Thread by @SethAbramson

At issue here—as in the recent Columbus shooting—is a simple question: were officers in imminent fear of their own physical safety, or that of a third party, when they killed this man. People on the right seem not to understand this element of police SOPs. npr.org/2021/04/23/990…

When a black man is shot by police, people on the right ask every question *except* those that are relevant to the inquiry under police SOPs. You don't shoot someone just because they have a warrant. You don't shoot someone just because they're fleeing. That's not how this works.

Officers are supposed to shoot (and by the way, officers are *only trained to shoot to kill*, not injure, which automatically *raises the stakes* of the SOPs) when they or someone else are in imminent physical danger. You don't kill someone just as a way of stopping their flight.

Moreover, as much as we understandably focus on the lost lives of shooting victims, what folks on the right don't understand is that the newsworthiness of officer-involved shootings ultimately involves *policing policy and public safety* more than any individual case exclusively.

The right has been trained by its demagogues to treat every criminal case as a mere anecdote to be argued over. On the left, we look at policing as a public policy, public health, and public safety issue. That's one reason left and right talk past each other on criminal justice.

The Andrew C. Brown case is of course a tragedy—without question—because a man lost his life and a family lost a loved one. But it enters the news because it raises questions about how we train police, how they're responding to that training, and whether our communities are safe.

When a man wanted for a non-violent crime is shot while fleeing at a time he's not an imminent danger, left and right should agree we have a *public policy problem*.

The only alternative is for people on the right to say that unarmed non-violent fleeing suspects can be executed.

As a former criminal defense attorney, I worry we on the left let people on the right off the hook by treating police shootings as individualized anecdotes that can be mercilessly deconstructed rather than public policy debates.

We will win the public policy debate *every time*.

On the right, there is virtually no understanding whatsoever about police SOPs or policing in America generally. After years of being *brutally* demagogued at by their leaders, folks on the right are so woefully misinformed on criminal justice issues they are like newborn babies.

If you are a criminal justice reform advocate on the left, you will *virtually never lose an argument about criminal justice policy* with someone on the right—so long as you focus on *public policy and police SOPs*, rather than the emotional components of any one individual case.

Treating officer-involved shootings as opportunities to debate public policy is not a devaluation of the human components of a shooting. What it is is a refusal to let conservatives appeal to rank emotion and bigotry to sidestep what makes a single shooting nationally newsworthy.

While we have so much more to learn about the Brown shooting, on the face of it no right-wing demagogue could explain how police SOPs regarding imminent physical danger should be idiosyncratically tossed aside whenever an officer feels like it. That argument is a loser for them.

By the same token, a full investigation of the shooting of the girl in Columbus still needs to take place. But right now that shooting does not look like a crime because it appears to be a classic example of police SOPs allowing for deadly force to save the life of a third party.

This isn't the same thing as suggesting that the officer in Columbus had no other options whatsoever. It's possible to have that debate. But based on what we know right now, that shooting was not criminal in nature. This is one reason we on the left should focus on public policy.

Treating criminal cases as mere anecdotes is a trap criminal justice reform advocates have been falling into for decades—and I say that as someone who's been a criminal justice reform advocate for many years.

Again, we'll almost *always* win the *policy* debates if we have them.