What is fear?
P1. Police whose lives are often at risk may fear for their safety even from suspects whose guns are unloaded or who brandish what looks like a weapon. The fact that they were not in mortal danger in no way diminishes their reasonable fear. Are police officer’s wrong to shoot “an unarmed suspect” or are they within their rights to neutralize a suspect whose intention was to harm? On the night of August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department was on patrol when he received a call about a robbery and physical dispute between an 18 year old male and a Ferguson Market clerk. A nationwide study conducted in 2013 by USA.com found that the average crime rate in Ferguson, Missouri, is 2,6885.38, which trumps the Missouri crime rate of 1,858.24 and the national average crime rate of 1,669.05. Officer Wilson spotted Michael Brown walking down the street wearing a hoodie, a red hat and yellow socks that matched the offenders description. Michael Brown’s hands were in his pockets, which perhaps gave the illusion (from a police officer’s perspective) that he could be holstering a weapon. The high crime rate alone was enough to justify officer Wilson’s feelings of uneasiness. Officer Wilson had to acknowledge that there was already a physical altercation with the Ferguson Market Clerk, so his defensiveness is valid. When officer Darren Wilson confronted Brown, Brown reached through the window of the police car, disrespecting the barrier that separates Brown from officer Wilson. Darren Wilson pleads that Michael Brown reached for his hosteled weapon forcing him to fire through Brown’s hand, which signifies the heightened severity of the situation. Because Brown’s physical gesture posed a direct threat to the safety of Darren Wilson, officer Wilson got out of his car to pursue Brown and shot him six times. While six shots seems inexcusable, we can relate to his heightened sense of perceived danger. Officer Wilson shot Michael Brown because Brown appeared to have an apparent intent to cause harm. The fact that he may not have a weapon in no way diminishes officer Wilson’s fear for his life. One of the central questions in the case of Michael Brown that was argued is whether officer Darren Wilson’s response to a situation that calls for instantaneous reactions could hold him accountable. The decision made by officer Wilson reflects an officer’s moral instinct to protect the public at any time and place that the peace is threatened.
P2. As we learn from Chris Mooney in “The Science of Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men,” we are not “born with racial prejudices. We may never even have been taught them. Rather, prejudice draws on many of the same tools that help our minds figure out what’s good and what’s bad. In evolutionary terms, it’s efficient to quickly classify a grizzly bear as dangerous. The trouble comes when the brain uses similar processes to form negative views about groups of people.” A study conducted by Lewis Loflin, a former U.S. Army and military officer , in 2012 found that of the total 2,029 arrests made in Ferguson, Missouri, 558 were white/hispanic and 1,471 were black. It is entirely possible that officer Wilson reacted to many cues in addition to the race of Michael Brown. It has been argued that the six shots to Michael Brown’s body was both excessive and unnecessary. Perhaps police officers learn to be suspicious of individuals that the general public do not fear. Officer Wilson could have developed reflexes that we don’t have, causing him to react faster or with more force than we would.
P3. Officer’s lives are often threatened. They have an obligation to respect the rights of suspects. They also have a (sometimes conflicting) right to defend themselves against mortal danger. Under the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, American law enforcement personnel is partially protected from investigation and prosecution arising from conduct during official performance of their duties, and provides them with privileges based on due process additional to those normally provided to other citizens. But police officers are not fully protected. This leaves them vulnerable to due process for a natural instinct. Michael Brown posed a threat to officer Wilson by neglecting to respect the barrier that separates the inside of the car from the outside of the car, while attempting to retrieve officer Wilson’s gun. As we learned from Sunil Dutta, an advocate for police safety and 17-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, in “Column defending cops in Ferguson sparks online fury,” people should “not challenge law enforcement — save that for lodging a complaint later. Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you.” If people simply cooperated with police officers, there would be fewer arrests and less violence as a result. We can relate to officer Wilson’s sense of perceived danger.
P4. A study conducted by Police One showing the reaction time of a police officer when faced with different scenarios. The test subjects were 24 male volunteers recruited from an active-shooter training class at a regional SWAT conference. Each officer, equipped with a Glock training pistol, was to progress through 10 rooms in an abandoned school where an officer was to confront a suspect with a similar pistol at a distance of 10 feet. According to prior instruction, one-fifth of the suspects followed the officer’s order to surrender peacefully, whereas the rest, designated as attackers, were told to try to shoot the officer at any time they chose. Analysis showed that the suspects on average were able to fire in just 0.38 second after initial movement of their gun. Officers fired back in an average of 0.39 second after the suspect’s movement began. The officer and suspect effectively shot at similar times. Why should an officer be held responsible for a natural instinct? These numbers validate police officer’s rights to react in the way they do to certain situations. Officer Wilson shot Michael Brown’s hand out of pure response to the altercation. While the next six shots seems inexcusable, we cannot understand officer Wilson’s perceived sense of danger and excessive reaction to a potential violent situation. Effectively, it is either kill or be killed.
P5. Neil Bruntrager, a lawyer for Officer McMellon, said, “According to State v. Anthony, once a defendant injects self-defense into a case, the prosecution bears the burden of disproving the defense beyond a reasonable doubt.” Self-defense is an extremely difficult burden to carry in a court of law. The fear of imminent danger in law enforcement is a reasonable defense and may outbalance the burden of proof. (Explain why)
P6. Finally, police officers, as a highly scrutinized group, should not be held responsible for a potential threat to their well-being and others around them. The burden we place on police officers, to protect the safety of everyone they encounter, is incompatible with their human instinct to protect themselves from danger. When we scrutinize their actions without considering how often they place themselves in danger on our behalf, we impose an unjust burden on them. The threats they recognize, that we might not, are mitigating circumstances.
Works Cited
“http://www.policeone.com/Officer-Safety/articles/3705348-New-reaction-time-study-addresses-whats-reasonable-in-armed-suspect-encounters/” Police one. 26 May. 2011. 28 Oct. 2016.
“http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/20/us/ferguson-column-police-reaction/” CNN. Josh Levs. 20 Aug 2014. 28 Oct. 2016.
“http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/science-of-racism-prejudice” Mother Jones. Chris Mooney. 1 Dec. 2014. 28 Oct. 2016.
“https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/26/officer-wilson-had-a-powerful-case-for-self-defense-under-missouri-law/” The Washington Post. Paul Cassell. 26 Nov. 2014. 28 Oct. 2016.
“http://www.usa.com/ferguson-mo-crime-and-crime-rate.htm” USA.com. 1 Jan. 2016. 9 Nov. 2016.
“http://www.sullivan-county.com/racism/crime_missouri.htm” Lewis Loflin. 3 Feb. 2016. 10 Nov. 2016.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
feedback provided.
—DSH
Help!
My main concern is how would I would fit this idea into my final paper. Is this a good definition topic?
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You ask good questions, Philly, indicative of your readiness to handle the complexities of a nuanced Research Opinion Argument. I won’t answer those questions for you; they are at the heart of what makes investigating this topic a worthwhile academic enterprise . . . for YOU.
Of course this is a good definition topic. It is essential to your argument that you and your readers agree on the ground rules. Officers’ lives are often threatened. They have an obligation to respect the rights of suspects. They also have a (sometimes conflicting) right to defend themselves against mortal danger.
Even more interesting than the prospect of defining “A Life-Threatening Situation” is the corollary proposition of defining “Situations in which an officer can reasonably fear for his life.”
If I shoot a suspect who brandishes a weapon and aims it at me with apparent intent to fire, the fact that his weapon was unloaded in no way diminishes my fear for my life. Was I wrong to shoot “an unarmed suspect” or was I within my rights to neutralize a suspect whose intention was to kill me?
If you want to make your job harder but richer, read this article (and follow its links all the way back the Harvard study to draw your own conclusions).
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/science-of-racism-prejudice
You’re onto something very valuable here, Philly. Have at it.
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Feedback provided
—DSH
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First a grammar note. You’re painting yourself into a corner in your first two sentences. We should be paying attention to the drama of the situation you relate; instead, we’re distracted by whether the officers you describe are male or female. The impact of the opening is lost.
You can’t use THEM to refer to “an officer.” That illegally mixes singular and plural. You later call the officer “he,” then again “an officer,” then “his or her,” then again “an officer,” then “he,” then finally “him or her.” That’s enough officers for a whole force, when you really only mean one person. Let’s fix it, and at the same time eliminate a needless If/then.
PLURAL SOLVES THE PROBLEM
Such sentences are harder to write but much easier to understand.
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As you know, Philly, you’ll receive quick grades in four grading criteria: Argument, Rhetoric, Mechanics, Scholarship (ARMS). Grades can always be improved by revision. To understand your grades, you need to know your Grade Code, which I shared with you in class MON SEP 19. I’ve numbered your paragraphs for easy identification. The Writing Center offers free peer-to-peer writing instruction appointments to suit your schedule. And additional feedback is always available from me upon request.
ARGUMENT (Grade Y)
You mean to start strong, and your choice of an illustrative anecdote is a good tactic, but you surrender all you’ve gained by not drawing a conclusion in P1. Where you merely pose questions, you should be at least defining clear alternatives. Your “a bullet went through his hand” comment is maddeningly vague. You kill Brown unarmed on the street and then leave him there while you suggest that shootings like these are controversial and raise good questions. Be braver than this.
In P2 you still draw no conclusion except to suggest that whether the shooting was justified or not, Wilson won’t be safe on the street.
In P3, because you haven’t yet taken a position on Wilson’s shooting, you appear to be building justification for officers who, like him, take suspects’ lives instinctively. But since your description of the shooting has Wilson pursuing and killing an unarmed suspect, you create defensiveness in your readers, who need to be told what possible threat Brown posed in that alley.
P4. And then the anecdote disappears. Your reader remains highly defensive, not malleable and suggestible as you want. Good argument requires you to anticipate your readers’ objections and minimize or refute them before they interfere. You can’t build agreement while your readers are actively resisting you.
P5. The very notion that police are trained to stop, not kill, is at odds with that scene you asked us to envision, of Brown running away from the officer, not toward him, and taking six bullets, certainly more than would have been needed to stop him. See how your failure to address the unknown details of your own anecdote are still getting in your way?
P6 P7. You’re doing a good job of compiling persuasive material, Philly. But while Brown did not wait around to be arrested or killed once he’d already taken the first bullet, neither did he stick around to pose a threat. (Still can’t get rid of these nagging objections.)
P8. Mechanical problems here with your citation. There may be a good reason for the single quotes, but if the quotation starts where you say it does, then you appear to be quoting Mooney quoting Nosek. That’s not clear from your citation. Your material on prejudice is probably very valuable too, but at the moment we don’t know whether you’re building a case to explain racial prejudice or something else. Most likely, police officers react to many cues in addition to the race of suspects. Do they learn to be suspicious of individuals that civilians would not fear? Do they develop reflexes we don’t have, causing them to react faster or with more force than we would?
P9. Well, maybe. But if they are well trained to recognize threats, they should also be experts at defusing them or avoiding confrontations that might turn deadly or dangerous. You can be understanding without giving them a free pass.
P10. Oh, yes they can and must. Speaking on behalf of your readers, the fear of imminent danger is a reasonable defense and may well outbalance the burden of proof, but that doesn’t absolve those entrusted to protect the safety of all citizens of their moral responsibility.
RHETORIC (Grade Y)
You have good instincts for gathering material to support an argument, Philly, but for now, you haven’t decided what exactly you want to prove in each paragraph. When you do, you’ll be able to phrase your claims in such a way that they both identify your position and persuade your readers to adopt it. Take Paragraph 9 as an example.
This is the same argument you made, but expressed in a way that balances the rights of all parties.
MECHANICS (Grade Z)
Fails for improper citation technique. Your essay contains vestiges of MLA citation technique (those parenthetical notes at the end of your sentences). We don’t do that in this class, which spoils your Mechanics Grade. Your citations should name the author and source as in the following example. For every citation, the bibliographic information must appear in the Works Cited.
SCHOLARSHIP (Grade W) I’m impressed with the range of quality of your sources here, Philly. However, your links do not lead to your sources. Can you fix this problem?
OVERALL
Very strong work in need of a rewrite primarily to resolve the troubles caused by your Ferguson anecdote and to fix the citation problems.
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Thank you for the detailed feedback. I could understand how my audience may have been defensive in response to my first couple of paragraphs. I clearly chose a side and added more information to help strengthen my paper. Your feedback allowed me to clarify my paper, which helped me tremendously. Thanks so much for the time and effort you put into these posts!
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