Deadly Force Was Met with Deadly Force
Dexter Reed case: Only courageous police leaders have the guts to tell the world that in a situations of deadly force, officers are deliberately attempting to kill a man.
As unpalatable and awkward it is to speak those words, it’s the truth. A criminal attempted to kill a police officer, deputy sheriff, state trooper or any other law enforcement officer. Police leaders try to get technical and couch their language in the gentlest vernacular.
“Their threat was met with deadly force, and after it crossed that threshold, the threatened peace officer took the action necessary and appropriate to mitigate the threat.”
Law enforcement leaders need to speak plainly that when the situation escalated, the law enforcement officer was exercising his determination to stop, defeat, and destroy the threat. When the suspect escalated the response of the police to deadly force, why are leaders so fearful to spit out the words: we were trying to kill this person who was clearly intending to murder us?
Leaders are easy to spot
Sheriff Grady Judd emerged on the national stage as America’s Sheriff in September 2006 speaking on the murders of K9 Deputy Matt Williams and his K9 partner Dioge and the subsequent manhunt resulting in 87 gunshot wounds on the deceased murderer. Several of my friends were on scene in September 2006 and I have on good authority 87 sounds conservative.
On July 7,2016, then Dallas Police Chief David Brown authorized a robot to deliver a bomb to the demented entrenched sniper who killed five officers while they were protecting Black Lives Matter protesters. A unique situation that required a unique response blew the murdering sniper to smithereens. That response appears to have had a deterrent effect.
The lies of Sanford and Ferguson
Not the metrics, but the focus of the metrics, prevail in high profile broadly reported events. George Zimmerman wasn’t on neighborhood watch patrol when he saw Trayvon Martin behaving erratically in the rain. He was on a grocery run. Zimmerman correctly identified Martin as a stranger in his gated community and followed the police community engagement speech to the letter.
One: if you see a suspicious person, call the police. Don’t worry about bothering us, this is what we are here for.
Two: provide an accurate description of them and be very specific about what behavior they are presenting that is suspicious and potentially criminal, which was a person he didn’t recognize in a compact gated community standing motionless in driving rain despite shelter nearby.
Three: provide an accurate location or direction of travel to assist officers locating and intercepting potential criminals without intentionally confronting them.
Four: meet with the officers when they arrive.
Don’t fall for the lie that Zimmerman defied the guidance of the 911 call taker and do yourself a favor and listen to a recording of that again. (Raw video of Zimmerman walking through the scene and cooperating with the police is linked in the references below.) Martin was 233 miles from home and likely had never been in Sanford before. He was sent by his natural mother to the residence of his natural father’s new girlfriend. But Trayvon Martin had been raised by his father’s girlfriend in Miami Gardens, and living with his actual mother was a new experience for both of them. When Martin abandoned weed for a codeine-based aggression enhancing mental altering (liver damaging) alternative, he got in a lot of trouble in school and on the bus. Enough trouble for his natural mother to ship him to Sanford.
Emotional complaints echoed across the country as Michael Brown laid deceased in the streets for hours. But his crime scene processing delays were the result of local outcry and protest sparked by proven false witnesses. It is no consequence whether a deceased body lies in the road for 60 minutes or greater. Is there a church in the community that has adopted this extra-biblical ideology? For some reason, national media meters the ‘dignity details’ in a shamefully lopsided fashion that undermines their own credibility.
It speaks volumes that it took two years after the beer summit for the media and activist groups like the Dream Defenders to find the Martin case and promote it like extra-judicial police killing of a minority. A swing and a miss.
It turns out that the only plausible version of the Michael Brown/Officer Darren Wilson encounter was what in fact happened. Brown had just committed a felony and every shred of evidence supported Wilson’s version and refuted Dorian Johnson’s testimony. Johnson’s testimony was given while he was wanted for lying to the police in Jefferson City. Even Eric Holder’s justice department couldn’t find a single charge to hang on Wilson. Strike two.
Dexter Reed shot a police officer and died
If only we shared the absolute truth, we would have little to fear. In my family, our first rule comes from red text in the Gospels: Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Dexter Reed’s family, the actual people having press conferences and filing lawsuits, are dancing on his grave for money. It is a repulsive practice that also furnishes a learning opportunity. At issue is the question of the proportionality of the police response after one of their own was shot, unquestionably by Dexter Reed. In a city like Chicago, everyone ought to have a bite of apple to be able to discuss the disproportional level of lethal black-on-black violence.
I review news sites from all over the country and find it surprising to review cities like Jackson, Mississippi and Albuquerque, New Mexico and find that similar cases to Dexter Reed wind up remaining within those news market’s silos.
Reed’s case doesn’t have the legs to run this race which begs the question, how did his police shooting death escalate as a national story? It’s only politics.
Chicago is a city with a Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) that has the authority under certain circumstance begin a misconduct investigation without any complaint of or evidence of misconduct. It’s also a city that will be hosting a political convention in August as it did previously in 1968 and 1996. The convention 56 years ago left eleven dead and 90 cops injured.
To his credit, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling has elected not to place the officers involved on paid administrative leave in a show of support that was more awkward than effective. "We have not heard from the officers. I will not make a decision to strip officers (of police powers) until investigation unfolds," Snelling said. His move has more to do with the rickety communication structure between the police department and COPA than providing the supervisory cover the officers need in this time. Being forced to defend yourself by taking a criminal’s life requires the time to receive care and properly process the trauma of the experience. Depriving officers of a break to avail themselves of their choice of counseling services is a poor choice that will result in bad outcomes.
Chicago doesn’t have courageous leaders who stand up for their officers like Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida. The growing county is home to the Kennedy Space Center and the Port Canaveral cruise ship port. In 2021, when the media questioned the number of shots fired by deputies responding to a criminal shooting at them, he told them: “Evil can never be dead enough.”
This month Sheriff Ivey presented “Leading from the Ledge” at the 2024 Leadership Summit hosted by Sheriff Jesse Watts of Eureka County Nevada, an 1860’s boomtown in healthy renaissance that exemplifies the term getting away from it all. I’ll be promoting their 2025 agenda as it develops. You can listen to a summary of his presentation on the podcast: Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates.
Media: Desperately seeking injustice
The chum is in the water. National media are intentionally seeking a police involved case to make this election season as racially charged and contentious as four years ago. We look at the history of the cases that receive national focus and they are unremarkable. How pathetic that in 2012, the media had to mislabel, stereotype, and ruin George Zimmerman painting him as a rogue neighborhood watch volunteer in order to associate his act of self-defense with policing. In Ferguson two years later, they swung and missed again while tearing communities apart nationwide. The murder of Walter Scott and the conviction of the (now) former officer, Michael Slager, who murdered him reflects how the system actually works.
Please keep all law enforcement officers in your prayers and pray for the full recovery of Polk County Sheriff’s Office (Florida) Deputy Sheriff Craig Smith and Lieutenant Chad Anderson. They were shot by a sovereign citizen who was killed by the wounded deputies and other responding officers on April 27, 2024.
Roland Clee served a major Florida police department as a Community Service Officer for more than 26 years. His career included uniformed patrol, training, media relations, intelligence, criminal investigations, and chief’s staff. He writes the American Peace Officer newsletter, speaks at public safety, recruiting and leadership conferences and helps local governments and public safety agencies through his business, CommandStaffConsulting.com. His work is frequently featured on LawOfficer.com, the only law enforcement owned major media player in the public safety realm.
References
https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-traffic-stop-man-killed-5b9b27e4497c0829e010542db3a4995b
When COPA released the footage of Reed’s shooting, officials said in a news release they had recommended that the officers who shot at Reed be stripped of their police powers during the investigation.
COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten told Snelling that recommendation was based on “grave concerns about the officers’ ability to assess what is a necessary, reasonable, and proportional use of deadly force,” according to a letter released by COPA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by WTTW News.
"We have not heard from the officers. I will not make a decision to strip officers until investigation unfolds," Snelling said.
Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida echoed the same where two of his deputies were shot by a sovereign citizen who was subsequently killed by the wounded deputies and their back up deputies. “We killed him graveyard dead and we killed him dead in a gunfight, a firefight with our deputies who had no idea they were dealing with anyone other than someone being in the park after the park closed, being suspicious and resisting our efforts to identify why they were in the area.”
Sorry, you have to double click this black field below and YouTube will open in a new tab or window.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/326700-full-transcript-zimmerman
https://www.yatesleadership.com/eureka-leadership-conference-day-3-with-sheriff-wayne-ivey/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/07/obama_beer_photo_op_now_part_o.html
Well done!