Walking a Few Inches in a Cop's Shoes

How can I be writing this, given that when I tried to talk sense into someone yesterday, he shot me dead? I hadn’t even drawn my gun.

Fortunately both our guns lacked bullets, and just made a big noise. We (“media” folks, city councilors, city employees, and a few state legislators), and we were in the Las Cruces Public Safety Building,, attempting police training scenarios, wearing protective equipment and under close supervision.

Police must know dozens of specific legal cases and state or federal laws. They must know ‘em better than prosecutors or defense attorneys. Lawyers can research a law’s details before citing it in a brief or going to court. Police officers must decide on the spot, sometimes in nanoseconds, under pressure, whether or not to put a foot in the door to prevent a man who may or may not be abusing his spouse from closing that door, or how to handle a shirtless trespasser who is acting in bizarre and threatening ways outside Costco.

Our state courts have (mostly correctly, I think, but challengingly for law enforcement) interpreted our search and seizure and other constitutional provisions and laws as more protective of individual rights than analogous federal provisions.

The landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor (as interpreted by later cases) governs police use-of-force cases. The Court unanimously held that all excessive-force claims should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, not a generalized “substantive due process” standard. Were the officer’s actions objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them? Courts judge reasonableness from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer in the moment, not using hindsight. Relevant factors include the severity of the suspected crime, the immediacy of any threat to anyone’s safety, and whether the suspect is actively resisting (or trying to evade) arrest. (More specifics in today’s blog post.)

One could note that we didn’t see the other side of the coin, when police officers step over lines and harm people unnecessarily. While officers spoke of the basic rules, I thought about situations from just a few years ago in which failure to follow those rules led to deaths.

I also saw again the chest video Officer Jonah Hernandez was wearing when a man to whom he’d spoken politely just rushed him, without warning or provocation, and knifed him to death. It’s hard to watch. It’s hard not to reflect on, afterward. It must have been incredibly painful for Chief Story and others who knew him well.

For me, the proper response to the session (which wasn’t my first) is NOT to express unqualified support for whatever police officers do in whatever circumstances; but I do view their actions with greatly enhanced sympathy and understanding. We owe them optimum training, equipment, support, and oversight.

We should recognize that we make them deal with all the hardest problems we are too weak, lazy, or blasé to fix: that modern society seems to drive more people mad, that a capitalist society involves a lot of poverty for those the system can’t use; and that most people are wonderful, by nature, others are somewhat vicious. Whether that’s caused by God or the devil or getting beaten too badly by Papa, trying to talk such a person into acting benignly, without violating his or her rights, or seeing anyone injured, is a tough problem you and I rarely have to face.

                                             – 30 –

[The above column appeared Sunday, 17 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom, "Understanding the Tough Choices Law Enforcement Officers Have to Make" ) and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[I mention Graham v. Connor (1989), the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that set the constitutional standard for evaluating claims of excessive force by law enforcement during arrests, investigatory stops, or other seizures. The Court ruled that 4^th Amendment “reasonable search and seizures” standard applied, not the 8^th Amendment, which would have turned on whether the officers had malicious intent or acted with excessive cruelty. (Initially, the Charlotte trial court had tossed the case at the pleading stage, based on the 8^th Amendment standard, and the U.S. Court of Appeal had affirmed.

The facts perfectly illustrate the two worlds different people can inhabit in the same parking lot.

Outside a crowded 7-11 gas station / convenience store, a cop noticed a car pull up, and the passenger jump out, acting a little oddly, and tell the driver he’d be out in a moment. He ran back out soon afterward and jumped in the car, which took off rapidly. The officer followed them, stopped them, and ordered them to wait while he investigated, then released them after a while, once he found out that there had been no crime.

A diabetic patient beginning to experience an insulin reaction asked a friend to drive him to a convenience store to buy orange juice. The store was so crowded that he concluded he wouldn’t be able to buy the juice quickly enough, and asked his friend to drive him to another friend’s house. An officer stopped them almost immediately, and other officers soon arrived and handcuffed the patient, who was injured in the process.

One interesting fact is that I haven’t been able to discover how the case ultimately came out between the diabetic and the city police. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded. That’s a common move when the Court determines that lower courts applied the wrong legal standard, or misunderstood the law. You clarify the rules and play the game over. Lower courts take more evidence and ultimately decide. However, records from lower courts are sometimes spotty. It appears that the parties settled the case out of court after the Court clarified the governing law.

Therefore it seems that the diabetic got compensated. That sounds fair. Even if the first police officer’s stop was reasonable – hold these guys a moment while we have another officer ask the store if it had just been robbed – the cop who handcuffed Graham and rolled him over on the sidewalk, so rudely that a foot got broken and a shoulder injured, ignoring the man’s explanation about the insulin (while another officer said, “I’ve seen insulin shock. There’s nothing wrong with this motherfucker except he’s drunk.”) may not have been so reasonable. (If the plaintiff was physically resisting the stop, such that subduing and handcuffing him was necessary, maybe it’s a different story.)

I also understand that the diabetic was Black. In Charlotte in 1989. I’m pretty sure a couple of middle-class white businessmen in the same situation would have been heard a little better by the officers, or at least treated more respectfully.

At any rate, as I say, last week’s event was a good session. Well-run, and pretty fair. Certainly something more civilians should see or experience. ]