A single event in the City of Ferguson, Missouri has law enforcement officers across the United States questioning what they do and how they do it.
The event destroyed the life of a police officer who, after an exhaustive investigation by the DOJ and FBI, did nothing wrong. The event gave a group (Black Lives Matter) a forum to spew hateful rhetoric in their efforts to overthrow the government itself. Statements like, “What do we want, dead cops. When do we want it, NOW” and “Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon” illustrate this point. If black lives really mattered, this group would be out on the streets of Chicago and Baltimore nightly attempting to curtail the killing of blacks.
Wilson voluntarily resigned from the Ferguson Police Department due to threats against the other members of the agency. He was able to get a job bagging groceries until the threats against him and his employer became unbearable. What Wilson is doing now is unknown.
Police officer videos became national news, with pundits and “experts” offering their critique of how the officer responded to the “threat” that they faced.
This was followed by the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland. A feckless prosecutor made the conscious decision to charge six officers despite having no evidence of wrongdoing. Those officers faced prison time as well as the loss of their careers. After a hung jury in the first trial and two not guilty verdicts in bench trials, the prosecutions of the officers were terminated.
As a direct result of the Baltimore event, two New York City cops were assassinated while sitting in their marked police vehicle by a man who drove there intent on killing cops. Whether or not these events directly or indirectly caused people to refuse lawful orders of police officers is not really known, but the resistance dramatically increased.
The result has many police officers re-assessing what they do and how they do it. Rather than engage in pro-active policing in high crime areas initiating contact with possible offenders, they only answer requests for service via 9-1-1 or citizen requests. Rather than reacting instinctively to resistance, officers will take a moment to attempt to assess the threat before responding. That short time frame of inaction can have devastating consequences.
The media now questions why officers cannot identify a toy gun from a real one in a split second and question why the use of deadly force was necessary in incidents. The fact is that deadly force may not be necessary, it may well be reasonable under the individual circumstances of each event. The word “necessary” becomes a subjective term while “reasonable” becomes an objective term.
Police officers risk their freedom and their lives each time they report for duty. It is not unreasonable, given the current state of affairs, for them to be overly cautious in their actions.