I'm not sure
what the Ferguson Police Department's policy is regarding waiting for back-up,
but it seems to me that much of where we stand today with regard to Michael
brown's untimely death could have been avoided if Darren Wilson had just waited
for help to arrive.
At the time
Wilson first encountered Brown and his companion, Dorian Johnson the only
crimes Wilson would have been able to observe were jaywalking and possibly
obstruction of traffic--neither of which warrants the use of extreme force.
The ostensible purpose for the stop that
Wilson cites was to get the two men out of the middle of residential road of
which the two suspects were walking down the middle. When the two men refused, and began shouting expletives
at him, Wilson, who was alone in his vehicle, should have fallen back, followed
the suspects from the safety of his vehicle, observed and reported, and waited
for more officers to arrive. It is likely that help would have arrived in
minutes, and if it didn't, so what? The crime at hand was minor and not worth
escalating.
The probable
outcome when back-up arrived would have been that Brown and his companion would
have backed down due to a show of superior force and numbers. If back-up took
too long, Brown would have exited the center of the roadway and headed for his
destination. He had just committed a petty theft ($38 worth of cigarillos) at a
local convenience store, and he would have known it was only a matter of time
before Wilson put two and two together from the radio calls, and brought
considerable weight down upon him. Brown wasn't planning on loitering for too
much longer; any hazard he was causing on the roadway was about to be cleared.
Wilson did,
in fact, connect Brown to the robbery, and set about delaying Brown and Johnson
until back-up showed up on the scene. This is the key moment in the
interaction, and the moment that makes so little sense that it's hard to
fathom. Wilson was alone; it was two against one, and at least one the suspects
(an exceedingly large one) had already plainly displayed an overt and
aggressive disregard for Wilson's authority. By blocking the men with his
cruiser in the middle of traffic and getting out to confront the suspects,
Wilson was virtually guaranteeing that there was going to be a confrontation
wherein his only advantage was the firearm at his side.
Now, I'm not
suggesting that Wilson should have resorted to cowardice, but instead that the
John Wayne, cowboy shit that so many of our country's police forces still seem
to encourage needs to go the way of...well, the way of the Old West. Caution would
have served Wilson better than bravado that day. He should have been weighing
risk versus reward. The worst case scenario if back-up didn't arrive in time
and the suspects got away would have been that two unarmed black men, guilty of
jay-walking and obstructing traffic, might have made off with a whopping $38
worth of stolen cigars. That would have been significantly less expensive than
the way things turned out.
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