The actions of a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day have smeared once again the vast majority of law enforcement personnel who act by the book to protect and serve the public.
In this case, as in almost all similar cases that draw national media attention, the police officer was white and the victim was black. And in this case, as in most of the similar cases, the officer was using force that was excessive, improper or uncalled for.
In the Minneapolis incident, the suspect – arrested on suspicion of paying with a counterfeit bill at a convenience store – died after complaining he could not breathe because a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes.
The officer and three other officers on the scene were fired after the encounter, but that won’t quell the feelings of black Americans who see each isolated incident in which a similar thing happens as a conspiracy. Nor should we be surprised at their feelings.
But while there is no conspiracy to kill black men by white police officers, such incidents should never happen. As long as crimes are committed, criminals occasionally will die at the hands of police, but training, education, the availability of less lethal force, and body cameras should keep more routine interactions from escalating into something tragic.
From evidence available to date, the arrest of George Floyd did not seem to be the type of confrontation that should have risen to the need for any kind of additional force.
And even if it had, an officer kneeling on a suspect’s neck is not the go-to method for most law enforcement agencies. For instance, Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy and Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Austin Garrett were quick to speak out against it.
“There is no need to see more video,” Roddy said in a Twitter message. “There is no need to see how ‘it plays out.’ There is no need to put a knee on someone’s neck for NINE minutes. There IS a need to DO something. If you wear a badge and you don’t have an issue with this … turn it in.”
“As leaders our communities must know where we stand,” Garrett tweeted. “This act of violence is black & white. Make no mistake, there’s no explanation or gray in it. For 8 min George Floyd lay suffocating and dying. If you wear a badge stand up for what’s right & stand up & speak out against wrong.”
Two years ago, the question “Why do police put their knee on the back of your neck when cuffing you?” on the question-and-answer website Quora brought several definitive answers from law enforcement officers.
“I suppose some department somewhere does that,” said Brian Jones, who indicated he had 30 years of law enforcement experience, “but that’s not how we were trained.
“LAPD, in their felony arrests, prone out the suspect, approach from the front, and place a knee on the suspect’s scapula (shoulder) – not the neck – and then lift the suspect’s arm to handcuff,” he wrote. “This allows a pain compliance hold if the suspect starts to struggle. Putting a knee on the neck is ineffective and possibly injurious at this point.”
A section on handcuffing techniques in the Texas Association of Police Explorers manual is similar.
“The arresting Explorer should move in and take the suspect’s right arm and do an arm bar,” it says. “Kneel down over the suspect with her arm between your legs. DO NOT lean on the suspect with your knees. The suspect will not be able to breathe if you do.”
“Why [kneel on the neck]?” wrote Jay Tee, a former 10-year federal law enforcement officer. “Because they were poorly trained. … We were specifically trained NOT to place any amount of our body weight upon the upper back or neck of a person being restrained face-down. … It’s incredibly dangerous….. It’s also NOT rare, although it should be.”
“[W]e know, absolutely, that it’s not normal for police officers to kneel on the back of people’s necks,” Paul Harding, a deputy sheriff since 2000, wrote, “because if that was normal then just about all of them would have broken peoples’ necks.”
What the officer in the Minneapolis stop did was wrong. If he acted with racial animus, that’s even worse. But whether it was due to improper training, inexperience or hate, law enforcement agencies across the country must sit up and take notice. And once they do, they must improve their techniques, offer better guidance or root out any officers in whom intolerance is ingrained.
As former Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher noted in a tweet: “Those of us from [law enforcement] have a duty to stand up & speak out & act against injustices large & small in our profession – long before they become murder. I see many of u who do stand up & act – let’s magnify their influence.”