bad
It's a good idea to have civil rights leaders like Quanell and Maupin get a taste of what it's like to be a police officer under stress. Putting them to the test to see how they would react proves how difficult it is to make split-second decisions when fearing for one's life. To that end, both men stated after the exercise how important it was for citizens to comply with police requests rather than allowing conditions to escalate. Both also said it would probably be a good idea for other leaders to go through the same exercise.
Despite the positive remarks, I cannot help being a little concerned about the politics of the whole matter. Why am I concerned? Because of the following quote offered by Quanell:
"Many of these officers do not have adequate training and they should not be patrolling by themselves. Having backup would stop them from being skittish and firing their weapon."
It is true that both Quanell and Maupin offered some positive comments after experiencing the exercise. It is also true that both men reacted in much the same way any police officer would. However, Quanell still cannot resist the temptation to blame the police by claiming officers are not adequately trained. How does he know this? On what basis does he say that officers such as Darren Wilson should not be patrolling by themselves because a lack of training makes them skittish?
Quanell and Maupin participated in a single exercise designed solely for the purpose of exposing them to the same kind of experience police officers go through. By the same token, officers undergo months of training before ever joining the force, followed by continued training throughout their careers. To suggest inadequate training is the cause of officers improperly using their weapons is to assume an untrained civilian knows the best way to train police officers.
This is not to say that some police officers do not overreact. Some do. And yes, there are cases when weapons are discharged inappropriately. Nevertheless, the vast majority of those cases are prosecuted according to the law. The violent protests that unfolded in Ferguson following the Michael Brown shooting were largely the result of civil rights activists and local citizens passing judgment on a police officer without sufficient investigation or examination of evidence.
Politics the Real Danger
I sincerely hope that Quanell and Maupin will more closely guard their words and actions after having undergone the use of force training exercise. In the meantime, we face the very real danger of politics destroying whatever integrity remains within our justice system. If civil rights leaders continue to use incidents like the Ferguson shooting to foment anger and hostility toward police, our justice system will be reduced to a political machine that dispenses justice according to who screams the loudest.
Our system of justice in the United States is based on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Police officers, regardless of skin color, deserve that same presumption of innocence. I hope that Quanell and Maupin have learned to grant it.
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