Among the many rules of engagement, surrender is the most universal. In war, it’s understood no matter what language you speak. At home, it’s how a guy who has done wrong ends it. Surrender is where the threat stops and everyone takes a deep breath.
It’s the point where no one, no matter how badly you screwed up before, no matter what harm you did, gets killed. And the universal sign for surrender is to raise your hands in the air. In Pinal County, Arizona, that got Manuel Longoria two bullets that ended his life. Via Carlos Miller at Photography is Not a Crime:
The reporting is horrendously bad, but the video makes the point. It doesn’t matter whether Longoria did the worst thing ever seen in Pinal County or not. He raised his hands in the air, and then he felt bullets enter his body as life left it.
The original excuse was on page one of the sheriff’s media guide:
“Officers and deputies attempted to use less lethal means to take him into custody including firing several bean bag rounds and Taser deployments. The suspect refused to obey the commands and suddenly reached back into the vehicle. A deputy felt the suspect was reaching for the gun he reportedly had, so he then fired two rounds.”
But when they put out the press release, nobody at the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department knew there was a video that would put the lie to their claims. So they turned to the back page of the guide, the part entitled “troubleshooting,” to figure out what to do when the shit hits the fan. And the Sheriff himself, Paul Babeu, stepped in the save the day:
However, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu insists the man should have been killed much earlier because he wasn’t complying with their orders.
Oddly, there is a kernel of truth in there. While there is nothing to show that Longoria did anything worthy of death, it’s possible that the police might have had cause to shoot before Longoria put his hands in the air.
After all, the First Rule of Policing: If an officer “hesitates,” he “could die,” as Sheriff Babeu openly says. The First Rule isn’t a big secret, really. It’s just that people who aren’t law enforcement officers don’t appreciate that their making it home for dinner trumps your making it home alive.
And this happened after a car chase. It seems to happen with brutal regularity after car chases. It’s still unclear to me why that is.
But what doesn’t seem to strike the sheriff about the killing of Manuel Longoria is that they didn’t shoot him while he presented a threat. They didn’t kill him during the car chase. They didn’t kill him because he had a weapon in his hand. In fact, he had no weapon, but then, the police couldn’t know that and there is little that gives them greater latitude to kill than ignorance.
More to the point, there is no argument to be made that Manuel Longoria, hands in the air, presented a threat.
But a former DPS and Scottsdale Police Officer Jess Torrez disagreed after viewing the video.
“You have multiple police officers on the scene and only one person makes the shot. That tells me that other officers at the scene did not feel there was justification to use deadly physical force,” said Torrez.
Perhaps because they understood what was meant by hands in the air?
Torrez said despite Longoria’s behavior during the chase and initial part of the standoff, the only actions that were central to a decision to shoot, occurred right before the deputy opened fire.
“Officers are taught to look at the hands first and foremost. So if his hands are up in the air, he doesn’t have anything in them. How do they justify using deadly force?” asked Torrez.
It’s not a question. There is no presumption that officers need to justify the shooting of a bad dude. That’s just public relations. The guy is dead. The deputy is alive. The rest is just details.
Except the shooting of a man with his hands in the air, even if there was cause to shoot earlier, presents a problem that Sheriff Babeu fails to recognize. The First Rule of Policing demands that no risk, no potential threat, be suffered if there is any chance that an officer might be harmed. Respecting the universal sign of surrender works to the officer’s benefit by ending the threat.
Instead, a message was sent by the shooter. Surrender, raise you hands in the air, and you will still die. This undermines the point of surrender, to end the conflict. This tells the person who police think could hurt them that they will not respect the universal sign of surrender, and that surrender is futile.
This tells the person that there is nothing he can do to bring the threat to an end while continuing to live. And if that’s the case, then the only option is to fight to the death. After all, if he’s going to die anyway, then he might as well die fighting.
And while that may, and likely will, mean that the person will not survive the confrontation, it may also mean that an officer will die too. That violates the First Rule of Policing.
Is that what you meant to do here, Sheriff Babeu? Did you mean to put the lives of your deputies at risk by sending the message that people can’t surrender in Pinal County and expect to live? Did you mean to tell people that they might as well kill your deputies since they’re going to die anyway?
That’s a very bad message, Sheriff. A very bad message indeed.
H/T Tim Cushing