Two separate incidents this week vividly demonstrate that simply breaking up a fight can be a dangerous business for a police officer — not only dangerous physically, but potentially dangerous for the cop’s career. In both cases, officers were thrown into difficult circumstances and their actions have been called into question in the aftermath.
In North Carolina, an eight-second video was posted on Twitter showing a school resource officer — surrounded by students — lifting and dropping a combative high school girl to the floor, then pulling her to her feet and leading her away. The video soon went viral on social media.
That officer has been placed on administrative leave.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, when officers were called to break up a large street fight, one of responding cops got into an altercation with a teenage girl. It was captured on video, showing the officer moving the teen away from a crowd and then throwing her to the ground and punching her. That footage also soon went viral on social media.
That Philly officer is currently “off street duty” pending an investigation.
Serious similarities in both incidents
In both cases, three similarities become immediately evident:
1. The officer/officers were massively outnumbered and surrounded by a hostile crowd.
2. The incidents were recorded by bystanders and those videos went viral on social media.
3. The offending assailants were teenage females, which may have influenced public perceptions.
There’s one more commonality which merits mention in this space: We know woefully little about what actually happened leading up to the incidents presented in the social media posts and subsequent press reports.
In Philly, it has been reported that the teen slapped the officer who eventually escorted her to the ground. In the Tar Heel State, we have even less information about the lead-up to the takedown.
In North Carolina, a few more seconds of footage could be seen on a separate video showing some of the event prior to that use of force, but still, the totality of the circumstances cannot be gleaned from currently available information.
The most disturbing similarity is that these officers’ careers have been put in jeopardy of penalty up to and including dismissal from their agency.
In the case of the fight in the school cafeteria, it was clear that some action needed to be taken in order to quell the mounting violence.
In the street fight, the officer was in the process of separating the fighting factions when she was assaulted by one of the violators. The subject and the officer are seen moving from left to right in the screen, and the video pans briefly away from the pair for viewers to not see the seconds immediately before the female suspect was taken to the ground.
The “optics” of force is never good
In both cases, critics have said that the officers’ use of force “doesn’t look good.”
Well, of course it doesn’t — the use of force never “looks” good. Force is ugly. It can be bloody. Force sometimes causes injury. It rarely — but occasionally — even ends in death.
Force is the last possible resort. But it is also sometimes the only possible option to resolve a situation.
What some critics don’t seem to understand or accept is that when an officer — or a group of officers — is surrounded by a crowd that could quickly turn into a chaotic mob, quick and decisive force is sometimes the best way to resolve a scenario that could become dangerous for everyone involved.
What critics fail to take into account are the myriad factors that the officer(s) in the rapidly unfolding high-stress situation must assess in an instant. A whole host of issues must be addressed by the officer in those moments:
• The number of officers present versus the number of subjects (and physical threat they present)
• The age, size, and relative strength of the subject(s) versus the officer (or officers) on scene
• Proximity to weapons, including those worn by the officer as well as environmental weapons
The critics have the benefit of hindsight — 20/20 vision seen through the lens of a smartphone — not the sworn duty and responsibility to quickly resolve violent confrontations in the moment.
Officers know that force may be necessary — and legally justifiable — in order to affect an arrest, overcome a resistive subject, prevent the escape of a dangerous subject or to defend themselves or other innocents from death or great bodily harm.
Time (and investigations) will tell
Were these two uses of force in question this week justifiable? The short answer is: who knows? We were not there. We cannot make that determination.
These departments will — and of course, should — conduct full and thorough investigations into what these officers saw, heard, felt, sensed and ultimately did in these situations. These organizations need to determine the totality of the circumstances and whether or not an objectively reasonable officer would do something similar in a similar situation.
The future of their officers’ careers is on the line.
As we saw just this week in an entirely different matter, an officer in Arizona who was seen on video punching a woman in the face during a November arrest has resigned. The department held that their officer violated unreasonable and excessive force policies.
Let’s all hope that the officers are judged through due process and clear, calm minds that have the necessary experience and knowledge to make an appropriate decision.
